At Home
What is Modeling?
Somebody asked me the other day if I’ve ever written a post defining what modeling is. I haven’t, but it’s a good idea since I suggest modeling things for children basically constantly. 🙂 I think […]
Child Development
At School
Caution Around Language
I have noticed some of my language shifting when I write notes, evaluations, progress notes, etc, in an ongoing effort to be more true when I describe what children are doing—since it’s so easy for […]
At Home
Hair Washing
My kids are 6 and 4. Both of them have gorgeous tight-coily-textured hair and both of them have (different) sensory processing sensitivities. For the first time in our family’s entire life I successfully washed and […]
Babies
What is Behavior Communicating?
The phrase “behavior is communication” was invented in response to a set of ideas, a counter to them. One of these ideas is that children’s inconvenient or strange or annoying behavior is a sign of […]
Child Development
“Why Did You…?”
It’s really understandable why adults ask children “Why did you do that?” After all, children are constantly doing things that seem honestly incomprehensible if not outright bonkers. An interesting side note is that in my […]
At Home
Processing Scary Things
There’s an episode of Bluey called Space. In it, three little boys are playing together at their kindergarten. They’re playing pretend space explorers. As they navigate who is going to play what role in the […]
At Home
Pencil Grasp
I think early childhood education has misunderstood what is behind the concept of “using the right pencil grasp”. For example, in my child’s reception class (the UK equivalent of preschool/kindergarten — it’s not exactly 1:1 […]
Autism
In Pursuit of Diagnosis
If you are pursuing diagnosis for your neurodivergent child, it’s okay to take your neuro-affirming lens back “off” in order to talk to the doctor about your child. What I mean is that you are […]
Activities
Six Ways to Play with Vacuums
At my lecture last Friday, during the Q&A session, somebody asked me if I had any ideas for connecting meaningfully and playfully in therapy with a child whose special interest was vacuums, and who spent […]
At Home
Perfection
Age 5 (and 6) is extremely concerned with perfection. It’s a normal developmental phase. (Yes, this might also mean that your 4 year old or 4.5 year old or 7 year old are like this. […]