Over the years Mick has spent working with kids and families across different countries, healthcare systems, and family settings, they kept finding gaps in the information that was available. Many times Mick wished there was more available to help parents, teachers, and even other occupational therapists in the field.
So Mick decided to build the resources they wished they’d had. Everything on this page grew out of those experiences.
Mick hopes these resources bring guidance and clarity to anyone wanting to understand more about meeting kids where they are with what they need.
Your Child’s Point of View: Understanding the Reasons Kids Do Unreasonable Things
In Your Child’s Point of View, the Occuplaytional Therapist (Kelsie “Mick” Olds) combines reassuring knowledge, modern research, light humor, and empathetic imagination to provide helpful insights and collaborative strategies for solving common adult/child challenges at home and at school, with an emphasis on meeting everybody’s needs in a positive way.
Whether you are raising a baby or teenager, teaching preschool or high school, or embarking on the often-difficult journey of reparenting your own inner child, this book is for you. Within its pages, you will find over fifty relatable examples of common childish behaviors. Each scenario, initially shown from the adult’s perspective, offers a possible child’s perspective, along with key things to know about why children may act this way and key things to try for replacing conflict with joyful connection.
Available on: Amazon US | Amazon AU | Amazon UK | Amazon CA
Big Talks, Little Talks
This eight-module video course series helps you understand how kids think, feel, and behave by addressing distinct topics related to neurodiversity and child development. Every module includes two videos: a Big Talk for adults (qualifying for continuing education credit) and a kid-friendly Little Talk that can be shown directly to children or used as a guide for explaining these concepts to children in your own words.
Post Collections
If you want the best of everything Mick ever wrote, all in one place about sensory stuff, or about emotional regulation, or about parenting stories, this is for you. Get PDF downloads of Facebook posts, collated into collections by theme for increased accessibility. The documents have a table of contents, so you can look for a story that once jumped out at you. They are searchable, so you can still type in a key word and look for anything written on that topic. And if you want absolutely everything, get the whole set and have the best of five years’ worth of work, all saved on your own device instead of subject to the whims of social media.
You Need Me & I Need Space
Some children just seem to be born deep feelers. Other children experience early trauma or challenges that can cause lasting effects. Whether as a result of nature or nurture, when children have intense connection needs, they might be described as ‘clingy’, ‘needy’, ’emotional’, ‘overly talkative’, as they set about trying to meet their own needs.
Adults who are trying to parent from a positive paradigm might struggle to meet their child’s needs without sacrificing their own mental health, or body boundaries.
Occupational therapist Mick Olds shares theory as well as practical ways to empower parents to meet the needs of everyone in their family, themselves included, for the incredibly low price of $5 USD to hopefully reach as many parents as possible.
COMING SOON
Here to Play
A continuing education course for pediatric occupational therapists teaching Mick’s play-based methodology.