LEARNING TO ENJOY LITTLE THINGS: Cherish the Journey and the Outcome itself becomes fulfilling!!

Kunal is a 11 year old boy who came in with a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome. He came in with a limited number of topics and would quickly jump from one topic to another abruptly. The only topic that Kunal wanted to talk about was football.

Winning or losing in games and judgements from people around, Kunal tends to underestimate himself. He is critical about himself and others. If he feels that the task is unclear, or he is not giving a good result, he prefers to quit and change.

Kunal comes in 6 times in a month. I am sharing this account after  Focus was on enjoying the process of the game. We together experienced and learned that the outcome of the task at times is not important. Enjoying the task is crucial. As caregivers/ professionals/ parents it is important for us to understand that as the process becomes joyful, the child becomes more productive in his task.

Focus was be on removing judgments from the activities and making the process of activities fun, rather than just the end product. We also learned that things are not always perfect. We did activities together, for e.g. purposefully putting more sugar or salt in something we cook. Then we discussed that that the process was fun even though the end product isn’t so good, or could have been better.

Kunal and I play a lot of games, and at times he enjoys so much that he loses track of time. Some instances of co-creating joy with Kunal were: when we blew bubbles with straw and made mountains of it. He loved the activity and the joy and happiness was evident in his relaxed body language and a big smile. That was one such session when he wanted to stay back and extend the class. Another time, we did an experiment of putting mentos in coke, and though the experiment failed, we enjoyed the process of collecting the material and doing it together. In another class, we made a glitter lamp, which was super fun. One of the days we sat in a pool of balls and had ball juggling competitions. 

We danced on songs, and Kunal wanted to show me some dance steps that he had made, and we even tried ball dance with each other. Another interest that cropped up for both of us was Musical Instruments. We both decided an instrument each. He shared he is learning tabla on you tube, and I was trying to learn mouth organ using YouTube. We would come back and share what we learned in the last week. He asks me what kind of a therapist am I. I tell him “I am a fun therapist.”