Beautiful dreamer

Asperger’s was first recognised in late 1930’s in Vienna, by paediatrician Hans Asperger. He noticed similarities in a number children with developmental challenges and documented these. 


Now this could be another boring story of another expert on a leather couch, but Hans was living in challenging times- in late 1930’s Vienna was just about to be overtaken by the German Nazi’s. Hans knew that if he called this pattern of behaviour a disability then these children would be killed by the Nazis. So he identified the challenges of the children, but also documented these children’s stunning abilities, particularly with numbers and codes. He identified that these children would make great code breakers and the Nazis did in fact use these children to assist them in code breaking (as did England at the time).


It’s an amazing and inspiring story, one that made me cry for all the children who weren’t seen for their strengths, and then cry some more tears of joy for all the children with Asperger’s who were seen for their strengths. 


It made me think: What strength would you see in your children if their life depended on it? Do you:                           

See the Strength in your Jedi,

the Speed in your McQueen, 

the Beautiful Dreamer in your Belle 

and the Enthusiasm in your Tigger?

So go enjoy a Vienna Coffee and listen to this amazing ABC interview with Tony Attwood where he discusses the above story and other wonderful positives about kids.


Holly Treechange

beautiful failure

I have tried a lot of Apricot Slice recipes now. I’m trying to replicate that apricot slice from childhood, you know the one? It’s just perfect in my mind but nothing comes up to scratch. Well, tonight I tried to change a pineapple slice into apricot slice and it was definitely a fail. The kids didn’t mind, pour custard over anything and it tastes ok. But I knew. 

But as the Robinson’s say:  “Keep moving forward!” 

It’s important to talk to kids about failing, and sometimes check in and see what they are afraid of. As with all problems, the best answer can be a question: 

“What’s the worst that can happen?” 

Not a rhetorical question, but truly step out with your kids what could happen, and what is the worst. Then find the humour. So for example my little tree was recently worried about a test at school. So we talked about some of the terrible possibilities. He could not do well, do badly or even worse be so worried about it he would forget to get dressed and go to school in pyjamas!

(I find if the humour brings anything to do with toilets, it works especially well.) Then we look at the chance of that happening. Getting the calculator can always help out, you can’t argue with the facts. 

It doesn’t always work. The little tree survived the tests at school but came home from sports day upset. He hadn’t done as well as he had thought he would. I got straight into what’s the worst that could have happened and dealing with his thoughts, I forgot the biggest thing. To just be with him and have a cry and say that it does suck... Because sometimes no matter how much custard you pour on top of the apricot slice, it still sucks.  

I love this photo, it reminds me that sometimes,

 failure can be beautiful. 

Feel free to share your best failure or that hidden apricot slice recipe I am seeking.

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White shirt envy

I have a favourite white top that I bought in celebration of my children getting older and feeling that I could finally wear white. I would wear it to outings with other mums whose children were still a bit younger, secretly gloating that I was beyond all that and could wear white. “My children are old enough to wipe their nose, wash their hands, not unexpectedly spit up all over me”, my white shirt would say. Oh the joy, it had been 9 years since my last white shirt.

You know where this is going don’t you? And of course it wasn’t the children that got a terrible stain on my white shirt, it was me. It came in from the line one day with two big reddish brown spots. I tried everything, nappy san, sprays and scrubs. Nothing worked. I gave up on it and on ever being able to wear white, realising it possibly wasn’t just the children that had been holding me back from my white fantasy filled life. 

Then one afternoon I listened to Shannon Lush on the ABC radio. This was when I first learnt that stains had to be treated differently depending on their cause. I know to all the domestic goddesses out there this is not news, but to me it was earth shattering. I looked at my stain, thought long and hard and decided it was a rust stain from the pegs. Shannon Lush suggested pouring a mound of non-iodised salt over the stain then a few drops of lemon juice to wet the salt and hanging it in the sun to let the salt dry. “The drying would lift the stain right out”, she said. I tried it, and was ecstatic to see it worked!

I realised that I could learn a lot from Shannon Lush, who knew that you need to understand the cause of a problem to solve it. It’s the same with parenting. 

You need to understand the cause of the behaviour, in order to change it. 

Researchers generally agree that children’s behaviour is motivated by avoiding or gaining something. Just by monitoring a problem behaviour and keeping a record of:

·         What occurs just before the behaviour?

·         When is the behaviour more likely to occur

·         What happens after the behaviour?

By thinking about these things, you can then identify what the function of the behaviour is.  When you understand the behaviour, like a simple stain that you have tried everything to remove, the right treatment can be applied and voila. Problem behaviour gone. 

Of course it’s slightly more complicated, but you get the idea. Other functions for behaviour might be to get attention, self-stimulation, tangible rewards, displaced anger or retaliation. If you would like more, you could read any of the good parenting books- I even think that Triple P parenting book has some good info on this, but my son flushed it down the toilet (that’s another Blog though). Or get with the technology and buy an app.   

This one looks good:No More Meltdowns

I would love to hear if you have got any favourite parenting apps? Or stain removal advice!

And with all that lemon and salt from stain removal, I am going to try this recipe: Roast Potatoes with Paprika and Lemon Salt

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Images

white clothes on line

pegs on line

no more meltdowns

roast potatoes

I love you to Eris and back...

I was snuggled up reading a book with my little branch last night, when she said that her teacher read her this book at kindy. Oh lovely, I say. Because it was one of those beautiful, almost sickly sweet mummy-loves you-forever-to-that-planet-past- Pluto, that’s not really a planet…. You get the idea.

Yes, little branch says, “I told my teacher that you don’t love me.” Pardon?! Me, who is reading you the third book for the night, who plays fairies with you, even acknowledges you at the shops when you have a massive tantrum? Me, who gets up to you in the night, tucks you back in, kisses you on the forehead and says I love you every time?

Yes, me. She smiles cutely and snuggles in to me. So I explain to her that I love her and we talk about all the ways people show they love each other. About forgiveness. She has well lost interest by now, keen to get back to the great book.

I think that is why I do love reading to my kids at the end of the day, no matter how old they are. You discover the most interesting things. Like how I have now learned that I have to go and do OTT displays of affection at kindy so the teacher doesn’t think I am awful!

I also think that there aren’t many problems in kids' lives that can’t be solved by reading just the right book. They are such visual learners and stories help us connect to children. 

My favourite non-sickly sweet books are anything by Peter Carnavas. 

and "I love you forever" by Robert Munsch which is also a subtle story about the life cycle.

A not too sickly sweet recipe to pair with your reading:

Key Lime Pie

Pastry
• combine 1 cup SR flour, ½ cup plain flour, ¼ cup cornflour, ¼ cup custard powder, ¼ cup sugar 
• rub through 125 grams chopped butter til you get the breadcrumb thing happening 
• knife through an egg or two depending on the size 
• when it's combined, knead into a ball 
• cut the ball in half 
• press one half into a large pie pate (and freeze the other half for next time!) 
• bake the pie shell for 10 mins at 1800C then remove from the oven

Filling
• combine tin of condensed milk, 3 eggs, juice of 3 limes (don’t throw the skins away) 
• pour into the half baked pie shell and return to oven for approx 20 mins 
• remove from oven (should be a bit wobbly in the middle) and allow to cool 
• refrigerate

Topping
• whip 300 ml cream with 1 tablespoon icing sugar 
• fold through zest of 3 lime skins (told you not to throw them away) 
• spread cream over the filled pie, and back into the fridge for at least 1 hour before serving

I would love to hear other people's suggestions on their favourite books to read.

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Images

http://cbishowcase.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/peter-carnavas.html

Copyright (c) <a href='http://www.123rf.com'>123RF Stock Photos</a>

worth a thousand words

Just watched this amazing film clip: it’s hypnotising and made me stop the housework for a full 4 minutes. It's great photos of now and then, an awesome song too!

There are some blurry booby images, so avert the kiddies eyes if you are so inclined.

Made me think of my own childhood photos, most of which would need blurring too given I was very anti-clothes.

Wouldn’t it be great to take some photos like this with your siblings now? We all use photos for the standard dragging out and embarrassing kids at birthdays as they get older, some ‘scrappers’ use them to make amazing artwork. I love using kid’s photos to help them with worries and learning new skills. 

When kids start school, a great idea is to make a story out of their photos of the new things that have done in the past- first swim, day at kindy, poop in the potty! You can then create the story of how they faced new things in the past, how at first it was a little scary or worrying but soon it became natural.

I love this kind of visual work with kids, who are by nature visual learners. Carol Gray’s Social Stories TM(thegreycenter.org) are an extended form of this story telling, and are fantastic for children with anxiety, on the Autism Spectrum or any child who is struggling to learn a new skill. Photos of kids doing the activity work best, but If you don’t have a photo don’t let that stop you being a Social Story Teller. Download some pics on the web, or some of my best Social Stories have been spur-of-the moment stick men completed by the kids themselves. 

Now back to talking about siblings - have to link to food somehow! My sister and I used to love to cook together. We would pretend we had our own cooking show. I don't remember what we used to actually cook. But we remember the shows!

This recipe is one of our favourites, it's from the fabulous Edmonds Cookbook.

Recipe here: Afghan Biscuits

I make the icing without butter. Mainly because when we made it as kids we used up all the butter in the recipe! But I think it makes it even more delicious.

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bubble thoughts for relaxation

Script for bubble thoughts:

Begin by sitting in a comfortable position, with your back straight and shoulders relaxed. 

Softly close your eyes. 

Imagine bubbles slowly rising up in front of you. 

Each bubble contains a thought, feeling, or perception.

See the first bubble rise up. 

What is inside? 

See the thought, observe it, and watch it slowly float away.

Try not to judge, evaluate, or think about it more deeply.

Once it has floated out of sight, watch the next bubble appear.

What is inside? 

Observe it, and watch it slowly float away. 

What colour is the bubble?

Is the bubble empty? Then watch the bubble rise up with “blank” inside and slowly float away.

This script can be used to help your child relax at bedtime.


for more information visit:


www.mindfuleducation.org/mindfulnessforchildren.pdf

Link back to this post to read about a healthy sleep routine.

http://twigblossom.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/go-to-sleep-my-love.html

Another post about relaxation.

http://twigblossom.blogspot.com.au/search/label/milkshake%20bubbles

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The Healthy Mind Platter

With so much focus on obesity in the media, many parents I talk to want their children to be healthy. We have all heard of the healthy eating pyramid, that tells us how much of each type of food to eat. Being healthy is more than this focus, and Dr Dan Seigal and Dr David Rock recently came up with healthy diet for our mind. The Healthy Mind Platter.

 http://drdansiegel.com/resources/healthy_mind_platter/

Do you feast each day from one section of the platter? Imagine if we focused on the healthy mind diet. I think the next time I went out for coffee I would say “I’m sorry, I have been pigging out on ‘focus time’ all week at work, I think I will just have a little slice of down time”. And promptly lie on the grass, recharging my brain.

“Down time: when we are non-focused, without any specific goal, and let our mind wander or simply relax, we help the brain recharge.”        

     Dr Siegal

You may have started to notice I’m all about parenting, and all about food. A healthy recipe is called for today: make it with your children so that you are also having a healthy mind platter.

http://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/nutrition/recipes/survival_I/treats2/carrot_muffins

Take these scrumptious healthy carrot muffins to the park or back yard, lie down on the grass and tell their children it’s time to feast from the healthy mind platter.  

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