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Points to remember- For parents of newly Diagnosed children.

Original content- Manju K Iyer

Rewritten and edited by- Shilpi Mayank Awasthi

This message goes to everyone who is anyway related to special needs kids or working with parents of special needs kids.

The post is meant to provide you some small tips to help your special needs children.

1. Build the right bond-

Please work on observing, building a bond and connecting with your child.

2. Don’t lose the mental peace and happiness–

Our kid is more important than the academics, his behaviours, his stimming or self stimulatory methods, the so-called tantrums as perceived by the society and is inappropriately seen. We need to try working upon mental health, peace and happiness, interests of our child first.

3. Set the priorities and the correct achievable goals –

We should work on small small goals initially as per the child’s age level and his skill level gradually increasing it to multiple and complex goals once achieved the earlier ones. Set the clear priorities what to expect, how much could be done, etc.

4. Trust your child –

  Your kid is first a human being… When you start trusting your kid for who he or she really is. Rest everything will fall in place with time and efforts trust me.

5. Acceptance is the key-

By accepting your kid the way he or she is and the capabilities a new world of possibilities will open up. Dont be scared of the tag that is the diagnosis, be it Autism, Adhd, or any other form of disability for that matter. It is a man made tag. Do not indulge in putting a label or correcting others who do so; as God did not create tags and labels for us. He sees everyone equally. So, accept the challenges bestowed upon you by God, use them as a positive force.

6. Teaching them daily life skills-

Yes, agree that we have to teach them how to live in this society, work with them until they are independent, but only after we accept them and give respect and connect to them as another human. Functional and daily living skills are very important and should be taught right from the beginning.

7. Stepping towards Independence

Try achieving independence together with your child at every step of the journey. Be it simply crossing a road together. Be it going to a local market. Be it visiting a mall and watching a movie together in a jam packed hall. Be it attending a birthday party or a marriage. Be it traveling to another city by bus, train or aeroplane. We can achieve independence and comfort in these difficult and chaotic situations with ease, while we have worked upon all the above points successfully.

7. The learning will follow –

The learning will automatically follow once we are ready to accept and trust the child; once we are at peace the child is happy and want to connect and bond with you. The learning will happen eventually.

Thank you for reading the post! Do like and drop a comment.

Original content – Manju k Iyer mam.

Rewritten and edited- Shilpi Mayank Awasthi

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changemakersaathi parentsaathi Resources

Do a 100-Day Parenting Project Dr. Dasaratha Rama

One of the biggest challenges I faced as a parent of neurodivergent child was taking systematic, consistent action. There are numerous resources on every topic and every challenge parents of neurodivergent child face. However, there is no clear guidance on what is worth doing at any given time. Hence, parents are likely to try different ideas and approaches and not practice any techniques consistently. The 100-Day project was created to address this challenge. The goal of the 100-Day project is sustained, consistent action.

In the last few articles, I have suggested that targeting co-regulation is a useful step for parents of neurodivergent children. Co-regulation is the foundation for learning. Based on my suggestions and discussions in the LIFESMART Parenting groups, several parts started addressing co-regulation. As described in her blog post, Shinjita Joshi-Pant started implementing a 100 Days of Co-regulation project. Other parents are also considering or starting 100-Days of Co-regulation.
We invite to join the LIFESMART 100-Day Parent Lab and start a 100-Days of Co-regulation project. If you are interested, please email me at lifesmartlabs@gmail.com

The LIFESMART Canvas

The LIFESMART canvas is a visual summary of the LIFESMART process.

Each parent’s journey can be viewed in terms of the five Ps.

  • The parent sees possibilities.
  • The parent clarifies priorities.
  • The parent chooses a path forward.
  • The parent practices selected skills.
  • The parent monitors progress and reviews the transformation of parent interactions, child engagement, and the system over time.

Communities such as SpecialSaathi can influence all the Ps. In this example, I am suggesting a specific path forward:

Do a 100 Days of Co-regulation project.

Co-regulation and Daily Learning

Read about co-regulation here.

According to this article, “The supportive process between caring adults and children, youth or young adults that fosters self-regulation development is called “co-regulation.”

Role of parents/caregivers

  • Provide a warm, responsive relationship
    • displaying care and affection;
    • recognize and respond to cues that signal needs and wants
    • provide caring support in times of stress
  • Create an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for children, youth, and young adults to
    explore and learn at their level of development .
    • Develop consistent, predictable routines and expectations
    • Provide clear goals for behavior regulation
    • Provide well-defined logical consequences for negative behaviors.
  • Teach self-regulation skills

I will be discussing tips and techniques to guide parents in this project. Other parents such as Shinjita will also share their experiences and insights.

Coregulation is a mindset as much as an action. If parents commit to developing coregulation to support self regulation in the child, they will be on a different path. They will be more focused on creating a safe, stress free environment. They will not send their child to therapists and schools that don’t accept and include them and put pressure on them. Every decision will be influenced by the coregulation idea. However, mindsets are not easy to change! So start a 100 Days of Coregulation project and take small steps to coregulation.

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parentsaathi Resources Story

Journey to Regulation…

I remember joining the LIFESMART group, thinking of it as another resource-group. Then started reading about Rama Ma’am’s daily posts explaining about the meaning of LIFESMART. First being, “Learn Daily ”, which was our core-struggle. Then she talked of Co-regulation with respect to Guided Participation. I asked more about it and it made sense as I felt the disconnect between our children and us as well as the lack of motivation to do anything except their favourite activity (without being robotic about it), were the major reasons to not being consistent. 

So, when Rama Ma’am suggested the idea of 100-day-projects, I chose “Co-regulation”. Now, you must be wondering, What is Co-regulation?

Co-regulation is 

  • social-referencing, 
  • back and forth communication, mostly non-verbal like gestures, body language, facial expressions.
  • Guess the pattern then follow it and act accordingly.

In a nutshell, its being “in-sync”, moment-to-moment, and learn to trust.

-Linda Murphy (Coregulation Handbook)

How to practice it ? (eg hanging clothes in clothesline)

  • Assign clear defined roles 

(Child : give clothes one at a time to Mommy, Mommy : hang it on clothesline)

  • Establish a pattern

(Child gives : Mommy hangs :: to-and-fro)

  • Add variation(s)

(Speed up/down)

  • Give challenges

(Clothesline is up high not upto our level)

Almost all our daily activities can be practised with these rules.

Things to keep in mind : 

  • Wait for 45-sec for the child to do his/her role. 
  • Don’t focus on the skill but on the process.
  • Refrain from prompting or instructing.
  • Try to maintain eye-contact not by asking for it but with actions.
  • Don’t force any role in an activity if the child doesn’t want to do that, go with the flow.   
  • Create competent roles for each other, we want to end the activity on a positive note.

Changes I noticed :

Myself :

  • Practising Co-regulation has made me calmer esp. during those activities. It’s regulating me too. 
  • I have learnt to wait for her responses.
  • It took me out of the crisis mode.
  • I have stopped looking for different kinds of therapies, after 11years of trial-and-error of so many therapies, I’m content and putting my 100% into it and have joined the formal RDI training. 

My daughter :

  • Very less prompting needed as the roles are clearly defined. 
  • Slowly few behaviours started fading away
  • Spontaneous speech even-if it is 2/3 words.
  • More confident in her demeanour.

After that, I took up 100-days-of-Movement, and now have a daily rhythm of both the activities combined as well as academics.

I would suggest everyone who reads this write-up to know more about Coregulation and think of starting it. The proof lies in the pudding. There is a separate thread on Coregulation on LIFESMART Telegram-channel. It’s a process which helps not only our kids but parents too.

Like us, one can start with a 100-day-project, research more about it, experiment with it, and see the results themselves. I was so impressed (read motivated) with the small small changes in us that I formally signed up for an annual RDI parent training.

 

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parentsaathi Story

Scissors are meant for those tiny fingers to create big inventions – Heena Sahi

scissors

 Scissors are meant for those tiny fingers to create big inventions

Scissors is an important hand utensil that makes the world easy  when it comes to important day to day activities in our routines like cutting out pack of namkeen when we are on a hunger pang , or cut strips of paper to make a mind blowing  science craft and also when you need a good hair cut , how can you resists the scissors?

Well by now you would agree that scissors is an instrument that cuts everything. I wish we could use scissors to cut out toxic people and negativity from our lives too.

Scissors skills is a must for a child to accomplish. Research says scissors grip is as important as pencil grip. I would say you must celebrate once your child accomplishes the hold on scissors because it is as a good as an achievement as holding and controlling the pencil for writing

Well scissors grip is a kind of tripod grip similar to the one used to grip a pencil. It kinesologIcally  is the job of the same fingerS as seen in the tripod grip.

You must be aware and very vigilant about the correct sequence of teaching the scissor grip to the child

Let begin now.

Lets familiarise ourselves with verbal cues to use when assisting the child to grab the scissors .

“Speak as you read this. Visualise as you speak”

1.Fingers go down

2.Thumb goes up

3.Open the scissor monster mouth

4.And you go chop chop …

Well practice it a few times. I am sure you will achieve it. I still get confused about where to place the fingers and thumb. The thumb should support the bigger hole in scissors and the fingers to fit into the small hole.

It is significant to start practice with the plastic scissors which has no blades in it

It is recommended to cut the play dough , clay or chapatti dough at first with these plastic scissors. This helps the child to understand the body planning and awareness about it .

As they cut the playdough. They get a visual and kinesthetic feedback that helps them to grade the amount of force and pressure to be applied by their hands on the scissors to cut well.

I would advice just start making snakes of play dough and present it to the child

Further ,  step is to switch to sharp blade scissors and present the child to cut ribbons , woollen strings, small piece of cloth . This will mature their ideation of application of force on scissors and better the finger planning and mapping in their brain. This is also because the fabric is thicker now. More strength is needed

Now its time to move forward and let the child explore  cutting the paper.

For this very purpose draw slanting lines with dot prompts and in a few days graduate to curvy lines with mandatory dot prompts. Please don’t forget to see the images along with this write up.

Dot prompts are the points where the child holds the paper with non dominant hand.I have attached images to make it easier

After you feel the previous goal is achieved , you can start presenting spiral patterns.

You must be wondering when will the child move to cut shapes . Well now is the moment!

You can start with shapes that have straight lines e.g square , triangle , rectangle , diamonds and later encourage child to cut shapes that have curvy lines for e.g circles , ovals.

Don’t forget the trick of dot prompts . Don’t worry , there is an image to understand where to put dot prompts

Once the child is pro in cutting all of the above pre determined steps , you can let their creative streak come out by making them practice feather cutting. This is difficult to achieve and would take time . Please note feather cutting is also on paper not on a real feather. I am against animal abuse.

Keep your expectation low and patience very high.

Feather cutting is basically cutting the straight line on paper till halfway  and not  the complete line . This challenges the force modulation , working memory and planning skills in an individual . I will suggest that feather cutting is one of the steps involved in making paper lanterns . You can go back to your child hood days.

In conclusion , I want to shed light that practice each step on your fingers , then demonstrate to the child. This will help you to empathise with them when they fail.

You ‘’ll understand the struggle they might have to learn holding and manipulating the scissors.

Well I hope this was meaningful and quite informative and please don’t sue me if you find this boring

Lovely picture to help you are attached in this write up so that you can start right way.Please don’t forget to download the file , you ” ll definately not regret once you have a look

Creative efforts and scissor skills mentor – Heena Sahi

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parentsaathi

ParentSaathi talk with Dr.Dasaratha Rama on the topic Lifesmart parenting approach on 12th October at 7:30pm

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ParentSaathi talk with Dr.Dasaratha Rama on the topic Lifesmart parenting approach on 12th October at 7:30pm