Dealing with Holiday Stress & Transitions

This time of year is exciting while we wait for Santa and his reindeer and all the rest of the holiday fun. Unfortunately, along with all the fun can come anxiety!

Anxiety in your child can look like worrying and crying, but it can also look like an increase in rigid thinking, noncompliance, sleep disturbance, and altered appetite.

Here are a few techniques to help with holiday transitions and help keep this a joyful time for all:

• One of the most effective techniques for dealing with transitions during the holidays is using a visual calendar to indicate the differences between days. You can click here to download and print a simple calendar for the holiday break. 

My encouragement to you is even if you think your child is going to be fine, sit down with him and mark the days that things will be "different". This can include relatives coming over, playdates, travel dates, days at mom's house or dad's house, Trail of Lights visit, and when we return to school, etc. Hang it on your fridge or in your child's bedroom and refer to it often. If the plan changes, make a quick note on the calendar. Allowing your child to see what is coming next automatically decreases their underlying anxiety.

Some children need a more detailed plan for the day. It is not always necessary to have a formal visual schedule. Often, a quickly jotted list on a post-it note is sufficient. You can make the "plan" for the day with your child the night before at bedtime or at breakfast. It might look something like this...

If your child is a time-conscious kid, just add ballpark times, but emphasize that they can change. If
they do change, make the change in WRITING!

Carefully choose the amount of information you want to share with your child about upcoming events. Children on the Autism spectrum function better with factual information about what to expect, but don't give too much information too soon. That can actually backfire and create the anxiety you were trying to avoid in the first place! It is okay to "drip-feed" information as it is needed.

Preview the "expected" behavior before social events or new experiences. You can discuss what they can expect to see, hear, and do and what others expect to see them do. Discuss any "hidden rules" of different environments. Hidden rules are those things that no one explicitly spells out for us, but we are supposed to just "know". A few holiday examples might be: if you get a gift that you don't like or already have, you smile, say thanks, and take it anyway or if you are served food that is not your favorite, you either take a little on your plate or politely say "no thank you" and choose something else - you do not announce to the group that it is disgusting!

Hidden rules are a giant minefield for our kiddos. The more you can think through the hidden rules of a situation and clue your child in before the event (or even during if necessary) the more competent they will feel, the calmer you will feel, and the more fun everyone will have.

Finally, remind your child that if the noise, crowds, excitement, and new experiences start to feel not fun, it is okay to say "I need a break".

Always respect your child's need to take a short break away from all the "fun" stuff. Talk about ways your child can take a break in "expected" ways (go in the bathroom for a few minutes, ask to take a walk with a family member, take headphones to block out noise if your child is especially sensitive to sound). If your child does start to have a meltdown, make sure to reassure him that it is okay and that he can use his calming plan next time.

Remember, the focus is on growing skills to be more flexible in different circumstances, improving perspective taking skills by recognizing the thoughts and feelings in others, and celebrating the use of coping strategies to stay calm and get needs met appropriately! Improvement in those areas is the best present of all!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for sharing your children with me every day. I am the luckiest teacher at Baldwin! With love, Mrs. Hively

Social Thinking Group October Updates

I cannot believe we are already through our first nine weeks! Time is flying. We have accomplished so much during this time. Here are a few highlights from Social Thinking Groups this month...

Kindergarten & 1st Grade Groups - We have continued our study of the basics of social thinking by reading about Thinking With Your Eyes. Did you know that you can think with your eyes? Yep, it's a fact! The kids have learned that what they look at is what they are thinking about. They have practiced identifying what characters in the book and members of our group are looking at and thinking about by filling in their thought bubbles.

We've built on these skills by reading a book about The Group Plan. In our reading and follow-up activities, we have practiced identifying what the Group Plan is and how we can match our thoughts and actions to keep our brains in the group.


2nd Grade - The Second Grade Social Thinkers have now been promoted to Social Detective Status! They have learned that social detectives use tools from their social detective toolboxes to help them figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. They can then use these tools to make smart social guesses.


The tools that we all have in our social detective toolboxes are our eyes, ears, & brain. We take the information that we see and hear in our social situations, run it through our brain computers and we can make a smart guess about what might happen next! It's an amazing superpower to have!

Using these tools has helped us practice identifying expected and unexpected behaviors. It is very important to remember that behaviors are not "good" or "bad". They are just expected or unexpected in the situation. When people engage in expected behaviors they keep the group feeling good. When they engage in unexpected behaviors people might feel uncomfortable, angry, or have weird thoughts about us. Here are some helpful visuals to work with your child at home on expected and unexpected behavior.  You can click here to download a copy.

3rd Grade - Our 3rd grade Social Thinkers have done an extensive study on conversation skills. We have learned how to tell when it is a good time to have a conversation vs a no-so-great time. How to tell when others are interested vs not interested. We have learned about how body language affects our conversations. We have examined conversation maps and identified ways to keep the ball bouncing back and forth between conversation partners.

Over the next week or so we will wrap up our study of conversation by looking at different ways to maintain and extend conversations using non-verbal cues, humor, asking for clarification, sharing a similar feeling or event, asking questions to get more information, making comments that show that you understand how the other person feels, offering help, and making a complimentary comment.

Sensory Tips for a Happy Halloween

Hello Parents,
I just wanted to share a couple of good articles from Specialism.com about how to deal with sensory sensitivities and anxiety at Halloween. I hope you find these to be helpful.

Click here to read the article on anxiety. 
Click here to read the article on sensory sensitivity.

Social Thinking Group Updates ~ September 2013!

We've had a great time in our first four weeks of Social Thinking group this year. The kids have done a fantastic job welcoming new members to the groups and continuing to build upon skills learned last year.

Here is what we've been up to...

Kinder Social Thinkers - We've begun using the Incredible Flexible Me curriculum to learn about what thoughts and feelings are. We've learned that what we look at is what we are thinking about. We've practiced keeping particular topics in our "thought bubbles". We have used play to practice taking turns and sharing. We've practiced identifying basic emotions in ourselves and in others through static pictures.

1st grade Social Thinkers - We've reviewed concepts from last year using the Incredible Flexible Me curriculum including what are thoughts and feelings. We've begun working on recognizing our feelings in the context of "Zones". The kids have practiced identifying scenarios that create feelings in the various zones and have modeled those feelings through photos/video. You can see an example of the Zones of Regulation visual below. We've begun to work on finding "tools" in our environment that can help us change our "zone".

We have also worked to plan and install our Speech-Social Communication Learning Garden! Our 3rd grade social thinkers were responsible for the actual building of the garden. Our 1st grade social thinkers were in charge of adding soil to the garden and planting two different types of broccoli and cauliflower.

Here are some photos from our garden planting day:

Working together to spread the soil

Planting cauliflower

Planting broccoli

More broccoli!

Taking turns with the watering cans

2nd and 3rd grade Social Thinkers - We've spent a good amount of time building community with new group members and beginning our Zones work. The kids have learned to identify their own physical and emotional state, represent it on our Learning Zone chart, and are now beginning to practice using various "tools" to change their feelings. We will continue to work on this over the next couple of weeks. You can view an example of a Zones of Regulation visual below. In addition, these marvelous students have used our Get Ready - Do - Done strategy to plan and build our Learning Garden. Mrs. D and I were so impressed with the amazing teamwork, group planning, and sharing that occurred during this process. We have some amazing social thinkers in these groups!

Check out our photos from garden building day:

Reading the Garden Kit Instructions

Construction time!

Teamwork!

Action shot with the rubber mallet!

Planting Buttercrunch lettuce

More lettuce!

Planting Fire Power Lettuce! Wowzers!

Watering our newly planted Circus Carrot seeds!

Finally, I have some exciting news. As you know, Dr. Peña and Ms. Kane are both great supporters of the SCORES and Speech/Language Programs. They have allowed us to expand our sensory break space into another room that is being shared with after-school groups. We've been able to build three center areas including a Fine Motor Center, Gross Motor Center, and Calm Body Center. The students are able to use this area for planned body breaks as well as those on-the-spot needed body breaks when they are having difficulty keeping their body or brain in the group. If you'd like to check out photos of the space, you can visit the collaborative blog that I write with Mrs. De Los Santos that is geared for other speech therapists and special education teachers. You can view the post by clicking here.

Thanks for your support!
Mrs. H

Ways to Keep Your Child Reading & Writing This Summer

Parents,
I think this blog post from thisreadingmama.com has some great ideas for integrating authentic reading and writing practice into summertime activities. Enjoy!
Click here for ideas to keep your kids reading and writing in the summer!

Hooray for Summer!

Congratulations to all the kiddos for their hard work this year and a big giant THANK YOU to all the parents for your support this year. I'm so proud of the growth that each student has made.

I hope that you all have a relaxing and fun-filled summer with your kids. Take advantage of the downtime to try new activities with your kids. Summer is the perfect time to try to expand your child's interests.

Don't forget about the importance of a simple visual schedule to ease the anxiety of transitioning into summer and back into school (or any "different" time like vacation). Here's a link to a post about working through transitions with a printable calendar. 

When the summer doldrums hit, here are the some resources for
fun activities in the Austin area.
Click here for a comprehensive list (free & not so free)! 

Click for  lists of free summer activities!

If you would like to see your child be able to complete more writing on the computer, summer is a great time to have them work on developing keyboarding skills. Check out this post for links for keyboarding games.









Summer is also a good time to work on basic personal care and safety skills like shoe tying and  learning their parent names, addresses, and phone number. Here's a link to a post with shoe tying visuals.

In mid-August, I will touch base with each of you to see how your summer has been and send you a social story and picture of your child's teacher for next year. We will also set a meet the teacher visit when it is quiet and chaos-free.

Have a wonderful summer vacation!

p.s. I've started a SCORES wishlist page on the sidebar. If you have a moment, check it out! If you can keep your eyes open for small items for the treasure box, that would be great! When my kids were younger, I was famous for swiping those discarded Happy Meal toys from the floorboard of the car to recycle in the treasure box! Any freebie can be a good wishlist item (keychains, pens, pencils, sticky notes, toys, etc).  Wish List

Fun Ways To Develop Keyboarding Skills This Summer!

I've spoken with several families about increasing their child's familiarity with letter location on a computer keyboard. Typically before having a child do more of their writing on the classroom computer or considering assistive technology options for fine motor/handwriting difficulties, it is important for students to be familiar with the keyboard and be able to quickly locate keys. Hunting and pecking is fine, but needs to be able to be done pretty quickly in order for it to be a help and not a hindrance for students.

If you think that you would like to discuss having your student complete more writing assignments on the computer or requesting assistive technology such as a Netbook or an Alphasmart next year, please have your child spend time this summer using the computer with the goal of becoming faster at typing.

The kids can email me at kelley.hively@austinisd.org to practice typing or perhaps a family member or friend. They can also play computer games for 10 minutes a day and will develop skills quickly. If your child is a video game fan, I recommend requiring them to practice a typing game for 10 minutes before they can access the video game of their choice.

Here is a list of great (free!) online resources for keyboarding games:

typingweb.com 

This site has excellent instruction as well as games. The section under "courses" is unfortunately dull, but good to do if you can get your child to work on it for 5 minutes or so. The section under "games" is fun and good practice.

Dance Mat Typing

learninggamesforkids.com

What is Social Thinking (c)?

Social Thinking (c) is a concept originated by Michelle Garcia Winner. She defines Social Thinking (c) as:

Social thinking is what we do when we interact with people: we think about them. And how we think about people affects how we behave, which in turn affects how others respond to us, which in turn affects our own emotions.

Whether we are with friends, sending an email, in a classroom or at the grocery store, we take in the thoughts, emotions and intentions of the people we are interacting with.

Most of us have developed our communications sense from birth onwards, steadily observing and acquiring social information and learning how to respond to people. Because social thinking is an intuitive process, we usually take it for granted. 

But for many individuals, this process is anything but natural. And this often has nothing to do with conventional measures of intelligence. In fact, many people score high on IQ and standardized tests, yet do not intuitively learn the nuances of social communication and interaction. (http://www.socialthinking.com/what-is-social-thinking)

If you are new to learning about how Social Thinking (c) instruction impacts your child, you might find the videos below helpful. They are excerpts from workshops provided by Michelle Garcia Winner.

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