This year, being an.. ahem... important year (PSLE leh!), all the more I am keen to send Ace to the workshop...
The first year he attended... he will skip parts of the workshop and read storybook! Cos he was totally not interested in those parts except the part where you paste pictures of what you like.
But lest you think a vision workshop is just a workshop where you paste pictures of wat you want and hope they come true, it is more than that... many of the exercises we do in the workshop are so so important to help us let go of our past and move forward to the future on clean slate and we also do lots of activities to make ourselves excited about our new year ahead..... Hence, I felt strongly about wanting Ace to take part in ALL the activities and exercises in the workshop... so I made him promise to take part in the WHOLE workshop next year.. nt just the parts he is interested in... and he promised...
The second year he attended... he took part in MORE activities... But he still missed out and skipped some of them and I told him since he did not keep his promise, I am going to stop letting him go lor.. cos dun waste my money right.. paste picture on cardboard.. who dunno... Hahahaha.. do at home can liao.... dun need to go and he said he will do all the exercises in the workshop...
And I am glad to announce that this year... Ace kept his promise and did really really well in the workshop!
Ace was really excited to go to the workshop again and be coffee boy though he did not get a chance to make coffee much this year. He ended up snack dispenser and tissue dispenser. The workshop with him made me realize that my boy is "good service boy" and likes to be in service of other people. Sad thing is.. the "other people" group... seldom includes his parents:) hahaha...
Each year, the workshop is actually different:) Hahahaahha... but yet some main things are similar.. this year is quite different and fun too:)
We spent the first half of the day doing exercises that reminded us to let go of the past year. And we did alot of letting go exercises.....and forgiveness exercises too....
I was group leader and somehow relieved that Ace is not in my group:) hahaha... And even more relieved to find that he is in the same group as Nick (an old friend of ours) and that Gloria Jie Jie is his group leader.... He will definitely be feeling at ease I guess and I think he will really enjoy the workshop!
But every year, my son will do something outrageous and to me, unacceptable, and test my tolerance level.... in the past years, he will take out book and read and and when he likes... throw and tantrum and walk away as and when he likes and while it made me very uncomfortable, I watched how our trainer Chi Ching totally embrace him and love him despite ALL THESE and slowly learnt to just accept him as he is.
THis year, his new stunt... bring a freaking big water dispenser bottle into the room and use it as his personal water bottle. Faintz! I can see many eyes on him... But pple accept his cos he is kid and cos they all think he is so lovable..
I am talking about this..
He found one with a cap that he could remove and put back and promptly drank from this huge ass bottle and put it back again. I ZIP and let him do wat he wants. End of the day, I told him that it is very unhygeinic for him to do that and that if he wants to drink water, he can choose to bring his water bottle. Somehow, tat seemed to work and he stopped doing it the next day.
My group member told me later he has much to learn from me as a parent and he is so impressed with how I totally embrace my son and trust him to do his own thing. Hahaha... I not good at that because I am good.. I am just better than him because I had more practice! Hahahahaha...
This year, we had most of our letting go and forgiveness done in day one in the first half of the day. I was so impressed with Ace with how he was totally into the healing and supporting his group members totally.... It gave me the space to also fully support my own group members without a need to worry about him ;)
Second half of the day, we spent very very little time doing our vision boards... and then we had to pick our gifts for the year and the healing required for the year...
After our workshop, there was a party being held. In conjunction with some new program that Growth Vision (organizer of the workshop) is launching, we are tasked to wear Angel Wings..
Oh, I forgot to mention that for the first day of the workshop, Ace brought his Evee along with him. He basically brings Evee along everywhere he goes... to the workshop lah... when we go out lah.. even when he went travelling!
In the evening, Steff jie jie sent me this photo...
Day two.. we reached early and started to have breakfast before our facilitator's meeting started:)
At this point, need to talk about this speaker that Ace was playing with the whole workshop. It is some portable speaker that is quite cool simply because as long as you are connected to the internet. You press a button and say, "Play (song name) please." or "Play Jazz music please" and it will start playing music.
It is a speaker from Amazon...and i think it is working on this thing called Alexia or something... I was told if will recognize voice one.. so if it is not familiar with your voice, you need to say PLEASE or something.. if not it will ignore you...
But as it is like siri, I was not very impressed.... till day two... cos it was Selyn jie jies birthday, Ace said to the speaker "Sing Happy birthday!" And the voice started singing! "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you... happy birthday to you..."
Then someone else who was tickled told the speaker "Happy birthday!" And the speaker started singing "Happy birthday to ME, happy birthday to ME! Happy Birthday to ME... Happy birthday to ME!"
LOL... so funny lor! hahahahahaha... If you look closely at Ace's dream board, you will see that Ace has listed it as one of the items he will like to have and added into this dream board:) hahaha...
Day 2 we were focused on some other things such as... picking our subconscious vision boards..
First exercise of the day... we did a trust fall to build our group cohesion.... We combined groups and my group was supposed to do it with Ace's group. It was a really interesting experience. I am quite heavy and was quite worried that my group will find it too strenuos...
PLUS... I am afraid of heights! But did it... and it was quite fun to be floating along! Plus.. I found out tat no matter how heavy... many hands make the work easier....
Ace was a star in this section. While many confided later that they were afraid to be the ones supporting or carrying because they were doubtful of their strength or whether their help was really needed seeing Ace happily volunteering to be supporting hand no matter who was doing it and having tat "can-do" attitude inspired them to try to help too :) And to their surprise, they found themselves being able to contribute more than they thought they could.
We also had to pick the vision boards of our classmates and it is a blind pick..
The last part we were all supposed to take turns to thank each other for their time. My group mostly thanked me for making them feel very safe in a workshop. I was thankful that I had a great group who are super supportive and super fun to be with.
Ace told me that most of his group thanked him for being such a star... for showing them that you can be yourself without needing to care about how other people see you (cos as usual, my son is a "class clown" and drama queen in the class- when teacher said whoever forget to put their phone to silent and had their phone ring will have to give a lunch treat... Ace promptly raised his hands and said, "可是我没有钱!" Hahaha...) and inspiring them to do things they did not think they could do until they saw him, a little boy, do it:) Our teacher, Chiching also thanked Ace for trying his best to express all that he wanted to say in Chinese because she does not understand English:)
We went for staff dinner (facilitators who helped out as group leaders are called staff).... Ace came along and discovered this black, thousand layer toufu which he really liked. Thanks to Uncle Ricky who introduced him to this food.. I told him I will buy another day for him to eat:)
I thought Elaine just passed him an extra but she actually bought cos she thought of him! She was buying for her nephew and thought of Ace and bought the exact same book too for Ace:)
Also, Nick gor gor and Steff Jie Jie also bought him a mug as xmas present which he promptly used to make Milo throughout the workshop:) hahaha..
This lucky boy is so loved lor...
Here is to a better year ahead!
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