Clean Pile

Recently, we started getting ready for a 5-day-4-night-gone-from-home camp.

Who’s in charge of packing?

Is it who can wait the longer?

We worked together on the gathering.

A big pile, pretty much what was on the packing list given to us.

Then he decided which shirts, shorts, and other stuff he preferred.

We used the process of elimination.

“Do you want this shirt or that shirt?”, etc.

Loading it all in the truck

Mom then capitulated, and was the one who wrote his name on everything.

We stuffed it all into the suitcase, plastic bag and backpack.

As a team.

And we talked about each thing he was taking.

He liked that he was getting a reprieve from taking nutritional supplements

and could eat anything he wanted.

He gets that freedom of choice each school day in the lunch room also.

When the time came to leave, he hauled all his gear out to the car,

opened the car with the keys, and

pretty much wallowed everything into the trunk.

Mom didn’t touch anything.

En route, he got free-roaming opportunity after lunch before the 90-minute drive to camp.

Practicing freedom to stretch his soul and his legs.

Six Days Later:

The pile was back, smelling a little worse.

Yes, Mom could have cleaned it up.

This dirty stuff doesn’t belong on the floor.

And John would have learned nothing.

Dirty Pile

Big brother Saxton gave John the laundry lesson.

Mom kept her big mouth zipped.

Later, the boys moved the wet clean stuff into the dryer.

So far, it is all still in the dryer.

Dry, but still there.

That’s now on his list for tomorrow.

Oh yes, we got back on the list the day he returned.

He expected it.

And he was overall pretty proud of himself.

The way it should be.

Hope this helps a bit in your world.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

Off-trail short cut through Ms. Debbie’s yard

If Mom nags, it doesn’t count.

Mom better zip it.

But it does count if my child decides to move faster because he wants to.

Time Timer

So we have backward chained with a Time Timer and a list (both verbal and written).

And we have practiced moving faster.

Oh, but this morning, something new happened.

Yesterday morning’s Mom-prompted-“Let’s-run-we-are-late-for-the-bus”

was remembered.

Mom said nothing (victory for Mom),

John heard/thought/remembered something (hurray for whatever that was!).

And he just took off running, yelling, “we are late for the bus! Hurry, Mom!”

We have built in environmental time reminders and awareness.

Like when the earlier bus goes by, picking up older kids.

And we talk about how many minutes go by.

(Use real minutes.  Never say “5 minutes” and let it go to something longer.

We use 3 minutes when we mean 3 minutes.

We have backward chained so I can hold up 3 fingers.

He knows what that means, no matter if we are outside, inside, alone or with others.)

John is intensely intrinsically motivated NOT TO MISS the morning school bus.

And at our first corner, he chose to go off trail, taking a short cut through a neighbor’s yard.

Oh, I love it when he does anything new: problem-solving, critical-thinking, off-trail!

Not stuck in a rut.

So, once again, the issue is the joy of the child, to do what he wants to do.

And may I add, clever manipulation of that intrinsic motivation to offer choices for success.

Peace to our village,

Gayle

It was after school, after the bus, and after finding out the evening belonged to Mom.

(John prefers his dad.  I understand the emotional dynamics going on.)

John was in the back yard, horsing around with the dog.

One of his shoes was floating upside down in the water.

There were lots of things I could have done.

I chose the “turn around and walk away” option.

He did have to fetch his shoe out of the pool.

He had no other shoes.

Three other shoes were up on the roof.

That’s another story.

Anyway, if he wanted shoes in the car to go to taekwondo,

then one was going to be wet.

I did hand him a pile of napkins.

I said nothing.

If I have learned anything in all these years of interventions,

it’s that once we have backward-chained to complete a habit/neural pathway,

Mom better zip it.

No learning will be reinforced if Mom nags.

It will just be push-back.

So, back to the wet shoe in the car,

John was wiping and talking about wet.

Shall we call it sensory averse?

I was driving, smiling on the inside.

Whatever lesson was learned, it was also about what a wet shoe feels like.

No rescue.

And it hasn’t happened again (yet).

Peace be with us,

Gayle

There was a time when I didn’t have dyslexia on my radar.

Those days are gone.

John does have language processing challenges.

So, with all that I have learned recently,

there are some things we can do to squeeze in yet another intervention.

With the advice of Neuhaus-trained professionals, I took two on-line courses in Scientific Spelling.

And we are doing the best version now at home daily.

It goes on The List.

We built the habit over the school break and on weekends, so John doesn’t try much any more to re-negotiate.

We are also concentrating on getting p’s, d’s, b’s and q’s looking the right way.

Even sent in all his pages to school, to keep John’s school team in the loop.

Qu (kw) has been a special challenge so we repeated that day.

Time for instruction is a precious thing.

If a child receives a pull-out for specialized instruction/intervention at school, they miss something else.

John has spent years “missing something else” while the rest of the pack moved on.

Trying to find balance in this continues to keep our days efficient.

We use The List daily.

We use “earn it” daily.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I have said, “How’s the list coming?”

to genius, conniving, relentless attempts at re-negotiation.

Another thing out of my mouth constantly is “I hope you earn it”.

That works in many circumstances.

Like when John decides to make bad choices when Ms. Rosemary (QRI, OT, Nutritional Balancing) and Ms. Melanie (piano) come to the house.

Eventually, his precious taekwondo blue stripe ends up on the door jamb, to be earned back with Ms. Rosemary,

and his favorite movie videos are to be earned back with Ms. Melanie.

I have to deal with my shame when he makes those kinds of choices,

and yet we build interventions for intrinsic motivation and who has the power.

May some of these ideas help in your world.

Peace  be with us,

Gayle

Athletics and other kids are very power motivators in John’s life.

It was the end of a long first day back to school in January.

Also the first night with his new Boy Scouts shirt.

Tonight:  Physical Fitness.

We (the 2 dad leaders, all the boys and myself) walked through the darkening cold to the nearby high school track.

Time for laps.

John joined in the pack, and off they went.

Some of the time, I could track him by the red flashing lights in his shoes.

Sometimes he was close to a running buddy.

Sometimes not.

Really too dark to tell.

After 3 laps, he comes off the track and heads over to the bleachers

where the other boys are gathering.

He should have done 4 laps, but I didn’t interfere.

Not too many days before, he was sick.

And his 3 laps coincided with the other kids doing 4 laps.

He talked about that experience and victory until he went to bed.

Who would have predicted his great joy in running in the dark cold

with his Scout buddies?

The next night, taekwondo class went out into the cold dark for a jong bong seminar.

Too many kids twirling long poles for inside the studio.

Forty-tive minutes of mid-line crossover, proprioceptive and vestibular movement-based learning.

Therapy that no one would call therapy (or boring).

So we never pass up an opportunity to stretch our kids.

Stretch them past the cold, the dark, the fear, the social isolation.

Bring them into the joyful camaraderie with other kids who are also learning.

Hope this helps in your world, to try new ideas that offer themselves.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

May I suggest to you the invaluable piece of paper.

And a pencil.

“Low Tech, High Touch” (for all you John Naisbett fans out there).

Saturday mornings we still and always have learning modules.

We call this his “list”.

When there is push-back on too many words,

a noble yet humble piece of paper saves the day.

Consistency, meeting expectations, and the structure of building good habits for the rest of his life.

As we put the teachable moments into improving neural pathways in his working memory, executive function & language processing.

Sure, he hollers about it.

That’s when I walk away and let the list speak for itself.

No negotiation, re-negotiation or bargaining.

Just another day’s work of building neural pathways in the right directions.

That doesn’t change just because it is the weekend or a school holiday break.

We have added Fast ForWord and Scientific Spelling.

Because we need to.

We have worked on academics all but two days this holiday, working through “sick”.

And if there is too much push-back from John,

we write on his list, “OR you can do Mom’s list”.

Nothing is more boring than Mom’s list.

It’s a total buzz-kill to John.

Fastest thing I have found to help him with good choices.

So maybe this helps in your world.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

“Going to be late for Choir!”

“Going to miss the bus!”

Most mornings, either of these sentences puts John into gear.

He tells me he is “not going to be the last kid going to Choir”!

And he has seen other kids have to run to make the school bus in the morning.

But some mornings, he still goofs around.

So, I have learned that we start sooner.

No snooze alarms for us.

I have asked John if he was choosing to be the last kid into Choir?

When he continued to stall, I have said, “When you are done eating breakfast, you can put your food in the fridge.”

“I will meet you in the car.”

(John does his best work when I am gone.)

“You lock the door.”

(We have been backward-chaining the whole door/key process, and

John can come and go through the door as he decides.)

So, the sentences get said that he is choosing to be hungry, to waste his time, to be late.

I don’t rub it in or nag (nagging does NO good at our house).

But I do declare those facts in a calm Mom voice.

This morning, we had a version of  “We’ll just have to wait until you are ready”.

I carried his vitamins and his toothbrush to the car.

During the drive to early Choir drop-off, I pulled onto a side street.

He immediately asked me what I am doing.

He’s very aware of location.

We just sat there until he took his vitamins (which he stalls on every day).

We talked about “hard way” and “easy way”.

He decided very quickly to do what he should have done at home.

Because he didn’t want to be the last kid to walk into Choir.

Because he knew he wasn’t going to get away with stalling and avoidance.

Because he didn’t want to be the last kid into Choir.

I offer these ideas to hopefully help in your daily routines.

Whatever our kids are intrinsically motivated by,

use that to help them learn habits and routines that will become muscle memory and be useful their entire lives.

He must feel the natural, unintended consequences of his choices,

and know he is choosing.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

Recently, I ran some very-yellow lights.

John called me on it.

He was aware I had cheated.

“Mom, you made a bad choice!” was what I heard.

“Red means stop!  Do not go!”

It was quite a little sermonette.

And he was right.

No wrecks, no tickets, lucky me.

These days, I continue to discuss Rules of the Road with John as we drive.

I make him look out the window.

He can also read, if he prefers.

But no electronics.

He can wear his listening therapy headphones, but that’s as close to electricity as we get.

I see him watching everything out the window, which prompts sentences.

We play “read the sign” games.

Or my favorite, “Tell Mom when the light turns green” game.

Just in case my head isn’t in the game at that particular intersection, waiting.

And we talk about lights, directions, who gets to go next and other drivers.

“Chargers” was what my teenager taking drivers ed used to call them.

Drivers to be watchful for.

And the “point of no return” as the stoplight goes from “stale” green to yellow to

“ohhhh,  !*#%@*&!”

As John has gotten bigger, he can now legally sit up front with me, which I like much better.

Easier to chat that way.

Yes, a few more risks, with him in the front seat.

The rewards outweigh the risks, in my analysis.

Because sometimes I slip into my head too much, and ignore the young learner in the back seat.

Let us continue to always chat with our less-verbal kids.

Their brains are very aware.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2017/10/30/building-delayed-gratification-childs-value-system-sparking-intrinsic-motivation/

We have talked before about piano dexterity and piano games.

We also added percussion over the summer.

Ms. Melanie, our music teacher, devised unique ways to teach John proper form:

where to stand (duct tape on the floor),

where to put the drum stand (more duct tape),

how to hold the drum sticks (tape again, for fingers 1 & 2),

where to position the “piece of pizza” (basket & the little red hearts for Left & Right),

and

counting out the beats with and without a metronome.

She even made the little

stand-up cards of music.

Percussion doesn’t use the grand staff, but does count notes and rests.

All this is in

preparation for trying out for band.

What about singing?

John now shows up twice a week, before school, for Mixed Choir.

An adventure for someone with lagging expressive language.

For many years, John didn’t have out-loud sentences.

Now we do, and yet still lagging (so far, so far) behind, compared to his neuro-typical peers.

So, quite humorous that John is showing up for choir at school now.

I drive through, he jumps out of the car, and is off on his own,

following the flow of peers to the Choir Room, 7:45am.

Autonomous.

Then he gets to (the right) class on time for morning announcements.

This Choir idea started last year when I heard John singing Christmas songs with his buddies at the restaurant table.

So, at the next opportunity, a new intervention for expressive speech:  Choir.

I have paid $15 for a shirt.

$15 for a year?

Do you know how much speech interventions cost?

The bargain of the century!

Moving on to another intervention that is “free”, but will be harder than you think:

Patience.

Always talking about patience, aren’t we?

The patience to just watch, when our kids are having a manipulative hissy-fit?

Randomly frequent.

And with a quick grin on his face.

(He’s just checking my boundaries, and if I still love him enough to hold them.)

So that you don’t think this happens only at your house,

the first response out of John’s mouth to anything is usually “NO!”

(That’s the pervasive developmental delays talking.)

My job at that moment is to have no response.  No increase in blood pressure.  No re-negotiation.

Maybe this gives you some ideas for music for your child.

It’s OK we have tape all over the floor.

It is there for the “moving from Middle C to E” game.

You can see the feet move from tape to tape.

Anything for teachable moments.

Peace be with us,

Gayle