Child Development
Things We Don’t Know
“Sometimes, my son asks me a question. If I tell him I don’t know the answer—and I truly don’t know the answer—he’ll get mad and protest, ‘you DO know!’ How do I explain to him […]
Social/Emotional
At Home
Diagnosing
If a child called “oppositionally defiant” could label the adults in their life, what kinds of things might they call them? Needlessly antagonistic? Endlessly demanding? Perhaps their adults themselves would receive the diagnosis of ODD […]
At Home
The Dividing Line
When you start to understand how thin — or nonexistent! — the dividing line is between “playing” and “learning/growing”, suddenly so much more of what children do makes sense. And suddenly so much more of […]
Babies
Three Scenarios
Imagine three scenarios. You’re holding your child on your lap. Your child is sobbing and screaming at the top of their lungs, curled up against you. In one scenario, they have just tripped, fallen, and […]
At School
Regulated vs Calm
I see children on my school OT caseload who are three, and four, and five, and six. They are behaving in all sorts of inconvenient ways for traditional schooling. They touch things when they pass […]
At School
“Rules for OT”
I was talking with another OT recently about our experiences when we were newly graduated and working at our first jobs. She shared a story with me about the first school she worked at. She […]