Have Holiday Travel Planned? Some Tips to Get You There….

The holidays are a busy travel time.

Traveling these days can be anxiety provoking for anyone, let alone our kids!  Before traveling this year, consider these tips.

• Prepare, prepare, prepare!  Let your child know when you are leaving, where you are going, who you will be visiting and what you will be doing.  The more they know ahead of time, the less likely the tantrum.
• As part of the preparation, do an activity.  Have your child make a drawing of their cousins.  Show them pictures of their aunts and uncles if they haven’t seen them in a while.  Or show them photos of your destination.  Even showing them photos of the inside of an airport, security lines, etc.  Let them know!
• All of us who travel know that it can be a frustrating process.  There may be delays or other unforeseen circumstances.  Have a back up plan like a travel game or photos or a favorite book.  If your child has a “lovey” that’s manageable, let them bring it!
• Noise reducing headphones, post it notes, usually-not-allowed treats and stickers go a long way to reducing stress when you need it.  During the travel itself, be a little looser with the rules.  It will help everyone breathe a little easier.
• By all means, if you are staying with friends or relatives, prepare them for your child’s needs and behavior.  If your child requires special seating, let them know you need a special spot.  If your child has special food requirements, pick them up ahead of time or let your family know.  If they know what to expect, your family and friends will be willing to help.
• If your child’s behavior is an issue, talk to your therapist about how to manage it ahead of time.  This can include using routing planning charts, receiving special buttons for good behavior or other techniques.
• Don’t plan too much!  Keep sightseeing and activities to a level that allows for rest and time to hang out.
• Be willing to change the plan if it’s not working.
• Keep food and other daily expectations as close to what they would have at home as possible.
• Remember to have fun, connect with your child and enjoy the time away.  Research shows that vacations are the perfect time to work on ridding yourself of bad habits.  Think about that as you give yourself some much needed downtime.
• If your child’s vestibular processing predisposes them to motion sickness, prepare with some ice cubes, water and perhaps an over the counter remedy.  Some parents we know swear by lavender essential oils to ease motion sickness on a long car trip.

Have a great trip!

photo from familytravel.com

Beth Osten visits APT! Again!

Therapists observe a treatment session with Beth, an APT therapist and one of our kiddos.

 

We spent the weekend getting a refresher from Beth Osten, our Floortime guru.  Beth practices just outside Chicago at Beth Osten and Associates.  She is a nationally recognized speaker for Profectum and is a specialist in the Floortime model, first developed by Stanley Greenspan.  From the Greenspan website:

The Greenspan Floortime Approach is a system developed by the late Dr. Stanley Greenspan. Floortime meets children where they are and builds upon their strengths and abilities through creating a warm relationship and interacting. It challenges them to go further and to develop who they are rather than what their diagnosis says.

In Floortime, you use this time with your child to excite her interests, draw her to connect to you, and challenge her to be creative, curious, and spontaneous—all of which move her forward intellectually and emotionally. (As children get older, Floortime essentially morphs into an exciting, back-and-forth time of exploring the child’s ideas.)

For any age child, you do three things:

• Follow your child’s lead, i.e. enter the child’s world and join in their emotional flow;
• Challenge her to be creative and spontaneous; and
• Expand the action and interaction to include all or most of her senses and motor skills as well as different emotions.

The technique for Floortime requires advanced training, which Beth has acquired and shared with us.  Most important to her conference with us, we learned that we can facilitate both cognitive and motor skill acquisition by working within the child’s emotional and play behaviors.  It looks like play, but it’s so much more!

We will be asking parents to come into sessions with us so they can learn too.  If you have any questions, please ask!