Sit still, keep hands to yourself, & stop bumping into me!

Children often get in trouble at school for being "wiggly", not keeping hands to themselves or for personal boundary issues.  In late pre-k and kindergarten it becomes more important for students to learn these concepts.  When children do not master these concepts, they often get in trouble more and more and may start to dislike school.   Why do some children have problems in these areas?

Any of these issues may stem from a number of non-behavioral reasons. These are the major ones that I see:

Core Strength:  this affects sitting still in line, staying seated in a chair, and sitting upright in the floor during circle time.  Our core strength is a perfect synergy between our extensor muscles (in our back) and our flexor muscles (in our stomach).  When one, or both of those muscles do not have good enough strength to maintain an upright position for sustained activities, then a student will basically tire out.  The child may lean on others, attempt to lay in the floor, change positions, fall out of their chair, and be "wiggly".  In addition, kids with less than adequate core strength will often have reduced endurance and may be quite fatigued after an elementary school day.

Proprioception: this is one of our body's sensory systems that allows us to sense our body's position in space.  Our joints, tendons, and muscles contain the receptors that allow for accurate proprioceptive feedback.  When you lift weights, you feel each muscle that is being exercised.  If you work out well, you'll have awareness of those muscles long after your workout is over.  During and after this workout, you have a keen sense of where these sore muscles are.  In fact, if you close your eyes, you could likely point right to the place that you are the most sore.  This is proprioception (and maybe some lactic acid setting in too!).  Everyone has different thresholds for senses.  Kids that seem to be a bull in a china store most likely have very high thresholds for proprioceptive input.... meaning that their nervous system needs much more input before it can register the input. Kids that may have a high threshold for proprioceptive input are the ones that bump into everything, seem to be accident prone or clumsy, constantly seem to touch others, may hug or play too rough, or may crave  jumping/bouncing.

What to do?  For core strength, swimming, karate, and yoga are great activities that help.  You have to stay after it so that you can build on the core strengthening.   For proprioception, a sensory diet works wonders.  Activities that allow a child to get this input prior to school will help the child to succeed.  Sensory diets have to be allowed during and after the school day too.  They don't have to be obvious activities though.   A sensory diet activity can be carrying books in a crate to the library, jumping on a trampoline for 20 minutes prior to school, monkey bars,  sitting and bouncing on a yoga ball, climbing up a rope,  and other heavy work activities. 

If you need help, then get a pediatric occupational therapist involved.  Often, it is helpful for the connection at school as an O.T. can explain why a child's behavior is an attempt to activate the nervous system, not an attempt to drive the teacher crazy.  :-)

Executive Skills- had to practice what I teach

NOTE:  not for the weak at heart or for parents that don't like to see messy rooms.  

Executive skills coaching /therapy takes a child's strengths and weakness's in mind when working toward the ultimate goal of improved achievement at home and at school.  Executive skills are those frontal lobe skills.  In children with ADHD, studies have found that executive skills may lag by as much as 5 years.  Wow.   Here is the list of executive skills.  Want the definitions?

Response Inhibition   

Working Memory          
Emotional Control
Sustained Attention
Task Initiation
Planning/Prioritization
Organization
Time Management
Goal-directed persistence
Flexibility
Metacognition

I got a good dose of using my training last week when my son got really upset at me and completely wrecked his room.  He threw everything off the bed and shelves and threw in the floor.

a wrecked room for sure

Brain Training at Learning Charms..and a little vent

"Brain Training" (also called cognitive training) is a hot topic of interest for parents of children who are struggling in school, or who have  ADHD, learning disabilities, attention/focus issues and sensory processing difficulties.  There are many franchises that offer brain training.  Brain training is not new, but is a new "hot word".  Occupational therapists have been helping clients to rewire their brains for decades.  We just called it "occupational therapy".   Occupational therapy increases achievement of students by working on the underlying and foundation issues of development, such as core strength, sensory processing, bilateral use, fluency, motor planning and so on.  Therapists practice increasing left and right brain integration every day because that is part of therapy. This increase in foundation skills increases academic performance.   In the past several decades, new high tech systems (such as Interactive Metronome) have come along that can assist therapists with improving and refining areas of focus, attention and timing.

So, my clients have asked me about these brain training franchises and what they do. I cannot say that I can personally review their effectiveness.  But I will share some insight.  I recently met a student that worked at one of the franchises and I asked what she did there.

Jumping rope in occupational therapy

Why do we jump rope in O.T. and handwriting tutoring?


My students always want to know why I make them jump rope so much.  If you come to see me at Learning Charms then you'll definitely be leaving being much better at jumping rope. 

Why is it important?  Jumping rope is beneficial mostly for fluency.  Fluency is part of motor praxis (meaning "planning") and is basically the ability to keep a steady pace and rhythm. It can be seen in reading fluency, math fluency, and even fluency in independent working pace.  I especially like jumping rope for children with ADD/ADHD.   Fluency is an executive function of the brain, meaning that it is a high level skill.  I teach jump rope to kids as young as 3 years.  As they get older, we learn to jump rope backwards, one footed, with rhymes, and counting backwards by 2's or 3"s.  Jumping rope helps with academic skills, timing, sensory processing and motor coordination too.  Bring out the jump rope this summer!

Occupational therapy for poor handwriting: why it works

Most of our clients come to us to improve some component of handwriting or writing skill.  Parents often question why occupational therapists work with handwriting so much.  Handwriting is a very complicated neurological and anatomical process.  Usually poor or inefficient handwriting or penmanship is simply the symptom of a developmental process that is not functioning smoothly.   When a well trained pediatric occupational therapist evaluates handwriting issues, they should be evaluating specific developmental areas. 

Optimal handwriting skills also require fundamental skills such as:
core strength
sensory processing
fluency praxis
processing speed
trunk stability
bilateral integration
upper body strength
visual motor integration (also known as eye hand coordination)
visual perception (vision to brain processing)
pencil grasp, finger strength and
postural stability

This is why traditional handwriting tutoring by someone other than an occupational therapist may not give your child the improvement that they need.  Once a trained occupational therapist has helped a child to improve these underlying fundamental skill sets, then a child's handwriting will quickly improve. 

Letter recognition, visual perceptual and rock salt

Kids love digging in odd textures and after having left over rock salt I decided it would be fun to utilize it during therapy.   I added some colored alphabet letters (they are actually beads) to the salt.

Then I wrote a few letters that they would be looking for on the grey boxes (Handwriting Without Tears paper).

I allow the alphabet letters to be upside down or backwards in the rock salt, as being able to find them in this manner increases form constancy which is a  visual perceptual skill.  Form constancy just means that a leaner know that a letter turned sideways/different color/various size is still that letter and can pick it out. Form constancy is a skill needed for reading.

To modify this activity to make it harder, I could actually write a few letters on the grey boxes, let them look at it for a few seconds, and then turn the sheet over and have them see how many letters they can find that I had written down.  If they can put them in order then this increases the challenge.  I often may ask the child to write the letters in the extra boxes.  Asking a child to find a certain number of letters in a specified time is a great way to increase the challenge.  If I want to test letter recognition, then I could ask them to give me certain letters but not write them down. 

To modify this activity to make it easier, I could decrease the number of letters in the rock salt and decrease the letters that they are looking for.    If the child doesn't like the tactile feel of the rock salt, then they can pull out with tongs or use thin gloves to pull the letters out of the salt.

numbers, letters, shapes and handwriting on chalkboard

I love using my chalkboard that I have painted on the wall in my gym and throughout my center.  To make the activity more therapeutic, I always have kids use broken chalk pieces (encourages proper grasp), have them kneel while writing (trunk stability), and let the kids use a spray bottle to clean their work. 

The activity I use with many 4 and 5 year olds helps with letter recognition, drawing shapes, and counting and writing numbers.  This method also helps kids to learn to follow and remember multi-step directions.

First, write several letters on the board.  I do a variety of capital and lower case letters--this time it was some of those "tricky" ones that are commonly reversed.

Notice the right side of the board-  this is the "key" which the kids will refer to finish the task.  For example, the "B"'s should be found and surrounded by a triangle.  This is a great time to reinforce shape drawing. 

Next, the child will start finding the letters and surrounding them with the shapes as indicated on the key.

I usually put 2-3 copies of each letter on the board so that it gives the child more opportunities to find the letter and to practice the shape.  If the child is too overwhelmed by a lot of letters, then you could do less. 

When they have found and surrounded each letter by its shape, I ask them to then count how many times they found each letter and then write it in the box beside it.  The box helps them to define the area that I wish them to write and is familiar to the kids that are learning handwriting with the Handwriting Without Tears program. 

At the end, the kids get to use the spray bottle to clean the board. They love it!