Child Discipline

Let me start with a disclaimer. I am not a child expert, nor a parenting expert. The things that I share on this blog are intended to be helpful and the reader has the responsibility to apply what they find useful and ignore the rest. With that said, I want to share with you an experience I had years ago with my AD/HD daughter. Beckie was a very active girl with a lot of energy. With her sensory processing issues, she exhibited low body awareness and regulation was a challenge for her. My exuberant, active, and sensory seeking child had trouble sitting through a meal. She wasn't a picky eater, so food aversions were not to blame. She just had a need to move around. A lot. And it didn't matter if we were doing school during the homeschooling day, or if we were having a meal together. That girl had to move. Having been down this path previously with her older brother, I had learned to be more flexible and accommodating. Even so, it's distracting to have a distractible child and it can be disruptive even when that is not the child's intent. I honestly don't believe that Beckie was trying to cause problems, and in fact I don't think she was even aware of her movements sometimes. I would remind her to sit down, and she would look down at her legs with a surprised expression on her face as if to say, "What? I'm up again? How did that happen?" One night during dinner, my sweet Beckie was having more difficulty than usual sitting still. Her father, Scott, decided it was high time Beckie learn to remain seated during the meal. Beckie would promptly sit down as soon as she was reminded, but Scott was getting tired of having to repeatedly request that she return to her chair. After several reminders, Scott decided to kick it up a notch and be firmer with Beckie. The next time Beckie popped up out of her chair, Scott leaned over the table and pointed an index finger at Beckie. Then he used her full name, which every child knows is a serious warning sign. "Rebecca Michelle, you need to SIT DOWN!" At this point, Beckie became very still as she stared at the finger in front of her face. It was so close to her that she went cross eyed. She then looked up at her Father, eyes still crossed, and with amazement in her voice pronounced "Two Daddies!" Totally missing the point, Beckie happily discovered that crossing her eyes made things look interesting and incredibly she was now seeing double with two Daddies in place of one. I was trying so hard not to laugh that I had to leave the room. My husband wasn't far behind me. We looked at each other and Scott said, "Well THAT didn't work!" We continued to work with Beckie on sitting still when it was called for, with the understanding that she needed to mature and eventually would. I was crazy about Beckie, even when her zest for life couldn't be contained. She grew, and was able to sit still when she needed to. Maturation takes time, and refuses to be rushed. We do what we can to promote and facilitate it, and then we get to practice patience. It's so important to keep your sense of humor when you are a teacher and/or parent. Your kids will give you a plethora of opportunities to see the humor even in challenging circumstances.

Dressing Up A Sensory Guy

People with sensory issues often have strong clothing preferences. I don't know if this is generally true, but in my experience most men do not enjoy dressing up. The men I know prefer comfortable clothing. They call their attractive dressier outfits "monkey suits" and yank their ties loose at the first opportunity as if their oxygen has been reduced and they need to gasp for air. Now add together "man who prefers comfortable clothes" with "sensory guy" and you'll see the issues faced by my son. A few weeks ago we were getting ready to attend a wedding reception. I informed Josh that he would need to dress up for the event. To Josh, "dress nicely" means wearing jeans without holes. Josh doesn't own a lot of dress clothes for the obvious reasons that he doesn't typically need them and he doesn't like to wear them. I asked my husband, Scott, to help Josh find something nice to wear. They are close to the same size, so sometimes they can share clothing in a pinch. This was a pinch, all right. Scott, who like Josh has AD/HD, didn't spend a lot of time selecting an outfit. He found something that matched and tossed it to Josh to put on. Then Scott was off to do something else. A few minutes later, I found a distressed Josh in my room. He looked truly miserable, although quite handsome. When asked what the problem was, he started describing how uncomfortable his clothes were. The shirt needed to be tucked in, but then wasn't comfortable. The cuffs around the wrist felt odd, but were tolerable. The shirt material was a little scratchy. I tried to tell Josh that it was necessary to dress up for special occasions and he quickly explained that it wasn't dressing up that bothered him. It was being dressed up by someone else. His Dad has made the choices for him, and because Dad doesn't have sensory issues he selected what would work for most men. Josh is the only one who knows how his body feels and responds to clothing, though, so we needed to make some adjustments. A change of pants for a looser fit made tucking in the shirt more comfortable. A belt held things comfortably in place - not too tight, not too loose, but just right. A plain cotton, tagless t-shirt under the dress shirt made Josh much more comfortable. Having the tie a wee bit looser but barely noticeable rounded out the outfit. Josh didn't own any dress shoes and his feet are bigger than Scott's, so he wore his nicest boots and it didn't look too bad. Tomorrow we are going to a wedding, and sensory guy Josh will be dressing himself up again. We bought a pair of dressier shoes (Rockports) that are slip-ons, with a little elastic around the tongue of the shoe for flexibility and comfort. Josh tried on several slip-on style shoes and found that some of the styles bothered him because they did not come up high enough on the back of his heel and he could feel them slipping around. The shoes Josh picked were high enough on his heel and comfortable, so hopefully the sensory guy will be able to relax and enjoy his time at the wedding and reception even though he is in a "monkey suit".

Pink Teeth / Winners of HOTM Online Conference Tickets

Trying to get a good family picture is challenging. Children aren't big on sitting still and posing in one position. Getting everybody to look in the same direction at the same time seems to be hard enough, let alone have the clothes and hair looking the way you want to remember it. I took my kids to a store where I had a "portrait package" coupon and hoped to get some good shots to frame and share with the grandparents. Since two of my children have AD/HD and sensory processing issues, we went on a weekend so my husband and I could team up to make this memorable photo a reality. Although we usually let our children select their own attire, that day we picked out their clothes so all the items would match and coordinate. Already, we should have realized that the end result wouldn't resemble what we saw on a daily basis, but we had a dream. The children were scrubbed and dressed and we were on our way. Unfortunately, the dressier clothes weren't as comfortable so my children were a bit fidgety right out of the starting gate. We assured them that it was only for a little while, and when we got back home after the photo session they could change clothes. We arrived and headed straight back to the studio in the store. We had failed to factor in the likelihood that going on a weekend seemed like a good strategy to other families as well, and we learned that we were in for a wait. Having to wait 50 minutes might not be a problem for some families, but the dream was seeming more like an impossible dream when my husband and I tried to figure out how we could keep the kids relatively content and clean while we waited for our turn. We thought about buying each child a toy, but that would have pretty much defeated the purpose of going there for the great coupon value deal. We decided to walk through the store at as slow a pace as the kids could tolerate, dragging our feet and hoping to make our store tour last about 50 minutes until it ended back with the photographer. At that point, we hoped our kids would be calm and bored enough that even posing for a picture would sound inviting. At first, Plan B seemed like it just might work. Then we hit a snag. There, directly ahead of us, was a little in-store pizza shop that served flavored icy drinks. Suddenly the children realized they were extremely hungry and thirsty, and I had to admit that the delay in picture taking did push us close to their usual lunch time. I couldn't see making it through pizza without getting some on the clothes, and I wasn't willing to take the chance. Instead, we offered them small cherry icy drinks with napkins tucked into shirt and dress fronts along with close supervision. My husband and I felt relieved, because the drinks would curb the appetites until we could return home for lunch and it was helping to pass the time. As an added bonus, those drinks can't be gulped or the kids knew they would get "freeze brain" so it helped pass the wait time. We were confident once again, that our portrait dream could come true. Having carefully monitored the time, I announced that it was time to make our way back to the photography studio. We should arrive just a couple minutes before our turn with the photographer. The children were happy and ready to go, having consumed their cherry icy drinks with great enjoyment. They turned to me, grinning with pleasure, and that's when I saw not only cherry red lips, but pink teeth! Getting a professional portrait done had seemed like such a good idea, but it just goes to show that plans need to be flexible and you need to have or develop a sense of humor to get you past those "pink teeth" moments.
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We had a random drawing from our subscribers for five tickets to the Heart of the Matter Online Conference.

The winners are:

1. awakenyourspirit
2. missmichelle6
3. TIM MCAULIFFE
4. D
5. Amy Mason

Please email me with your Name and email address so HOTM can get you the tickets. If we do not hear from you in the next day or two, we will open it up to the first readers to respond.

Sniffing Tennis Balls?

My son, Josh, has a well developed sense of smell. His sensory processing issues are sometimes a strength but more often than not when he was younger they interfered with his ability to function and participate fully in activities. When I homeschooled Josh and his sisters, two out of three of my students had AD/HD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) along with sensory and auditory processing difficulties. Not only did they have more energy than I did, I had to repeat myself a lot and keep their sensory challenges in mind. Leaning over to help Josh with an assignment, I can remember Josh informing me that I had coffee breath. Unwilling to forgo coffee, I instead tried to angle my head so that when I spoke the air flow would be directed away from Josh's nose. Picture the way a bird cocks its head, and that's probably about what I looked like as I taught my little fledglings. Although I wasn't right in his face, his overly sensitive nose could pick up the smell of a peanut butter sandwich from several feet away. As with many of his sensory integration challenges, Josh was both sensory seeking and sensory avoiding at times. When I prepared his meals, Josh always had to sniff the food before eating it. Always. Even if it was his favorite meal, very familiar to him, he smelled it prior to eating as if this time I might have slipped something nasty in his food for unknown reasons. Josh wasn't a picky eater, but he sure appeared to be a suspicious one. Over time, I was able to get him to sniff more surreptitiously at least when he was a guest in someone's home or out in public. Josh still occasionally gives an unfamiliar food item a sniff prior to tasting it, but I think that's o.k. because we all tend to notice the smells of new and previously untried foods. Josh's tendency to sniff things wasn't limited to food or drink items. One time Josh was playing with our dog, having him fetch a tennis ball. This is when impulsivity collided with sensory processing and Josh took the tennis ball from the dog's mouth and gave it a sniff. "Ewww! This smells terrible!" he proclaimed, practically gagging before lifting it to his nose for another whiff. "Ugh! That's awful! Plus, it's slimy!" Now his whole system was on red alert since he experienced an aversive smell and an aversive tactile feeling together. I could practically see him shudder. We had to laugh, though, because even after he knew the tennis ball had a bad odor, he went ahead and smelled it again before he could stop himself. When I asked him why, he said something in his brain told him to check again to see if it was as bad as he thought it was. His own second opinion was confirmation enough. Josh still has an acute sense of smell, but over the years has learned to control both his impulsivity and his reactions to smells - even though as his mom I can still tell when he is cringing inside.