Reflection: Response To The First Day Of Class

When I think back to the first day of class, I remember being confused, and extremely uncomfortable. It is evident through my blogs that I was uneasy about how the class began. Prior to this class, sitting in silence used to be one of the most awkward experiences for me. At the beginning of the semester, I would look down at my feet and avoid direct eye contact. I did not realize how much I had adjusted and become accustomed to sitting in silence until I reread my blog posts. For the first few blogs, I mostly wrote about how uneasy these long pauses made me feel. On the third week, I was still talking about the silence, but I said how I had become more comfortable with it. When I look back now, I think that was lying to myself. Realistically, …show more content…
In nearly all of my responses, from the beginning of the course, I started out by saying, “I understand,” or something containing the same meaning. I have come to learn that this is not something you want to say to a client. When it comes down to it, I do not understand what they are going through. It does not matter how much I have learned about the problem they are faced with. I have never been through what they are going through, and even if I have, their experience …show more content…
While I used the phrase “I understand” two time in my second attempt, it was more to say that I understand where they are coming from, rather than I knew how they were feeling. In my first attempt, it is clear that I wanted to solve the problem that was being discussed. I did not have any regard for how they were feeling, or the emotions behind their words. Before this class, I feel as though we are only taught to fix the problem. We set goals and our sole focus is placed on meeting those goals. After that, we move on to a new set of goal. Along the way, I think that we forget that we are working with people, not a diagnosis. The clients emotional well-being is just as important as the speech therapy. These clients have important emotions and we, as clinicians need to remember this and acknowledge those emotions. While I think I did a better job on the second response, there are some places that still need a significant amount of work. In my second response, there are a few places where I showed more concern for the child, or the person with the diagnosis, than the family member that was expressing concern. For example, for the first statement, I wanted to know how the child responded to being made fun of. It wasn’t until after I