Made for Love - The Power of Play

For most of our caregivers and teachers, a crucial part of our day-to-day work is playing with the children.  Peek-a-boo, pulling turnips, wheels-on-the-bus, hide-and-seek, are just a few of our all-time favorites.

Play is a lot of fun, but it is much more than that! For young children, most of their important learning takes place in play. We try to create every possibility for the children in our care to play. Over the years, we have seen firsthand how play transforms young lives, unlocks potential and nurtures the skills they need to thrive.

Play is the most natural way that young children learn and explore. When they build a tower with blocks or solve a puzzle, they learn to problem-solve and sharpen their thinking. 

When they play ball games and giggle together outside, they learn to collaborate, to develop motor skills, and to exercise perseverance. When they spend hours digging holes in the garden or making mud pies, they are learning about nature and using their imagination and creativity. 

Language and social skills flourish during play, too, for example when children discuss what to do and negotiate rules in play (“I'll be the mommy, you be the baby.”).  When they are engaged in rough-and-tumble play, we see empathy and a sense of togetherness starting to take root. 

Through play, children discover how the world around them works and how they fit in. When a little one holds a doll tight and pretends to bathe her gently, that child is re-experiencing her everyday life of love and care while imagining what it feels like to be a caregiver, to show compassion and to be responsible. This is an essential tool for emotional development.

For children who have faced trauma and loss, play provides a safe space to process their feelings and regulate their emotions. When a child dresses up as Ultraman and shouts “Believe in the light!”, he is exploring what it feels like to be courageous, to stand up to evil, and to be resilient.

Unfortunately, play does not come naturally for many children who have suffered from early deprivation and emotional neglect. Even if they are surrounded by toys, they are very likely to just examine the toys, toss them around, or grab them from their peers’ hands, rather than concentrating on them and playing collaboratively with others. Therefore, it is critical that we as adults invite children to play with us and model for them how to play.

Playing together gives us opportunities to model important skills like concentrating, problem-solving (“How can I get my tower even taller?”), and social skills (for example, turn-taking). We also help the children to co-regulate with us. We use our imagination and get creative together, until these things begin to come naturally to them. 

Play is the foundation of learning and growth for children. We strive to give children the tools to learn, grow, and heal, and to create spaces that encourage joyful, purposeful play, so that they can become more confident, creative, and connected.

Two years with little YX!

 Little YX was abandoned within hours of her birth two years ago in June.  

She was born with congenital melanocytic nevus (CMN), which is also called a giant hairy nevus.  In YX’s case, this large black birthmark covers more than half of her torso and is also evident on parts of her scalp and extremities.  We can only guess that her family was unable to accept such a visible disfiguration and felt that had no choice but to leave her where she would be found and taken to an orphanage.

Although these lesions are benign, they have a very high risk for becoming precancerous or malignant.  Half of all children who are born with them will be diagnosed with a malignancy by age two, and nearly three quarters will receive that diagnosis by age 7.  As soon as she arrived at the orphanage the staff asked if we might be able to accept her for care.  We knew that she would benefit immensely from the nurturing, attentive care in our baby home.  

YX is receiving regular screening consults to watch for any dangerous changes to her skin.  Her caregivers are also monitoring closely to watch for any warning signs.

Little YX is now a healthy, curious toddler who loves the activities in our early learning center classes. 

While she is thriving in our care, we hope and pray that someday she will be able to join a family of her own.  

We are very grateful to all who support us in our work.  Because of you, we are able to provide love, nurturing and life-changing medical treatment to children like YX. 

Launchpad - Getting Started

 Our very first Launchpad home is in north central China.  Last year, when YJ first approached us with his doubts and concerns for the future, there were two more young men who had previously been cared for in Little Flower homes who also joined the discussion.  One more young man also from the same orphanage heard about our plans.  He was intrigued, and he asked if we could consider allowing him to join our Launchpad home as well.

After the boys discussed their plans with the orphanage leaders and received approval to proceed, our first task was to find a suitable apartment to rent.  While there are many inexpensive housing options in outlying areas, we were limited to a rather central location in the city so that the boys could easily get back and forth to their vocational center, shopping, church etc. without having to make multiple transfers on the bus or subway.  An even higher priority was finding housing that was handicapped accessible. 

 With two of the four in wheelchairs and one dependent on crutches, we knew that having to navigate stairs or narrow doorways would be a problem.  We involved the boys in the search; letting them browse the available listings and contact agents directly.  They considered many different homes before finally, we found just what we were looking for!

We had hoped to get a furnished rental, but since that didn't happen we started shopping for furniture.  The boys did some research, and it turned out that IKEA was the best option for inexpensive, durable, basic furnishings.  They worked out exactly what pieces were needed, how much it would cost, and put together a detailed list for approval by our accounting department.  We were able to get some of the large appliances and kitchen wares donated, and soon the empty apartment was filled with many flat packed boxes of furniture ready to assemble.  It was a very daunting task, and the boys had no real experience with this kind of project!

Fortunately, several kindhearted volunteers offered to supervise and assist in the furniture assembly.  After many long hours of hard work, their new home was ready!

While all of this was going on, we were also searching for a set of house parents who could help guide our young men along the path to independence.  This proved much more difficult than we expected, but we finally found Mr. Sun and Mrs. Qin (women in China do not take their husband's surname when they marry), who have a long history of helping to care for disabled children as foster parents.

This fall has been a period of adjustment, with the boys and house parents getting to know each other, each settling in to their roles and responsibilities in the family.  

The boys spend their days at a nearby vocational training center, and the house parents also volunteer there helping to prepare lunch for the students and staff.  

There have certainly been some rough patches and many conflicts; as we discussed in our last post what we are doing involves big changes and lots of hard work!  But we are all so excited to be started along the path to our goals, and we can't wait to see what the future holds!  

If you would like to support Launchpad, click below! ⬇⬇⬇

Off to a good start!

Little Y was found in a mountainous, rural area in a northern province just a few months ago.  The person who found her was quite surprised, as she was left in a rather isolated area with few passersby.  She appeared to be a perfectly healthy newborn, but when she arrived at the local orphanage they decided to have her admitted to the hospital for a thorough evaluation just in case.

Initially, the hospital did not find anything wrong with her, but her orphanage worried that she might need special care, so she came straight from the hospital to our home.    A few days later her bloodwork came back with a diagnosis of phenylketonuria (PKU). 

This is a serious metabolic disorder which, if left untreated, can cause seizures, intellectual impairment and life-long health problems.  The treatment for babies with PKU is a special formula, which is quite expensive and not readily available in your average supermarket or corner store.  We can only guess that her birth family received this diagnosis and felt hopeless to provide the care she needed.

We transferred her to our medical home in Beijing so that she could follow up with the top pediatric specialists, who were concerned that she might have additional medical problems.  Fortunately,  no other problems were found.

Little Y has a delightful personality and charms everyone she meets.  

We are grateful to all who support out work... because of you, we able to provide love, nurturing and life-saving medical treatment to children like little Y!

Launchpad - How do we get there?

 In our last post we shared the inspiration behind our newest program - Launchpad.  Now we'd like to tell you a little bit more about what our goals are and how we plan to achieve them.

As we shared in our last post, our goal is to perfect a model that will be successful in helping motivated young adults make the transition from passive recipients of institutional care to productive, capable members of society.  While that sounds simple enough, figuring out how to get from point A to point B is an intimidating challenge!  Starting out, we had so many questions... how long would this process take?  What knowledge and skills would these young adults need to acquire?  What kind of jobs are available to disabled people who may have had zero formal education?

The model we feel will work best is a model that has been tried and tested all over the world - a group home model headed by a dedicated set of house parents whose role is to guide these young adults along the path to independence. These house parents and young adults in our Launchpad program are supported in many ways by the rest of our team, and together we are focused on developing skills and competence in these 5 key areas:

***Education - most disabled/institutionalized children do not attend regular public schools.  They may have limited opportunities to attend orphanage run "schools" or receive some kind of special needs education.  This is better than nothing, but they end up lacking the comprehensive education and actual diploma that children attending a regular school receive.  We start with an evaluation of their reading, writing and math skills and work to help them attain a high school level of knowledge in these basic areas.   We encourage them to take standardized tests in subject areas that will increase their employability in the future.

***Daily life skills - growing up in an orphanage means that you don't have to learn to do the things that most kids in families grow up learning.  This includes things like shopping for groceries, learning to cook meals, how to scrub a bathroom, do your own laundry.  Always having these things done for you and then having to take the responsibility for them yourself is a big change!  Our Launchpad program helps them face the challenges of doing so, which for some of our young adults is complicated by a significant physical disability, such as being in a wheelchair.

*** Financial literacy and money management - most kids grow up learning these skills from their parents.  Older teens in an orphanage have no experience gradually learning to cover their own expenses and no one to model for them how to make wise financial decisions.  Our Launchpad program provides a stipend to each young adult, and expects them to contribute a portion of this to their own monthly expenses. We offer them guidance on how to plan for the future by budgeting and maintaining a savings account.

***Interpersonal skills - children who grow up in orphanages certainly do not grow up in isolation, but they experience a very limited range of interactions with others.  It's not uncommon for them to have experienced bullying or harassment, which can also affect their perception of others.  We work with them to help them understand their feelings, how to deal with conflict, and how to develop and maintain meaningful relationships with others, including family members, co-workers and those in authority - such as a boss or supervisor.

***Vocational skills - of course, the ultimate goal of Launchpad is to help each young adult discern what type of career is suitable for them, and then help them receive the personalized education and vocational training to acquire a job in that field.

If you think that sounds like a lot, you're right!   Making the decision to undertake great personal challenges while also taking responsibility for your own future is scary!  It's perfectly normal to have doubts and feel uncertain, and everyone has days when they wonder if they've made the wrong decision.  That's why our Launchpad program has one additional vitally important component - counselling!  Learning to manage stress, understanding turbulent feelings, coping with difficult emotions, identifying unhealthy behaviors, developing self esteem - all of these are reasons why we believe that counselling is necessary to the success of the Launchpad program.

Stay tuned for our next post, where we'll share a glimpse into our first Launchpad home!

Made for Love - Actively Engaged

We believe that children are not just passive recipients of environmental influences but are actively engaged with the environment with their own intentions and orientations, intellectual understandings, and emotions. In other words, children are active participants who contribute to their own development and understanding of the world. 

From a very young age, children show great curiosity about their environment. They actively seek out new experiences and explore their surroundings by observing, touching, manipulating, and, of course, putting objects in their mouth. Above all, they are interested in the primary caregivers and then later, other adults and children in their life. 

In addition, we often see children with physical disabilities demonstrate amazing adaptabilities. In spite of their physical limitations, they manage to find ways to communicate, to move around, to play, and to express themselves. Their desire to connect and communicate are made clear as they use gestures, sounds, eye contacts, etc. to engage with caregivers, peers, and toys. 

In general, children actively learn through social interactions. They enjoy engaging with caregivers, peers, and others around them. Educational research show that for children, cultural norms, language, and socially acceptable behaviors are all acquired through active participation in social life. 

Learning happens from children’s encounter with the social context mainly in the following three ways: First, children learn by observing and imitating what the others are doing. In our group homes, we often see older children voluntarily care for the younger siblings just as they have seen their group home parents do. 

Second, children learn through trial-and-error. Rather than passively waiting for instructions, they try to make sense of the environment by testing out new possibilities and see what the consequences are. For example, a young child sitting in a highchair may throw a toy and watch how it falls (and often what a caregiver responds). The child learns about gravity (and cause-and-effect, when the adult picks up the toy every time). 

Third, children learn from playing with others. This is especially true when children are involved in pretend play, where they recreate in play what they see, hear, and understand in their everyday reality.

Children do not just absorb whatever information is provided to them. Rather, they make sense of their everyday experiences based on their developmental levels and past experiences. This is why a similar situation may be interpreted and responded very differently by different children. 

An important implication is that children’s active engagement with the environment requires that people who work with the children be conscious of their different needs and preferences when trying to offer support. Our role as caregivers and educators is not to decide for children every aspect of their experience, but to prepare an environment that tailors to their individual differences in order to protect their natural curiosity, intellectual growth, and emotional development. 

The belief that “children are not passive recipients of environmental influences” helps us to rethink how we provide care, education, and emotional support in orphanage settings. Children are not merely shaped by their environment, but they actively reach out, interact, and make sense of the world around them with their abilities, preferences, and emotions.