I have “old paper” in my OT room (white paper stained brown with tea or coffee, crumpled up, etc) and sometimes the kids will get interested in making wizard scrolls or pirate maps or whatever. I had a kid who told me very very VERY seriously that he was going to write the worst spell … Read more
Modeling writing authentically and meaningfully and delightfully doesn’t always have to be, like, great works of prose or poetry. They don’t even have to make sense or be meaningful to someone who wasn’t using them for play. That’s what academic writing is for. Notes jotted down in one’s own notebook, words scribbled out as part … Read more
At my lecture last Friday, during the Q&A session, somebody asked me if I had any ideas for connecting meaningfully and playfully in therapy with a child whose special interest was vacuums, and who spent most of the session searching the clinic in hopes of finding a vacuum. I gave a few ideas right off … Read more
I wrote a post about myself, an adult, not freaking out when my children said things that were factually incorrect because I knew they were playing at having that skill. Like pretending to read a sign, or drawing scribbles and then “reading” them to me. The point of my post was that I don’t need … Read more
We went to a new playground recently. Monkey bars are rarer here in the UK (at least in my rural area) than they were at playgrounds in the states. As far as I can tell, this might’ve been the first time in awhile that my son has encountered them, maybe the very first time he’s … Read more
When my kids had their summer break, my son kept asking and trying to make sense of how long the break would be. He’s in a phase right now of intense interest in lots of mathematical foundational concepts, including both “time” and “counting beyond 20”, so he was asking questions over and over again as … Read more
Sometimes I get stuck in awkward situations with other adults where the other adult feels like they need to correct a child in some way that feels wrong to me. It might be exacerbated by my presence — like, for example, at a park when a parent is over-correcting what their kid is doing because … Read more
I had an unusual moment recently that reminded me of a sensory feeling from my childhood that I’d completely forgotten about. For me, it was a good illustration of the way that interoception — or inner body senses — work. Your inner body sense sort of describes 2 types of internal feelings (at least the … Read more
I’ve written before about “sensory mismatch”. It’s one of the hardest things for people with vastly different sensory profiles to be able to get along with each other in stressful circumstances. Let me tell you another story from my own family. The cast of characters here is myself, my son Apollo (5), and my daughter … Read more
I recently appeared on the podcast Dauntless Grace to talk about trauma, play, reparenting ourselves, and that infamous consequences post. You can listen to the interview on their website, Dauntless Grace. It’s also available on iTunes here, and on Spotify here. If you’d rather read rather than listen, the transcript is available here.