Fidget to Focus

I (Melinda) had the opportunity to interview Sarah Wright, co-author of the book Fidget to Focus. This book has great ideas for children and adults and is packed with practical ways to use fidgeting as a strategy to help increase focus. The book is also useful as a resource when you need to advocate for your child's use of fidget objects like the ones in our Heads Up Fidget Bundles. Fidget items can help those who need them and Sarah helps explain why it's worth giving them a try.

Wipe! Wipe!

Some of you probably thought this post would be about potty training, but no. This is for all of you with children who don't like to get their hands dirty. Some children are oblivious to messes and don't mind having a dirty hand or face. Other kids become distressed if even one finger has come into contact with a substance they don't like to feel. I have worked with children who remind me of Monk, the obsessive compulsive detective who calls for his assistant to hand him a wipe whenever he shakes hands or touches something he deems undesirable. Recently I was sitting with a young boy who was eating a snack, and he got some frosting on his hand. In a near panic, he turned to me saying, "Wipe! Wipe!" and held out his hand for help in removing the frosting as quickly as possible. Right next to him was another child totally indifferent to the feel of frosting covering her face and hands, happily licking the frosting from each finger. My son Josh was in the "Wipe!" camp when he was young, and my daughter Beckie was such a sensory seeker that she deliberately smeared food on her face and hands and loved messy art projects. Both of them needed to work on sensory processing and awareness, but today I am going to suggest a strategy for the sensory avoidant, "Wipe!" children. I didn't want to overwhelm or traumatize my avoidant son, making future attempts to increase his tolerance even more challenging. But I did want to expand Josh's acceptance of various textures, smells, and sensations. I knew I couldn't just put materials out for him to explore and expect a different response from him. Josh was already doing what came naturally to him, and that was to limit or avoid his exposure to certain materials. So I put finger paints, pudding, hair gel, etc. into Ziploc bags. For some of the bags I added in small objects such as decorative erasers for added input as the materials were investigated and experienced through touch. Sometimes I double bagged to prevent leakage, and in addition to sealing the bag I added a layer or two of packing tape along the seal. Then I modeled tracing a finger over the bag, poking it with my finger, smashing it with my palm, etc. and encouraged my son to do likewise. Touching substances through a bag felt safer to him, and the limited boundaries of a Ziploc bag appeared more manageable to his young mind. Since Josh was also sensitive to smells, the bags eliminated or at least minimized odors. As Josh became comfortable with the materials in the bags, I would gradually introduce a small amount of the material without a bag. With repeated exposure over time, Josh learned to process all the sensory input and no longer avoided touching materials directly. I found, with Josh and other children I have worked with, that many children are more willing to touch a substance that I present to them on my own hand instead of on a table or piece of paper. I'm not sure if that's because seeing it on me implies that it is safe to touch, or if it's the skin to skin contact that is reassuring, but in any case it's worth trying with your kids to see if it helps them as you expose them to a greater variety of sensory input.

To Tell, or Not to Tell?

I've met many parents who are pretty sure their child has AD/HD or some other learning challenge but they are hesitant to make it official by having their child evaluated and diagnosed. The fear that a label may limit their child, be inaccurate, or be used in discriminatory ways is valid. When my son, Josh, was approaching school age I thought about the advantages of private schools with smaller class sizes. Several people suggested that I go ahead and enroll him without telling the school personnel about his AD/HD diagnosis so they couldn't turn him down. That was before we knew he also had an auditory processing disorder. I was assured that once he was enrolled in the school, they couldn't kick him out just because he had a diagnosis and they would be forced to work with him. Wow! For one thing, Josh was pretty easy to pick out of a group as being different than his peers. I'd give it 5 minutes tops before things became unavoidably noticeable. So basically I would have had to keep him out of sight until school had officially started. Then there was the whole idea of the people he would be spending hours with each day being tricked into having a student that they weren't prepared for and apparently didn't feel equipped to deal with in their classroom. That made me feel sorry for Josh and for the teachers, since having someone who was "forced" to work with my child because I had hidden some vital information from them just didn't sit well with me. I loved that boy, and the thought of sending him somewhere that he might not be wanted didn't make sense to me. I had the same dilemma when it came time for Sunday School at church. I didn't want to bias the teachers against Josh by telling them all his struggles, so I coached him on the way there and dropped him off like all the other parents with their children. The Sunday School teachers, bless them all, are volunteers in the church and most don't have training as educators - and for most kids that's just fine. But to do the "drop and run" with a special needs or challenging child is not a good idea, as I came to realize. Every week, the other parents would pick up their children and happily leave. When I came to pick up Josh, I inevitably got pulled to the side and told, "I need to talk to you about Josh." Then I heard, week after week, a full litany of complaints from frustrated and bewildered teachers who were describing things that were not unusual for Josh but were not typical for most children. For example, Josh was not adept at sitting still for long. He was not deliberately disruptive and was never disrespectful, but his need to stand at the table while coloring his page instead of sitting in a chair like everyone else was considered problematic. His sensory issues led him to sit at the back of the group on his carpet square, and everyone else was huddled together and bumping into each other which Josh was carefully trying to avoid. But that meant he wasn't "with" the group because he had made a row of one - just himself! And the list would go on and on until I was finally allowed to leave with my miserable son who knew that somehow just by being who he was he had screwed up again and people were unhappy with him. Those experiences led me to advocate more and be preemptive with anyone I left Josh with for any length of time. When there was a sub or a new Sunday School teacher, I made a point of telling them a bit about Josh and strategies that would help them, and I was careful not to dwell on the negatives. I shared Josh's strengths, too, for I found that if I became negative about my son others felt free to share every little thing they saw as being wrong or weird about him. I was well aware of Josh's struggles and it served no purpose other than to discourage me when others felt the need to complain about him. All this, and he wasn't even doing anything "bad" on purpose! When someone was going on and on about all the things Josh did or did not do, I learned to quietly point out something that he had done right, or I'd share something that Josh had enjoyed learning in their class previously. This seemed to derail some of the negativity some of the time. Just as with our kids, nothing works all of the time but something will work some of the time. We need strategies for working with those who are in a position to care for our children, and hope that something will work some of the time. Whether you are a natural advocate or a reluctant one, if you have a child with a learning difference or special challenges, you must be an advocate unless and until your child one day develops the skills to advocate for himself. In my experience, being deliberate in my advocacy was hard but preferable to what happened when I just waited and hoped things would work out for the best.