Ten things I could’ve done when my kid didn’t want to brush her teeth… Nonverbal cue: Set the toothbrush down next to my kid. Toothpaste already loaded. Wordlessly. Offer alternatives: Mouthwash, floss, a different flavor of toothpaste… Playful: Announce that I see something silly in my kid’s mouth, and how I need to get it … Read more
One skill that has been really helping me in these past few weeks has been the skill of being able to describe to myself in my head, in detail, what feels bodily wrong when things feel wrong. This is a relatively new skill for me. For the majority of my life, if I felt bad, … Read more
We have been using the park after school as a good strategy for getting/staying regulated. Just going and camping out with a meal for a few hours, til it’s close to bedtime. But on this particular day, everybody was too dysregulated for that to even work, or be safe. We came home instead. The kids played … Read more
Bedtime has been rough for… Well, let me back up. Bedtime has been out of whack in general for like, six weeks now. But bedtime has been especially bad and full of tears and yelling and dysregulation this whole week. I’ve been so tapped out myself by the end of the day that I can … Read more
The sensory weight of disability. It’s the way it feels like I had barely learned how to take care of myself without self invalidation. It’s the way that all of my feel-good strategies involve making myself feel worse first, and immediately after. So what’s the point? It’s asking someone if they could hand me a … Read more
A weird component of running a page like this while my kids are 5 and 6, not grown, is that I’m still in the middle of this. It’s not theoretical and it’s not like I’m reflecting on years ago. Trying to find the balance between not oversharing about my personal life and my kids’ stories, … Read more
When something uncomfortable—like something for medical health and safety—has to happen for a child, it’s often adults’ instinct to try to do it as fast as possible, to get it over with. (After all, it would be kind of barbaric to extend an uncomfortable or painful experience when it could be sped up and then … Read more
There have been quite a lot of times in my adult life when I’ve needed to talk to my husband about something but been unable to speak about it. Some of those times, the words have just lived inside of me. I think about them over and over, or maybe even make plans to say … Read more
“We have to leave the park in five minutes.” “How about six?” “You need to work on this for ten minutes.” “No, I choose nine!” What do you say next? Do you dig your heels in? Fight for that sixty seconds? That sixty grumpy, angry, dysregulated seconds, that might just poison the whole thing? I … Read more
The class finishes watching an age-appropriate video about reptiles and mammals. The teacher says, “Okay everybody, let’s take out our science journals and write one sentence to answer this question: What are some differences between reptiles and mammals?” What the curriculum hopes to assess is: Does the student understand the difference between reptiles and mammals? … Read more