On today’s podcast, I quickly re-visit one of my favorite ways to help kids see the impact their words can have on others. Then I talk about two more ways to help kids & teens understand the impact their words can have on other people. I
Why I Love Playdates!
How Play and Coping Skills are Connected
As you may know, I run two websites - Encourage Play and Coping Skills for Kids. Although at first glance it doesn’t seem like these two are connected, they are - by PLAY!
The Importance of Play and Teachable Moments
Secret Messages
Inside: A fun arts and crafts activity to do with a social skills group. This is a great way to start a discussion hidden social rules.
Doing arts and crafts with social skills groups is awesome because it's fun but it’s also a playful way to teach. This lesson is all about about picking up on clues. This activity allows kids to write a secret message and reveal it.
6 Tips for How to Disagree
Social Stages of Play
Do you know how my 5th grade teacher taught us the planets? She sang it to us. When her former students would come back and visit, she would always ask if they remembered the order of the planets. And they’d all end up singing it back to her. Imagine these big high school juniors and seniors singing in the middle of a 5th grade class?!
How to set up a playful home
From the other room, you hear “MooOOOm, I can’t find anything to play with!!” Then you walk into a playroom filled with toys and a 7 year old who has their cranky pants on.
How many times have you experienced something similar? Your children have all these toys and they just don’t play with anything. It’s mind boggling, really. Let’s break it down and try to make it a little easier.
Book Review: The Incredible 5-Point Scale
The Incredible 5-Point Scale by Kari Dunn Baron and Mitzi Curtis is a great resource for people to use in a school setting, a social group setting or at home. It can be used to address a number of different issues, and it’s a great resource for working not only with kids on the spectrum, but for all kids who need a little extra teaching around social and emotional concerns.
4 Ways to Discuss Expected vs. Unexpected Behaviors
It’s expected that every morning I drink a cup of coffee. If I don’t have coffee, that’s unexpected. It’s expected that when it’s time for dinner, everyone comes in and sits at the table. It’s unexpected if one family member gets up from the table and starts dancing in the middle of the kitchen while everyone else is eating their meal. It’s expected that at bedtime, you get into your bed and lay down quietly. It’s unexpected that you come downstairs and ask for more to eat.
Social Skill Autopsy
A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of the book It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend by Richard Lavoie. I absolutely love this book, and I wanted to focus in particular on one of his interventions that can help kids learn from their social errors in the moment - The Social Skill Autopsy. Addressing a social misstep and using it as a teachable moment is a great way to help kids identify what went wrong and what they could try again the next time.
Why I like play dates
Just because it's scheduled time doesn’t mean it lacks imagination.
Kids need to play in order to practice creativity and flexibility, solve problems and learn ways to regulate emotions, and I’ve already addressed the importance of play in this blog post. A new phenomenon in play has evolved since I was a child, the scheduled play date. The play date has been getting some negative press recently, with people listing all the things they don’t like about them. There are pros and cons to everything, so I decided to explain why I appreciate play dates. I’ve found them to be helpful for a number of the children I‘ve worked with over the years, and I schedule play dates for my own children from time to time.
TED Talk from Tim Brown
I was intrigued by this TED Talk by Tim Brown because of the title - Tales of creativity and play. Tim Brown is the CEO of a consultancy company, and you might be thinking - what the heck does a CEO of a company know about play??!? Quite a lot, it turns out. This is an interesting TED talk to watch because he has the audience actually do a few creative activities, including drawing and shooting little foam rockets around the room. What I love about this TED talk is that he connects play with how that helps the creative process in the work place and suggests that adults should use play more. Here’s what resonated with me from this TED talk:
Temple Grandin - TED Talk
I finally got a chance to watch Temple Grandin’s TED talk from 2010. I first heard about Temple Grandin a few years ago when I watched the HBO movie about her life. I found it interesting and insightful and I’ve wanted to learn more about her. I haven’t had a chance to read any of her books yet although they are on my reading list. She has a lot of interesting things to say about children on the spectrum as they get older and enter the workforce. Here are some of my takeaways:
