At Home
Wet Mess vs Dry Mess
If you’re someone who would say “Oh, I can’t handle letting my kids make a mess! It stresses me out too much!” …Well, first step, let’s differentiate between “wet mess” and “dry mess”. These aren’t […]
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At Home
Video Games
On my recent post about children being developmentally ready for games with winning and losing, somebody asked me if the same information applied to video games, which was a great question. I think the umbrella […]
At School
Choosing the Right Sensory Tools
I can understand why some fidgets get labeled as “toys” — or worse, “distractions” — and taken away from kids who need them. It’s because they’re sold in bulk and trendy and seem like fun […]
At Home
Teaching Play
Once you’ve “taught” them how to use something (even accidentally), I notice these things happen: -they start to believe there is a “right” way to play with the toy -they fall into a pattern of […]
At Home
Everything is Sensory
PSA: Everything is “sensory”! (And, again, like I mentioned yesterday…”sensory” is actually an adjective, not a noun…that’s me being pedantic, but it is something that really indicates to me whether I’m talking to somebody who […]
At School
Let Them Be 5
There is no need to borrow worry from the future. And that’s exactly what this kind of thinking is: it’s borrowing worry. 5 year olds are not just future adults. They are also present 5 […]
At Home
“Sore Loser”
To speak in very general terms of averages — because that’s all I can talk about, is average child development, not your kid’s specific child development — 5-6 is when children start to really become […]
At Home
Diagnosing
If a child called “oppositionally defiant” could label the adults in their life, what kinds of things might they call them? Needlessly antagonistic? Endlessly demanding? Perhaps their adults themselves would receive the diagnosis of ODD […]
At Home
Everyone is Sensory
PSA: Everyone is “sensory”. 😊 (A second, more pedantic, more pet-peevy PSA: “sensory” is an adjective, not a noun!) Everyone in the world has a sensory system. Everyone interacts with the world around them through […]
At Home
The Dividing Line
When you start to understand how thin — or nonexistent! — the dividing line is between “playing” and “learning/growing”, suddenly so much more of what children do makes sense. And suddenly so much more of […]