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.

Despite what some parents think, I’m not magic. It’s true that I’ve got a huge toolbox for connecting with each kid individually: that’s what you get from years of training and working with diverse kids, right? But there are limits to what I can do. Sometimes I need to use REAL magic, and that’s the magic of PEERS.

Peer feedback is 100 times more valuable than mine.

We’re all familiar with peer pressure as a bad thing, right? But peer influence can also be good, especially for kids learning through social challenges. As kids get older, they start to value peers more and more, so it’s really important to harness that power for good!

Let’s look at two kinds of peer influence:

Social proof is what researchers like Robert Cialdini call it: the power of seeing what the people around you are doing. When a child is around other kids who know how to behave, over time they can learn to model that behaviour. And it’s easier to convince a kid to try something different when you have the social proof of another kid doing it.

Peer feedback can take many forms, such as a child saying “I don’t like when you yell like that” or “your drawing looks really cool!” Even giving feedback can teach kids about their own behaviour.

That’s why I like to pair older kids up for therapy. With each thing we do, there’s often one kid who finds it easier to make changes, and often that helps the second kid make the transition faster.

Happy Pairings

Let’s look at some pair therapy success stories.

Learning friendly competition: Joe & Peter

Two of the boys I worked with were poor losers: they’d get angry whenever they played games and lost. I decided they could learn a lot from each other.

So I paired Joe and Peter up to play some games. When Joe lost, he threw his pieces and walked away. I brought him back to ask Peter how he felt, and Peter said he felt:
”Like I didn’t want to play with him any more and he scared me when he threw the pieces.”

Joe said sorry. But this was just the beginning.

Later that week Peter lost, and threw a fit. This was a great opportunity. I asked Joe to tell us how he felt, and then reminded Joe that he was lucky that the Peter would even play with him because last week he had done a similar thing.

This way both kids got to benefit from understanding what it was like to be on the other side, and had to adapt their behaviour to get along better.

The smell of success

One of my older kids never wanted to wear deodorant. We had several chats about how his body was changing and how smelly one would get after gym class or basketball. I even had him smell his stinky clothes after basketball. Despite the reminders and mom nagging him he rarely put it on in the morning, until one day that changed everything.

That day we were on the bus and he whispered to me, “Is that smell coming from that kid?” He gestured to the kid around his age that was sitting in front of us. Of course I took the teaching opportunity and said, “Most likely. He probably didn’t put deodorant on this morning, or maybe he didn’t shower”.

After that, he never forgot to put deodorant on, or complained about taking a shower!

This lesson simply wouldn’t have been possible without peer feedback.

Kids learn a lot from peers

As you can see from these stories, spending time with peers has the potential to greatly accelerate how kids learn social skills.

My role with peer groups, whether pairs or larger groups, is to make sure they learn the best things possible from each other, as quickly and happily as possible.

So I guess the real magic is all of us working together.

This blog post came out of all the research I did to support one really sweet girl who for the life of me I could not get to focus. I mean I was for lack of better words hitting my head against the wall trying to support her. The most insight came from books like Delivered from Distation and The ADHD Advantage, but also from my good friend Byron who has learned to use his ADHD to his advantage.

Controlling the Bingo Brain

What you may ask is the Bingo Brain? It is the ADHD brain running free. What I admire most about people with ADHD is their ability to see connections between people, situations, and things that I would never see because thier brains are “hyper connected” . People with an ADHD brain need time to let their brain run free. Honestly that is when some of the most of the wall but brillant ideas come from. One of the best analogies I have come across is that ADHD brain is like a race car that is turbo charged. One has to learn to put the right oil in the car so that it doesn’t burn up and one needs to learn how to put the breaks on and slow it down so it doesn’t crash.  – Dale Anchor author of the ADHD advantage.  Here are some types to slow things down and keep track of things:

1. Write things down. Making lists will help clear space in a person’s brain to allow for room and energy to put on the things that matter.
2. Remove distractions. Also when working on a computer things like closing all the apps, tabs and social media that may distract you from the task at hand can be useful.
3. Exciting goals. A good way to control the Bingo Brain is to have a meaningful, exciting, goal that stretches the person because then hyper focus is more likely to kick in.
4. Prioritize what needs to be done this month, this week, and today.

Time management and forgetfulness

Time management is something a lot of people with ADHD struggle with. They often don’t have a sense of time passing.

• Use a calendar One of the tools I use with the kids I work with is Google Calendar. Rather than giving them a gigantic list at the beginning of the day of all the stuff they need to do we put reminders in their phone. I often but heads up reminders in their phone to start putting it in their head before they need to do it. For example “heads up you need to meet so and so at 4pm” and then 10 minutes later “leave to walk to meet so and so”.
• To do lists and project management software Google calendar is great and an other website I use myself is Asana, which can help keep track of projects and all the little details that go with each of the projects. The best part is that multiple people can interact on the same project.
• Routine is important Building routines is also very helpful for children with or without ADHD. Things like preparing the night before for school in the morning can help, eg. making their lunch, setting out clothes, and packing a bag. Building morning and bedtime routines helps kids to remember: it almost becomes muscle memory. Have specific places for sports equipment like a swimming bag that the swim suit, towel, brush, and goggles live in so they can just grab and go.

ADHD has its challenges but it is also something that can be leveraged. If we spend some time early in a child’s life to figure out how to use their gift and work with it rather than against it one can only imagine what is possible in their future.

ADHD

Can be seen as:

• Difficulty focusing or staying on task
• Inattention to details
• Inability to sustain attention
• Trouble listening
• Disorganization
• Avoidance of tasks that they don’t find interesting
• Frequently losing things
• Being easily distracted by external stimuli
• Forgetfulness

Or as :

• An ability to multitask
• A propensity to thrive in situations of chaos
• Creative, non linear thinking
• An adventurous spirit
• A capacity for hyper focus on something that fascinates you
• Resilience
• High energy
• A willingness to take calculated risks
• Calmness under pressure

— Dale Archer, The ADHD Advantage

 

ADHD has its advantages! Many successful people both today and in history have had ADHD; many have gone undiagnosed.  They learned to leverage their strengths, such as the ability to compare different aspects of several options in their head, or their ability to stay calm in what the rest of us would call chaos.

So how can we help children or adults, for that matter, learn to harness their gifts and use them? First, we have to realize that people with ADHD won’t fit into our conventional inside-the-box way of doing things, so let’s stop trying to make them fit.

People with ADHD tend to:

• Need more stimulation than the rest of us to stay focused
• Need less sleep
• Work best in the wee hours of the morning or the late hours of the night.
• Have hyper-connected brains, so they make connections to things that we don’t always follow
• Get distracted easily—yet when, really interested can be hyper focused on something for hours and lose track of time
• Lose track of time, often being late, and forgetting things
• Thrive off multitasking
• Do really well under pressure
• Be big picture thinkers, and not so good at remembering all the details
• Need help from people in their lives who are strong at the things they struggle with—much like the rest of us!

In a lot of cases, parents, teachers, and doctors jump straight to medicating a child. I am not saying medication is wrong, but in my opinion there are many things we should try first, before dampening their brain and the child’s personality. Meds may end up being the answer for a short while or at certain times in a person’s life, but long term use can have some unwanted side effects. I believe that diet, exercise, coping mechanisms, and an open mind to things being done in unconventional ways are what needs to be considered first.

Supporting kids with ADHD in the classroom

Let’s make classrooms that fit the kids rather than kids to fit the classroom. My first suggestion is to ask the kids what works for them. If they know great, if they don’t here are some ideas to stimulate their brains, and help them focus.

• Fidgeting: Tapping a pencil or playing with a fidget toy
• Wiggle seat/ yoga ball
• Movement breaks every 30 min (I love brain gym breaks for the whole class)
• Changing places—Moving about to a new place in the classroom
• Multi-tasking: Working on a few different assignments at once. I tried this with one of my clients who was super frustrated, having a really hard time with sight words and got stuck in a routine of giving me the same wrong answer over and over again. She always seemed to get distracted even when sitting in a room with only a table, 2 chairs (one for her and one for me), and her work. So I tried alternating between a math equation and a sight word, and she got 50% more sight words correct. Before each question, I’d ask things like:
  • “We are thinking about numbers now.”
  • “Is your brain thinking about letter sounds now?”
• Build on interest—Work with what they are interested in and build lessons around that.
• Free time—Give them time that is unstructured so they can let their “Bingo brain” run free. It is important for a person with ADHD brain to have space to day dream, freely to make all those connections they make in their brain run freely. Amazing things can happen during those periods.
• Vigorous activity before seated activities
• Short bursts of instructions, so as not to get bored and tune out
• Kick start: When they have trouble focusing sometimes they need what I call a kick start, so start with something they like related to what needs to be done. For example when a friend of mine can’t get into working on his computer he starts by playing a game on it and after he plays for 10- 15 minutes his brain is in computer mode and then he gets down to work. It could be to start reading or listening to something they like before moving on to reading the textbook. It is kind of warming up their brain to get in the zone.

ADHD has an impact on the kid’s social lives, too. They don’t always catch when others can’t follow their train of thought, and often are a lot more self educated on subjects they are interested in than their peers. Sometimes the opposite is true they have trouble articulating what they are thinking. Teaching children with ADHD to be self aware, and read social cues, and control those impulses to interrupt others are essential to their success.

Sports are a great way to help children with ADHD with so many skills while meeting their need for movement and exercise. Teams sports teach them cooperation, communication, and resilience while things like dance, Karate, boxing and wrestling give them body movement to study, which is very complex and always changing so they don’t get bored.

Be a Role Model

The number one way you can instill good habits of any sort is by modeling them yourself. Your kids are watching and analyzing your every move.  The best way is to create family habits and routines.

We have all heard “Families that play together, stay together.” It would also apply to families that eat together, work together, and holiday together.  Pretty much any shared activity will bring your family closer together and build cohesion as a family.

I bet if you think about it most of the memories you have from your childhood where built around a routine or tradition that happened regularly. Christmas?  Family Meals? Annual trips?  Or maybe it was around everyday routines, like favorite teeth brushing songs or bedtime stories.

My Grandfather had only two bedtime stories that he told us.  One of them was short and sweet:

Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,

Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair,

Fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,

Was he?

Routines and traditions create memories and are not hard to create. Here are just a few I have come across when chatting with families

• Family game night
• Family dinner discussion (Two things that you enjoyed or went well and one that was challenging today)
• Taco Tuesday
• Sunday family activity
• Bedtime routines
• Bath routines
• Getting home from work/ school routines
• Snack time routine
• As your family grows up some of these routines will fade and you can start others.
• Drop off at daycare routine (I love you, I love you more…, or See you later alligator)

Get Them Involved

For older kids, it is a good idea to have a discussion around why you are trying creating a new habit and is beneficial to ask their input.

One of the kids I work with is constantly forgetting which books to take home at the end of the day so he can do his homework.  We sat down and he brainstormed a few different ways to help him remember. The one he decided would work was putting his schedule in Google calendar and an event in at the end of the day that read “Check what you need for homework” because he already had the habit of looking at his phone when he got to his locker, and then he didn’t have to think very hard because his schedule was right in front of him. He even started putting his homework in his calendar under each class in his calendar in the notes section.

When kids are involved in the solution they are way more invested in sticking to it.

Give Them Time

Give them time to adjust to the new habit and make it a routine. I’ve read that it takes 30 days for something to become a habit. You can help it stick better by noticing and commending them for doing the new habit because they then feel good about it and that feeling is a good enforcer.  I would recommend tackling one habit at a time, if you try too many it can get overwhelming.

Set a specific time and for long periods of time.

If you want to instill good homework habits early start in grade one or two by setting a time before or after dinner that is homework/ quiet time. It is the same time every day and that they do their homework for half an hour if they don’t have homework they can read. As they get older you can increase the time as they get more homework and it takes longer. The habit of starting can be enough that they will just stay until it is finished.

Avoid External Rewards

It has been shown that external rewards are not good for helping sustain long term habits: the novelty wears off.  That is why if you start potty training before a child is ready they seem to really well at first, but soon they just seem to stop caring. The reward isn’t motivating enough. It can be a good incentive to get them sitting on the seat if they are a little nervous, to entice them to leave what they are doing, but long term they need to be motivated to stay dry for themselves.

With older kids it is about having the discussion about forming good habits, what they look like, why they are important and then leading by example.

Healthy life Habits start at home, by modeling them, by creating family traditions and routines, by including your children in a conversation around the importance of such habits and making being healthy fun!

A habit is essentially any action we repeat over and over again. It often starts off as a conscious choice but then becomes an unconscious choice. These unconscious behavioral patterns can be directly linked to our nervous system. They are triggered by cue, followed by an action, that is followed by a reward. Often habits like nail biting, smoking, playing with keys in your pocket are often triggered by stress, and they all have a calming effect.

Bad Habits- Maybe not so bad after all

Some habits are brought on as a result of stress, such as pacifiers, blankets, stuffed animals and other self-soothing habits. There comes a time when most parents think, “Alright you are a big boy now you don’t need that pacifier.”  It is often thought that the best time to “drop “a habit is when you start a new routine, when they start preschool, or get a big girl bed”, when really that is probably the worst. Children have so little control of what happens in their day, and the routine of sleeping with a blanket, having the stuffy is calming, a routine they can count on, something they have control over in the day.  So unless a doctor or dentist says it is impeding on your child’s health, let them grow out of it. If you really need to change their routine do it when things are calm.

Key Steps to Changing Children’s Habits

Wait until the child is calm

If your child’s world is relatively stress-free, changing the habit will be easier because they won’t be triggered as often.

Understand why the habit is happening

For children show them you understand how they are feeling; “Seems to me you are really frustrated, and rocking helps calm your body”, “looks like you are nervous, you are biting your nails a lot.”

Introduce them to a new coping strategy

The hard part about this is that whatever you’re replacing the old habit with has to do the same thing, have the same reward. If the reward from the new habit is not as strong as the original habit then you or your child will go back to the original one. Involve your child in the solution, when they come up with the solution they are more likely to stick to it.  Some of the alternate strategies I have used with children for when they are stressed at school include:

• deep breathing
• rubbing a worry rock
• squeezing playdoh,
• having a dialogue with themselves (I can sleep without Teddy tonight, because I know I can sleep with her tomorrow when I get home)
• tensing up their body, clenching their fists and labeling how mad they are, instead of hitting or kicking a friend.

Encourage / Reward them for their efforts

This follows along the idea of positive reinforcement, rather than calling them out when they are sucking their thumb, which increases their stress and makes them want it more, congratulate them every time they are using the worry rock or choosing to take Dragon breaths.

The Importance of Risky Play

Just the sound of the phrase “Risky Play” may make many parents cringe, even more so, if you know your child has a disability.  It is essential to a child’s development but before I get into that, let’s look at the types of risky play children engage in.

Children’s risky play can be put into five categories.

• Great Heights – Kids love to climb up trees, up shelves, any structure that will allow them to feel like they have a view from an airplane.
• Rapid Speeds – Kids have a need for speed. They love riding bikes, skateboards, down big hills, swinging really high and fast. Kids love the wind in their hair and the feeling of flying.
• Ruff and Tumble – Children love to wrestle, and roll around on the ground. There is great satisfaction in being able to out power someone. It is also allowing them to find their bodies in space by the extra pressure on different parts of their body.
• Dangerous tools  & Dangerous Elements – It is an honor to be allowed to hold/use such things, and a thrill of the possibilities of getting hurt.
• Disappearing  – Young kids love to hide and seek it a temporary thrill of being separated from their peers and other adults. You will find very young kids will hide in twos and threes because they are not quite ready to do it on their own.

Risky play is important for every child even children who are not mainstream for many reasons some of which I outline below with examples from my experience.

• Builds physical strength, coordination, and proprioception (where their bodies are in space) – climbing trees, jumping off ledges all build muscles.
• Allows your child to learn to identify and measure the risk. Is it worth it?
• Allows your child to build a growth mindset (that things take practice and failing is learning).
• It teaches them to be persistent and builds stamina.
• Allows them to realize their boundaries.
• Allows your child to problem solve.

I have some really great examples that model several of these. A little guy at a preschool where I work a few mornings a week is one of the older yet smaller kids in the class and he really wanted to be able to hang off the monkey bars but he couldn’t reach. He worked through this over the course of a couple of weeks.

Day 1 – He was upset, mad and pouty that he couldn’t reach. (Deal with the frustration)

Day 3 – He found something to climb on so he could reach.  (Problem-solving)

Day 6 – He could hang on the bar for a good 25 seconds before losing his grip. (Strength building, proprioception of shoulders).

Day 9 – He saw another child actually move across the monkey bars and he wanted to but couldn’t quite let go. (Negotiating the risk)

Day 12 – He builds up the courage to let go of one hand, and reach for the next bar and then after several tries he would add one or two more bars until he could go all the way across. (Coordination, growth mindset)

All along the way the leaders encouraged him but didn’t help him in any way. He learned a valuable lesson over the course of a couple of weeks.

Another is young boys love to roll around on the ground crawling all over one another. Wrestling is allowing proprioception for many parts of their bodies they don’t often engage. They are learning their boundaries between this are fun and this has gone too far. Ruff and tumble play also teaches them to speak up for themselves and teaches the others who are playing with them to have the self-control to stop.

So what are you as the Parent going to during this Risky Play?

Try some of the following strategies:

Bite your tongue – calling out “Be careful” can instill unnecessary anxiety and breaks the child’s concentration making it more likely he or she may have an accident.

Step back – take the approach most daycares do. If they can’t reach or negotiate the situation themselves, it means they are not ready and encourages a growth mindset.

Wait to save the day – meaning when kids are wrestling over a toy let them figure it out on their own. As long as they are not hurting the other child see if they can come to a compromise on their own.

Watch them Smile – There is no better reward for a child than letting them take a risk and succeed.

 

There are numerous reasons for fidgety kids and I will touch on that in a future post. For now here are some of my more successful tips for getting your fidgety child to sit relatively still:

Hard work breaks

These allow children to expend their extra energy so they can calm their bodies and focus. Some of the ones I use most often include:

• Rearranging the classroom or bedroom
• Animal walks ( walk like a crab, a bear, jump like a rabbit)
• Trying to push the wall back an inch.
• Carrying or pushing a box of toys/ books/laundry basket to where they belong
• Scooter board rockets ( lay or sit on the scooter board and push with feet off a wall)

Sensory break  

I have heard the term sensory break used for hard work breaks in some article but I feel they are similar but not the same.  I feel sensory breaks or just that more sensory oriented like swing, bouncing which will affect a child’s vestibular system. Some of my favorite sensory breaks include:

• Swing
• Bouncing on a ball
• Yoga
• Beanbag squishes ( have the child sit in or under a bean bag)
• Body sock time ( a spandex bag that I child can sit/stand in and push on the sides)
• Crashing ( my crash mats are mattress covers filled with foam leftovers in it)
• Earphones with calming/ or stimulating music
• Over stimulation breaks ( sitting in a darker room, ear protection)
• Darkroom with projector images on the wall

Feet fidgets

Feet fidget easy, cheap and effective way of allowing a child to fidget in place. The ones I use most often include:

• A pool noodle strung on a bungee cord and connected to the desk legs or the legs of a chair.
• A thera band from the dollar store wrapped around the desk or chair legs
• I have put microfiber mop heads under children feet ( child has to be in socks for this to work) for them to rub their feet along
• A piece of foam for a footrest

Balls, wobble seats

I have mixed emotions about wiggle seats. I agree they work for some children with strong core muscles but for those that don’t, it is not a great base of support for them to do their work. Children without strong cores tend to wrap their feet around or rotate their pelvis to stabilize themselves which is not beneficial either.  If you are using a wiggle seat it doesn’t need to be expensive. Here are just a couple of ideas:

• A deflated ball instead of expensive wobble cushion
• Piece of foam on their seat
• Ball in a create to stabilize it

Finger fidgets

There are so many fidgets out there from fidget spinners and cubes, to worry rocks and pencil toppers. In my life skills group, I use them often but mine don’t cost a fortune. The group’s favorites include:

• Two paper clips looped together
• Playdoh
• beads on a pipe cleaner
• nuts and bolts
• balloons filled with flour, cornstarch and water, sugar, marbles or water beads
• fabric marble mazes

I do use some bought fidgets also like:

• Fidget spinners
• Hand putty
• Squishy dollar store toys
• Chinese finger traps sown shut with marbles inside

We all Agree Sleep in Important, Why?

Good sleep is essential so many reasons.   Sleep supports growth because the majority of Child’s growth hormones are released during sleep.  Heart health is also dependent on good sleep because it protects damage from stress hormones and cholesterol build up. Children who wake several times a night tend to have higher cortisol levels making it hard to fall asleep and have been linked to higher weight, diabetes and heart disease. Much like adults when a child is tired their body craves higher fat or higher carb foods and are just as guilty of looking for comfort foods when they are upset. It’s not their fault, all their life they have been trained that food fixes things, ie “ohh you hurt your self will a lollipop make it feel better?” Good sleep helps a child deal emotionally with what the world throws at them better. Still to this day my mom always says when I am upset, “ Hun, go to bed, get a good night sleep and everything will look better in the morning” and she is usually right. Sleep also plays a vital role in your child’s immune system, by produces proteins that fight infection, illness, stress and make us feel sleepy. Sleep deprivation and ADHD share many of the same characteristics such as increased impulsiveness and increased distractibility which can look like ADHD.

Create a Good Sleep Environment

Make sure your child’s room is for sleeping. Ideally, we want homework, screen time, play to happen in a playroom or somewhere other than the bedroom. This creates a connection of relaxation, sleep, and calmness to the room. If you can’t keep the whole room “play free”, try just their bed.  The room should also be dark because lights can keep the children up. Growing up my parents had blackout blinds in our rooms so even though it was still light out at 8 pm in the summer our rooms where dark.

Create a Routine

Have a bedtime routine which may start right after dinner with no screens or only an hour depending on the age of your child. The light from the screens affects your child’s body to produce melatonin which is a hormone that helps your child sleep. Your routine is up to you but most families have one that includes a reading stories together, a healthy snack (so your child doesn’t wake up hungry) and brushing teeth. The other important things are to try and keep the routine happening at the same time regardless of whether there is the school in the morning or not.  It allows your child’s body to get into a regular sleep rhythm.

Outside/ Active play

The more energy your child expends during the day the better they will sleep it is as simple as that. It can be hard sometimes when children are drawn to tv, and tablets but creative parents have gotten around it. I know one mom who makes her children earn TV minutes for every hour outside they play they earn 15 minutes of TV time.  Family outings such as to go for a walk, play at the park or go for a swim at the pool on the weekends is a good way to increase the whole families level of activity. Sports are a great way to keep your children active; they build social skills and sportsmanship as well. I would caution you to not have your children too scheduled. Valuable things happen when your child is bored, but that is a conversation for another day.

Control Liquid Intake

Watch what and how much your child is drinking and when.  Beware of drinks full of caffeine, or tons of sugar that will keep them up. Waking up for the washroom can be a huge disruption in a child’s sleep.

Control Screen Time

For some children, the blue light from a tablet, television, or gaming device can stimulate their brain and keep them from sleeping. Children need more screen-free time then Adults do before bed so I have heard of some families doing no screens after dinner.