This quote sums up everything I’ve ever tried to say about “behavior” and does it so perfectly succinctly in four sentences. What’s the best-case scenario? That instead of wanting to get revenge on children for the ways they act that inconvenience, bother, or annoy us, we start to soften. We start to see them empathetically. … Read more
This post has an audio and video recorded version for those who prefer to learn by hearing rather than by reading. Scroll to the bottom for the video of me reading it. Someone recently asked me, “I want my child to know that they can feel their full range of emotions without any emotion being … Read more
If my partner and I were chatting and he said “Ughhh, I’m so stressed out by writing this dissertation, I could just throw my computer out the window!” I wouldn’t say, “Well, you aren’t allowed to throw your computer out the window.” I might say, “I know. I know it’s maddening.” If my boss and … Read more
I sometimes see people ask things like “How can I increase connection with my child?” so I wanted to share one simple game/example that has meant a lot to me and my kids: I pretend they’re a baby. Preemptively, I mean, not when they do baby talk or pretend to be a baby (although I … Read more
My son huffed at a puddle that he didn’t want to be there the other day and said, “The rain is making bad choices!” It made me laugh, because it was cute and funny. And then it made me think, because most of the adults I know who say, “___ is making bad choices,” are … Read more
It can be really tricky to teach children how to understand the emotions inside of their bodies. It feels obvious after you already know all the emotion words — maybe, depending on how in tune you actually feel with your ability to interpret your own emotions! — but it’s much harder to do from the … Read more
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
One of my favorite tools for building a whole bunch of skills— hand strengthening, finger strengthening, hand-eye coordination, and then copying from a visual model, and occupationally meaningful writing— are these toys which I originally found in a closet and have since googled to find out are called “Zoomorphs” and, more specifically, “Dinomorphs”. They’re basically … Read more