Learn About Happiness

         "Sometimes we have to learn how to be happy". It is so neat to see happiness where I work because you know the children are really happy when they are and it is the process of how they get to be happy moving from their situation to ours. So much can be done with just a routine and someone you loves them. I have recently seen some children that came in really upset and sad but when they left they were happy and smiling. One child was homeless and the other child was living in a bad house.
           The homeless child was a girl that her dad "gave up freely". Now some of you might be thinking why would he do that but he cared enough for her to do that because he knew it would be better for her them being homeless. It was so sad to see her come in on her first day because you could just tell by the clothes she was wearing that she was homeless. I didn't think anything about it until I found out that why she was there. She was a mess. Very clingy to me and cried all the time. Didn't want to play with her peers. Didn't want to be by herself and would hit her head on her pillow when she would go to sleep. She would also cry if I was not the person in the room with her. She was very attached to me. Her hair was a mess but we had someone cut it and she looked really cute.
            Before she left, her attitude changed totally around. She would play with her peers. She would laugh and smile more. She "let go" of me. Wasn't so clingy to me. She calmed herself down and went to sleep on her own. I still needed to be the one in there when I was there but she did fine otherwise. I didn't want her to leave because the week before she left she was all smiles and laughter everyday and that was the first week she was like that. She went back and forth a lot depending on the day but that week was so life changing for me just to see how happy a child can be yet been through a lot.
               The other child living in a bad house was a boy. He told us a lot about what he remembered of his house. He talked a lot about pipes and was interesting in the drain in the bath tub. He loved to "work" on the toy cars we had in the gym. He would actually get under the car and pretend he was working on it. He came in his first day not playing but just sitting around. He would not go play with his peers at all. He would just sit at a table and cry and say he wanted his mommy, daddy and sister.  He would play alone a lot outside of the rooms. Before he left, he would play with his peers. Talk a lot more. He cried a lot less. He also when he got there would cry when his sister left from supper and if he saw her there he would cry too. It got to where he didn't want to sit by her as often and he just whined when he saw her instead of crying. He would stop faster once he got busy playing.
             It is so neat to see how a child's life can change just in 3 months or less. Sometimes you don't think about it until after they leave and you miss them and start talking about them to people. I will have stories to tell from this job and a lot of them.