Someone asked me what to do when one of their children was distressed by the other child crying. Their kids were 6 and 4, and so are mine. The 4 year old especially would cry quite often, and the parent wants to give the child space to cry and feel like all their feelings are … Read more
Imagine that you sit down to watch a movie. You pop yourself a bowl of popcorn to go with it…maybe your favorite toppings, whether salt and butter or marshmallow or Parmesan cheese or something else…you pick up the remote, hit play, and get ready to watch the movie while eating your popcorn. Then somebody takes … Read more
Intellectually, I am aware that “science” does not mean “mixing a bunch of bubbling purple liquids together”. But like, doesn’t it feel like sometimes it SHOULD? We did “science” today in my OT room. (I accidentally referred to us as wizards and our work as potions a couple of times and was promptly corrected.) I … Read more
One thing went wrong. And it led to another. And it was too many things. And he was MAD. I carried him into his room so that we would have a safe space to melt down. He screamed at me, “JUST GO AWAY FROM ME!” I have talked about this before (I’ll link that post … Read more
One of my kids who does not like to write and feels particularly threatened by writing, really does like to have some kind of transition object to hold in the hallway while we walk from their class to my therapy gym. We have experimented with lots of different options. A couple of months ago I … Read more
At the top of the poster is a sentence describing “old school expectations”. It reads like this: “Kids at desks / sit silently / (without sensory supports) / while adult teaches / on adult’s directed topic / until adult is done. / Then, kids work seated at desks / silently / on written work … Read more
We sort of organically invented a game outside that I thought was pretty great for kids who are what’s sometimes called “destructive”, or who are wanting to take things apart, knock towers over, break things, etc. The game basically consisted of my daughter (4) and me writing and drawing with chalk on the house, the … Read more
When some kids come to me, they don’t know how to break outside of the school model. They aren’t sure what to explore, with the freedom to explore whatever they want. They aren’t sure what to create, given access to loads of art materials and free time and space to do it. They aren’t accustomed … Read more
My son was feeling a little bit “out of whack” (that’s usually the least-jargony way I can describe the word “dysregulated”). He was picking at everyone in the family, emotionally, verbally. He pushed his sister, who was watching a show, far enough for her to lash out at him physically, to hit him and push … Read more
This was from a session in which a child and I were pretending that he was exploring space. We built a space pod out of tents and filled it with cardboard box “panels” on which I drew various buttons. I made sure to make some of the buttons interesting and write various labels on them, … Read more