Sometimes when my kids are playing, one of them plays too rough or in a different way than the other one wanted them to. Sometimes they will appeal to me for intervention: “I said stop and he’s not stopping!” More often, lately, though, the dynamics have been shifting. In their younger years, I would jump … Read more
During one of the recent snow days home, my kids were getting really sick of being cooped up inside and struggling to be able to play with one another successfully. They both needed more space than was available inside, and they were both sick of trying to play bundled up in the snow, and the … Read more
Three scenarios about my children (5 and 4) (fictionalized, but compiled from real scenarios) and the way that parenting shifts based on what actually happens…instead of what I might imagine will happen. *** Summer: I’m a scary monster and you run away from me. Apollo: OK. AAAAH!!!!! Scary monster! Summer: (super offended) NO! I’m not a … Read more
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
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
The last thing that I wanted you to know this week, as I wrap up my talks about sensory mismatch (the other four posts are here: one, two, three, four), is that kids will typically become better at managing this mismatch themselves over time, so you don’t have to feel like this will take active … Read more
Setting up the environment to help mitigate some of the sensory mismatch is the fourth tool you can use in parenting, teaching or whatever situation you might encounter. Some of these other things I’ve named over the course of this week are just specific versions of doing this. (Here are links to the first post, … Read more
In my last post, I shared the first tool for dealing with sensory mismatch. Today I’ll share another tool. Just like in the last post, some of the things I say in this post may be tricky to understand if you haven’t read any of my past posts about sensory processing or some of the … Read more
I have had lots of questions from people about “sensory mismatch” lately. Sensory mismatch is my phrase for it when two (or more) people in the same environment (like home, a classroom, etc) have different sensory processing styles, AND those different processing styles are causing a clash of some kind. I recently gave a whole … 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