Tag: parenting

Categories
parentsaathi specialsaathi

The Power of Small Steps: Our BloggerSaathi Journey

Yesterday, Ananth shared his first post as blogger saathi.

What can one blog post set in motion?

First, we decided to include blogging in our daily routine.  Writing a small amount daily is important for producing blog posts regularly.

While Ananth will write a small amount for his blog daily, we don’t know exactly how the writing process will unfold for him. We are now in a phase of continuous exploration, experimenting with tools and process for daily writing.  For example, Ananth started jotting ideas for his next post in Obsidian today.   Since he has liked using this note-taking/second brain tool in the past, we figured it was worth exploring it for capturing ideas as they come for preparing blog posts at a later date.

Our initial goal for targeted practice is to write 8 – 10 sentences daily.  The daily memory shares may or may not feed into the blog post for SpecialSaathi.  But the daily shares will build a repository that Ananth can use in future writing.

Growing the Six Cs

Connections: Shilpi is now another champion for Ananth encouraging to write.  She is supporting him by making him a part of the SpecialSaathi ecosystem.  Shilpi played an important role in bringing writing/blogging into Ananth’s daily routine!

Competence: Targeted practice develops skills.  Over time, we will identify and practice specific writing skills.

Coordination: Once Ananth starts blogging regularly, he will find ways to coordinate with Shilpi, me, and the readers of his blog.

Clarity: Over time, Ananth will gain clarity about the topics that interest his audience, and how best to present this information.

Choice: As he gains clarity, Ananth will be better able to choose content for his blog.

Conversations: I have interacted with many parents today.  These parents have read about a variety of issues that Ananth mentioned in his post.  They have asked me about different therapies and educational opportunities.

Becoming LIFESMART

We have taken a small step forward to becoming LIFESMART with SpecialSaathi!  Blogging is a way to Learn daily, share Interests with others, enhance Family interactions, and expand community Engagement.  Blogging can be a particularly valuable tool for neurodivergent individuals to communicate with others and to connect with people. Blogging creates SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-framed) projects since we have a specific target for producing blog posts.

Week 1

Ananth started compiling his ideas in Obsidian. He started writing a few sentences daily at 9PM after we have finished other work for the day. Read his post here.

Week 2

Ananth added an Explorations section to list what we explored in writing this week. The information below is from his blog post. Read the full post here.

Explorations: My Journey to Blogging
  1. Ackerman A. 2016. The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to City Spaces. JADD Publishing

My writing teacher Ms. Idania Cater, suggested this book. I have not used it for more than two years. Now, it is time to use it for writing my blog!

  1. I am using Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) to record my thoughts daily. I build my blog post gradually during the week.
  2. Theater and writing: Since I had the opportunity to participate in RASA Day 2022 (https://rasaindia.org/), my mother and I talked about theater and the role of setting and props. Now, I can see why the Urban Setting Thesaurus suggested by my teacher is important. Writers must paint a vivid picture of the setting with words!
Categories
parentsaathi Resources Story

An Autistic personality was aware about masks even before Covid -19

An Autistic personality was aware about masks even before Covid -19

Autism and Masking is like “to blend or not to blend”

Hiding who you are in reality is pretty uncomfortable , well this is a daily hustle for people with Autism

Autistic adults would clearly relate with this. Autistic people would often feel the need to present or perform social behaviours that are considered neurotypical

Masking the autistic personality will let the neurodivergent individual to feel protected and lesser chances of being excluded or harassed.

This specifically happens at school or at college

Thus this is the very reason a child will have a meltdown as soon as they are home after a day at school as they get tired of this “ masking”

Now you might think is this masking behaviour intentional,no it is not always

Thus if you have a teenager or an adult who is showing masking behaviour , you must not ignore as this can lead to adverse health  consequences.

To make you understand what is this masking behaviour . Now everytime you see the word masking , read it as “compensating”.

You can call it a social survival strategy applied by a neurodivergent person

Just think how many times you too effort hard  to fit in among people who are totally opposite to you.

Masking behaviours can look different from one person to other. These  behaviours vary as below:

1.forcing or faking the eye contact during social communication

2.imitating smiles and facial expressions

3.hiding personal interest

4. mimicking social scripts conversations

5.pushing through intense sensory experiences like “ loud noises”,” flashy lights”

6. making bodily stimming not so obvious

There has been debate and research going on why women do masking more than men with ASD

So I talked about very important social survival strategy that individual with ASD apply. Next I am going to shed light on how it feels like having autism.

This is compiled after I heard some very cool adults with Autism

Let’s go

Being autistic feels like eating soup with fork

Being autistic feels like playing a game without knowing the rules

Being autistic feels like having 1 % battery mode

Being autistic feels like being on a roller coaster

Being autistic feels like existing in a world which is inherently not built for you

Thankyou so much

I hope you totally adore this blog

Creative Efforts and Autism Activist- Heena Sahi

Categories
parentsaathi Resources Story

Seven Tips for Implementing your Daily Routine – 1. Be Mindful of Movement

Shinjita and Shilpi discussed the importance of the daily routine and shared suggestions for implementing the daily routine.

In this blog post, I want to introduce my seven tips for implementing your daily routine. We discovered these tips gradually. The Enki approach based on the Waldorf approach was a key influence on how we designed our daily routines. Movement, arts, and storytelling are integral parts of our daily routine even today.

This week I will start with the first tip:

Be mindful of movement

Be Mindful of Movement

This week is the right week for introducing this tip. Ananth’s website, A Journey to Bharat through Natya went live this week. You can view his website here.

Movement has played a critical role in his life. Fortunately, we homeschooled and lived in a place where it was possible to go for long walks together. Ananth and I have been walking partners for over 15 years! I walk with him because we can have conversations and continue our academic discussions. So even though he can go on walks by himself, we still walk together because it is an efficient way to learn!

In 2012, he started Bharatanatyam. Bharatanatyam has been a game changer for him. Bharatanatyam impacted many areas including speech, executive function, processing speed, visual processing, posture etc.

In 2020, Ananth performed his Bharatanatyam arangetram. The arangetram was the beginning of his theater arts journey with RASA. Dr. Ambika Kameshwar was the chief guest at his arangetram. Theater arts expanded his opportunities for practicing coordinated movement with others and further developed his communication skills.

Ananth participated in his first RASA Day experience in August 2022. It was an amazing experience that expanded connections and developed skills! Looking forward to the next RASA Day!

This week, we are in Bengaluru. Through RASA, we discovered a Bharatanatyam coach for Ananth in Bengaluru too. Ananth did lessons with Ujwal Jagadeesh, a senior artiste and a senior faculty at the Ramana Maharshi Centre for Learning, Bengaluru. Ujwal’s approach of drawing attention to the gift of movement and natya as a means of fully utlizing and developing these gifts resonates with me. I also like how he nudges Ananth to smile!

Coordinated Movement and Coregulation

The question I have for parents today:

How do you create opportunities for coordinated movement throughout the day?

The word coordinated is important. While formal, structured movement instruction for Ananth started later, Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) led us to simple, coordinated movement. We walked together even before we started RDI. But once we started RDI, we made into a coregulation opportunity. I would stop suddenly, run, walk in the opposite direction etc. We would put dishes away together. We discovered many opportunities for coordinated movement throughout the day.

Tip of the Week

Become mindful of opportunities for coordinated movement with your child. Seek small opportunities for purposeful movement with your child daily. Move together as a part of shared experiences. For example, clean together, hang up clothes together, and walk together.

I will end this post with a suggestion for parents:

Look ways for incorporating movement throughout the day. Do not worry about sitting tolerance. Over time, sitting tolerance will develop. In the meantime, use your gifts of movement and help your child discover their gifts!

Categories
parentsaathi Story

Daily Rhythm …

“We are what we repeatedly do”

We are a creature of habit, good or bad. And we all know how our kids thrive on habits and structures. They like predictable patterns. They like sameness and repetition, and repetition builds not only physical but mental strength too.

The problem arises when our kids get stuck in sameness, and that’s when Co-regulation helps. We do things repeatedly, and when they get comfortable with that, we add small differences for them to notice but not get eager to get into either fight or flight mode. We don’t want to overwhelm them with the change but want to give them a taste of change, which they may or may not like, but again “Repetition” of change in Routine or Structure helps them to tackle it, to handle it. 

Few activities in the structure make our Daily Rhythm. I remember, there was a time, when I could never stick to one thing. Then, I started 100-day-projects, and got into a Daily habit. 

Our Daily Rhythm can be anything. 

  • Getting up and sleeping on time can be a rhythm, 
  • eating all meals at the same time can be a rhythm,
  • Doing certain activities everyday can be a rhythm.    

Our life is filled with rhythms, we have seasons, which bring certain festivities, and doing certain activities year by year, eating certain food is nothing but rhythm, which brings joy and happiness. This Rhythm trains our brain to trigger happiness associated with them. 

Likewise, our Daily Rhythm 

  • instills confidence in our kids, as when they repeatedly do things they get better and confident in that and get motivated to learn or do more. 
  • It builds a strong connection between parent and child,
  • brings order to their chaotic world,
  • reduces stress and power struggle.

How we can make our Rhythm depends on our goals as well what mode of communication child prefers or understands. We started with picture boards. We struggled a lot in movement based activities, but putting a picture card in our daily schedule made it predictable and repeatedly doing it made us better with it and reduced both of ours stress. Doing a 100-day-project really helped us stick to our schedule and we made so much progress in skills and built strong connection with each other, a connection of trust, a connection of respect for each other. 

Categories
parentsaathi Resources Story

THE LIGHT BOX’S MAGIC STORY

THE LIGHT BOX’S MAGIC STORY

MIND IT, THAT’S NOT WITCHCRAFT MAGIC

Light box is an activity and is literally a magic and enchanting

This is a miracle box if you really struggle with a child to sit for an activity

What I mean is , a child who gets fidgety and shows very poor sitting tolerance

This is an innovative idea to be used when the child able to comprehend table top based academic skills like matching , sorting , tracing alphabet and numbers  , easy board games, crayoning , using pegboards , crafts and art making

This miraculous light box acts like a flat table surface.

You can also call this as your child’s /students working station

You are basically creating a visually stimulating but not a distracting table for the child to engage in various activities or tasks as mentioned earlier

Why I AM BEING SO PARTICULAR about this light box

We all know and are aware that children would not be ready to attend a task by themselves

They won’t comply easily to engage in a task

Then why not give them a space that boosts them to get involved

THIS LIGHT BOX CAN HELP TO PROMOTE INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Intrinsic motivation is simply anything that we do to for our own happiness and not for an external reward

Light box gives a soothing and warm effect to the eyes

Your child would be happy to see create such exciting box for them

This box can be easily made with minimal usage of resources

Are you ready to create one with me?

  1. YOU NEED A BIG TRANSPARENT BOX MADE UP OF TEMPERATURE FRIENDLY PLASTIC THAT HAS A LID OR COVER WHICH IS FLAT
  2. THIS BOX COULD BE SIMILAR TO THOSE YOU USE TO STORE KITCHEN PANTRY STUFF
  3. NEXT GET GOOD QUALITY STRING LIGHTS OF WARM  WHITE  IN COLOR
  4. THIS COLOR WILL NOT BE STRESSFUL TO EYES AND WOULD HELP IN EYE TEAMING
  5. THE COLOR CHOICE WILL HELP YOU TO EASILY SEE ITEMS TO KEEP ABOVE THE LIGHTBOX
  6. NOW YOU CAN CREATE A SMALL HOLE ON THE LOWER SURFACE OF THIS BOX TO PASS THE LIGHT AND YOUR HAND
  7. PLEASE NOTE KEEP THE SWITCH QUITE CLOSE TO THE LOWER SURFACE FOR EASILY MAUEVERING YOUR HAND TO TURN ON AND OFF THE LIGHTS
  8. THE HOLE COULD BE LARGE ENOUGH YOUR BANGLE SIE TO REPLACE WHEN THE WARM LIGHTS WOREN OFF
  9. YOU CAN TAPE THE TOP SURFACE TO ALL THE EDGES OF BOX SO THAT CHILD CAN’T OPEN IT
  10. SEAL THE OPENING BELOW AS WELL SO THAT YOU CAN OPEN IT BUT OBVIOUSLY NOT THE CHILD , HERE YOU HAVE TO ACT AS A SMART MUM

And you are ready to go my dear !!!!!

Well once you show it to your child ,let them explore and have a good look . It is not a good ideas to bombard them with the task at the very first go. Day 2 or even Day 4 is better day and good opportunity to start your goals

Well now that I have written so much , I would treat you with some wonderful pictures to learn and gain ideas for using this miraculous and magical “ LIGHT BOX”

1

2

3

What lightbox looks like ? you can use to announce a break

Use it for presenting numeracy and literacy worksheets
You can do ample activities like boardgames , playdough, gauging time and so on.

You must think what if my child gets habitual of this magic box and looks for it in school , well you can start a social story “ we can use light box only at home”

Creative efforts and LightBox Experimentor – Heena Sahi