One of the stations in my therapy gym right now is a dinosaur dig. I have had this idea in my mind for a long time and finally had time to construct it during the winter school break! The end result is a bin of sand with “dino bones” to hunt for, and their skeletons’ … Read more
This morning my kids invited me to a restaurant. Let’s start with the positive. The owners are clearly passionate about this restaurant, and even about personalizing it to their customers—as soon as I stepped up to the storefront and found out that they were calling it “Mommy Let’s Go The Restaurant”, I was impressed. And … Read more
When you start to frame autism, ADHD, or other neurodivergences as really and truly just a difference instead of a disorder… It leaves space for realizing things like how the “social skills” that we teach to little neurodivergent kids aren’t actually, like, hard-and-fast rules of the universe so much as they are just societal norms. … Read more
I said this a few days ago as part of a larger post, and I liked it so much I decided it needed its own post. 😉 Some kids are interested in “writing” when they’re 2. They love letters and learn all the letter names and the letter song. If left to their own learning … Read more
In the Autistic community, self-diagnosis is accepted as a valid journey to diagnosis. There might be reasons to pursue medical diagnosis, which could include the affirmation of hearing it from an external provider/professional; needing medical diagnosis to overcome particular barriers, such as needing accommodations legally or at a workplace; access to a functional healthcare system … Read more
It’s “trendy” to offer your kid choices. 😉 It’s one of the easy, catchy, go-to parenting “tips and tricks” that I guarantee you’d see on almost any advice article, book, or even just talking to another parent. “Your kid feels like they don’t have enough power, offer them choices!” (Sometimes this spirals into giving them … Read more
This made me laugh out loud. When kids love something, they’ll explore it in every facet of their play if you don’t get in their way! You don’t have to turn it into worksheets. (Yes, even for academic objective purposes. I have a kid with whom I’m working on fine motor control. It would theoretically … Read more
When I originally saw this posted on Flourishing Homes & Families, not with the original caption, but in the original comments, a lot of people seemed (to me) to have missed the point. They took it at face value, as if the meme were saying that this is actually true. I don’t think it is. … Read more
Young children repeat the same thing over and over and over (like the same joke, the same observation, reading the same book, playing the same game…) because they are strengthening the connections in their brain that are learning from that repeated experience! In addition to whatever they’re learning from the experience they’re repeating, they also … Read more
I noticed that I was struggling with eating the food that I had available for myself for lunch. When I thought about needing to get up and get my lunch, I would think of excuses why I couldn’t or shouldn’t. I should keep working on what I’m working on. I’ll eat later. I’m not hungry. … Read more