At Home
You Don’t Have Any Blocks
“I want you to build a tower,” I say. You agree, and you stand up to go get the bucket of blocks off the shelf. I shake my head sternly. “No. Did I tell you […]
By Domain
At School
When You Don’t Agree With the Behavior Program
Sometimes parents are uncomfortable with the behaviorist strategies used by their schools. (ABA strategies, PBIS/PBL strategies, rewards charts, clip charts, smiley face charts, ClassDojo, etc.) I think it would be outright impossible for me to […]
At School
Motor Plans & Letter Formation
People ask me semi-often about learning “letter formation”, or, to put it in other terms, what would be the “right” way to teach children letters? (assuming that they WANT to learn to write letters…none of […]
At School
Caution Around Language
I have noticed some of my language shifting when I write notes, evaluations, progress notes, etc, in an ongoing effort to be more true when I describe what children are doing—since it’s so easy for […]
Autism
New Space in Your Brain
I want you to imagine for a moment that…everything is really good right now. Imagine that all the things on your to-do list that feel like “have to”s (instead of “get to”s) are taken care […]
At Home
Hair Washing
My kids are 6 and 4. Both of them have gorgeous tight-coily-textured hair and both of them have (different) sensory processing sensitivities. For the first time in our family’s entire life I successfully washed and […]
Personal
Galaxy Thoughts
When I think to myself I do not think with an inner dialogue. My thoughts don’t sound like words until I translate them. When I think to myself, it’s in a big empty void (I […]
At School
A Tale of Two OTs
There was once an occupational therapist working at a school. The occupational therapist had a young teenage boy on their caseload. They were supposed to see the teenage boy to work on handwriting goals. The […]
At Home
Sensory Mismatch Conclusion
The last thing that I wanted you to know this week, as I wrap up my talks about sensory mismatch (the other four posts are here: one, two, three, four), is that kids will typically […]
At Home
Sensory Mismatch Key: Set Up the Environment
Setting up the environment to help mitigate some of the sensory mismatch is the fourth tool you can use in parenting, teaching or whatever situation you might encounter. Some of these other things I’ve named […]