Mom

Family, there is nothing so important in the world. Family comes in many different “shapes and sizes.” Many people have multiple families. There are nuclear families usually made up of blood relation, families of friends, workplace families, church families and on and on the list could go. Family is my number one priority in my life. My nuclear family of course comes first followed by all the other types of families.

I write about families this week in honor of my mother as Sunday is Mother’s Day. Most of you who read this blog don’t know much about me, but almost 15 years ago I lost my father after his battle with cancer. This left my mother as a single parent to a 20 year old college student and a 14 year old. I cannot even imagine what this must have been like for her, but she kept on supporting both my sister and I through it all. She was the rock in my life and we have developed such a great relationship. I respect her so much and consider her not only my mother, but my friend. I feel so lucky to have such a great women in my life.

I can only hope that all of you are as lucky as I am to have such a great mom. So on this Mother’s Day honor your mother. If you are a mother yourself take time to honor yourself. Tell your mother what she really means to you and cherish every minute you get to spend with your mother or being a mother.

Here’s to all the mothers out there! Enjoy your day!

Talk to you soon,
Erin

A New Beginning

With spring comes a new beginning, fresh flowers, new leaves on the trees and unfortunately a lot of new bugs and bunnies that eat our new flowers. Spring each year is a time of new beginnings - especially in my family. My husband and I began our relationship in the spring, we were married in the spring, and both of our girls were born in the spring. I am reminded each April/May of new beginnings. Last week I wrote about priorities, today I'm going to elaborate on that a bit and encourage you to think about some personal new beginnings.

Right before my husband (Kevin) and I were married we attended a church service in which the pastor encouraged each person to write a mission statement for themselves and/or their family. Kevin and I took this challenge and decided we'd like to start our marriage off with a mission statement. Unfortunately we got as far as getting some bulletted points down, but never developed those thoughts into a mission statement. I began thinking about that concept again this week and thought it really makes a lot of sense. Who am I? What are my priorities? Where should my focus be in life? It's important to occassionally stop and think about this, but how great would it be to have a personal mission statement in which you can reflect daily on your mission in life? Each year or so you can take time to revamp it as things in your life change and continue to use it as a road map for your life.

This week I'm going to start thinking about a personal mission statement and I encourage you to do the same. Here are a few things to think about to get started:
Who do I serve/give time to?
What do I hope to accomplish in the next couple of years?
In what things will I put my energy?
What makes me unique?
What are my goals?

This is a great way to create a new beginning - put things in perspective and live your life according to your priorities. When your boss asks to put in some extra hours, you can quickly reflect on your mission statement and think, nope, that's not what I'm about or absolutely - my job is my priority at this point. When you are asked to do something else, does it fit with my mission statement? What a wonderful way to keep your life organized and with priorities in order.

Check out this site for a few more ideas in developing your mission statement.

To new beginnigs! ~Michelle

Piano Duets and Co-regulation

As I observed my son’s piano lesson this afternoon the concept of co-regulation came to mind. He had practiced a song this past week and after he played it for his teacher she suggested they play the duet together. She joined him at the piano and they played the song together – my son doing the part he had practiced and his teacher doing the more difficult part. The thing about a duet is that both people have to be playing their part in a synchronized way with the other. If one person plays their part without any regard for what the other person is doing it is very unlikely that the song will sound like it’s supposed to. In fact, it will probably end up sounding like two people playing two totally different songs at the same time.

The essence of playing a duet is co-regulation – each person has a role to play and there must be continuous awareness of what the other is doing. They must check with each other for readiness to start and to stop. Each must constantly monitor their tempo / pace in relation to the other. Each must continuously check their volume in relation to the other. If one person fails to do their part and takes off on their own, one of two things happens. Either the other person constantly adjusts their actions to stay coordinated or the entire thing falls apart. I noticed this with my son and his teacher today. He is only 7-years old and has been taking lessons for about 7 months, so he is not very good yet at monitoring lots of things at once when playing. His teacher recognizes this so she makes sure to regulate her playing around what he is doing. If he loses his place for a moment she pauses her playing to wait for him to get back on track. If he starts playing faster she speeds up to match his pace. She knows that with practice he will get better at knowing how to do his part and also monitoring what she is doing so they can each share the responsibility of staying in synch with each other. Sometimes she doesn’t change her pace and lets him finish well before her – and he learns that people can get out of synch and that he needs to change something when that happens. He will continue to become competent at taking more shared responsibility for maintaining the co-regulation of duets by practicing with her and making these discoveries. She will continue to let him experience success for the most part, but just enough difficulty to allow him to learn something.

This is the same process we use to help our children learn about co-regulation within any activity. This is a critical concept for remediation and we need to be working on it in everything we do with our kids on the autism spectrum. They need to learn about co-regulation – not just you and I both doing something in the same place at the same time, but true co-regulation where we both have a shared responsibility to make things work. As parents we need to balance carefully between modifying our own actions enough that we can experience success together, but not so much that the child has no recognition of the importance of continuous monitoring of us in relation to what they are doing. The next time you are doing something with your child think about the piano duet. How much are we both doing to contribute to the success of this? If I stopped modifying my actions in response to what s/he is doing would the whole thing fall apart? What kind of discovery can I help my child make about his/her own actions in relation to mine?

Until next week,
Nicole

Update on Construction

Just a few pictures this Friday to show the progress on our addition. We're excited to see it coming together. We all took turns standing in the middle of it today to visually see where things will be. Hopefully we'll have our 2nd floor walls next week. Enjoy!

Unconditional Love

Sometimes it is amazing how much we at the office think along the same lines. I knew already on Saturday night what I would blog about this week. As Michelle said in her post this week I got my priorities in order. I had the great pleasure of spending a few hours on Saturday night with my cousin and two of her three sons. The oldest was gone to the races with his grandparents which really gave me a chance to spend time with the two younger ones. This is significant because the oldest and I have a strong bond and when I am with the whole family I tend to spend most of my time with him talking and playing so I don’t get as much time with the other two.
I haven’t seen them for a while so of course they had grown and changed. The middle one recently turned for and the youngest recently turned 3. Well something amazing has happened to the youngest in the past few months. He has really started talking to the point where you can understand most of what he says and he really wants to communicate with you. He has also calmed down a ton and has left the tantrums behind for the most part. When I arrived he was so excited to see me and he spent the majority of the next two hours on my lap chatting away. He was so cuddly and loving.
As I have been thinking about this over the past few days and after reading Nicole’s blog it really all makes sense to me why his behavior was the way it was for about 6 months and why most children go through a terrible twos stage. If we stop to think there are so many things happening during that 3rd year of life. Not that there aren’t a ton of things happening before that, but this is the time when the language piece of communication really starts to kick in, kids motor skills take another leap, some children start potty training and on and on the list goes. It is no wonder kids have a tough time behaviorally during this time. They have so many new things to figure out.
It is so great to see that they do come out the other side and behavior improves until the next big growth spurt comes along. Until then I’ll just enjoy the unconditional love and calmness.
Talk to you soon,
Erin

Prioritizing

I have often found that setting priorities in life can be very difficult. I know where my priorities lie and in which order they should be listed, but it seems that it's much too easy to get those priorities mixed up, reversed and suddenly I wonder why my relationships are suffering. One of the early appointments we hold with new families is to look over their schedules, to assess where the majority of their time and energy lie and if they are finding time for the important things and people in their lives.

Do you ever see a whole week go by and never connect with your spouse or kids? I do, I fill my time with work, household duties and other things. By the time the weekend comes around we as a family are feeling distant, sometimes grumpy toward each other and just plain on a different page. My husband and I described last weekend to each other like we were oil and water. Can't we all just get along?!?

This weekend my husband and I are celebrating our anniversary and taking the time to reconnect, remember the vows we made to each other and to make each other our priority again. How are your priorities? Are you noticing where your time needs to be and investing in that area? Are things like church, friends, work etc taking too much time away from your spouse and kids? Take time to write down the things that fill your time, then think about what order those priorities should be? Are they landing in the right order? What needs to change to put those things in the right order? I challenge you this week to not only put your priorities in order on paper, but to take action to make it happen.

Until next week,
Michelle

Dysregulation and Development

I’ve been thinking about dysregulation and developmental “growth spurts” lately as my 9-month old daughter has had a week-long stretch of frustrating behavior. Normally she is a very easy baby – content to hang out with us and do whatever. She generally likes to be held, likes to play with toys on the floor, sleeps through the night, etc. Two weeks ago she learned to crawl – that funny army crawl where babies kind of use their elbow and knee to propel themselves forward as they move across the floor (OT’s in the audience-yes I know the importance of doing a cross-crawl but for now she is doing it this way!). She wants to get everywhere and she is FAST! So there is a lot of time spent telling her “no you can’t go there” and picking her up to move her back to a space where she can be. She has also started to wake up quite a bit in the night – crying out and banging on her crib rails. I’ll go into her room and she will be trying to pull herself up in the bed and then gets mad when she falls down onto the mattress. During the day she is mad about everything – doesn’t want to be on the floor unless she is allowed to crawl wherever she wants to; doesn’t want to be in her jumper or her exersaucer, or her swing…and doesn’t really want to be held either. Basically she just wants to be on the go and exploring her newfound mobility – and if she can’t then she is MAD!

I remember this happening with my three boys as well when they were this age. It seems like my kids go through a period of falling apart around the time they make a developmental leap forward, and even for some time after that as they settle in to their newfound abilities. It’s obvious to me with my daughter that this is what is going on right now because she is my fourth child, but I remember with my first one thinking that he had turned into a nightmare overnight! Now I’m able to ride it out knowing that they all go through periods of time like this and it will end.

In the RDI® work I do with families I see this same phenomenon occur. Sometimes parents will call or email to say that their child is suddenly going through a very dysregulated time period – and when we look closer they have either just developed a new skill / way of thinking about things, or they are about to go through a developmental spurt. It seems to be the brain’s way of reorganizing itself - which can be a dysregulating process. Obviously not all dysregulation in children can be attributed to cognitive reorganization / developmental growth spurts, but it is something worth considering if you see it happening with your child. Considering it from this perspective allows us as parents to slow down and wait to see what happens without immediately worrying that our child has regressed or become permanently dysregulated. Sometimes in development we take a step back to take a few steps forward – good to remember for all kids!

Until next week,
Nicole