One thing that’s really challenging for adults in all contexts—parenting, or professional contexts—is balancing between how much autonomy and how much protection to provide to their child. That’s why when I was writing this reminder to go on the board in my therapy gym, for the adults who work with kids who use it to … Read more
The transcription of the whiteboard can be found at my intro post for this series: What the Therapy Gym Is. When I set out to write this as a helpful reminder for the adults who take children to use my therapy gym to self-regulate throughout the day, I spent a lot of time thinking about … Read more
Last year, I had the opportunity to train some of the staff at one of the schools I work at about how to use the therapy gym as a place for some of the children to use regularly to self-regulate throughout the day — i.e., as opposed to only coming in there with me during … Read more
Something I’ve been trying out lately is counting to a hundred. I do it when I’m impatient with my kids for no actual reason. So I’m not saying this is for when you actually have somewhere you need to be. I’m thinking of times when I’m taking my kid home from daycare and she stops … Read more
The only reason I’m writing this post about this show is because it’s a show my child is obsessed with right now, so I’ve watched the episode 41,392 times. It’s not because I think the whole show is horrible or that this example is particularly egregious — just a single example I happened to see … Read more
I spoke to a parent recently whose child was getting in trouble at school for being too “touchy” with other children—wanting to hug, touch, wrestle, tickle, etc more than was school-appropriate or allowed. I know these types of kids, too, and my heart really goes out to them! Rough-and-tumble play is a powerful and important … Read more
[Though I don’t currently have the bandwidth to accept any new consultation requests by email, I am still working through the backlog of consults that I did with people a couple of months ago when I was able to accept those. Here’s another of those questions.] *** A parent wanted to know about ways to … Read more
I did this activity with one of my older elementary school aged kids (in the 8-10 range): we went on a “sensory scavenger hunt” together. I had a lot of ideas in mind while I did this. -I wanted the child to be able to take a break from any classroom time, and get outside … Read more
Listen, the parental exhaustion is real. I know this. AND, simultaneously, the children need to be in constant motion, like, 22 hours out of the day. I also know this. Meeting opposing sensory needs is a whole thing. It can be really tricky and take a lot of creative work and a lot of forgetting … Read more
Compared to the other two apps I’ve named, Forest and Finch, this one is much more of a game and also much much simpler in function. I believe it was designed for children and young people, but I enjoy simple games, so I really liked it too. The entire “self-care” function of this game is … Read more