Thankful and Grateful {blog hop}

I am grateful to be a part of the Frenzied SLPs-and I’m excited to be a part of this month’s thankful and grateful blog hop!  If you are just starting, check out the first blog post HERE:

Visit each blog to read about what we are grateful for-and collect letters along the way.  The letters you collect will create a phrase.  You can enter that phrase in a Rafflecopter.  Three lucky winners will receive a $10 gift certificate to Starbucks and Teacher’s Pay TeachersA few years ago, I kept a gratitude journal.  There was something fulfilling about taking time every day to think about at least one thing that you were happy for.  My journal is sitting in a drawer under a few pairs of jeans that fit me a few years ago.  Things got busy and it was one of the things that I let go-but as I was writing this post, I started thinking about how I enjoyed this exercise.  I may need to take it out again.

I am so thankful for everyone who I’ve met through blogging.  This includes other bloggers and some amazing readers that take time to leave comments or share their thoughts with me.  I never would have thought that I would feel the community of online friends and colleagues.

I am so grateful for the bloggers who I blog-stalked before starting my own blog.  They are amazing and my speech room is filled with their materials and activity ideas.  Jenna from Speech Room News, Kristin from Heard in Speech, Jill Kuzma, and  Sublime Speech were my very first introductions to speech therapy blogging.

I am amazed and grateful for the online speech therapy community-including all of the amazing groups on Facebook.  Remember when it seemed like it was just you at a school?  Now there is a growing online community that you can reach out too (while keeping in mind privacy concerns of course!)

I am grateful that I have a job which I am passionate about-even after all of this time.  I love that I can be funny, creative, and of course a little (a lot) weird and still make a difference in a child’s life.  Without communication-even very basic communication-life does not seem worth living.  We get to help shape a child’s first words-or help someone regain their words and voice after a stroke or traumatic brain injury.  So yeah, CC from Superpower Speech had it right when she said, “I help people communicate, what’s your super power.”

I’m also really, really, really grateful that my son has stopped using the F word.  (the really bad one-not the flatulence one although he has been better about that one too.)  I thought we’d dodged a bullet when I got him to stop saying it (accidentally at first and then on purpose due to my husband’s inability to keep a straight face in the midst of toddler swearing).  I’d be sweaty at Target as my cute cherub yelled “&*^$ it mommy!” over and over again as I tried to get our groceries done.  Finally I just pretended he was saying “bucket.”  This fooled the average listener-but I know you know that an /f/ for /b/ substitution is rare.  There was about a month where it was touch and go at the start of the school year.  It seemed like there was nothing I could say/do/threaten to get him to stop.  But he has, so I guess it’s that’s my parenting miracle of 2015 and a lead in to my frenzied letter:

 

One more thing, while I haven’t done a gratitude journal in awhile-I have started talking at our home about our “high point” and our “low point.”  Each night at dinner, we share one great thing-and one thing that we wished had happened differently.  It started off as a way to help my seven year old son deal with disappointment and failure-and to help him focus on the positive.  It’s become a way for me to bond with my family in a way that I did not expect.  A lot of times they are silly moments-to the point where my son has changed the activity to “high point”, “low point”, and “weird point.”  I bring it up because it is like a gratitude journal-but it’s also an exercise that you could be adapted to work with your students and clients.  I think it could be powerful for them to hear from an adult and to generate their own positives (and maybe listen to your “low” points) on a weekly basis.  Not exactly a gratitude activity, but something I was thinking about as I wrote this post.

Check out the next post by clicking below!

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