Introduction

Below you will find the audio podcast recording and the transcribed text for our first session. I’ll be curious to learn if you feel you need the text, since that’s the more time-consuming part. However, for now, we’ll do both and eventually see if just the audio recording is sufficient. I have left comments on, however please only comment if you are a LUNCH Groups® participating family, otherwise it will be deleted.

Audio Recording

Transcribed Text

Hi parents tonight was a first session for group #1. Have to tell you, it was really an event. We previously had a younger group of kids last year. And so we kept the group smaller, you know, maybe eight kids, nine kids. So having 13 today, and seeing how they interacted was really a treat. We started off after you all dropped off your children by going over to the office, and actually working on pedestrian safety, even on the way over. Afterward, we talked with them in the waiting room area and went over names, we went over some basic rules and some of the things that we were going to be doing.

Following this was time to head back to Gelsons where we went through the produce department. And we got grapes, raspberries and strawberries and I think blueberries and a few different kinds of chips. They had a chance to practice environmental control, where shoppers who came down the aisle were able to pass through, because your 13 kids all move to one side, you'll be able to see video of this, when you come to the parent meetings.

They went through the checkout counter. And one of the things we do is have kids hold items that aren't necessarily what there are going to eat. You'd be amazed at how much they only want to sometimes hold their own food. After this, we brought it outside, and we set it up where we serve them. And so they're only getting their own portions. And we start off with a serving of chips or fruit or whatever. And then we do kind of monitor. If a child's eating fruit, fine, we'll let them have some more food or encourage them to try different kinds of fruit. If they're having chips, and then they want to second serving, we encourage them to try at least some type

of fruit. Even if they refuse, that's not a problem. We want to make certain that they refuse, politely, and stay in emotional control. You might remember that's one of the four areas that we talked about in terms of what we want kids to work on.

So they spent a good amount of time. We didn't get back to the office after that until close to five o'clock, which left us another hour. Back in the office, we pretty quickly settled in to having them decorate their envelopes that also included their nicknames that will be used for any web projects that we do. So that maintains confidentiality. And we also were dealing with some I wouldn't call them problems, but some situations that came up examples are a child going into the bathroom, but not fully closing the door, a child either putting their fingers in their mouth or picking their nose, to which we use what we call contention effort. This is where we ask a child politely to go wash their hands.

Additionally, we had some minor issues with body boundaries and making sure that they knew not to be touching one another. And then, as we were going through LUNCH Points, which we explained to them and will be up and running for you, we had an opportunity to call on some of the kids who are a little bit more shy to do reading. And it was really nice to see how their behavior relaxed and how they began to interact more with other kids during the session. Finally, we had just about 10 minutes left. At that point. We watched a Pixar video. Normally we would discuss it a little bit and talk about the story. But we ran right up until six o'clock. And so we didn't have a chance to do that.

That's pretty much a summary of what happened tonight. You are welcome to contact me with any questions. Our feeling is that the group is pretty well balanced as is but one or two of you might be hearing from us suggesting that we move your child from group number one to group number two.

That's it for now. See you next time.

Dr. G.