May 2014 Featured Child: Bai

This month, we’re featuring Bai, a five-year-old from Little Flower’s Group Home #6. He arrived at Little Flower in November 2012, diagnosed with developmental delays. When he first arrived, he couldn’t speak very clearly, knew only very simple words, and had trouble expressing his thoughts out loud. In terms of our approach to his treatment, we determined that he would need some help with his language skills and overall development. Luckily, he’s had both the engaging environments of the Little Flower Early Education Center and his Group Home family to help him develop quite rapidly, not just with his language skills, but also his social and interpersonal skills. Though he still has a ways to go, he has shown vast improvement since his arrival.

When he first arrived, he was extremely shy and didn’t have many conversations with others. Today, he’s much more outgoing and likes to talk with his school friends and other siblings from Little Flower Group Home #6. Group Home #6’s foster dad actually comes to the school each day to cook lunch for the kids, and Bai loves seeing him there everyday. Bai is actually quite similar in personality to his foster dad. They’re both very easygoing and love to make others laugh. Here's a photo of Bai with is foster mom:

At the moment, Bai is the third oldest of five siblings in his group home. The others are Ji, Ling, Ya, and Tao. He gets along with his siblings very well. Since he has two younger sisters, he’s grown to experience what it’s like to be an older brother and help look after them.

Well actually, his foster sister Ya, who attends the Little Flower school with him, can sometimes play tricks on him, which may make her seem like the older one. Bai is a very generous kid, who doesn’t mind sharing what he has with others or helping out with chores.

At home one day, the kids were all eating fruit. Each of them had four pieces, and Ya gobbled hers down first. She asked Bai for a piece, and he said, “sure!” But when he turned around, Ya had gobbled down everything!

The Little Flower teachers report that Bai is one of the most active students at the Early Education Center. He loves playing outdoors, running, jumping, digging holes and climbing all over the playground.

He’s full of curiosity and also has a rich imagination. He loves Kung Fu, and can be found having a bunch of imaginary adventures just during the forty-five minutes of recess.

One day, he picked up a couple of sticks and pretended they were a bow and arrow. He darted around the schoolyard for the rest of recess, pretending he was a little archer, off to save the day.

Recently, we found that Bai was having some trouble seeing. This led to a trip to the eye doctor and Bai’s first pair of glasses. He loves his glasses, and is very happy now that he doesn’t have to squint to see. Each day at naptime, he takes the initiative to find a teacher to keep his glasses safe while he’s sleeping, and then collects them after waking up. He can often be found peering over his spectacles like an old wise man.

Speaking of which, little Bai can’t wait to grow up. At naptime some days, when the younger kids sleep and many of the older kids choose to go to the art room to draw, he often sneaks into the art room with his older classmates.

And whenever the students line up to go outside, they organize themselves into two lines: one for the younger kids, and one for the older kids. This little guy refuses to go to the little kid line, and adamantly takes his place alongside the older students.

When he heard about Yang, Shu, and Gong transferring to the Beijing International Bilingual Academy, known colloquially among the Early Education Center kids as, “the big kids’ school,” he immediately wanted to go.

Little Bai took the matter up with his teacher Maria. He walked up to her and announced, “I want to go to the big kids’ class!” Maria patiently explained that he would have to wait before he could attend.

What did Bai do next? He took a little stroll around the room, and a couple minutes later, he approached Maria again. “Okay, I’ve done my waiting. Now can I go?”

Bai has a forever family coming to adopt him soon. He recently received a package with photographs of his family from the United States. He’s very proud and excited to go to America. We’re sure that his imagination and ambition will take him very far when he gets there!

The Athletes

Today, we wanted to highlight some of the talented athletes here at the baby home. Check out their moves!

It's off to the races with our first four babies, who are ready to crawl to the finish line. Here, they have all lined up at a starting line. From the left, we see Xian, Yang, Min, and Wan.

And they’re off! Yang is quite the sprinter. But Xian looks a little lost; the expression on his cherubic face seems to say: “Hey, where are they all going?”

Yang emerged victorious from that race, but no matter. Wan here looks ready to move beyond crawling races to become a race car driver!

In the field of gymnastics, Yang shows off his moves. We’re not sure whether those splits are intentional, but he does seem pretty flexible!

And here, we have Yang doing her version of the rock and roll split. She would look great with a little guitar wouldn’t she? Or maybe some cymbals.

Le is definitely one of our most flexible babies. She would be great at yoga!

Speaking of yoga, here you will notice that our little ones love to do one of our favorite yoga poses--the “happy baby pose.” It is an actual yoga pose, and our babies are experts at it.

Here, we have two little “boxers,” Da and Yun.

Last on our list is a favorite: FLYING! The little guys love to do this “Superman” pose. Xiao always does her flying pose with a big smile.

A Triple Birthday

We've been working on establishing a program in our second location in Shanxi Province that's similar to our successful Group Educational Foster Care project in Beijing. There, three of the children in our new program had a birthday this week and shared a big cake with their foster parents! 

Check out the photos below:

The New Kids

We've been seeing some new faces around our school lately! That's because we have a few new children who have joined our Beijing Group Educational Foster Care Program, and they have, in turn, joined our school. Being the new kid in class can be difficult for anyone, but the Little Flower teachers have been working hard to make sure that these newcomers feel comfortable in their surroundings. The other students have helped out as well!

The first "new kid" is Li, a five-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome from GH #3. She arrived at Little Flower recently, and joined our school after just 1 week here. She's a bright, outgoing girl who loves to talk.

She does have some delays with her speech, and it can sometimes be difficult for our teachers to understand her, but that doesn't stop her from chatting with classmates and teachers alike! This is a skill that our teachers will work on with her in the coming months.

She has great concentration and is extremely curious, with a desire to explore everything around her. Naturally, this can sometimes lead her to mischief. Our teachers have reported that she tries to eat a lot of things that probably shouldn't be eaten... This, of course, led to a more thorough round of child-proofing in the classroom, where some of the smaller toys had to be put away. Li can also be rambunctious around the other students, taking off her shoes in the middle of class, or nicking food from her neighbor's lunch bowl! But no matter, the other kids have been helping to guide her in the right direction, especially the older ones.

Because we employ individualized education methods, and have kids of different ages in the same class (many of whom are foster siblings themselves!), we see a lot of big-brother/big-sister relationships at our school, with older kids helping out the younger ones.

The other new kid is Zhen, who just arrived at GH #4. He had spina bifida, and two successful surgeries in 2009. He's the most pleasant, laid-back kid you'll ever meet. He's extremely easy-going and warms up to everyone right away.

We also have a few other kids joining the school this week: two older girls and one boy. The two girls, Ling and Jia, are between 11-12 years old and recently arrived from their orphanage, where they had a small classroom but never really attended school. Because they aren't familiar with a real school environment, we decided to bring them into our Early Education Center as a sort of trial run. This will give them a chance to adjust to the daily rhythms and activities of an academic environment before transitioning to public school.

Similarly, we have Gui, a 12-year-old boy, currently living in GH#2, who started at our school on Tuesday. He's extremely shy and a little bit timid. He doesn't like big crowds or noise, and has been largely staying at home. Little by little, however, we've been trying to bring him out of his shell. The next step, of course, was to get him into school.

Because we suspect that he's had some kind of emotional trauma in his past, as well as experiences with bullying in his orphanage school, we want to create a safe, relaxing environment as he transitions back into a school environment. A few days ago, Maria, one of our teachers, visited him at home to talk about how he felt about going back to school.

She reports that he acted very much like an average teen, with some outward indifference to the situation, but that he did give her a shy smile! She told him that they would be able to start slow, with a choice between half days or full days during his first week. "When a child has experienced some kind of trauma, it's very important to let them take charge--to see that they have the power to decide what they want for themselves," Maria explains. Hopefully, Gui will be able to interact with our other two new older students, and they will be able to help each other adjust to the new environment.

Maria and the other teachers will be able to closely observe these kids, whether it's to see how they interact with other students in an academic environment, or to see what might trigger any anxiety. When asked whether or not she found it a challenge to deal with so many kids with different needs, Maria replied, "Not really. Our school focuses on individual education. Everyone has their own interests, skills, and potential. So everyone's different anyway!"

Let's hope that all of our new kids get into the swing of things very soon!