COVID-19 outbreak has shattered many personal and professional lives. Together we faced withdrawal, hopelessness, difficulties in concentration, feeling of being less productive, disturbed sleeping and eating habits. Many people felt sad, anxious, and unhappy. During these uncertain times it is important to count our blessings. Try gratitude! It is as powerful as possible.
“We SURVIVED the first Lockdown!” July 2020, while some families scream out of frustration and relief, others reflect their achievement and gain. One shared experience from parents is “I never knew my child CAN do that!” The imposed Lockdown has brought out the challenges, along with the opportunities for families to connect, or reconnect. No doubt about the challenges, we are well informed by the news and critiques. I would like to spread some antidote reflection from parents and families with children on the spectrum.
As parents, we often worry about our children and sometimes we are not sure how to respond to them in given situations. This is common for parents around the world.
The image on the left is thought provoking because it shows us the interactions between parents and children at times, and perhaps we (as parents) do not even realise it. The message from the image is to connect with our children with all our attention. Too often, parents feel or report that their children do not pay attention to them when they (parents) want to talk to them or that they (parents) seem disconnected from them. As parents, It is important to ask ourselves “how present are we when we are with our loved ones, not only with our children?” What is the real presence at the moment? Too often, we are present with our bodies but not our minds (as our minds are full of demands and not in the moment).
How well the being residing within your body feels?
We often think of ourselves as just a body and forget that the “being” residing within this body is the real “YOU”. This being within you is made up of a plethora of experiences, actions, thoughts, activities and behaviours. The health of the being within us plays a colossal role in the quality of life we experience here on this earth as a humans. This contributes to the bigger picture that is our overall state of wellbeing, which affects our day-to-day enjoyment and comfort.
“Say lolly or I won’t give you lolly”. How many times do you find yourself saying this sentence? As parents with a child with a severe language and speech impairment we often try to elicit our child’s speech by asking them to say the word before giving them their favourite food or toy. How many of us have stopped to reflect and wonder “Does this strategy really work?”
Let us have a look at what the research says.
Emotional regulation refers to a person’s ability to understand and manage their emotional responses to situations. Toddlers are often witnessed throwing, what is loosely described as tantrums, in shops when they do not get the toy they want. They are incredibly sad and do not yet understand their own body’s response or know how to express their unhappiness. Imagine for a moment: You are watching a clip exploring a mountain range. Suddenly your body starts feeling hot, your palms become sweaty and your heart beats faster. You do not understand what is going on and do not have the words to describe it someone. This is what it might be like for a child experiencing big emotions.
Each year that begins, we are challenged to face endless personal and family tasks and obligations. The school break generates changes in our routine, and for most of us, we have to quickly adjust back to established schedules, tasks and activities. Every change generates the need to assimilate, accommodate and finally adapt to the new reality. This is a psychological process that we all go through. During the process, different emotions are aroused: neutral – positive and / or negative. It is important to keep in mind that there are no good or bad emotions but that each emotion is produced to give us information about how we are feeling in a certain situation. That is why it is important to be able to welcome all our emotions and break old beliefs.
As human beings we all are motivated by different kinds of things. For example, waking up in the
morning is much better when accompanied by the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Going to work
everyday is fuelled by the anticipation of the weekend just lurking around the corner. We look
forward to things that reward us with joy and are more likely to do them.
We are wired to repeat behaviours that fuel the reward centres in our brain. It could be a
smile from a co-worker, a favourite lunch or a positive comment from a client that has the potential
for us to want to repeat the same behaviour again.
Internet overuse could not only potentially cause addiction, extend existing pathologies, and even worse, damage social functioning.
If you don’t use your leg muscles to walk for a week, you will notice the efforts to walk again. If we do not use what evolved over millions of years as biological social interaction, like reading a person’s face, observing someone’s postures and gestures, listening to the tones of speech, and processing further non-verbal information, then our social capacity is likely to weaken.
Living in a group and sharing tasks in a group has its evolutionary value, compared to a lonely isolated life. As a consequence of a social life style, a number of emotion-related capacities, such as reading expressions in someone’s face and listening to varying affective speech melody while being actively engaged in direct communication, has been imperative to social functioning.
As therapists we often get the question: “How can I teach my child with ASD at home?”
Fortunately, it is much less complicated than you might think. You don’t need fancy and expensive toys. All you need is patience and creative ideas. Ideas to create ample opportunities for teaching. There are so many activities we do in our day to day lives that can create a great learning environment.
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