Everybody Stims

Just a few ideas to follow up on my summertime post from a few weeks ago.  Here are some ideas to fill those days where your kiddos are bouncing off the walls and it's really hot out and September seems eons away... •    You don’t need a therapy room devoted to mats, balls and swings, there are all sorts of activities to get the same input. Try games such as Twister, sack races, whiffle-ball in the yard, or even a trampoline –the mini or large kind. •   Hiding under cushions, making forts, obstacles or crash pads in the living room is always fun.  Rolling up in a big blanket together to make “body bagel dogs” or under a bunch of pillows to make “human fruit salad” on the couch or floor is always fun. “Toss” the salad by having the child pile up with pillows and stuffed animals on a big blanket, then you gather up the corners of the blanket and shake and pull them around. Then change places. Be brave! Wrestle, roughhouse, break a sweat toge...

I've never made cards like this or handed them out before. Thinking about it as we leave our sweet, safe little Vancouver community nest to travel a bit this summer, I'd like to be uber-prepared, just in case. Starer-ers, snickerers, and pointers are not my favorite people but I usually ignore them or try to give them a straight on for reals, Namaste-yourself-I-see-you-and-I-still-love-you smile saying we are just fine thank you. Happy, even. However, as we venture far out into areas unknown in challenging new ways, I want to make sure Dan has backup, and if I don't have the emotional (or sleep) resources to bring forth my namaste-self, then I might need to just hand out a card --really it would be to make myself feel better. But families, just so you know, I have mixed feelings about these things... Part of me is like; "It's no one else's business and effing back off if you are disturbed by my obviously struggling child or I will shank you." We...

Every year, after the initial excitement and novelty of mornings with cartoons and pajamas wears off, usually just after the 4 th of July, I often get the question:   “Help! What can we do to fill up our summer days?” Good question. So many of our kids enjoy highly structured lives. School, therapies, doctor appointments, and activities typically fill our days. Often we feel we have to fill the empty spaces during summer months to keep our kids from stimming the day away and getting very bored or behavioral. However, we can only go to the zoo or Children’s Museum so many times before we want to poke our own eyes out, so what to do? These days, spontaneous individual play is a challenge for many kids, but it can be doubly challenging for us, especially when  nostalgically  thinking about the “typical” summers of our own childhoods. Those long, unscheduled hours of grimy, sepia-tinged adventures we  remember, glorified in movies like “The Sandlot” with...