A week of horrors!

This week has been so long! Nearly all of the children had concerts at school every night for a week and a half. They started Wednesday the week before and the last one was Thursday just gone so because they were all going to bed later than usual they were all knackered (it also doesn't seem to be common knowledge here that kids probably shouldn't eat fizzy sweets and chocolate just before bed so they don't get a burst of energy!). We also had to tell them all some bad news last Friday (I'm not going to say what the news was on the blog, but don't worry, no-one's died or anything that serious). We have been told a lot about 'stressful incident leads to observable behaviours' so I definitely saw that this week. Children who were usually fairly well behaved were acting out and the children that often misbehaved were on a new scale. The children who are the ones you rely on to be fairly independent and just get on with their own stuff became really needy and wanted you to be with them the whole time. It was so stressful.

On top of this, all the Child Care Workers-CCW (Tannie's one per house and paid version of the volunteers but they're here full time-basically the person who tells me what to do when in the house) on shift went for a teambuilding day thing. But it meant there were no CCWs on shift at all. I haven't worked in other houses so I don't know what the situation is like there, but the house where I work, the kids don't listen to what any of the volunteers say. Ever. It's really frustrating. So if there's no CCWs for 2 hours then the volunteers have 2 hours of trying to stop 12 kids from going too wild. All this considered, I think we did quite well! I mean, one child flicked a fork-full of food at another child's head and 3 boys climbed onto a small 1st story roof. But other than that! And all 12 kids were alive and in the house when the CCW got back! Only we have to do it again next week when the other shift goes for their teambuilding. YAY.

But I think next week will be better! :)