Month: June 2019

Before we start effectively helping your kids we need to make sure you as parents are in a good place.  A place where your needs are met so you can provide the best possible support for your child.  Stress is part of life, and some stress is good, but too much is harmful to your health. I know from experience what too much stress does to your body and it is not pretty. A person feels stressed out or overwhelmed when you are not in alignment with yourself and your core values.

Core Values

To work or not to work that is up to you, there are so many decisions that one has to make and what it all comes down to is your core values. Some parents will value going to work over staying home with the kids. There is no judgement here as long as your decision doesn’t cause you stress. The truth is you only feel stressed when you are out of alignment with yourself and beliefs.

I find that a good place to start is to look at your calendar, where are you spending your time? For me when I am not working is Swing dancing because it aligns with my core values of fun exercise and adult conversations (since most of my day I work with kids). So where are you spending your time? If you look and you don’t like where you are spending your time then that is a good place to start making small changes. The second place I look to is where are you spending your money? Is the star bucks you drink every day have something to do with not being able to afford that painting class you wanted to take? Is that star buck’s coffee that important to you?

If you would like to go more in-depth with your core value exploration here is a couple of links

7 steps to discovering your Core Values

Family Life work sheet on Core Values 

Life Wheel

The Life Wheel is another tool I use often with families to gage where in their life the stress is coming from. The life wheel looks at your satisfaction with different areas of your life. Follow The link below to run one off and then follow the instructions below on how to use this tool.

Life Wheel

1. Life wheel for this you are going to color in how happy you are in each area of your life. So if you are not getting out with friends as often as you would like you may only color that section a quarter of the way, but if you are happy with your relationship and time with family you may want to color most of that section in. If you were to ask me I never color a whole section in because things can be going great and still have room for improvement.

2. Now take each section of the life wheel and give it a number between 1 – 10 . 1 being it isn’t that important not worried about it, 10 being over the moon important I need to make some changes.

This is an activity that one you have to be honest with yourself or you are not going to get anything out of this. I would encourage you to share your wheel with your spouse or a good friend and have a conversation about it and see what comes up. Feel free if you don’t have anyone to chat with about your life wheel to throw me an email.  Stay tuned over the next few weeks and my blogs will look at each area of the life wheel.

Learning what your child’s strengths will help you better relate to your child, and find activities and learning opportunities that they will enjoy, stick to and do well at.

According to Philip Moore, the author of The Future of our children : an education system based on love, all children have one or two dominant lines of Intelligence aka super powers. We all have multiple intelligence but usually one or two will be strongest.

There are 8 lines of Intelligence:

Bodily/ Kinesthetic – These are the kids that love to move and use their bodies. Because of this they like sports of all types and enjoy physical work like chopping wood, building things, and gardening.

Musical Intelligence – These are the children who love to sing, write their own music/ songs, and play several instruments.

Interpersonal – these are the healers. They are social butterflies and are the ones always organizing peers. They are kids who help those in need and seem to get along with everyone.

Intrapersonal – These kids are your day dreamers. They prefer quiet time to themselves and may enjoy meditation.

Verbal Linguistic – These are the kids that are fascinated by different languages. One of my friends definitely falls into this category. He was reading by the age of three, is bilingual French and English and has self taught himself, Hebrew, Chinese and several other languages over the years.

Logical Mathematical – These are the kids who see all the patterns so math comes easily along with physics, and often chemistry. They see the patterns in nature all around them. I have a kiddo that I used to work with that could  calculate to the day how old you with in seconds of you giving him your birthdate.

Visual Spatial – Kids who have a visual spatial intelligence tend to be good navigators. They enjoy things like painting, drawing, sculpting and have interests in architecture.

Naturalist – These are kids that love being outside. They prefer the forest or the beach to the playground. They also often love animals, interested in ecosystems and life cycles.

What if we discovered these early and taught them in a way that a child relate to? I use song all the time to teach kids because it is fun and they are learning. Learning the alphabet for a kinesthetic learning may involve throwing balls at letters on the wall where as an Interpersonal learning may be finding friends whose names start with each letter and a Visual spatial learner may to enjoy coloring, painting, or sculpting the letters.

How do you find your child’s superpower aka line of intelligence? Sit back and observe, maybe take notes daily and see what patterns show up and when you find it, run with it as much as possible and see what transpires.

There are so many reason why enrolling your child in a mainstream classroom that could benefit your son or daughter but also the other children in the class. I could list them all here but I think a story would be a better way to share them.

Children learn by watching others

The first is about a young non verbal boy I had previously worked with. When I started working with him, he was not overly expressive in his body language and pretty well behaved overall. He alway understood what I was asking him. I would put crayons and paper in front of him and he would color or a pair of scissors and a shape to cut out and he would do it. He often played by himself not really interacting with the other kids.

After two weeks in a school for children on the spectrum he was screaming, pinching, throwing things and biting. All things that were never happening before. You see he was overwhelmed by the other screaming children, was modelled inappropriate behavior and he followed suit.

If he was in a mainstream classroom it would have been quieter, and been modelled mainstream expected behavior. In my experience I have found kids want to be part of the group and eventually learn to look at what their peers are doing and follow suit when they are unsure what is going on.

I have seen children learn to kick a soccer ball, do the monkey bars, pump on the swings by watching their peers. I personally love it when their peers take time to help them or even teach them. I find that the kids I work with when in a classroom from kindergarten on they are accepted as part of the class early on and it stays that way as they grow up. Some kids drop off but there is always a couple that stay close and will always say hi, and look out for my young friend. That support network is so important as they grow up. If or when they realize they are different having a couple of friends to defend you, explain social situations you are unsure of and just knowing they accept you solely and completely can be enough to counteract the teasing and the depression that often occurs.

Your Uniquely wired child has something to share with their peers

The other children in the classroom learn to celebrate diversity and even learn to have empathy for other people.  One of my lower functioning kids that I work with has a hundred friends it feels like. I pick him up from school and at least five kids are saying “Bye Teddy”. When we are at the mall I have had classmates come up and give him a high five or yell across the store “Hi Teddy” and he always gets a huge smile on his face.

Another story of acceptance is that of my friend Johnny. Johnny needs to let his wiggles out so he has had a trampoline at the back of  his class room since kindergarten. Now in grade three the other kids don’t think any thing of it. “That is just what my friend needs to keep his body calm.” is what they tell me.

From my own experience growing up

I grew up with a girl who actually lived across the alley from me but also in my class at school from kindergarten to grade nine when she passed away, who had cerebral palsy. She was accepted into our class from day one. I remember the teacher giving us the talk about how her legs and arms don’t work very well what is why she was in a wheelchair and she had an aid, but her mind was not broken and that she was just as much a part of our class as anyone else. We took turns pushing her to music, as we got older we took turns staying in at lunch time while she had a break on a matt from her wheelchair. As far as we were concerned she wasn’t any different then the rest of us other then maybe she was a little smarter from all the books she read.

So if you ask me with the right support the absolute best place for your child is in a mainstream classroom. They will learn so much from their peers and they will teach his or her peers a thing or two about life.