Books
In Your Child’s Point of View: Understanding the Reasons Kids Do Unreasonable Things, the Occuplaytional Therapist (Kelsie Olds) combines reassuring knowledge, modern research, light humor, and empathetic imagination to provide helpful insights and collaborative strategies for solving common adult/child challenges at home and at school, with an emphasis on meeting everybody’s needs in a positive way.
Whether you are raising a baby or teenager, teaching preschool or high school, or embarking on the often-difficult journey of reparenting your own inner child, this book is for you. Within its pages, you will find over fifty relatable examples of common childish behaviors. Each scenario, initially shown from the adult’s perspective, offers a possible child’s perspective, along with key things to know about why children may act this way and key things to try for replacing conflict with joyful connection.
Only available on Amazon in paperback format. The above image links to Amazon.com, but you can search your local Amazon (.co.uk, .ca, etc) if you have a local marketplace instead.
O Sovereign Lord, I have forgotten how to speak
Forgotten how to pray, forgotten how to sing
I type instead
I think instead
I open a door to let you in my head
O Sovereign Lord, I have forgotten how to speak
But O! I remember how to love!
Raised in evangelical Christianity, author and occupational therapist Kelsie Olds hyperfixated on the “rules” for being a good Christian and a good kid. Nearly thirty years later, they find themselves grappling with burnout and religious trauma, parenting their own children from a paradigm utterly anathema to the framework of their upbringing. Here, they explore that journey through raw and authentic writing that will resonate with the “queer, neurodivergent, ex-vangelical poetry lovers, and also anybody who loves one”.
Autistic God is a series of poems and prosaic essays on neurodivergence, faith, mystery, righteousness, and love. They reject the fundamentalist framework of knowing all the answers, and instead grapple honestly with the feeling of groundlessness that comes from renouncing dogma in the earnest pursuit of nonviolent belief, of “loving neighbor as self”, of the necessity of loving self that precedes that.
Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle format. Check your local Amazon marketplace if you live outside the US.
Webinars
Welcome to a series of eight webinars created to explain really powerful information about the ways that brains and bodies work.
Sensory processing. Neurodiversity. Regulation. Self-advocacy. Empowerment.
These aren’t just webinars for grown-ups, though. These are webinar pairs: the same content, the same topic, presented by a grown-up to grown-ups, and then presented again in a child-friendly and accessible way to kids. Bodies, brains, the way they work, the ways to try to understand ourselves better, to live weller in ourselves. Delivered in kid-appropriate language, with kid-friendly visuals, so the kids can learn about themselves at the same time that the adults are learning, too.
You could watch it with your child. You could use it in a classroom or therapy setting. Or you could watch it yourself and go into that classroom, therapy setting, or conversation with your child, equipped with child-friendly language and a better understanding of how to help them.
The kids’ videos are overall aimed at approximately age 10-15, but the first few minutes of each one give a very palatable overview that might be appropriate for younger kids — even as young as 6-7 — before diving into a deeper exploration of the topic.
Available only until May 2025.
Some children just seem to be born deep feelers. Other children experience early trauma or challenges that can cause lasting effects. Whether as a result of nature or nurture, when children have intense connection needs, they might be described as “clingy”, “needy”, “emotional”, “overly talkative”, as they set about trying to meet their own needs.
Adults who are trying to parent from a positive paradigm might struggle to meet their child’s needs without sacrificing their own mental health, or body boundaries.
Occupational therapist Kelsie Olds shares theory as well as practical ways to empower parents to meet the needs of everyone in their family — themselves included — for the incredibly low price of $5 USD to hopefully reach as many parents as possible.
