All About Your Child

Second day at PuddleWorld!

This time, the kids are more ethusiastic. In fact, Binbin ran to the ‘playroom‘ after we alighted from the dropoff point at Concord Hotel. Yes, PuddleWorld is located at Concord Hotel.

For those of you who missed my first blog post “PuddleWorld – Day 1 of 4” and are curious about what PuddleWorld is all about, fear not, details are here:-

• Workshops contain all round Mind and Body benefits, Positive Psychology contributes the mind component, and the Dance Movement Therapy component adds an important physical link.

Thereby their workshops are unique in employing an overall holistic, psychosomatic approach to therapy. And being drama based, it’s a really fun way to acquire skills in resiliency while your child is in play mode!

• Benefits are quite powerful: sending a child for extra tuition, or to learn extra Musical or physical skills provides excellent tools – however, is anything being Done in the meantime to improve the operation of the child’s actual mind itself?

How does the mind deal with stress, how does the mind cope with an intense workload, or peer pressure, or a competitive landscape?

It’s fine having extra skills – but at the end of the day, we need a positive and resilient mind to effectively employ those extra skills inside today’s intensely competitive landscape.

That’s where Puddleworld comes in, with it’s joint applications of Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy.

You can check out Puddleworld by liking them at www.facebook.com/puddleworld

==========

Today, I reached there a little earlier than last week when it was time to go home. My reward for being early was to see my boys in action! Having fun playing the ‘Cool Down Game : Duck-Duck-Goose‘ with their new found friends at PuddleWorld.

You can see the upset look on KitKit’s face, in the video below, when Binbin tabbed him. It was KitKit’s second time in a row being the ‘catcher‘, its was nice of the coaches to ‘spare‘ him after that and let another child have a go.

After two sessions in PuddleWorld, my boys told me that they now posses ‘Super Powers’ which could help them when they are unhappy, stressed or afraid.

Their ‘Super Powers’ are actions or physical movement which could ‘free them from those negative emotions.

My 7 year old Binbin started to show me some of the ACTIONS taught at PuddleWorld.

I get that warm fuzzy feeling when I see the smiles on his face as he demonstrated one action after another clearly. I think this applies to all parents, when they see their children smile, right?

In case you are thinking deeper and wondering how did PuddleWorld come about….

The beginnings were back in September 2011, during the InHerShoes-Art and Music Against Cancer concert at Fort Canning, an event which Puddleworld Founder Simon Wong was organising in support of cancer research, and Stephen Lew (Director Of School of Positive Psychology) was a volunteer for.

Both men were subsequently inspired by a series of discussions over the subsequent months, and with School of Positive Psychology looking to serve a social cause and InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer, seeking to doing likewise through it’s drama capability, an idea was born to bring to people the benefits of a healthy mind through the medium of drama and play.

Stephen had often remarked upon the extreme resiliency of some cancer fighters, caregivers and survivors, a trait which Simon seemed to posses in some quantity having lost his wife Peikie to cancer in 2008.

His response was to get up and carry on, with the birth of InHerShoes – Art & Music Against Cancer (an annual event run in conjunction now with the NCCS and it’s RunForHope), and then with writing the story of Puddleworld, and the subsequent Puddleworld programme which drew it’s objectives from the first hand experiences of members of the InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer team affected by cancer and an identification of needs to help cope as both caregiver and fighter.

From there the InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer team discovered some common examples of resiliency and coping, and it was clear that if cancer fighters and caregivers could face death and dying, and come out for the better of it – an analysis of such a mind and it’s mechanisms could identify some strong traits, which we could then identify and apply Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy, principles to replicating or enhancing in the rest of us – and that’s where the School of Positive Psychology came in.

Puddleworld’s own Dance Movement Therapy specialist and Programme Director Agnes Law added the physical dimension; through her long experiences of working with children both in Singapore as a social worker and in London for the UK National Health Service as Dance Movement Therapy specialist, that when the mind is in a state of play, humans tend to absorb much more information and are more likely to internalize the lessons at hand.

With the InHerShoes, Art & Music Against Cancer connection to the performing arts scene, it was only natural then to incorporate the principles of Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy into drama, resulting in the creation of the Puddleworld storyline, a story largely inspired by Simon’s caregiver experiences during his wife’s resilient and inspiring fight against cancer.

With the sciences of Positive Psychology and Dance Movement Therapy firmly built into the course, they hope to instill healthy resilient qualities into children and adults to improve their coping with difficulties in school, work and: all important life situations.

After all, we must not forget to live while investing time in school and office!

With a clearer understanding PuddleWorld. I must say that what they believe in is very similar to my beliefs, which I often talk about on my blog(s) over the years. Live a Fulfilling Life with a Positive Mind and Attitude.

My boys are eager to show their drawings to their coaches and friends at PuddleWorld in the next session!

PuddleWorld

It was a great way to start the first day of a new month for my boys. Keatkeat and Binbin went to PuddleWorld today to embark on a journey of self-discovery and to improve their resilience.

Puddleworld was created in conjunction, with the School of Positive Psychology and the charity organization — In her Shoes; that helps to raise money and awareness about cancer. Through drama, dance movement and a positive psychology based course, it is said to improve a child’s resilience.

It is a 4-weekly drama workshop. Today is their first day there.

A little apprehensive when they reached but were beaming from cheek to cheek when they left, especially Binbin.

I was not there to watch and I think it is a good thing because to me, kids are most at ease when their parents are not around, no matter how playful their parents are. When a child is at ease, he/she will absorb like a sponge.

Based on their reviews and expressions, I can tell if they really understood what was going on or were they just going with the flow blindly.

Other than the above pros, the biggest plus point of not being there was having undisturbed couple time with Allan. *thumbs up*

2 hours later…the fun time at PuddleWorld ended.

They hopped into the car and Allan asked: “So what did you do?”

Keatkeat said: “We played games.” and he went on to describe how the games were played.

Binbin interrupted: “Ya, so fun! And there was this time I …..” on and on he went, talking about what went through his mind when he was playing the games.

Keatkeat also told me that they did some group exercises whereby they held each others hand and turned around.

When asked “What did you like most at PuddleWorld today?” both gave different answers.

KeatKeat; “I know of a fun way to draw a pig!” 

And immediately he started to sing ” ‘Small circle (x2), Big circle, Small circle (x2), Big circle, Triangle (x4), 6 times 6 =36 and 6 times 6, what’s the answer?’ And the answer forms the TAIL of the Pig!”

I passed him a pen and he sang again as he drew this out during the car ride home:-

As for my 7 year old Binbin, it was the story telling that left a deep impression in his head. He said: “I like the story about the puddle of water. How the dripplets of water feel sad at first then later feel happy again. They (coaches) were so funny!”

My 8 year old added more details to the story and told me that they even danced with umbrellas and did different actions during the story telling session.

After hearing the full story from the two of them, I asked:” So do you know what is the story trying to tell you?”

Silence.

“Well, in life there will be times when we have ‘bad’ things happen to us and we feel unhappy; but in actual fact they are good things. Just like the dripplets, who thought that they are not going to see each other anymore, and thought it was a bad thing, but later they had more friends than before right? So what appears to be bad sometimes can turn out to be something good in the end.”

Keatkeat: “Orhhhhhh…just like you always tell us to think positive, right?”

*smile*

I recalled….when I reached there to pick them up, I saw BinBin and another girl at the white board drawing out the Puddle story.

When BinBin is happy, he draws. When I saw how he decorated his name tag, I knew he Really enjoyed himself. He liked the Puddle story so much that he drew it in too.

Before we left, BinBin insisted on taking a shot with the props used for the story : The Farmers Hat.

Drippy (the one in the middle) is Keatkeat’s favourite coach. “He is very fun to be with, always say or do funny things to make us laugh.”

Both are definitely looking forward to next week’s workshop….

*smile*