Barbara

Hello, I'm Barbara, one off the people who work with Dejana. I'm working with Dejana for around 3 years now, and i'm still loving it. Every time you walk in that door and you meet Dejana she looks at you with those lovely eyes and gives you a kiss. 2 years ago Branka talked to me about the possibilities after i finished my Higher Education, one of the idea's was to go and talk to Bibic about being trained as a therapist. It took some while but finally i booked my flight to Bibic at Brightwater. They trained me up as a bibic therapist, being able to see were children are in their development and putting together a programme to help the parents and children with developmental problems. The idea is to give the parents the possibility to get the best out of their child. It's was a lovely time.

After I came back I started working with Dejana again. I noticed that I did look with new eyes at here and was more able to bring up idea's to work with Dejana. Besides the regular programme i'm working on communication with Dejana. We have picture cards of objects and I lay down 2 or 3 card, then I say the name of one of the pictures and Dejana has to point them out.

When you work with Dejana you notice that sometimes she does understand you but she doesn't know how to get her response out. I'll give an example: When you put a ball on the table and you ask if she can get it, she can do it quit quick if you help her by touching her arm and lifting it a little bit up. Well my intention was that Dejana had to practise to do this alone. So I'm not helping her anymore with the little push. It's hard but she is doing it. In the beginning it took almost 3 minutes to take the ball or to take her hands out of her mouth, by now she does this in less then a minute. It's really nice to see her pride when she managed to do this by herself. She is learning to make a plan on her movements. I believe in her.

Looking at Dejana you can see that she made a lot of changes. As she is getting older she is also getting more of an own will, she lets you know if she dislikes something and some of the exercises we are doing she is not willing to do anymore, even though you know she was able to do them. Dejana wants to learn, and meanwhile she is teaching us a big lesson: "She believes she can do it with our help, she is willing to practise with us and she's showing us she is worth believing in'

When a child is not able to do things at once,
than please have the patient en the believe in them,
only then they can learn to grow.
We all have to learn,
look at yourself,
look at how normal walking, sitting,
laying down and getting up is.
Now look closer,
look really close to how you move,
the small steps.
What movements do you make when you get from laying down to standing up.
You do more then you think, don't you?
So we can't expect a child to just stand up.
Start at the beginning of the movement and teach the child step by step.
BELIEVE!