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Evil Secret Weapon

Choices Too Loud for Even the Bathroom

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With all our vacation “teachable moments in the bathroom” (because I was mortified by John’s bad choices in front of my extended family), quite by chance I found an ideal motivator.blow dryer

Extrinsic. Not intrinsic. But still dirty pool.

I just held up the blow dryer.

“Do you want to _______ or help me with this blow dryer?”

It was instant compliance.   With no effort or persuasion needed.

Maybe this evil idea could help you.  If you are OK with the dark side of it all.

Some days are just a bit more desperate.

Peace be with us.

Gayle

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I Hate Opening Birthday Presents

So Mom just saved them and put them under the tree. And waited.

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Getting John in and out of birthday parties has gotten easier over the years, but getting John to open his actual birthday presents has been bloody murder.2016-01-02 13.41.39-1

So, this year when John just couldn’t be bothered to open gifts in August, I set them aside and later put them under the Christmas tree.

Not yet any thank-you notes, didn’t re-wrap anything.

Just stuck them under the tree.

(This was in my recent fortune cookie:  “If you put up with small annoyances, you will gain great results.”)

So this Christmas, John got into ripping off some paper.  Finally, on his 9th Christmas.

I took photos to prove it, cause I wasn’t believing it.

John hit his limit about half way through, so the rest of the gifts are still stuck under the tree.

Wanted to let you know that you aren’t alone in waiting for what should come so easily.

So we wait.  But we keep working on neural pathways, always.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Scared of Star Wars

But Mom Pinned Me Down

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2015-12-29 21.27.25-1John avoids new movies of any kind.

Especially scary, loud, sensory ones.

Each new movie into his acceptance is major effort.  I have to pin him down—make him sit with me.

Eventually, he gets comfortable with it.

So, Star Wars is here, right?  During the holiday vacation at my sister’s house, we made the commitment on the Star Wars series.

A nightly family ruckus of pin-John-down-and-make-him-watch-a-Star-Wars-movie.

Each movie got a little less like a wrestling match.

I don’t know how much of the story line his brain was absorbing.

From a sensory standpoint, it was progress for sure.

We turned on captions/subtitles, and that helped everybody.

Not ready for the big theater yet.  Something to look forward to, some day.

Just surviving the family-viewing sofa was victory for now.

May the Force be with us.

Gayle

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My Eyes Don’t Match My Ears – Data Out of Sync

So Build a Bridge--Turn Captions / Subtitles ON!

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Eyes Dont Match EarsWhen we are overwhelmed, we turn away, don’t we?

So do our kids.

This link to a study by Vanderbilt University shows how the ears and eyes don’t get their information to the brain for processing at the same time—-for those with learning differences:

http://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/1418450360/2014/01/1418450360_3055499925001_8.mp4

Explains why our kids can’t look at us when they are processing the audio stream of instructions.  All these words we throw at them, full of our expectation for immediate action, and they have a full-time job of trying to fulfill it.

And we want them to look at us also, as their eyes give their brains out-of-sync data?

So, if you have a heavy cognitive load processing in the best case, and your eyes betray your mission, who would want to look?

The good news is that our brains are able to build new neural pathways with practice.   Not easy, but as long as we are alive, the brain can do its magic.

So, build a bridge!   This season has a lot of watching media.  When I turn on the subtitles / captions, my son pays attention in a completely better way.  His brain can better blend all the streams of data, and figure out what is going on.  He stays glued, not turning away.

So we keep practicing.   So can you, and turning on captions / subtitles may really help.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

 

 

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The Angry Room

(and the rest of the house is Happy)

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Some days are just hard.  John tests my boundaries all the time.

This morning, instead of “lovely, peaceful, almost-Christmas”, it apparently is

The Angry room

“I-am-gonna-fight-TouchMath-and-hit-Mom-and-fight-TouchMath-more-so-she-puts-me-in-time-out”.

I do my best to turn off my emotions.

Once again, this sign gets marked on the bathroom floor at the doorway.

I hold my ground.

It’s the only way John is going to have a good adult life.

Whatever it takes for him to become a Jedi master of self-awareness and self-control.

The Force has a long, long, long way to go here.

May the Force always be with us.

So, my dear fellow parents, set those boundaries so that you can live with them (for all your reasons).

Hold your ground.  Your child will believe you.

Eventually.

Do it because you love them that much.

Gayle

 

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Rubbing It In, On The Floor

(but 1 more thing is 1 thing too much, Mom)

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Trans-dermal vitamins are rubbed in, absorbed through the skin (here you see 2 white and 1 red trans-dermals).

Transdermals

John gets to do this himself, crossing mid-line (both north/south and east/west).   If Mom rubs them in, John’s mid-line crossover misses out.

There also is no benefit if John rubs them into his clothes, sofa, pillow or rug.

One evening, John flopped down on the floor and refused to budge.

So, I squirted the 3 vitamins onto his tummy, while he was on his back, back-talking.   And I told him to “rub”.

Round and round, up and down, back and forth.  Crossing mid-line as much as possible.

So, now that method is his favorite way.

TransdermalDistractions

(There is a second lesson here, for Mom.  When I was trying to get the photo you see here of his tummy, he didn’t want to cooperate.   It took longer than I had expected, and the skillet full of cooking veggies burned.   You see here my plan for a healthy pile of food instead on its way down the drain because Mom just had to fit 1 more thing into a busy morning.   Instead of veggies gently sautéed in coconut oil, John had to eat french fries with his eggs.   No time to start the veggies over.)

Will Mom ever learn?

Peace be with us,

Gayle

 

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Ugly Work Erased

It's called "Self-Directed Learning", even when it is ugly.

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John’s incoming homework, “Weekly Work Study Homework #13” (pr, sh, th, pl) was done badly at first.   Ugly Work Erased 1

I told John it was “ugly”, erased it, and left it for John to re-do. (Also, note the highlighting to help him match pieces together, and I will fade this prompt ASAP——this tip from Alma Liotta, O.T.R.)

I was in the opposite corner of the house, he had willingly turned off the computer (but I did ask him to), worked on the homework by himself, (I did ask him to “make his teacher happy”) and brought it upstairs to show me when he was done.

I then added more demands & more work to it, and John then brought it back up to me after that.

This is John’s first  self-directed homework, and I didn’t hover or micro-manage him.

It still isn’t good, and there is always more to do.

Still, a victory, for what it is.

We have been inching toward this, and so can you.

Motivation is a complex thing, and the magic is when someone triggers self-directed intrinsic motivation:  because they want to, and would do it again when no one is looking (or hovering).  It is a lifelong tool.

So important to anyone still breathing.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Power of Peers

(Assuming that is what motivates your child)

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Peer modeling is HUGE for and to my son.   IMG_6620

Like this, at basketball. Those are mouth protectors going in.  (John is on the left).   Putting that cold hard chunk of plastic in his mouth is not anything John would be interested in, if it were just he and Mom hanging out.

Like cleaning the car windows with the squeegee at the gas station (it was more like making a big mess, but never mind that) because his friend Zeb did it first.   And John just had to man up.

Try this with your children—give them time to watch their peers, and then ask if “they want to try that”.   Whatever “that” is.

And respect the answer.   Take heart:  if not now, maybe soon.

Peace to us,

Gayle

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Adding More Minutes

3 Years of Misery in the Grocery Store

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2015-11-17 19.30.48It was miserable in the grocery store with my son.

I didn’t look anyone in the eye.

I attended to his re-directs, and that’s about it.

I think I got most of the purchases I was aiming for—-very hard to concentrate on my business with him on the warpath.   In a public place.

I even got whacked.

Instead of amping up, I cheerfully (was I really cheerful?) added 10 more reading minutes with each blatant, little-boy-smirking act of rebellion.

I think I kept pretty cool, I am happy to share.

By the time we wheeled out, seemingly three years later, he had “earned” 50 minutes of reading to get through before anything electrical was going down.

I think it made a profound impression—-at least, I surely hope so.   Only time will tell.

We then made it through some cool books, and he was actually proud of his reading.  He even wanted to sit on my lap and doodle.

He has never doodled before.

So, maybe this intervention might work with your adventures.

Peace be to us,

Gayle

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Reading the Dictionary

"I chose a book with no pictures---that makes me a big kid!"

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2015-11-02 16.46.12Maybe someday it will be a Harry Potter novel.  But for now, for the required daily reading, John picked his new dictionary, given to him by the school.

(May be he was faking it.  Then I would give him points for cognitive manipulation.) 

There is lots of cool information in there, before and after all the A-Z.  John was reading aloud the presidents’ names.

To encourage you to read daily with your child!

I say, “who is reading?”   (you or me?)

When I am the reader, I pick lyrical, beautiful lines of words and read them aloud.

I hear that (the mere) exposure of all kinds of words feed the brain, and I am banking on that!

So, we read anything at hand:  road signs, cereal boxes, the newspaper, anything.

And so I hope you and yours.

Peace be to us,

Gayle

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Top Of The Net

Encouragement to keep kids moving

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IMG_6437_2John is in the white oval, in the gray shirt, on the top level of this platform.

On his knees.

Just like me.

After so many attempts, John finally wanted this badly enough to overcome his fear and pain.

He yelled, “I made it!”

So, keep up with gymnastics, climbing, parks, gross-motor play.

That’s how muscles get stronger, and neural pathways get made.

“Play is the work of children”, wise people say.

Peace be to us,

Gayle

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“I Am NOT Sad”

(so why are you laying that way on the sofa?)

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He said he wasn’t sad.

I didn’t believe it.

I laid down next to him, nearly on top of him, and said (what I hoped were) comforting, validating words.Sadness

“It’s OK to be sad” kind of stuff.

Within a minute, he was up and on to the next thing.

Not sad anymore.

I will always believe it is because he felt validated.

Just like in the movie, “Inside Out”, when Sadness validated and built resilience.

Peace be to us,

Gayle

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Want It My Way!

Levels of Independence vs. Assistance

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2015-11-02 16.51.01John in the red/blue shirts.2015-10-14 18.05.09

Adamant he wanted to wait OUT THERE.

On the parking lot side of the glass wall, with Mom inside the building.

He was proud he was out there, not needing anything.

What if he was sick and tired of always being told what to do and how to do it?

Secretly dreaming of ever-greater independence.

A balance of frightening risk and intrinsic reward, right?

Every day, I really try to give John more rope.

And rope begets more rope.

Peace be to you, little John the rebel.

Thanks to Alma Liotta, O.T.R., for the (hierarchy) Levels of Assistance (added graphics by me, courtesy of PowerPoint clip art).Levels of Assistance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wait—Right Here—Don’t Move.

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2015-10-13 18.27.51 Not a runner.

But we have practiced.

Each time, with a longer piece of rope.  An imaginary tether.   And, a watchful eye.

But tonight, John (in the turquoise shirt) said he wanted to wait “right here” while I went back to the car to get a stupid coupon.

Also, I admit that I constantly make changes to what John thinks he is going to do.

Anyway, I decided to trust him in that little island of pavement while I scurried many cars away in the parking lot.

It worked out OK.  2015-10-13 18.28.00

So, I hope this helps you with something else to try—to practice a tether of independence for your child.

Not that you needed something else to do.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Plan B May Be Better

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Plan A Plan B BalanceJohn was mad because I was making him do his daily reading homework.  In the car as we were driving.

The window was partially open.

Not sure he really meant to let it fly, but the book was gone.  I couldn’t exactly see his face, but I think he was actually surprised his book disappeared.

First time he has chucked anything out the window.

So, he lost gymnastics Fun Friday Night as a natural consequence.  (He would have lost Wii Sports and Nintendo DS, but those were already gone because he was pinching his friends in specials.)

Then, something completely unplanned happened.

John’s teenager sibling wanted to watch Singing in the Rain because his high school was performing it the next day and we had tickets.

The two kids ended up snuggled together on the sofa.  John started laughing at the “Make ’em Laugh” genius of Donald O’Connor.  Then John tried toSinging in the Rain tap dance. First time.

Also first time he had ever paid any attention to a non-animated movie.

So, try this movie at your home.  There is a lot to engage a child with learning differences.  (Speech therapy, mid-line crossover, and lots of physical therapy with tap shoes on.)

Like for me, maybe Plan B will be better than whatever your Plan A was.

I know I can get overly focused on fulfilling the interventions.

Oops–lost my personal joy along the way.  Missing the important “in-the-moment” stuff that can happen.

“Bad choice, Mommy”, because joy is important too.

Your joy.  Your child’s joy.

Peace to us,

Gayle

 

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So This is What Toys Are For?

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Buying kid toys has always been a prayer of purchase – a plea to the angels that if I buy enough of the right kind of toys, John would eventually play with them.

Like other kids.

So please consider this a reason to keep stretching your child’s comfort zones with peers as models of how to play with all this stuff.

John is finally picking up a Nintendo DS, a radio-controlled car, and the Wii remote (at home and at church).

ToysToys1And hogging them.

Don’t give up!  Keep stretching our kids.

Peace be with us,

ToysGayle

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2 Steps Forward. 1 Step Back.

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2 steps forward 1 step backIt is slow progress sometimes.  But it is still progress.

A new skill.  Joy.

A set-back.  Fear.

When I step back, way back, and look at the bigger picture, it looks like this picture.

So, I better step back.

Feed the solution–the progress, the joy.

Starve the problem—the set-back, the fear.

Maybe this will help you and your child.

Peace be with us.

Gayle

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Monkey Child and Bathroom Words

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Recently, John has enjoyed the thrill of saying bathroom words in the wrong places, including school, to Mom’s deep chagrin.

Further, John needs practice with fine motor everything.   He pretty much hates writing (printing), let alone the approaching cursive.

So, when John repeats something over and over (I label this “monkey boy”.  To his face.), he is told he gets to say “one good sentence, then write it.”

Thus, when school behaviors show John’s “bad choices” (a phrase I use every time it applies), out comes the paper and pencil with grip.2015-10-02 12.18.17-1

Ten…..oops..…nine good written sentences.  In this case, “Wee wee is a bathroom word.”  

Then a personal hand-delivery to his teacher with a verbal apology.

Special thanks to Alma Liotta, OTR, for this paper to best help John write less diagonally  (which I scanned and made copies of to use at home and at school).

Hope this works for you and yours.

Peace to us,

Gayle

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Blowing

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Candles 4 Times 1 Candles 4 times 2Every year, birthdays have been a torture.  John never wanted to unwrap anything, blow out anything, or sing anything.

So, to encourage you to persevere with your interventions, 9 was our magic number.

Wanted to sing (joyously).  Wanted to blow out the candles (over and over.  We lit them 4 times.)

John was huffing and puffing so hard, moving his head more than he was moving his lungs.

Almost caught his hair on fire (more than once).

Wouldn’t eat the cake (no sugar, so no loss there), and we didn’t bother to wrap the gifts!

So forget the wrapping.  Just get candles & matches.  We even used the left-over cake from Saxton’s birthday. (Mom dug it out of the freezer—we had low expectations.)

There was spit and wax everywhere.   It was glorious.

So, never give up.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Where Are My Teeth?

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John brushes his teeth by moving his body—NOT the brush.brushing teeth

To know where the brush is, it’s a 2-fisted grip.

He moves his whole body to find the brush.  The brush just stands there.

He is very good at chewing the brush.  That is mastered.  It is utterly pulverized.

Ah, but actually using the bristles?  Not yet.

Maybe some day.

How does tooth brushing, with all that oral defensiveness, work at your house?

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Are My Lips Moving?

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2015-09-06 10.14.33I am watching John read, 20-minutes a day, required homework:

I see his lips move, his finger move (tracking the words in the line), and then I see him swallow.  When he swallows, he stops moving his lips and finger temporarily.  Then, back to things moving.

So, it would seem, his moving parts are really part of his reading process.  He’s not reading completely in his head, statue-like.  He’s got body parts involved in his reading.    So, try letting your children move (anything, really) when they read.

Sometimes I hear him talking to himself.   (Not that long ago, John had no words we all could hear.  Now he’s talking to himself.)

Please let this encourage you, to keep stretching and challenging your smaller loved ones.

Try uphone timersing the timer on your phone.   When John cheats on his reading (and he does!), I stop the timer and call him on it.  He hates that.

It turns out turning on and off the phone timer is a big-deal tool for John to self-regulate himself.  It’s free, and he is in charge of running it.

Maybe these ideas will help you.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Breathe In, Breathe Out

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2015-09-16 16.00.30John couldn’t blow out the2015-09-16 16.21.11 birthday candles on 2015-09-16 16.14.22a cake.  For years.

So, for him, breath control to KNOW if he was actually breathing in and out was tricky.

(“If I don’t know where my body is in space, maybe I don’t know where my breathe is, and humming is a way I zone out or try to find something that I don’t know where it is.”)

So, we named it (humming), and then limited it–gave it boundaries.  Can’t hum in the classroom!   So, for school and home, “Instead of humming, I can …..”)

Instead of hummingAll well and good, if you know how to “breathe in and out”.  John didn’t know this.  He accidentally does it all the time, but purposefully knowing—-no.

Here are photos of Rosemary Slade, O.T.R., helping John to figure out how to “breathe in” and then to “breathe out”.

Hope this can give you some ideas to try yourself.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Out of Balance

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Slide1I have recently gotten too focused on intervention improvement at the expense of joy-of-the-moment.

I try to mask my strain, but my kids feel it and reflect it in their actions and lives.

You may skew to the other direction.

See the heart?   It is supposed to be divided equally—half of my everything doing all I can, and half loving as we are right now.

John has two occupational therapists (both are O.T.R.s), and they know a lot.  I have leaned a bit heavily on them for help, and they have generously contributed great peace to me with their ideas.

So, thanks to Alma Liotta and Rosemary Slade.

I share with you my mom vulnerability and regret.  I hope to encourage you to seek “extra” help from good, wise people, even if it isn’t exactly their niche.

If we don’t ask, no one knows.  It is in the showing of our sadness, our seeking, our imperfections, our vulnerabilities, that lets others help us.   To get back to this balance:Heart

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Move! Move! Move!

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2015-09-22 07.52.40You gotti9 BB Summer 2015a love an occupational therapist who will haul around an upright backboard just to play hallway hoops with a kid.

Thanks to Alma Liotta, O.T.R. for her years of service to John.

Oh, how he loves playing basketball!  This grin is for his (first ever) team photo shoot.

He has come a long way—his first scrimmage with i9Sports was so overwhelming that John just laid down on the court.  Mid-game.

With each experience, he builds a better database of what to do and how to do it.  Body position for offense and defense is his current robust challenge.  He mimes the coach’s, “Move! Move! Move!”, and for all the clumsy joy, Mom cries.

How about log rolling races?  John can’t roll in the grass in a straight lirolling racesne.   He has friends he can model after, and tries to catch them.   But, really, he is still learning where his body is in space due to out-of-whack proprioceptive and vestibular senses.

Keep our kids moving.  Whatever it takes.  Crossing mid-line, building balance, having physical fun that most of us take utterly for granted.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

 

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It Always Goes Back to the Game

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Here is John getting tested.  (In times past, the misery in the room was huge from sensory wars.  It was full-body wrestling for John and Mom.)

We call this 2015-09-09 13.45.01“The Headphones Game”.

And there are other games:2015-09-09 13.26.29

“The Blood Pressure Game”, “The Balance Game”,

“The Don’t Make Mommy Cry Game”,

“The Getting Poop in the Toilet Game”,2015-09-09 13.42.28

and my all-time-favorite, the “I Think I Will Try That” Game.

Hope some of these work for you.

Peace,

Gayle

 

2015-09-09 13.38.02

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Apparently Not Afraid of Sea Water Down the Hatch

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So John is slower to join in social gatherings, slower to figure it all out.

Because he doesn’t know what to do yet.  Fear of the unknown.

So, he will also be scared of the waist-high Galveston ocean water, the 1st time out into it, during daylight.

The 2nd time out, at night, with some time to figure it all out, he seemed fearless.  (No way I would be laying down in that mess in the dark.)IMG_5851

Sensory adjustment is overcoming FEAR.

Once our kids get something figured out, they can overcome their fear.IMG_5852

So please accept this encouragement to keep stretching all the neural pathways yet-to-be in your child.

Same with John: Once he decided he “wanted to try that”, he was ready.

Keep asking, “Do you want to try that?”

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Torn Heart?

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John has once again outstmarted me. torn heart 2

In two restaurants during our recent vacation trip to Galveston, John tested me past my good-natured mom endurance.

Sometimes, when he senses a weakness (in public!), he tries to get away with stuff that he knows is not the plan.

Twice, two different days, I found myself saying some jibberish like, “you can decide to sit here nicely like you know how to do, or we can go outside and I will give you five swats…..”.

(Yeah, right, Mom!  That will be great moments in intervention parenting.)

Once we got home, and the subject of good choices came up, John looked me dead in the eye and said something about “getting 100 swats”.

So back to the teachable moment of me saying how sad Mom was in the restaurants, that “you tested me to see if you could get away with stuff, to see if I still loved you enough to keep the same rules”….

It was a stalemate.

He changed the subject.

And, by the way, that divided-in-half heart represents the advice I received long ago from Alma Liotta, OTR, “Take half of your heart, your energy, your everything and do all you can for your child.   Then, take the other half and love him just as he is.”   

Peace be with us,

Gayle

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Got Siblings? Got Friends? Got Cousins?

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Do you have other kids in the family?  We also use school buddies, cousins, and nice kids wherever we go.

I validate to those children their kindness and good heart.

I thank them for teaching “a younger brother”.

I demonstrateIMG_5830 IMG_20150904_151314077 2015-07-27 10.16.58 to  them what speech delay is by grabbing my own tongue to slow it down—-and I try to talk like that.

I tell the parents and the school what good choices they are raising.

Reciprocal play (my turn, your turn), joint-attention (let’s play together), and sharing in each other’s joy builds social neural pathways for our kids.

Here are some examples, in case you “want to try that”.  It is a free intervention.  The payoff can be huge.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

 

 

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So That’s What Your Everything Feels Like (TED – Chris Milk)

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empathyYou have heard of virtual reality, right?  How about that as a tool to help communicate and thus improve learning differences?

“Inside The Box” (Time, August 17, 2015), in an article about virtual reality (VR), talks about Jeremy Bailenson’s (founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab) vision of VR as an empathy machine, and Chris Milk’s (music-video director, artist) extensive work in the arena.

As Chris Milk says, “There’s something about sitting on the same ground someone else is sitting on that changes the way your brain registers their humanity”.   Here is Chris Milk’s TED Talk: “The Ultimate Empathy Machine”

So, what if VR could be used to help communicate what it feels like to have the wide spectrum of learning differences, sensory overload and cognitive overload?

And what could we all do together to help ease those areas we do not directly know of?

So we reach out to them, thank them, and ask to be part of their research.

Peace to us all,

Gayle

(P.S.  Thanks to PowerPoint for access to this image.)

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“My Legs and Feet”

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What is that1handwriting1In the August 2015 issue of WIRED, they discuss kids’ handwriting and if being terrible was a problem.   The author closes with the muse, “we should take a second to think about how beautiful it can be”.

“Beautiful”?

As compared to the beauty of all the kids starting cursive while the boy living with me is struggling with the mere grip of a pencil?

I am grateful he has learned to write his name.  Never to be taken for granted.  Nor compared to other children’s work.

How about Art Class?  This is the first drawing he has made by himself.  Not cheating with other people holding the crayons and markers.   I had to ask him what it was.   He told me.   And he had to correct my question of in whose class he had made it (that was a piece of processing itself.)

Never by himself has he drawn anything solo or willingly, let alone his own legs and feet.  That is what this is, in his words.

So, we all can take the advice of WIRED, of joy in the beauty of whatever our kids create.

I would rather have this, made by himself, than a masterpiece with cheating.

How about you?

Peace,

Gayle