Summer Routines for Your Quirky Child
May 29, 2012 by dr.cstone · Leave a Comment
Summer is the time of ease, of rest and relaxation, of freedom from all those rigid schedules. Hurray! However, if you have a child with learning disabilities or ADHD or other atypical profile, you know that your child needs some structure in order to get along well and be happy. Not knowing what to expect next can increase anxiety and lead to trouble.
Most of the families in my area have two working parents, so they have probably already put some sort of summer plan into place. But for most families there are gaps in the summer arrangements. These bring the opportunity to spend more time with your children, and with proper planning these interludes can be delightful. The challenge is to have enough structure so that your child is not thrown off but enough flexibility so that it feels like a vacation.
I find that for many families it is important to set an expectation for how much screen time you will allow. Perhaps you will have some days with no plans. You might imagine your child doing crafts, playing with a sibling, or exploring outside. However, for most children television, video games and computer games are so attractive that they can quickly trump the other activities. It is a good idea to set an expectation for how much screen time is OK and when it will be. For older children you will need to get their input on this and come to some negotiated agreement for it to work without struggles. Be prepared to be tested and to need to stand your ground. It’s a good plan!
Now, what will your children do when they are not occupied with screens? Perhaps you have children who will engage with Lego or crafts for an hour or so. To be sure that this will work, you might want to be sure that you have the supplies for the crafts. You might want to plan to invest in a new Lego set during the summer to keep the interest going. Regular trips to the library will outfit you with new books to read.
Other times you will plan to do some activity with your child. Consider some outings that you and your child will enjoy. Many public libraries have free passes to area museums. Find out how to reserve ahead and make your plans accordingly.
In addition, many children have (and should have) some responsibilities around the house. The morning is a good time to attend to these.
Now that you have some activities in mind, you can come up with a loose daily schedule. It is a schedule, so that your child will know what to expect, but it is also loose so that it feels like summer. It might go something like this. Your child gets up and has breakfast. Then she can play on her own for awhile either on screens or with other activities, like the Lego or crafts or books. This gives you time to do some things you might want to do: return phone calls, read the paper, pay some bills. After an hour the screens go off, and your child can play off screen if you are still busy.
Now you are done with your work, and you and your child can go out on an expedition — a visit to a local park or a museum, or the library. Many towns have story hours or other summer entertainment for children. Perhaps you’ve arranged a play date. Lunch happens somewhere in here. Perhaps you pack a lunch, or you eat out.
By mid-afternoon you arrive back home. You child might be tired, so a quiet activity would be a good option while you prepare supper. Maybe a little more screen time or independent reading. After dinner, maybe some board games, a TV show the family likes, and reading together.
The schedule might look quite different in your family. The point is that the day is chunked into somewhat predictable parts. There are times for independent play (you provide engaging supplies), time for entertainment on screens, time for you to attend your business, time for activities with you. This is a schedule you could make predictable for your child and still have flexibility to enjoy summer. You can make a schedule and post it using pictures to make it accessible for younger children. If your children can contribute some to the schedule and the activities, they will be more cooperative about it.
You will notice that I did not put in a great deal of time for you to work from home. If you have a quirky kid, it is likely that this is not realistic, unless you are willing to let videos and TV keep your child occupied. I hope that you will be able to take some time off when your children are not in programs. If you are torn between work and children, neither gets the best of your attention.
Let me know what ideas you have for making the most of summer free time.
Click here to sign up for my newsletter, Parents’ Corner, and receive my free report on how to improve morning routine with children who have ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, or other executive function deficits: Smoothing Out Your Morning.
Juggling the Many End-of-Year Events: Some Tips
May 21, 2012 by dr.cstone · 13 Comments
This is a busy time of year for families. It seems that every activity has an end of the year event, so parents and children are hurrying to recitals, chorus and band concerts, ball games and graduations. Hopefully, these events bring pride, joy and satisfaction. I hope that your child is beaming from the stage, and that you are relishing the moment.
But all these extras can cause stress even for the more mature and resilient among us. Yesterday I got home in the late afternoon after a day of activities, and I got snappish when I heard that my young adult son was coming to dinner. Yikes, what would we eat? My husband wisely stayed calm and told me to take a nap. That reset my system and allowed me to enjoy the serendipity of the day. Dinner went fine.
* First consider yourself. You need to be resilient to help your children get through all the fun. Notice your own perfectionism and see if you can let go of it some. Try to get enough rest. Try to tune into your emotions and your body during the day. Are you tense, worrying about the event to come, having difficulty staying in the present? Take some deep breaths and try to stay in the moment. It is the only moment you really have any control over anyway. If there are activities that you know are renewing for you, try to keep them despite the busy schedule. Perhaps you meditate, walk the dog in a pleasant park, enjoy listening to music, or savor reading a mystery at bedtime.
* For many families with quirky kids all this change of routine can be very stressful. Here are some ways to manage the demands. If you have a child who is easily upset by changes in routine, try to anticipate with him. Be the planner for him. When you get the notice about the concert or whatever, put it on a family calendar. Preview the day with your family, preferable the night before. The fewer surprises the better.
* Let go of some of your own expectations about routine. You might eat a lot of take out for a week. Or if you are very good at planning, you might be able to take some dinners out of the freezer that you made ahead.
* Consider whether all of your children can manage the schedule. You might have a child who rolls with the punches and can smoothly move from event to event. But you might also have a child who does not do that well, or who might not enjoy his sister’s dance recital. Can you let go of family togetherness enough to hire a sitter for the child who would be unhappy and disruptive in the recital? You might need to divide and conquer.
* Also consider the stresses on the performers. Children who tend to get anxious and rigid under pressure can find the band concert or graduation worrisome. If this is the case, let the adults in charge of the event know so that they can be reassuring. Make sure that your child knows exactly what to do. Lastly, consider whether it is wise to invite the extended family to this event. Perhaps that would only put more pressure on your anxious child. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins can come for cake afterwards.
I hope that this gives you a few ideas to help ground yourself and your children in this season of celebration and transition. Let me know on Facebook what your ideas are for coping with this time.
Click here to sign up for my newsletter, Parents’ Corner, and receive my free report on how to improve morning routine with children who have ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, or other executive function deficits: Smoothing Out Your Morning.
Photo credit: Focus Photography on Flickr
Talking to Teachers: Seven Steps to a Productive Meeting
May 15, 2012 by dr.cstone · 12 Comments
When your child enters school a new institution enters your family. The school influences your family life, your child’s life, and his or her sense of well-being. Often this is a positive influence — new experiences, new friends, pride in learning. However, for most parents there comes a time when you need to schedule a talk with the teacher.
Think of this relationship as a collaboration. You need each other.
Here are some tips for making that talk as productive as possible.
1. Manage your feelings. When your child has difficulty in school or you feel that the teacher has been insensitive, it can bring out the “mother bear” in you. Listen to Mother Bear and let her know that you are going to attend to the problem. You will be more persuasive if you are calm.
2. Consider the teacher a colleague with a set of skills and information that you need. You know your child and the teacher knows education and your child in school. Some parents carry their feelings from their own unhappy school experience, and they are intimidated by classroom teachers. To them I say, you are the expert about your child and what happens at home. The teacher needs you. Other parents are condescending to teachers. You might have more education and you might be ten years older, but this teacher has training that is specific to education. In addition, the teacher sees your child during the school day — she or he has important information for you.
3. Be clear about what you want to address. Perhaps you want to tell the teacher that the spelling homework is taking an hour a night. Or perhaps you have a question about the requirement for independent reading which is causing havoc in your household. Perhaps you want to inform the teacher that you child is being bullied, and you are concerned from your child’s report that the teacher is insensitive to this. Put out your concerns without blaming or accusing.
4. Ask for input and listen. You may learn things about the homework, the classroom, the teacher, and your child that you did not know before. This is useful to you.
5. Offer a solution. Be open to the teacher’s solutions as well. Perhaps your child could have fewer spelling words. Perhaps you need some guidance in choosing independent reading material for your child. Agree to give the solution a try.
6. Arrange be in touch to share information about how the solution is going. Regular contact by e-mail can reduce the need for future face-to-face meetings.
7. Thank the teacher for his or her time. Everyone likes to be appreciated.
Working in this way sets the groundwork for a respectful working relationship. This is the most likely way to be helpful to your child.
Click here to sign up for my newsletter, Parents’ Corner, and receive my free report on how to improve morning routine with children who have ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, or other executive function deficits: Smoothing Out Your Morning.
Photo credit: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv
Learning Disabilities and Family Life: Four Ways Learning Disabilities Affect Home Life and Ways You Can Help Your Child
May 8, 2012 by dr.cstone · 12 Comments
If you have a child with a learning disability, you are probably learning that your child learns and reacts differently at home as well as in school. You will likely have to adapt your parenting strategies to your child’s neurology. If you have a diagnosis, then it is likely that you also have a neuropsychological testing report. These reports and the IEP (individual education plan) include recommendations for instruction. Good test reports will also have recommendations for home. You can look at these recommendations and adapt them for home use. Here are a few that I run into in families I work with.
Slow Processing Speed
Your child is bright enough to do the work, but she thinks things through slowly. Think of having a computer with an old CPU. Often the IEP will recommend that a teacher provide “wait time” after asking a question. Parents need to do the same. If you patiently wait for your child’s response after a question, you can include her in family dinnertime conversations that she might otherwise be left out of. Processing speed can especially be a problem in tense situations. For instance, suppose you are asking about a missed homework assignment. Give her a minute to remember and give her response, instead of filling in for her.
Nonverbal Learning Disability
This is a disability that affects children’s ability to read social cues and to understand metaphor and sarcasm . They can be very sensitive to tone of voice, and their own modulation of tone of voice is poor. However, they can be taught these skills over time. It helps to understand that if your child responds angrily to a request, it might be because he thought you were angry. It is important to keep your voice neutral. Joking with this child is a tricky business. You will need to explain teasing because he won’t pick up from your tone of voice that you actually mean the opposite of what you are saying. Adding, “Just kidding,” can be essential.
Poor Working Memory
This is a problem that affects a person’s ability to keep a few ideas in mind in order to manipulate them or use them for problem solving. This could come up if you give your child complicated instructions. For instance you might say, “When you go upstairs to start your homework, check on the hamster food, and if we don’t have enough for the week, tell me so I can buy more.” This is a lot to keep in mind — go do homework; check on hamster food; and then what? You can have more success, and your child will feel more successful, if you break down the requests. Start with “Go check to see whether we have enough hamster food for a week, and tell me what you learn.” Then say, “Ok, now start your homework.”
Adjustments like these avoid misunderstandings that frustrate everyone.
Executive Function Deficits
This seems to be the diagnosis dejour in my caseload. If executive function is a problem for your child, you are probably already well aware of it. Your child loses and misplaces things related to school and everything else in life. It’s really frustrating for all. But scolding and shaming her for being disorganized doesn’t teach her strategies. I find it helpful to give kids like this lists for different situations. For instance, before going out the door in the morning, she could check off backpack, lunch bag, instrument for band, gym shoes. For going to soccer practice: cleats, socks, shin guards, ball. The same list applies for leaving soccer. Some kids are visual learners, and for them, a picture or drawing of themselves labeled with all the right equipment would be more useful.
These are just a few of the ways that learning difficulties affect home life. Learning about how your child thinks and learning strategies for managing life with a person with this brain will save you and your child a great deal of aggravation. Using accommodations at home can actually teach your child coping strategies for life. I know young adults who have learned to make their own lists so that they don’t travel without essentials.
My website, www.drcarolynstone.com has a number of resources listed that can be helpful for parents in learning what they need to know about living with learning disabilities.
Click here to sign up for my newsletter, Parents’ Corner, and receive my free report on how to improve morning routine with children who have ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, or other executive function deficits: Smoothing Out Your Morning.
Photo Credit: Steve Webel on Flickr
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