TherExtras

Comic Relief

 

[Image cut from the Sunday paper & from this comic reference site.]

If your child is like Hammie, he’s going to do well.  (Although sibling relationships might be a bumpy ride.)

What is most significant in this representation of a sensory-seeking child is that he planned and set-up the whole sensory experience himself. 

 

Life seen through the comics previously here at TherExtras: 

The Comics as Reference for Parenting

Learning Neurology from the Comics

 

Long Term Goal

 

Just imagine your child washing the dishes for you, one day.  Say, five years from now.  With supervision.  Some modifications to the kitchen area, perhaps just certain of the dishes or specially selected dishes. 

 

When can you start teaching him? 

 

Maybe sooner than you think. 

 

Witness another one of my recommendations for ‘skipping’ the developmental order of things in the life therapy emphasis of a child with a development-altering-diagnosis.  [My MOST shocking blasphemy recommendation being to skip crawling in favor of both sitting and standing.]

 

Years and years of working on handwriting in 30-45 minute increments at 2x/week pace does not result in the ability to wash dishes. 

 

 

Home School

 

Subtitle: 
Typical Developmental Trajectory of Parents with a Child with Special Needs

 

PwCwSN Milestones:

Diagnosis

 

Suspicion of problem

 

Manic Multiple Medical Tests

 

Manic Initiation of Multiple Therapy Interventions
Simultaneously (or not) with manic search
for curative treatments (or not)

 

Huge leaps of learning
about the particularities of your child
and his diagnosis (other children/people with the same diagnosis)

 

Huge emotional-rollercoaster-ride

 

Welcome to a new community

[Image from here.]

 

 

Profound feelings of isolation

 

And then

 

Your child with (a development altering diagnosis) special needs goes to school. 

 

Then

 

everything changes, again. 

 

Still Learning, After All These Years

 

The winner of the book Delightfully Different is

(drumroll please) Fawn at Fawnahereo's Place. 

 

Ta da!
Or not. 

I‘m still crazy learning after all these four years of blogging. 

 

Three Books, Two Purposes & One Giveaway

 

 

This happens occasionally to all of us, but you might most easily recall an occasion when your child latched onto a ‘thing’ with such excitement, relish and fervor and in the most embarrassing explicit behaviors told every one in sight that she.must.have.that.NOW. 

 

Don’t even think about taking it away without the severe likely consequence of a meltdown. 

A third tier in the spin downward spiral of a developing compulsion is for the parent/caregiver/adult to become near-compulsive about managing controlling said ‘thing’ in the life of the child.  The behavioral sequence just described is natural save for the word ‘compulsion’ – which indicates an inability to behave otherwise. 

 

Some ‘things’ send me into a near-compulsive spin too.

 

Perception and Perspective

 
[Image is a digital copy of an original art piece by our CollegeDaughter.]

When we watch other’s behavior most of us interpret the other’s perspective but we are often limited by our own perception.  Often.  We seldom either seek to or actually acquire the perspective of another.  Naturally.

Before your children were your children, before you were their parent – how did you respond to the kind of behavior your child now demonstrates in school, in the homes of your relatives or in public?  What did you think or feel at the first sight of a child in a wheelchair before your experience of parenting a child with a development-altering-diagnosis?

Judging others based on limited personal experience is only natural.  We can literally do no more unless we make the effort to learn to do more.

Each person’s reality is embedded in both their perspective and perception.  To separate these two concepts is a semantic challenge but provides a basis for explaining (some of) cortical brain growth in children. 

Perspective comes from a living history, of accumulated experience that builds memory and, the person’s brain.  When I look at the above image I see the impression of a composite ‘animal’ with its several diverse facial components.  If you, like I have, seen many different types of animals, you might recognize the facial features of

eyes, nose (or gills) and mouth (or beak)

 

from your memory,
from your many experiences of seeing animals. 

 

Perception is a subtly different layer of neuronal structure – that of added meaning to a sensed experience.  How do you perceive does the above image make you feel?  Or, is there an emotion attached to your memory of fish or birds or a particular visit to the zoo, a treasured childhood story of animals?  Perception is also involved in seeing the separate parts of the image versus a whole confusing non-sensical perhaps blob. 

This last offering post of 2011 The Year of Physiology is as much about you parents as it is about the neural potential of your a child with a development-altering-diagnosis.

 

Choosing Meaningful Treatment

“The anatomy of the brain is very closely linked with function.” 
Dr. Elly Nedivi  [Video is 63 minutes long.]

I do not want to give a simplified representation of the brain and the length of the previous-linked video is telling viewers there are no few commercial-length videos that will provide you with a meaningful understanding of the brain.  I feel very fortunate to find such good online education to share with you. 

For those of you who are into studying/learning/suffering through/reading about neuro-anatomy-and-physiology (like Amanda) I can only say you are after my own heart mind. 

I believe your efforts to understand the basis for your child’s difference(s) will help you in selecting from among the treatments you are referred to, offered berated by marketing to buy and to which you invest your time, treasure and emotion.  My intent [if only so much pavement to Hades] is to provide some meaningful translation of science at a level that keeps me in line as a therapist but is often not readily given or available to parents of children with development-altering-diagnoses. 

When a physician gives a parent of a child with developmental delay a “diagnosis” or supposed reason/source/etiology for the delay – the physician often is giving a distillation of very not-yet-complete knowledge about the nervous system. 

 

Repetition

 

In the right sidebar on this blog is this quote:

 

Once is not enough.

Einmal ist keinmal.
What happens but once might as well not have happened at all.
[German saying, quoted in The Unbearable Lightness of Being]

[Given to me by JoyMama.]

 

I’ve stated something similar … '2x per week therapy sessions are next to nothing in terms of effectiveness'. 

 

While I am working on the next post on the nervous system and nearing the end of 2011 The Year of Physiology I give you some quotes from previous posts. 

 

Subtitle:  I’ve said something like this before. 

 

With a strongly organized and healthy brain one has the mental resources to adapt to life changing/threatening conditions. A well-developed brain is like well-developed bone – resistant to collapse/fracture. 

From my post titled:  What is lost in aging is the ability to adapt. 

 

This is simplistic but also generally correct - cognition (cortical function) inhibits impulsive (nervous) behavior or the firing of neurons in the deeper parts of the brain.  Whatever the speed rate of growth of a child’s brain the eventual development of (higher) cortical mass is critical for a child to control his impulsive behavior. 

Brain growth and development occur due to specific, complex and difficult-to-research reasons.  But without the research, we are all vulnerable to crediting both obscure and traditional treatments to pure-dee-maturation.  Read this discussion on the research of techniques designated as “sensory integrative” at ABC Therapeutics. 

From my post titled:  Inhibition

 

The beauty of video is in the option to watch it over and over again.  How many times will you watch this one on the brain? 

 

 

Today I took the time to add a new category (see the ‘cloud’ – low in the sidebar).  Click on brain to see more of my repetitive past posts.