Children's Development

Whenever we have time, we go to the kids in the orphanage. We see them during the week in their school break, talk to them, and see how they are doing. But Saturdays are special for them. They know that we come to spend time with them. Some people might just call it playtime, there is more to it.

We use different approaches to help them develop their skills. These include areas like: 

Gross Motor Skill Development: This is the child's ability to use large muscles for example learning how to skip, kick and catch a ball and jump etc. Most of the kids in the orphanage have no problems with this. 

Speech and Language Development: This is the child's ability to both understand and use language. We take time to read with them, playing memory games, learning the time, playing domino for counting etc.

Social and emotional Development: Because of these children encountered an earthquake, lost maybe one or both parents, they have had to deal with traumas in their lives. I honestly can’t imagine. They need to work on their ability to interact with others, to share and to help each other. Most of the time where is a lot of jealousy going on between them, so they need to learn self-control, which is very important, especially when 18 boys are living together in one room.  

Fine Motor Skill Development are the actions performed with the small muscles in the hands, fingers and wrist: How a child is holding a spoon, pencil, holding a pair of scissors, the kid will require precise movements of his small muscles to accomplish his task satisfactorily. When a child develops his fine motor skills, he is gaining competence using the small muscles in his hands. 

We personally find that the Fine Motor Skills are not very well developed in the kids from the orphanage.

So through painting and coloring we take time to strengthen the muscles in the fingers (and thumb). But this takes work and fortunately little ones need to be reminded every day of it. It takes lots of patience and providing of opportunities for them to exercise, move and learn to control the finger muscles and strengthen the pincer grip. Development just happens through practice and more practice. 

One boy, he is 10 years old, he can hardly write his name. When they write, they use their whole arm, instead their wrist. To hold a crayon, pen or pencil seems quite difficult for some, especially for the older ones. When they write, for us it is so confusing to figure out where a word ends and where a new one starts because the children write it with no space in between.

The same boy, never really wants to play with the younger once. So when he plays with me, I always include the younger once too. Writing this, it hits me why he never wants to play with the younger kids, because they remind him of his inabilities. Because when we played a memory game, the 7 year old could remember and collect the same pictures, but the 10 year old could not. 

I guess, the difficulty is, that the older kids (9-10) realize, that they sit in the same class with the  7 year old and some of the younger once can write much better. I think, some are quite aware of their disabilities and are frustrated. 

Please remember these precious children in your prayers. Pray for that they won’t lose their enthusiasm to learn, to see every day a little bit of improvement. And also pray for us, that the orphans will see the Fathers character in us: Love, patience and kindness. Thank you!