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Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours

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MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM OUR FAMILY TO YOURS

It’s December! Bring on all the end-of-year celebrations after another great year. How are you celebrating and acknowledging the last 12 months? 

End of Year Celebrations

For us, our team have been all together again in November and have had our Christmas Party. We celebrated the last year by being creative with making Christmas wreaths, eating delicious foods and spending some quality time together. Check out some of our Christmas celebratory pictures. Lots of laughs were had! 

We have continued our time together to participate in a team day, where we have spent time together reflecting on just how much we have achieved together for ourselves, clients, their families and our communities. We have been beyond grateful to continue sharing our knowledge and providing ongoing support, therapy and guidance in achieving your goals this year.  So, thank you for being vulnerable and safe in allowing us to come into your home and work so closely to gain these achievements! Without your ongoing commitment, we wouldn’t be able to work so effortlessly alongside you!! 

This opportunity has also allowed us to identify where we will focus on for 2024. As you know, we love a good theme, and this coming year, we have another coming your way. Keep an eye out for our New Year January blog, where we will share the 2024 Annual Theme and all the new exciting things coming!

School Holiday Groups & Intensives!

The last 12 months, we have been focused on developing new group programs for our clients based on feedback we have received. We have been working behind the scenes to be able to offer these options for January 2024. It gave us such joy to announce and share them with you all. If you have missed out on seeing these groups, make sure you check out our website for all the information or contact us today! 

These new group programs, “Game Changers” and “Transition to High School”, will commence in the January 2024 school holidays alongside our popular group programs “Big School STARS (transition to Kindergarten)”, “Shake n Bake” and “Teenage Dirtbags”.

Based on our group numbers, we will also offer limited spots for our School Holiday Intensives Programs. If you would like the opportunity to commence the year strong, discuss it with your treating clinician or call our office today. 

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! 

With great love and well wishes, the Explore and Soar team wishes you a great end of year with lots of celebrations, rest and family time. We look forward to going on a well-deserved break with you all from Friday, 15th December 2023 and returning on Monday, 8th January 2024. 

We can’t wait to see you all in 2024.

Until next time, 
Jess

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How to Build Resilience for your Child and Family

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HOW TO BUILD RESILIENCE FOR YOUR CHILD AND FAMILY

By the time you have read this blog, we will be back into the daily routines of school for Term 2. I don’t know about you, but Term 1 seemed to fly past, yet at the same time went so slow! Time seems to go faster as we get older, gain more responsibilities and life/society, in general, becomes busier. Some days there just does not seem to be enough hours to get everything done! And with that, I know that my own ability to cope and my own regulation capacity varies as I try to juggle all that is on the to-do list – both at work and at home. 

Over the last few months, I have been engaging in different professional development courses as I am forever learning and striving to do better at my job. While looking at various courses, a theme that seems to be more so present now than ever before is that of positive mental health, mental wellbeing and resilience. A theme that is across all aspects of society, with more awareness and education occurring on multiple levels. Resilience, in particular after the pandemic, seems to be coming more to the forefront. We often read NDIS goals or have parents tell us that they want to develop their child’s resilience. 

So what is Resilience?

Resilience is defined as:

  1. the power or ability of a material to return to its original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed or stretched; 
  2. the ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes etc; 
  3. the ability of a system or organisation to respond to or recover readily from a crisis, disruptive process etc

(From https://www.dictionary.com/browse/resilience (14th April 2023)

We can definitely see from those definitions why it is such an essential concept at the moment. From an OT perspective, we look at occupational resilience – a person’s ability to successfully participate in their everyday activities while navigating the challenges, changes, stressors and difficulties they face. We develop this resilience when working with your child so that they may overcome whatever hurdle they face at that point in time. 

Resilience development occurs through external factors (our environment), internal factors (our values, motivations and beliefs) and learnt factors (social, emotional and interpersonal skills). As OTs, we look at the whole person to consider all of these factors. We look at developing and enhancing your child’s knowledge and skills of emotions and emotional regulation, as their social skills and higher cognitive skills such as problem solving and negotiation. This is only one factor in the overall bigger picture. 

Family resilience and how to develop it

Developing Family Resilience is also vital. A key protective factor in mental wellbeing is relationships. We can foster family resilience through occupations (activities) that focus on each person’s strength, allow open and honest emotions and regulation capacities, being present and engaging with each other while contemplating the bigger picture, such as how we can all give back to our wider communities. 

In my family unit, one way that we worked on our family resilience was over Easter, we spent time at home enjoying our own space while also resting our minds and bodies. Initially, the kids were not so keen on staying home, but it allowed us as a family to bake, have Mario Kart races, and do a puzzle where everyone contributed to the finished product. Not all of us are good at each of those activities, nor is it our favourite thing to do. There was plenty of frustration, annoyance, and disappointment voiced not only by the children but us as parents too. It allowed us all time to decompress and process the term that was so that we could reconnect, reset and refresh for what is to come. Each family is different, so there is no right fit or right way to do this. It is about finding what works for you and yours.

Resilience Activities & Ideas for you, for your child and for your family

  • Gratitude Walks – go on a walk around your neighbourhood, through a park and comment on what you can see and are grateful for.
  • Art therapy – spend some time drawing and colouring in with your child to foster connection and communication.
  • Community Service – give back to your community in whatever way you can. 
  • Ask yourself or your child what the hard part is – identify what the challenge is to them so that you can work together to overcome it.
  • Look at the Resilience Donut – I have, I can, I am – to identify your strengths. 
  • Compliments circle – take turns in giving compliments within your family; give a random compliment to a stranger and see their reaction.
  • Sharing stories of Resilient People in history whom your family can relate to, eg: JK Rowling, Nelson Mandela.
  • Create a dream board – using visualisation of what you believe your family values and goals are. You could do this individually and then come together to work on it. 
  • The Hard Thing Rules by Angela Duckworth – This combines passion & perseverance, building confidence and grit. There are 3 parts.
    • 1. Everyone must do something hard, something that requires practice, something where you are going to get feedback so you can get better at something; 
    • 2. Must finish what you start eg: season of sport, number of lessons signed up for; 
    • 3. No one gets to pick the hard thing for anyone else – you must choose your own challenge. 

Additional Resources to read 

Check out some of the resources below around resilience for various age groups. Please also chat with your therapist about how else we can support you and your child here at Explore and Soar.

Articles 

Brown. T (2021). The response to COVID-19: Occupational resilience and the resilience of daily occupations in action. Aust Occup Therapy Journal, 68, pg. 103-105

Masten AS, Barnes AJ (2018). Resilience in Children: Developmental Perspectives. Children 5(98) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069421/


Zafran, H (2020). Occupational gifts in the time of a pandemic. Occupational Therapy Now, 22(4),
pg. 5-6. https://caot.ca/uploaded/web/otnow/OT%20Now_JULY_20.pdf#page=7

Until Next time,
Lori

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 3, 2023

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Handwriting & Creative Writing for Self-awareness and Wellbeing

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HANDWRITING AND CREATIVE WRITING FOR SELF-AWARENESS AND WELLBEING

There is nothing quite like putting pen to paper. 

Handwriting is a skill that we are often introduced to prior to entering school. It is then further explored in early education, then over time we develop the ability to form more comprehensive cursive written text. As we enter our teenage years and tertiary education, we then progress to touch typing – with digital correspondence becoming our most prominent means of written communication. 

We are taught to identify and draw shapes that lead into the pre-development of writing letters, and understand shape recognition of our letters to then write them. As Occupational Therapists it is our job to facilitate fine motor development, hand control and the strength needed to be able to achieve these handwriting skills, develop pre-requisites to handwriting and the correct letter formation. This occurs from capital letters to lower case to cursive writing in grades 3 and 4. We do this in conjunction with a child’s development and alongside the teachers in your child’s classroom. 

The power of handwriting is something that we as OT’s stress the importance of. Hoping for it not to be lost in a technologically advancing world. The ability to draw shapes and practice drawing letters prior to school, is a more powerful form of letter recognition for development in reading and writing once transitioning into school (James & Engelhardt, 2012).This is a more profound use of skill acquisition and the attention to complex writing skills, compared to tracing over letters on paper or using apps to do on electronics (Berninger & Amtmann, 2003).

So, what else is handwriting powerful for? 

Its power lies in a child or adult’s ability to to express themselves in written text! It can also be used as we get older as a creative outlet, a way to express ourselves without judgement, a way to work through our own personal experiences and emotions attached or further explore the process of different texts like short stories, plays and poetry. The power of putting pen to paper for written text has such profound positive effects on mood and well-being (Deveney & Lawson, 2022), yet despite all this evidence and documentation on creative handwriting on paper, it appears we are moving towards more technology based learning? So how does this further impact our children’s ability to attend to activities for longer, enhance their higher executive functioning skills of organisation, sequencing of an activity and expand their ongoing development and coordination of all skills together, such as cognitive, motor and neuromuscular?

I pose the question, what if writing is a creative outlet? A way to express ourselves without judgement, without rules, a way to make sense of our inner and outer world and enhance our wellbeing through body, mind and spirit. To declutter the mind and find truth, reasoning and intent behind our feelings and emotions. What if the very idea of escaping into an idea or fantasy prompts emotional regulation, self expression and a great understanding of oneself? 

I say this as someone who has truly found the benefit of written text – predominately through journaling to make sense of the world around me. Growing up, written text, English and the pressure of being creative within a certain formula was extremely difficult for me. I would become anxious and overwhelmed by the expected requirements. Not to mention spelling, grammar and paragraph formation. It was like an automatic cognitive roadblock to my brain that impacted the way I would bring together my creative mind and my higher executive functioning skills. 

Upon reflection growing up, these were all a part of my challenges academically and skills that certainly didn’t come to me overnight. In focusing on the finer details, I couldn’t be truly creative and use writing as a means to express myself and my emotions. I lacked self-regulation strategies, emotional awareness and that secure free outlet that I find today, in writing by hand in my diary. 

Taking the pressure off my grammar, spelling and structure when writing has helped to truly clear the road blocks I experience when I have to write an important written text for business or for everyday life. Even more so, journaling and creative writing about my life helps to clear my mind, and allows me to prioritise my important tasks. Looking back, what I often wonder that if I had this opportunity to explore a sense of creativity without limitations as a child, how much more expressive and perhaps how significantly better off my cognitive and creative mind would have been then. Especially through my teenage years and the challenges that high school brings. 

By using myself as an example, I hope that you can see just how important handwriting truly is as a means of self expression. Add to this colours, drawing, mind maps.. And your child’s development is greatly and positively impacted not just today but their years to come. Creative writing helps us gain perspective and channel different emotions.

So how do you use written language in your life and does it support your well being and mood when engaging? How do your children utilise written text in their life, and are you allowing space for creative and written language to express their emotions and work out different daily social contexts and events in order to  help with their own personal development and awareness? 

It might be time to put pen to paper and step away from the screen – for some creative expression. 

References:

Berninger, V. W., & Amtmann, D. (2003). Preventing written expression disabilities through early and continuing assessment and intervention for handwriting and/or spelling problems: Research into practice. In H. L. Swanson, K. R. Harris, & S. Graham (Eds.), Handbook of learning disabilities (pp. 345–363). The Guilford Press.

Deveney, C & Lawson, P. 2022, Writing your way to well-being: An IPA analysis of the therapeutic effects of creative writing on mental health and the processing of emotional difficulties. Counselling & Psychotherapy Research, Vol 22, Issue 2.   

James, K. H. & Engelhardt, L. 2012. The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literature children. Trends in Neuroscience and Education. Vol 1 Issue 1. 

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 5, 2022

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Social Skill Development & Community

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SOCIAL SKILL DEVELOPMENT & COMMUNITY

Last month we spoke about enhancing our understanding and development of safety and connection between the caregiver and a child. In the time that’s passed since our last blog,  so much has happened at Explore and Soar and with our families! With school and extracurricular activities, celebrations, catch ups and holidays all occurring over the last 6 weeks, as well as the constant uncertainty of Covid, we have been forging a path towards a new normal.

I have often thought about how exhausting assimilating into a ‘normal’ social life is for me, my team and our families. We have gone from months of being stuck in our own homes, to all of a sudden being out and about all the time. It has been exciting to reconnect with our friends, family and community in ways we did pre-pandemic, yet such a change does come with a few consequences. 

Notably, our children are exhausted! 

They simply haven’t had this much social stimulation in a long time. They have been out on weekends and are now experiencing their first proper end of term fatigue. And let’s be honest, as parents, we too are exhausted and needing some down time. 

As much as I want to discuss social skills and interaction in this month’s blog, I’d like to focus on finding the balance between socialising and creating the time for rest and integration (processing) time. 

Socially, developing these skills occur at the commencement of regulation and engagement (please refer to our previous posts), but social skills are dependent on a child’s ability to process sensory information internally and externally (from the world around them). This is completed through sound (middle ear), movement (vestibular system found within the ear), and the visual system (eyes), in conjunction with other systems in the body. Additionally these organs and sensory systems are all connected through cranial (head) nerves. When we are processing information, our sensory systems alert and motivate our body to carry this information through our nerves. Our cranial nerves are located on the face and in the brain, which allows us as young children to begin understanding non-verbal social cues. There are a lot of nerves that are connected to the mouth and eyes, from our ears, which when working together, create facial expressions and we then in turn use words to express ourselves, allowing us to socially interact with others using both non-verbal and verbal communications. 

If our children have challenges processing sound, visually tracking or moving their body, just their emotional regulation and social skill development can be impacted. Unfortunately children can’t always tell us what is going on inside their body with the use of words, but they can tell us with their behaviour. 

So let’s take 5 minutes to reflect on how your children have been over the last month. Ask yourself these questions:

How do they look? How are they feeling? Are they regulating through their emotions? Are they coping at school? How fatigued are they? When you are communicating and connecting with your children, are they seeing your facial expressions? Are they able to read your social cues in order to pick up on what comes next? 

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then please take some time to work on safety and connection with them. Support their regulation, calm their bodies and nervous systems. Pausing and giving time for their bodies to rest is optimal integration time to support gains in all development but also supports them in understanding demands socially through their sensory systems. 

So many of our children are easily overwhelmed by sounds, visual input, touch and movement. When they are not able to process these inputs optimally, it can greatly impact how they socially connect with you, as parents, their siblings, and additionally how they cope in the school and community environments, when connecting with their friends.

Which brings me to socialisation in schools. Is your child having difficulties socialising with their friends at school, is it becoming more of a problem now than in previous years? And how can you help your children more?

Please reach out and chat to us if you are worried about this! Each of your clinicians will have an understanding of your child’s needs and when we are working with them, we are developing their foundational skills to further support their social skills, or additionally we are specifically working on skills that can further expand their capacity to interact with peers.

Some strategies we work towards developing are:

  • Understanding their feelings.
  • Understanding others feelings through body language and facial expressions, such as happy face, surprised face, frustration or sadness.
  • Understanding whole body listening concepts and active listening when interacting with friends or a group of friends.
  • Developing group plans, negotiating and turn taking within these activities.
  • Expected, unexpected and flexible thinking when working with friends. 

At home there are things you can do to further expand your children’s social skills, such as:

  • Understanding which emotions your children feel or express to you. How many are there? (remember this will differ pending age and their self-regulation skills). 
  • Can they ask you what is wrong if your mood or facial expressions change?
  • Playing silly faces, can they guess emotions from facial expressions, such as sad, excited, surprised?
  • Play a game together that you all contribute to, each having an idea and adding everyone’s ideas together, to form a group plan and play as a family. 
  • Play boardgames that are chance related to expand on regulating through waiting their turn, winning and losing, as well as supporting each other as a whole family. 

As we are socially interacting with others in the community, school and different events, in order to further support your child’s tolerance in busy environments or supporting their reintegration into the community, you need to take notice of fatigue. Please consider different strategies that can support you and your children re-entering into the social world such as:

  • Reducing sounds, visual input and high energy movement to help them process the world around them.
  • Provide some visuals and plan for the day to support their understanding of routine and expectations.
  • When the days are not as busy, take your time or allow for transition times between activities.
  • Provide moments of deep pressure hugs, fetal positioning, ice chips, inversion activities, respiration or squishes to support their regulation and calming of the sensory system for increased engagement and interaction with peers.
  • Reduce time spent in the community or at events to support a transition back into the community and increase tolerance of high sensory inputs over an extended period of time.  

Allowing and providing our children with the best support in order to allow their sensory systems to engage socially and be present with others is paramount. It is vital in the current environment due to the reduction in time spent socialising during the last 24 months. Be kind to yourselves and to your kids, you have permission to take it slow. You do not need to say yes to everything! Think about what is best for you and your family, and focus on that!

We hope to continue seeing all of you venturing out into the communities, reconnecting with friends and expanding upon our children’s social skills. If you think we can further help you with these skills and expand on our support offerings, please don’t hesitate to contact me or your treating clinician.

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 13, 2022

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Safety and Connection

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SAFETY AND CONNECTION

As we continue to break down and share with you the way Explore and Soar supports our clients and families in our year of ‘self-awareness and growth’, it’s only fitting that after having dived into our continuity support plans and parent coaching strategies, we address the topic of ‘safety and connection’ with you. 

Upon reflection and after reviewing a large amount of continued professional development over the years as a practitioner, one valuable skill set remains a constant. This integral part of development is always discussed at the beginning of each theory or model for paediatrics. It is the ultimate foundational skill required for us as human beings in order to begin our journey of  overall development; from infant > toddler > child > preteen > teenager > adult. 

These skills are safety and connection. 

The premise being, no developmental milestone or emotional and social skills can be obtained optimally without the foundations of safety & connection. 

Establishing a sense of safety and security is essential to all stages of development, with connection following this. 

As occupational therapists when working with our clients and families, we begin by establishing what safety looks like for each family, in order to use our therapeutic practices in the most efficient and successful manner. Before any goals can be targeted or reached, it is essential for a sense of safety and security to be built between our client and their therapist. 

As a therapist when working with families, to be able to identify their strengths, boundaries and what makes them feel most secure allows for adaptive intervention methods. When this occurs, there is a natural sense of relief and sense of calm that is not only beneficial for our parents and caregivers but with our children as well. If there is no sense of safety between the clinician and parent/caregiver, then the safety the child will feel with the therapist can be altered, impacting all therapy intervention and a child’s ability to achieve their desired goals and skills in regards to development. 

Safety and connection work simultaneously. 

Connection is a feeling. It is often described as the way in which someone unconsciously connects to another’s energy and then interacts with your own. Think about when you meet someone for the first time. With some people there is a sense of calm and connection straight away, like you have known them your whole life. But then others can also have the opposite effect, with a great sense of disconnection. These feelings are our internal navigation system that helps determine whether we are feeling safe and connected or whether there is a potential threat to our sense of safety. Acknowledging these feelings then allows us to make a choice on how to respond. 

Personally, many of my decisions as an adult, especially in work have been navigated by my sense of safety and connection. I wanted to provide the support that I didn’t have growing up in a small rural town. I want to provide the knowledge, research and intervention strategies that I have learned over my lifetime to families in order to enhance their sense of safety and connection, especially in our remote areas that lack greater levels of support. At the heart of my why is relationships. And establishing Explore and Soar as a safe and connected space for our families is paramount. 

Ensuring that your children feel a consistent sense of safety and connection is what allows them to evolve and grow as a human.  

Connection is established from birth, however due to individual differences for each child, parent and/or caregiver we all have different ways of establishing these connections or different individual reasons as to why some of us may have difficulty establishing connections.  

Connection is the foundation to any relationship and is paramount for all of us as humans to feel connected. The bond between parent and child from birth is where this all begins. A model that we use within Explore and Soar is the DIR Model (Developmental Individual Differences Relationships-Based Model originally developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan) which allows us to work on providing strategies, interventions through parent coaching and relationship approaches to help our parents and children obtain a healthy parent-child connection. 

We seek to support the development of these skills in order to allow your children to enhance their own skills through a model of “Shared Attention and Regulation” – being the foundational pillar. 

It has been extremely exciting for us to explore the recent research addressing more specific developmental skills in relation to connection. These skills contribute to the beginning of development and enhance the child’s relationships and connectedness to both parent and self, ultimately allowing for future emotional and social development to occur.

So how do we as humans actually establish connectedness? 

We establish this through;

  • Mutual gaze – visually connecting in face to face interactions for connection of shared emotions which is foundational and earlier than shared attention (joint attention), through games with parent and child (Rollins, De Froy, Campbell, & Hoffman, 2021). 
  • Unconscious mimicry (shared actions), is linked to movement and body synchrony, outlining the importance of rhythmicity with movement, mirroring body language to connect to others (Peper, Van Der Wal & Begeer, 2016).
  • Synchrony – shared social timing, known as timed relationships, some examples include predictable rhythms of mother for baby to connect with such as heart rate, respiration, reciprocity (tone) of voice, sleep/wake cycles and an ability to have an interactive and rhythmic flow of interaction to connect the parent and child’s emotional state to match (foundations of co-regulation and regulation) (Feldman, 2007). 

These established skills result in a parent child synchronicity and connectedness, reinforcing the sense of safety as outlined above and supporting overall emotional skill development.

I personally love working within this field because you can learn so many different models of support and expand your intervention approach and strategies for all children, as no child is ever the same. As I continue to work in this field, I have begun to see each model overlap and support one another.

Safety and connection is vital in building the foundations to co-regulation and regulation. It greatly impacts social development which we will be discussing in greater detail next month.

Articles

Geller, S. (2018). Therapeutic Presence and Polyvagal Theory: Principles and Practices for Cultivating Effective Therapeutic Relationships. From Porges and Dana (2018) Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies. New York: WW Norton 

Feldman, R. (2007). Parent–infant synchrony and the construction of shared timing; physiological precursors, developmental outcomes, and risk conditions. Journal of Child psychology and Psychiatry, 48(3-4), 329-354. 

Peper, C. L. E., van der Wal, S. J., & Begeer, S. (2016). Autism in action: reduced bodily connectedness during social interactions?. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 1862. 

Rollins, P. R., De Froy, A., Campbell, M., & Hoffman, R. T. (2021). Mutual gaze: An active ingredient for social development in toddlers with ASD: A randomized control trial. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51(6), 1921-1938.

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 3, 2022

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