My Supports

I have many supports in my daily life. I have emotional support from my family members including my husband, mother, and father. I also have emotional support from my friends and co-workers. The support of these individuals is invaluable to me. My husband is there to help me care for our daughter and our home. He is also there to give me a laugh when I am feeling down or to knock me down a peg when I am being callous. My parents are very positive aspects of my life. They support me by helping me with my daughter once a week because I cannot afford child care five days a week. They also provide me with time for things I enjoy by taking me and my family with them on vacations and just little daily outings. My friends are an emotional outlet for me. I can complain to them about the things I think suck about my life and I will sit and listen about their days. We have a back-and-forth support system that provides stress relief for me, but also gives me a feeling that I am helping them by supporting their need for stress relief as well. My co-workers help me achieve my professional goals by helping me to provide the best quality care to the children in our community. Without such a competent, well-trained, and caring staff, I would not be able to do my job everyday. Without the support of my family and friends, I may not be able to keep my daughter in childcare, which means I probably wouldn't be able to work. I also wouldn't be able to decompress at the end of a stressful week and that could lead to emotional and medical difficulties.

When I look at practical support I have to say that my laptop, my desktop, and Microsoft Excel are my biggest supports. I do everything on my laptop at home. I do my homework for classes, my lesson plans for teaching, and most of my social interactions with my friends are on a social website of the evenings. I create my shopping lists online and send them to my phone. I do all my bill payments online, save one, and I find it relaxing to play games online. At work I use my desktop for all of my staff and child tracking. I use Microsoft Excel and Word more than any other programs. Theses programs with the PCs aid, support all of my file systems to keep me organized and up-to-date on my job responsibilities. Without these somewhat technical practical supports, I would be out of touch with many friends, behind on bills, unable to do my homework and lesson plans, and pretty much unable to keep up with my job requirements.

I'm not sure what physical requirements I need beyond food and the occasional help with a pickle jar lid. My employment and my family support my physical need for food. My husband does all of the physical labor I am unable to do, which is very little. If he were not around to support me in a physical capacity, I suppose I just wouldn't eat pickles. If I became limited in my physical capabilities, I may need more support. Fortunately, I am still pretty healthy and strong.

The challenge I chose to imagine was being a single parent. If I were an only parent, the challenges that I face in my life would expand greatly, but I would also have access to other supports to which I do not currently have access. I would need emotional support, and possible financial and physical support from family members. One support I would have access to that I don't have access to now is child care subsidies and scholarships. These would be additional financial supports, but even though I have a wonderful and very supportive family, I think that raising a child on one's own would be very difficult, very emotionally overwhelming, and deliver very little free time. I know that the support I get from family and friends would be enough to help me through, but I also think I would have to be a little stronger emotionally than what I am currently. I think I would require the same practical and physical supports as I do now and I would have the same difficulties without them.

Overall, I believe that most families need support from family and friends, but they may also need support from community and school resources. It is my job, as a professional early childhood educator, to make sure that the families that I serve have the information and the access to any and all programs that can provide support for the parents and the children in the family. I too must find ways to help support the children and families in my program in a respectful and noninvasive way. This can be a difficult undertaking, but the benefits to the family and the relationships a teacher will build with the families by consistently offering this support, far outweigh any negative results.