Fine Motor Skills

A lot of children have trouble with their fine motor skills. Occupational therapy is usually recommended to address this delay. However, there are TONS of things families can do at home to work on these skills. Most of these activities can be done with materials you already have around the house. I would recommend doing a couple of activities each day during playtime, depending on your child's needs.

Pincer Grasp
Children develop their pincer grasp around 12 months of age. They move from using all their fingers to "rake" items into their hand to using their index and thumb together to pick up small objects like Cheerios. A neat pincer grasp is important for eating- picking up foods to finger feed, putting food in their mouth nicely instead of shoving it in with their whole palm, and eventually using utensils. A pincer grasp will eventually be needed to hold a pencil correctly and button buttons.

* Put small items such a beans or coins in playdough and have child get them out
*Put flat items like coins or bingo chips into a piggy bank
*Use an eyedropper filled with paint to drop paint onto paper for unique art
*Crumple bits of tissue paper for craft projects
*Peel off stickers
*Tear tissue paper
*Squirt toys in the tub (little fish or ducks that squirt water)
*Place clothespins around a empty container or paper plate
*Pop bubble wrap

Strengthening Hand Muscles
*Use a hole puncher
*Playdough or Thera Putty
*Squeeze a turkey baster 10 times in each hand
*Use large tongs to pick up cotton balls or pom poms and put them in an open container (also good for hand-eye coordination)
*Play with squirt guns or spray bottles filled with water

Disability Scoop

I check in with Disability Scoop throughout the day. They gather popular news stories about all types of developmental disabilities. It covers everything from the latest research, how Congressional decisions affect Medicaid benefits, to human interest stories.

Beginning Signs Pt. 2

Now that we've gone over how to teach signs, here are the signs most teachers and speech therapists start with. I usually work on one or two new signs at a time. It's important to remember your child doesn't need to get the hand formations exactly right. A good approximation is all we're looking for.

More

Put your fingers together on each hand and tap your fingertips together

Eat

Put your fingers together on one hand and tap your mouth

Please

Place your hand flat on your chest and make clockwise circles

Thank You

Holding your hand flat, touch your chin and pull your hand down

Beginning Signs

I plan to cover a little bit of everything with this blog, so I thought a good place to start would be some beginning signs. Signs are a great way for kids who are autistic or have general speech delays to start communicating. The nice thing about signs is most of the beginning ones are pretty obvious and self explanatory. Kids as young as 1 can start picking them up.

Some kids who have expressive language delays will just use signs for a short time, as kind of a "place holder" until they start talking more. Kids with hearing loss or who are very delayed may continue to use them and add more and more as they go. Kids who aren't able to express themselves by talking tend to get frustrated and have temper tantrums. Imagine being hungry but unable to tell anyone! Teaching them some basic signs can help ease their frustration.

In the case of some children on the autism spectrum, you need to start by teaching them WHY they should want to communicate with you. They may seem uninterested. You have to show them that saying something, whether by talking or using a sign, gets them what they want. Look for opportunities where they are really motivated- if you know they really want a ball, show them the sign for ball. If they really, REALLY want a cookie, do the sign for cookie. After they do the sign, even if you have to use hand over hand, IMMEDIATELY give them what they asked for.

How To Teach A Sign:
I'm going to use the sign for "more" as the example

1. Look for an opportunity. If your child is eating goldfish crackers, give him one cracker at a time. Then say, "Want more?" several times while doing the sign for more.
2. Hold your child's hands and do the sign (hand over hand)
3. "YAY! YOU WANT MORE!" and give him a cracker
4. Keep repeating the process (maybe over days or weeks) until your child gets the hang of it
5. Eventually, ask your child if they want "more" and do the sign yourself. Try this several times if needed, waiting to give the kid the opportunity to do it himself
6. If your child does the sign independently, great! If not, give him a little hand over hand assistance

Depending on the child, it can take days or weeks for them to get the hang of a new sign. Kids who already know several signs will pick new ones more quickly.

Tips:

• Use signs CONSTANTLY. Use them at every opportunity.
• Give your child tons of praise! Keep it simple though- "Good job! You said MORE!"
• Food can be a great motivator. Create opportunities to sign by giving your child one goldfish or piece of dry cereal at a time. Break a cookie into several pieces and give one at a time. This is a good way to work on "more", "eat", "please", or specific food signs.
• Siblings love to use signs as well. Teach the whole family. The more your child sees the sign, the quicker they will learn it and be more likely to use it

A little background...

I've been working with special needs kids for six years now. I started in college while I was studying psychology. ABA (applied behavioral analysis- intensive therapy for children with autism) was big in our area, and a lot of the agencies hired college kids as tutors. I mainly worked with two kids, one preschooler and one elementary school age.

After graduation I found a job teaching at an inclusive preschool for Easter Seals UCP. While I was there I taught the two and three year old class, but also worked with the other age groups some as well. Without knowing it, I had picked one of the biggest learning experiences in my life! Our kids had a wide range of needs. Some were typical, some were on the autism spectrum, some had gross motor delays such as cerebral palsy, and many had various genetic issues resulting in delays. We had a lot of kids with medical issues, such as epilepsy or kids who were tube fed. I was able to work closely alongside our therapists, including OT, PT, and speech. We also had visual impaired and hard of hearing teachers.

My most recent adventure has been as an early intervention coordinator for my state. I assist families of children birth to three in getting therapy services. I also help them as they make the transition from early intervention to our county school system. So far I'm learning a lot, particularly about preemies and their specific needs.

I hope I will be able to combine a lot of what I have learned and continue to learn in this blog! I've had some many great teachers along the way and I hope to be a good representative for them.

Here goes nothing...

You always hear about people blogging their "passions", and if you're like me it always made you feel just a little inadequate. You just didn't get excited enough about something to put in all that effort to share your thoughts with the great wide world. Then one day I realized I do that everyday, only not on imaginary internet paper.

I spend most of my week thinking about, remembering, and researching ways to improve the lives of kids with special needs and their families. I'm pretty sure I bore my family regularly, telling them excitedly about some new trick I figured out to make Mikey eat peas. Do they really care about Mikey getting over his texture issues and swallowing a single pea?

Probably not. But Lindsay's mom, whose kid hasn't eaten a vegetable in three years, would probably (hopefully) eat up any advice I could give! So here's the start of my humble blog. Nothing groundbreaking here, just a simple way to share all the little things I've learned over the past few years in hopes that it will encourage a parent to try something new. I'm by NO means an expert in ANYTHING, and I don't claim to be. But it's a great wide world of confusing information out there, especially for parents of special needs kids. How can I get him to eat? Does she need a compression vest or a weighted vest? What exactly IS a pincer grasp, and more importantly, what good is it if he's using it to draw on my walls?

Here's to looking for those answers together...