Parenting
How Can I Help My Child by Helping Myself?
“How do I help my child? What am I supposed to do?”
That is the question most parents ask when we begin speaking to them about their children’s developmental and learning challenges. It comes from a feeling of helplessness. They’ve either tried everything they know or they’re at the beginning of their attempts to make sense of things, and the myriad treatment options seem too overwhelming to make decisions about. The result is burnout or, worse yet, the inability to act. With knowledge and support, parents are empowered to act swiftly and confidently on their child’s behalf.
It takes a village to help my child.
You can’t do this alone, nor should you have to. The best thing a parent can do when seeking support for their child, is to get support for themselves. Parents are the ones helming the ship, and if the captain isn’t operating with optimal knowledge, the whole crew suffers. Self-care, groups, therapy resources, and just being kind to yourself, are all recommendations for parents. Give yourself a break – give yourself compliments – don’t give in to negative self-talk.
There’s no right or wrong way to find community and get support. Some parents prefer one-on-one meetings with a therapist, others prefer parent groups, while others find community in their yoga class or religious community. Podcasts, books, blogs, and online groups are great resources. Finding others to talk about these topics and share experiences, gives a parent a sense of belonging and connection as opposed to feeling isolated and alone.
At the Child Success Center we understand the hurdles and intricacies of parenting “outside the box” kids. We offer various opportunities for parents to learn how to continue and support in the home and school environments, the strategies that we work on with the kids during sessions.
Our goal is to provide the resources and tools needed to facilitate happiness and success for children and peace of mind for parents.
Parent Resources:
Behavioral Therapy – A child’s problematic behavior may, in actuality, be the resulting reaction to any number of unseen factors. Our therapists work closely with family members to help determine what lies beneath the surface of the behavior, including a variety of sensory, social emotional, environmental, and physical issues.
Child Success Foundation Parent Support Group
Child Success Foundation Annual “Outside the box” Child – Educational Conference
Tips For a Successful Transition Back to School
Back to school tips to make the transition easier on the whole family.
With school about to resume after the long summer break, now is the time to put wheels in motion for a smooth transition to the back to school routine. These back to school tips will benefit the whole family.
Morning Routine
First and foremost on parents’ minds is likely some dread thinking about the “morning routine” of school time. Two weeks prior to the start of school, establish school appropriate bedtime and wake up times, and practice going to bed and waking up at those times. Determine what the school morning will look like for each member of the family. Don’t use words alone – try using visual schedules to illustrate routines. A checklist with added visuals helps children learn how to self assess if they have completed what is expected of them. Every child wants to succeed, and feeling successful with the morning routine is no different.
Who will prepare breakfast and lunch?
Make sure to leave enough time in the morning routine for eating breakfast or preparing healthy smoothies to go. Start planning breakfast and lunch options a couple of weeks before school starts too, especially if your child is a picky eater. Explore ways your child can learn to make their own healthy lunches with plenty of fruits, crunchy veggies and protein to fuel their brain throughout the day.
Transition of movement
As kids head back to school, it’s important for parents to understand that their child’s nervous system is going to go through a transition while their body gets used to having less active movement throughout their day. Summer time fun involves a lot of whole body big movement play. School time requires more small motor tabletop play and learning experiences. This shift in body movement can cause a child to get fidgety or anxious. Try not to increase this anxiety by emphasizing they should “sit still”, “be good”, or “pay attention”. Make sure they get a good amount of active movement during after school hours.
If your child has been seeing an occupational therapist working on strategies to support attention and regulation, or if there are certain words that help your child connect to whole body listening, share those strategies and words with your child’s teacher prior to the commencement of the school year.
Much of the tabletop play and learning will involve writing or drawing. The small motor skills required for both are not necessarily automatic and easy for all children. Watch how your child picks up and holds a marker or pencil, and if they experience joy or avoidance responses when doing so. If you notice a tendency towards avoidance, manipulation seems awkward or encumbered, or if their desire to do age appropriate drawing and writing does not develop, seek advice from a pediatric occupational therapist as early as possible.
Sensory Overload
The classroom environment may have a lot more sound and visual stimulus than a child might experience during a typical summer break day, as well as many more people in their immediate space. For some children, this additional sensory activity is joyful, but for those with sensory processing challenges, these circumstances can heighten the stress response. Be aware and observe your child as he transitions into these new situations, and appreciate how his/her brain may be working to modulate and process the incoming sensory information.
Children can also be overwhelmed by the amount of oral communication they have to process during a school day. They need to fire up their listening skills to follow direction, and their memory systems need to respond and perform in an expected manner in a group all day. Whew, that’s a lot! Don’t be surprised if they struggle with following directions and listening when they get home at the end of the day. Watch for chewing of shirt, pencils and other nonfood items – this is a sign that their nervous systems is needing help to regulate. Keep this in mind for the first couple of weeks and try not to overload them with too many additional directions.
Communication
School requires children to be sharing thoughts and ideas, and following direction utilizing their language processing brains all day long. If they are struggling in any of these areas and if they were a late talker, seek a speech and language evaluation to gain insight into language processing, before social, emotional, or reading/spelling concerns develop as well.
Speech intelligibility is a developmental process. Knowing when your child should be saying “s”, “l” and “r” sounds, to name a few, correctly can be confusing. This chart can be referenced as a guideline.
Finally, you and your child will feel tired as you transition sleep patterns and routines back to school. Be kind to both of your nervous systems and don’t over schedule your child’s after school activities. Some down time is a good thing – for both of you.
Preparing for Back to School with Social Emotional Brain Building
How the many aspects of social emotional brain building affect a child’s academic success.
When a parent thinks about “back to school”, thoughts probably turn to new backpacks, notebooks and sneakers. Academic questions likely come to mind too. After all, isn’t that mainly what school is all about? Well, yes, mainly. But a child’s back to school tool box needs to have social emotional skills too, as the ability to perceive, adapt, attend and self-regulate is key to effective learning and social integration. And let’s not forget about executive function, mindfulness and self-awareness. Let’s take a closer look at each of these to make sure you can check them off your child’s back-to-school “to do” list.
Social Brain Building
Much can and should be said about social brain building, and we’ve written much on the topic. But for the sake of this article, we’ll keep it short. In a nutshell, social brain building is the development of a child’s social emotional health, critical for interactions with others.
This developmental process is not always inherent, and relies upon efficient self-regulation, sensory motor processing, executive function, two-way communication, (verbal and non-verbal), and the capacity to stay connected, in order to develop problem solving skills and a sense of “self” in relationships. The integration of all these processing systems enables a child to think of others, taking into consideration their thoughts, emotions and intentions, and react in an expected manner to build attachments rooted in joyful, trusting relationships.
Communication
We navigate our world and our social relationships through language. Effective use of oral communication with peers sets the stage for positive self-esteem, and enables a child to advocate on his own behalf.
Receiving and processing non-verbal social communication cues requires a child to “think with their eyes”. By visually assessing a given situation they can determine what others might be thinking, how others are feeling, and what might be expected of them upon entering that situation or environment.
Speech Development Checklist
Executive Function
The ability to think as a “we” and follow directions, listen, attend, modify behavior and anticipate change, is the foundation of executive functioning. Executive function is a set of processes, or neurologically-based skills, that all have to do with managing oneself (mental control and self-regulation) and one’s resources in order to achieve a goal. A solid foundation of executive function skills is imperative to all learning.
Mindfulness and Self-Awareness
We hear a lot about “mindfulness” these days, but perhaps you’ve never heard of the body’s 8th sense. Interoception is a sensory system that gives us whole body awareness from the inside out. Receptors for interoception are widely spread throughout the body’s organs and give us a huge variety of sensations including but not limited to hunger, physical exertion, nausea, and the need to go to the bathroom. Interoception is deeply connected to our emotions and self-regulation. When a person is aware of their internal state they will either consciously or unconsciously take steps to self-soothe. That entire process from sensory perception, to awareness to self-soothing, all together is called self-regulation. Our desire is for our children to be regulated in order for them to successfully build meaningful relationships with others.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation refers to the ability to manage your reactions to your emotional and physical feelings and the environment around you, and begins with the ability to identify and validate those feelings. The ability to self-regulate is closely tied to one’s awareness of their internal state via the interoceptive sensory system as well as efficient management of input from all 8 sensory systems.
Sensory Processing
Self-regulation depends largely on a child’s capacity to turn the volume up and down on incoming sensory information from all 8 sensory systems. Effective sensory processing directly affects a child’s ability to attain and maintain the “just right” state of regulation necessary for the classroom and peer interactions.
So as you might have surmised, the system of social emotional skills is complex and highly interconnected. It is also vitally important to a child’s academic success, and really to all of life’s successes.
Have a look at these areas of development as part of your preparation for the upcoming school year. If you have concerns regarding your child’s proficiency in any of the areas discussed above, a consultation with an early childhood development specialist might be recommended. It’s never too late to learn a new skill set, but like with anything, the sooner the better!
Summertime Tips for Early Childhood Development
Summertime can provide endless opportunity to enrich early childhood development.
Summertime for young children means splashing in water, squishing sand between toes and endless hours of creative play. Still, there are ways for parents to guide a child’s play, here and there, to make sure they’re getting all the developmental support and enrichment they need to be ready for their next level of learning.
Summer tips for early childhood development – 2-6 year olds
The therapists at Child Success Center share some simple ways parents can foster early childhood development during the summer break.
Literacy:
- Sit and read with your child everyday. Choose books with illustrations and have your child talk about the story and images as you read it. When you’ve finished reading the book, ask your child to tell you what happened in the book in the beginning, middle and end. Books with little or no text encourage a child’s imagination to create the story.
- Consistency and accessibility can foster early literacy. At home, create a reading corner where you and your child can sit and enjoy books whenever you want. When traveling over the summer, take some favorite books along in the car or plane, and find some new ones that might be relevant to the places your visiting or the activities you’ll be experiencing.
Social Brain Building:
- Facilitate social skills building by challenging your child to get acquainted with one new peer each week during the summer break. Ask them to find out another child’s name and 2 fun facts about that child, such as what grade they’re going into and if they have a pet. This exercise helps a child build confidence when placed in new social groups or when entering a new classroom environment.
- Invite some of your child’s friends over to collaborate on building a fort or obstacle course. When completed, have them explain why they made the choices they did, and ask for a walk thru or demonstration.
- Limit screen time each day. With the extra “down time” during the summer break, it’s easy for a child to spend too much time in front of a screen. Limit screen time, making sure there’s plenty of time spent playing, exploring and socializing.
Communication:
- Encourage your child to share thoughts and words. One way to help build “communication temptation” is by keeping toys out of your child’s reach. This requires your child to use their language to ask you for what they want. As a child learns to request, provide two options, asking, “Do you want _____ or _____ toy? By doing this, the child is empowered with ownership over their choices.
- Language is everywhere! Increase your child’s exposure to language input by narrating, commenting, and labeling everything you see while playing, eating, and driving.
- Engage in activities that involve and stimulate the talking muscles, tongue, lips and jaw: Blowing bubbles, blowing kisses, drinking with a straw.
- Take pictures of your child’s day and talk about what happened first, next and last. Make a photo album of your child’s summer activities that he can talk about with friends and family.
Communication and social brain building skills come with shared play experiences, including just getting messy! Play with water, take out the finger paint, dig in the garden, build sandcastles. Have a great summer!
Supporting the Dad of an “outside the box” Child
The journey a dad will take with his “outside the box” child may be long and challenging. How and where will he find the support he needs?
Any father-to-be experiences myriad emotions when contemplating his new role as a parent. Elation and excitement will likely give way to some level of anxiety, as he questions his ability to be a “good dad”. Questions like, “how will I financially support my growing family?” “Will I be able to find enough time in the day to work and be there for my family?” He might even fall asleep at night wondering if his child will be successful, get married, have children of their own. All of this might well be addressed with the creation of a “plan”. A roadmap that, if followed closely, will lead to the desired outcome. Done.
But, what happens if a dad suddenly is faced with a major detour in that road? What happens when he receives a diagnosis for his child of a developmental delay, whether it’s sensory-processing based, speech related, or behavioral? It can be jarring and confusing, causing dad to go back and question his parenting choices, or feel guilt, fear, anxiety and anger. Ultimately, dad may even choose to deal with this by creating a new “plan”. But how? How to make things better – what to do – how to help?
Now this certainly doesn’t apply to all men, but, according to gender research men have difficulty dealing with things they can’t fix or problems they can’t solve. When their usual problem solving methodology doesn’t work, they may feel powerless or inept. Add to this the emotions and fear of their spouse, the sense of aloneness, and the realization that some of the “dreams” they had may not turn out just as “planned”, what parent wouldn’t get overwhelmed?
While a parent is a parent, no matter the gender, moms, dads and even siblings and grandparents will all deal with the diagnosis in their own way and at their own pace. No two people are the same, nor do they process and experience events in the same way. It would be unrealistic to expect two parents to understand and process a diagnosis and be “on the same page” all the time. A disconnect can occur when fear and anxiety about the child’s future, coupled with the sheer amount of extra work and patience it takes to deal with your child’s challenges, all feel like too much to bear. It would be shortsighted to think that support would come in a “one size fits all” form.
The journey a dad will take with his “outside the box” child and the rest of his family may be long and challenging. There is much parents will have to decide and do together to achieve the best possible outcome. But while the need for teamwork is crucial, there is also room for individual support and guidance. The “dad will tough if out” mentality is no longer the norm, and our community realizes the need to acknowledge the dad’s perspective and offer solutions that he can relate to and apply in familiar ways. Whether dad is “stay at home”, primary care giver, tag-teammate or weekend warrior, joining a dads’ support group can bring camaraderie, patience, insightful information, new perspective and help focusing on the positive and the strengths of all involved.
Child Success Center is presenting a Dads’ Discussion Group in a series of 3 evening sessions to be held this fall, designed to provide insights into self-care, ways to support your child and partner, information about diagnosis, provide camaraderie (you are not alone), and tools needed to maintain patience and a perspective of positivity. This feedback and coaching will be helpful to dads endeavoring to adjust to the new needs of his child and systems in place within the home and out.
Learn more about this innovative new program and sign up today.
