mamashark
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Posts posted by mamashark
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Question for you ladies. I am reading the book Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne, and it is suggested, near the end of chapter 1, that deep extended play periods provide the same brain benefits as the hours of meditation that monks practice. I wanted to see some research on this concept but there is no footnote on this comment and my attempts to find anything else about it online give me only benefits of meditation in kids or benefits of multiple brief periods of play, encouraging schools to provide more than one recess time. Neither one supporting the idea that a deep and lengthy period of imaginative play leads to the same specific brain changes that lengthy periods of meditation provides. Can anyone with stronger search skills than I have help me out?
Thanks!!
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1 minute ago, nixpix5 said:
I dropped every "expert" working with my son ages ago and that is when we started making progress. No regrets. That is coming from someone who makes a living as an expert ? Take a deep breath and little steps. You got this ?
This is where I will be in a few weeks. We dropped the psychologist in the spring, along with the chiropractor, and there are only 2 more OT sessions left on the books and then we're done with them too. The diet is the one constant that I will continue because when he gets something artificial he turns into a nightmare of a child and it lasts for days. Thanks for the encouragement and advice!
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1 hour ago, nixpix5 said:
If you could have seen my 7 year old at 5 he was an anxious wreck. I had to put my money will my mouth is and use all of these same techniques I had trained others in for years on my own kid. So I know it isn't easy. My guy is doing so great! People who have always known him are amazed and think I must have him on medication. Nope, I just do all of what I have said here. I am loving and playful and try to never show frustration. Each day is a new one. You will get there ?
Thank you, I think the hardest part will be my own resilience because I tend to get my hopes up and come crashing down when I "fail" and can't get him to do something. But it will make us both stronger!
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She does type very well but she really wanted to do more hand-writing instead of typing everything...I Think she is self-conscious of her handwriting compared to her peers and wanted to get better. Maybe I need to ensure she's comfortable with writing the lower case letters to ensure that's not holding her back.
I like the idea of highlighting every other line!
I use graph paper with her for math and have had to teach her how to use the grids but it helps her tremendously.
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Oh and he is 5, turns 6 in January. So it sounds like maybe I should work on confidence building and reduction of anxiety at home before I consider putting him in anything (which financially is good for us anyway).
He does go to his Sunday school class and enjoys it in-spite of a particular troublesome kid in his class. We've talked through types of issues that come up, labeling them as small, medium, or big problems and a clear understanding of how he can handle each type of problem. We explained this all to his teacher and then from that point on he has had no problems with that class.
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51 minutes ago, ClemsonDana said:
With my kid who got overwhelmed, we talked through it, and we'd rate possible 'bad things that could happen' on a scale from 1-10. Kiddo set 7 or 8 as the level at which is was reasonable to cry, so once he saw that he rated most normal things as 2-4, there was no need to cry over them. i was kind of shocked that this thing that I made up worked so well, but we kept the 'upsetedness scale', with upsetting things ranked on it, hanging on the wall for an entire school year and referred to it as needed.
I love this idea - I have a couple of things made from his social group at OT, I think this needs to be part of his "calm down" corner too!
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37 minutes ago, nixpix5 said:
To begin working on panic and anxiety at home...
1. Visualize expectations before going onto a new situation. Have him describe what his brain is expecting, have him describe any worries. Trouble shoot worries by coming up with coping strategies if that happens. Challenge his belief of what he thinks it will be like by saying "what if the room looks like this? What if the teacher is someone new?" It doesn't really matter how you challenge it, the idea is that he begins to recognize that his mental schema is different from others and may not align with his expectations.
2. As much as you can, talk through and process a coming event. Veggie Tales, pre-watch it, tell him the story, what characters do, ask him to predict the ending as you tell the story and once he knows it, try watching it together. Maybe for about 10 min to start and talk it through. This is exposure therapy and you want to carefully expose his brain to noxious stimuli to build resilience. Anxiety to a show/colors/noise can be linked with sensory processing and regulation. Often times anxiety stems from over and under active sensory systems and parents don't realize. Obviously he won't need Veggie Tales to survive in the world but by using it to begin gentle exposure therapy, that will extrapolate to other areas where anxiety exists. It desensitizes the fight or flight responses.
3. Do not maintain his fears by letting him out of anxiety inducing situations. I do not mean make him do VBS if he has anxiety but be loving yet firm in helping him to take those exposure steps. "Today we will step into VBS for 15 min and leave. Stay with him. Then go home. This is how you build grit, perseverance and confidence. There is just no other way. I wish it was easier but it is the slow realization that you can survive a situation over and over.
4. Don't over function or over empathize. As moms we feel our kids pain and sometimes own it. If you say "I know this is scary/anxiety inducing/ etc" and rescue you reinforce that the fear is legitimate and a reason exists to feel that way. Change the narrative. "Your body chemical cortisol is telling you a lie right now. It is trying to get you to have a big fear of something that should cause a smaller bit of discomfort. That means we need to battle cortisol for a while to make him see that he does not need to be so worried. Here is our plan to do that..." and then you talk about small exposures.
5. Teach him Peacock breath. Get him some peacock feathers and the trick is to breathe in calmly and blow the breath out to try to bend the peacock feather for 10 breaths. Focus should be placed on the feather and the breathing to bend it. This can de-escalate during an anxiety response.
This is all hard to explain via a post. Much easier in my office but I have treated many children with your son's profile with slow, careful exposure, visualization and breathing techniques. It is a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy coupled with narrative therapy.
This is great info, thank you so much!! I love the way you explain some of the ideas, because it makes them feel manageable even to me! lol Kind of wish we had spent all that psychological $$ on you instead of the person we did go to.......he has come a long way with sensory processing - he used to avoid all unexpected touch or any "comfort touches" and we had a play date a couple weeks a go where the mom had a ton of water balloons and water guns for the kids to play with and he had so much fun with no meltdowns or other sensory overload issues afterwards! I will take a look at where I can add some of those exposure steps to our days, starting very small and realizing, I'm sure, that it will take time.
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The thing is - he was never diagnosed with autism. The psychologist said that he didn't have enough markers for it initially, and only wanted to revisit the topic when we decided to pull out from her services. Like she could scare us into coming back just because of the idea of the "autism" label. His primary care dr. has a child who was diagnosed with autism and feels it was a misdiagnosis based on changes she made and his current behavioral status. She did not feel our son has autism. So officially all we have is "anxiety disorder" and I am inclined to agree based on what I see.
His behavior at VBS was classic panic attack. Another trusted adult familiar with him also said it was a panic attack.
He displays classic symptoms of a generalized anxiety disorder and I am working with him on that through the lessons in the social group therapy sessions with the OT.
The OT suggested a team sport, not sure if I mentioned that before. But all the leagues around here are starting at age 6 and the YMCA is out of our price range. Just looking for confidence builder ideas.
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4 minutes ago, Kiara.I said:
Not precisely a confidence boost, but... Did any of the therapy check for and address retained neonatal reflexes? If not, you can do it at home... And some of them are linked to anxiety.
Yes, the OT looked at these for us.
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So we've been on a long journey with our son - and spent a lot of money on therapy and dr's over the past year. We've made huge strides in behavioral changes and have gone from an almost sure autism diagnosis to an almost new kid. The big thing that still remains is anxiety. True, unable to do things type anxiety. He has had panic attacks the last two nights when we tried to take him to VBS at our church because of how chaotic it is. He responds the same way if we try to get him to watch a kid-friendly movie, like veggie tales.
We've eliminated a ton of allergy triggers (dog, etc.), utilized chiropractic adjustments, participated in social groups, undergone a ton of OT sessions, had individual psychological therapy sessions (she was a waste of time and took a lot of money, I was very disappointed in her), and under the guidance of a natural minded primary dr. we manage so much of his behavior with diet it's kind of miraculous. But we are still experiencing this huge anxiety. Our insurance has changed and we cannot afford the new copays for continued therapy treatments, so I need to find some new ideas for boosting confidence and reducing anxiety.
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1 hour ago, displace said:
I would think stacking a few sheets and just tracing a line with a pencil and a ruler would do it. If you press hard, then turn the paper over, it will be slightly raised. Or a butter knife edge would work. The commercial bought paper isn’t super tactile like a glue line. Though for younger kids that might be better.
True, the line isn't super tactile, just enough of a bump to give a bit of feedback. I might try your idea of stacking sheets together and tracing the line with a butter knife edge. It's worth a shot anyway!
The OT also wants us to be strict about practicing proper capitol letters in proper places (she'll put random capitols in the middle of words) but she's 10 and this is something I've been onto her about ever since she started writing, it's not like I've "let it slide" so anyone have any great ideas how to get her to improve in this area other than continuing to do copywork and make her fix the mistakes like we have been doing?
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Yes, my daughter said she could feel the lines through the pencil while she was writing and that she didn't feel like her pencil was floating on the page anymore.
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At my daughter's vision therapy today she was writing on paper with raised lines and it helped her handwriting tremendously. I'm on a super tight budget right now because of paying for therapy and was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make paper with raised lines?
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We got mental health benefits in the fall, called to get on the waiting list for a behavioral eval for our then 4 year old son. Had trouble finding a place that took our insurance so ended up at a private psychologist that was recommended by our family dr.
Filled out a boatload of paperwork, got on the schedule for January 2018, right as he was turning 5. In January we had 2 visits, an initial visit where she got to see some of his "shutdown" behavior, and she sent home another parent and teacher standardized evaluation for us and one of his Sunday school teachers to fill out. The second visit we turned in those evals and at a glance she told us "he obviously has a lot of things going on" and began going over some of the initial paperwork with us.
When I asked about autism, she said there were signs of it on paper, but she preferred to refer out for that diagnosis. I explained the insurance issue and she said that we would see what she could do because they do have a multi-disciplinary team at her office, but that for now, his official diagnosis would be "anxiety". She mentioned OCD at that appointment too. She wanted 3 more appointments before we went any further, one with him and mom, one with him and dad, and one with him alone. Then we would meet again. In the meantime we were to start OT with him.
Then she got the flu, we had several weeks of bad weather, we had a traumatic death in the family, and finally, 3 months later, we were able to get back on her schedule. Got those 3 requested visits in, then a parent meeting.
That parent meeting was very frustrating for us - she wanted to know how we felt about our experiences with him during those individual sessions, asked for general updates on how things were going, reiterated again that we needed to go on dates to have a break from him, and told us her observations were that he fidgeted and wasn't 100% focused on the games we played, which caused him to make mistakes or miss some of the directions. Literally nothing else. When I asked for copies of her evaluations because our insurance is changing in July and she'll be out of network, she told me rather condescendingly that she never did any "official" evaluations, and a conversation with a new psychologist would be more helpful to us than any papers.
I talked to the OT about it and she told us to request a written report of her findings. So I called and left a message explaining nicely that we must have miscommunicated our desired request for a behavioral evaluation, apologized for any confusion, and stated that we would like a written report of her findings and to cancel our next 2 meetings.
I just got a voicemail from her explaining that she had missed her note to herself at the bottom of the back of his file to finish going over the behavioral categories, and that we should use one of the next scheduled meetings to go over that and talk about "the rest of it and what it looks like in regards to an autism diagnosis and how that impacts other treatments that we seek out for him". She said she can do a written report for us too, and to call back and let her know how we would like to proceed.
I feel like we've waste so much money on her already and we are seeing HUGE improvements in behavior with diet change and OT (where he's in a social group) and that she was unprofessional and unprepared and I don't really want to spend more money on another visit with her... and all the complication that goes along with finding a babysitter for all the kids (the last time we had to do that, my in-laws kept them and they broke his special diet and we had a week's fallout from it in his behavior...)
An autism diagnosis at this point isn't going to be very hugely helpful because we've been able to solve the majority of the behaviors ourselves.
For example - he's now eating well,
his "fits" last mere minutes and he is able to talk about them and take responsibility for cleaning up any messes, and these fits are not even every day (as compared to multiple 20+ minute fits daily before). I'm able to pick more battles and start over with teaching him appropriate behavior even if he's not happy by my request. He rarely truly melts down anymore (less than once a week if that)
He rarely shuts down unless we are leaving somewhere and he doesn't want to go.
He's sleeping in his bed more than 1/2 the time now (instead of never)
he wears jeans without a problem.
He's fully day-trained now,
has been going to his classes at church without a parent for several weeks.
He's not displaying the autistic-like repetitive behaviors anymore,
his sensory sensitivities are drastically reduced (now he only doesn't "like" getting dirty or sprayed with a hose... but is willing to take baths, brush teeth, wear all kinds of clothes, walk barefoot outside, etc)
He's made several friends his own age, and while he's overwhelmed by large groups still, he is able to manage without a behavioral issue so long as he's well rested and not hungry.
So what do I do about the psych??
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11 hours ago, nixpix5 said:
This was my thought too. If you have trip pictures you could create book sections or chapters based on the state and then add the pics along with scanned in pics of her work for that state. It is hard without knowing exactly what you have that needs bound but I could see it being very memorable for her.
Oh that's brilliant! I didn't think about adding pictures to it too! I love it!
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On 5/9/2018 at 5:24 PM, Ktgrok said:
If you google Meg Ryan Curly Short Hair you get a bunch. Honestly my DH adjusted quickly to the short hair, and it was nothing short of life changing for me. I am SO excited for summer and swimming and not worrying about my hair!
This is still feminine:
This is basically what I ended up with and my husband loves it ?
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I've been sitting on a project on a collection of states that we visited that my daughter completed last year and want to "finish" it or publish it somehow. Right now it's a stack of papers, some printed, some hand written, and a stack of tracings done on tracing paper. Ideas for the best way to nicely finish the project?
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Just now, Garga said:
The only benefit is that you said your DH wants it long, and it sounded like you wanted to leave it long for him. If you're ready for a haircut...then that's a new direction we could go in.
well yes - that's true I did indicate that. and if I can't find a style we both like I'd probably just stick with the messy bun/something up type of thing.
So go in a new direction and talk about cuts, then in the end I have both options to consider!
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Just now, Scarlett said:
Yes, a messy bun looks great with curly hair.
But really - if I'm constantly putting it up to stay cool, what benefit is it to have long hair? seems like a lot of product and time in the shower just to put it up in a messy bun ...
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Just now, Garga said:
Even though I don't have thick, curly, hair, I was wondering what would happen if you cut it really short, like @Bluegoat said. Then you wouldn't have the pony tail, yet it would be off your neck. And you could put a little bobby pin or something in it to keep it from your face. (Bobby pins side out of my hair pretty much instantaneously. But they'd stay in yours.)
Yeah, bobby pins have trouble sliding INTO my hair, but will stay once there!
I wonder if there's a way to style it so that it's shorter and not so tightly curly but more wavy?
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2 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:
Soooo - I am guessing that shaving the sides off might be too trendy? Because if you kept the top a little shorter than it is now and shaved the sides, I think it would be nice and cool in the heat and also quite hip, even if you put it in a pony sometimes.
That's probably a bit much - my husband really likes it curly and long - it's just crazy hot in the summer!
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2 minutes ago, Garga said:
Don't know, but it's fun to realize that the grass isn't always greener. I have straight and baby fine hair. I look like a drowned rat most of the time, with my hair stuck to my head in the most unflattering way. It takes WORK to get my hair not to stick to my head. I daydream about having thick curly hair that puffs out from my face.
Wanna swap? : )
My 10 year old has hair like you describe!
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I've got naturally curly thick hair. I also live in a home with no A/C and my hair is currently a couple inches below my shoulders.
I'm also a naturally lazy hair person, and I have a square face, which you can't see in the picture, but I figured might be an important detail.
I am so tired of my curls, and the thickness, but I have no money for a stylist - I've cut my own hair for YEARS. What can I do to it this summer to help me like my hair again? I don't really feel like living in a ponytail all summer...
Here's a picture from a couple months ago - it's a bit longer now. Suggestions?
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my kids are young, oldest is finishing 4th grade. And I am going to take next week off for sure, I decided that right after I hit post. I have to get a certain number of days in thanks to PA law, but I need a break!
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simplicity parenting - meditation vs play
in The Chat Board
Posted · Edited by mamashark
Interesting - thanks, that's along the lines of what I was looking for ?