That was pretty much how our day went. He was not unhappy. There were really no melt-downs. He wanted to play alone and he did not want to do any "activities." When he started biting his arm from wrist to shoulder while in a calm state, I decided this was a sensory issues day. He let me do a little deep pressure over his body and we applied pressure to the balls of his feet (me pressing on him and he pressing against my hands). We did some brushing and then a little HANDLE work. His body seemed very warm to the touch, but he did not appear to be running a fever.
He played outside in the water, running and spinning in the yard, sifting sand in the sandbox, and swinging on his swing.
He came to me to request snacks, open doors, water. We cleaned up the mess Frog made in the kitchen with the water facet in the sink. And I sang the "Frog is getting in mommy's car . . . running to Mommy's car . . . .jumping to mommy's car" song while we walked, ran and jumped. But we went around and around the car instead of getting in it.
We did take a ride and saw cows and raccoons. We tried to take a walk, but Frog wanted to stop every 4 feet and sit-down to play with the dirt/grass/sand.
We added a new book to our collection today:
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert. Frog sort of listened from across the room. The book is about the life cycle of a tree. We may bring this one back again and again over the year and finish by planting a tree of our own.
By 3:30, Frog was pooped. He headed for his room and fell asleep.
3 comments:
Did you learn to brush from an OT? I want to do it to my son but need to know the correct way? Any website you can recommend on this subject?
Also what is HANDLE, sounds so familiar? Just did a google search, is it the HANDLE institute? Now reading some of their pdfs
My son Nick who is 13 and my homeschooler has been watching History channel all morning since it is a jurassic fight club marathon, repeating severalshows, it is on Wed nites at 10 PM so tonight is his late nite.
He did two subjects for school and 2 more left and almost 11:30 so not bad.
Matthew is very tactile. I got him a quiet quilt, need to get it out soon since put it away during summer.
I didn't get any formal training in the brushing technique. I searched the internet, but wasn't able to locate instructions. Our school OT gave some handouts and basically instructed me to use the surgical brush and brush up and down on arms, hands, legs, feet and back, but never, never over stomach or head. The protocol calls for brushing every 20 minutes. Our School OT's use brushing not as part of an integration protocol as much as a sensory input prior to other work.
We haven't used the brushes for awhile. Now I just use my hands and brush down over arms, back, and legs. Similar to the brushing moves in the "Dendrite Dance". Frog has trouble releasing bio-energy (grounding). This type of brushing and some reflexology can help him with that and leaves him a little calmer in his body.
The HANDLE I refer to is The HANDLE Institute. We took Frog to see Judith Bluestone a couple of years ago. You can read about our visit and our program at
http://4-frogs.blogspot.com/2006/08/little-frogs-handle-program.html
and
http://4-frogs.blogspot.com/2006/08/getting-handle-on-little-frog.html
I love that book! We got it from a library- I should look for it again! Daniel went through a phase with sand/dirt this spring/summer. For him it was a visual thing. Frustrating and sometimes dangerous when he HAD to do it in a parking lot...
Once again, it's so nice to read about your day and what you're doing with him. Keep up the good work! It's encouraging to know there are other moms out there...
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