Five Tips for Successful Teaching at Home

Parents can make great teachers. We have some luxuries that teachers at school don’t always have...access to our kids when they are at their best and in a wider variety of environments. We don’t have to hurry. We don’t have to start the relationship from scratch every fall. We already know what motivates and delights our kids.

We can use these advantages for boosting our kids’ learning. Whether we support learning that is already happening at school or branch off with our own set of skills to learn, our kids can learn a lot at home. Here are five essential mindsets to make the most of the time we spend helping our kids learn.

1) Expect the best. Children tend to live up to the expectations of those people they value. Believe—honestly believe!—in your child. He’ll pick up on your attitude. Just as important, tell him you have confidence in what he can do. Be his most supportive cheerleader. Brag up your child’s accomplishments to others in her hearing, always ending with, “But then, it’s no surprise. We knew she could do it.”

2) Make learning interesting. Tie it in to your child’s passions. By relating the topic/activity to something child loves, you’ll keep her interest much better.

If she is crazy for penguins, let her practice her reading on books about penguins. Import images of penguins from the Internet into Powerpoint and let her write facts as captions to make a book. It can be as simple as her writing in the missing word in a repeating frame sentence on each page:  “Penguins _____ ....” She’ll remember—and read—“can” after this activity much better than if she copied the word five times on a worksheet!

Shark Toob toys

Work on ordering sizes using her penguin collection, letting her set them in a line from smallest to largest. Use penguin manipulatives to practice adding and subtracting facts to ten (check out all the types of “toob” sets available through Amazon.com using their search feature; Michael’s Crafts also carries them. They come in every theme you can imagine!).

Bring in music. Maybe I’m dating myself, but I still remember grammar rules from “SchoolHouse Rock” songs played during intermissions between cartoons. Oh, and facts about the solar system from an astronomy operetta we learned in 6^th grade. Check out SongsForTeaching.com to preview some fun song-fact CDs you could sing together in the car to make good use of that time driving back and forth to therapy. Or type a search into YouTube for “(your topic) songs.”

Make drill work into a game. There are many more ways to practice drill than on worksheets or flashcards! More-than/less-than is pretty ho-hum as a worksheet exercise, but everybody loves a rousing game of War (the new politically correct name is “Top It.” Parents have no idea what that is. It’s just the same good old game of War we grew up loving).  

Touch your head it the number is even, touch your toes if it is odd. Or convert true/false into a Simon Says game; if the fact is true, do the motion. If the fact is false, don’t change to the motion.

There are way too many sources on the Web to list for free online games to practice skills. Just type “free online (your skill) games” into your browser and check out the pages of results! You’ll need to preview them first, because some may require responses that are beyond your child’s capability (i.e.: a child with motor issues might get frustrated with a timed game).

Switch out modes if possible, so that kids get practice at the material in lots of ways. It’s more interesting and it will help them generalize the information later. Sometimes we read a book, sometimes we read the captions on the bottom of a movie (by the way, it’s a great idea to leave the closed captioning ON on your television if you have budding readers at your house and especially if your kids are working on developing rate/fluency!), sometimes we read the words on road signs or cereal boxes.

3) Make learning meaningful. Give it a purpose, a function. Transferring walnuts from one bowl to another is (y-a-w-n) BORing fine motor work. Transferring wrapped candies into goodie bags to pass out to trick-or-treaters gives fun purpose to the same task.

4) Keep practice short but make it often. Do you know what an amazing opportunity sits in front of you if your child needs supervision during toileting? My daughter has memorized so many things during toilet time—sight words, spelling rules, math facts, the order of the planets, anatomy of a fish, you name it! We keep flashcards for memory work on a shelf above the toilet. Working through them 5 minutes at a time, 5 – 6 times a day makes for a great schedule!

If toilet time isn’t an option at your house, try to find some other daily ritual that lends itself to short bursts of practice...often. How about 5 minutes of practice at the end of meals? Waiting for the school bus? In the therapy waiting room?

5) Relax and have fun! Learning isn’t a race. What your child doesn’t learn today, he can learn tomorrow. Take a deep breath—it’s really okay. If something just isn’t sinking in, come back another day, another month and give it a fresh go. Parents have a lot more leeway in this area than the school does so at home, especially, relax. Learning should happen for a lifetime, and so if it something doesn’t click today, you have all that lifetime to keep working on it.  

Learning at home can be very rewarding and lots of fun to boot! Here's a challenge for you...think about what might you help your child learn at home. Did you find any ideas here that might make it successful? Is there something I missed that other parents would benefit knowing about? Be sure to let us know what you are doing!

Also, take a look at Barbara’s blog carnival at TherExtras. She’s asked parents to share what they taught their children...you might get some really terrific ideas there!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

7 Ways to Deal with Daily Time Bandits

Have you ever heard the adage “We all have the same 24 hours in a day...it’s all in how you choose to use them”?

As a parent of a child with physical or cognitive disabilities, this can feel like a slap in the face. We don’t necessarily have a choice about how we are going to use our hours. We accommodate our children’s needs for physical care. We give our children the time they need to process and carry out instructions. These things cannot be hurried.

Last week a friend and I were commiserating about how time-consuming physical disabilities are. Sure, there are the big time-gobblers that come with the territory, like IEP meetings and endless doctor appointments.

But even more than that, there are day-to-day time thieves related to disabilities that steal away tremendous minutes. Every day. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year.

Moms of able-bodied children can direct their kids to complete their own care. Kids may not be  definitely are not quick when they are toddlers but there is the hope that things will speed up as the kids mature.

This isn't necessarily true for kids with disabilities who will grow to become adults with disabilities.

Let’s look at just one example. When the mom down the street needs to run errands, she can instruct her kids to grab their shoes and coats and meet her at the car.

Moms of kids with severely physically challenged children go through an entirely different process:

·        Check and replenish bag of travel supplies (5 minutes)

·        Put on AFO’s and shoes (5 – 10 minutes depending on the style)

·        Put on child’s coat (2 minutes)

·        Load child into wheelchair and walk outside (2-3 minutes)

·        Unload ramp or lift-up seat, secure child or wheelchair, reload ramp or lift-up seat (5 – 7 minutes)

·        Load wheelchair, if using lift-up seat (1-2 minutes depending on how many parts you have to remove)

·        Stop to recover breath if said wheelchair is over 30 pounds. Most standard wheelchairs are. Dust road grime from the wheelchair tires off your clothing (1 minute)

·        Go back to the house for your own coat and purse, DOUBLE-CHECK THAT YOU HAVE YOUR KEYS (2 minutes...infinitely longer if you have forgotten your keys)

Hmmm. It takes 20 – 30 minutes just to load up the car. This assumes the child doesn’t need to return inside to use the toilet. This happens.

And that’s just loading the car. What about dressing? Bathing? Toileting? Eating? Homework? The list goes on, and those extra 10-, 20-, 30-minutes add up fast.

How do we respond to this?

1. We commiserate with one another. It feels so validating to talk with other parents facing the same challenge of how to fit everything into the day. Our 24-hours are not our own. You and I are not the only people who truly don’t have discretion over how we will spend all our hours. Sometimes it’s nice to know you aren’t paddling the boat alone, isn’t it?

2. We streamline whenever possible. It’s helpful to keep a well-stocked backpack in the car with all the items you might need away from home. Our family keeps a change of clothes, an extra jacket, extra toileting supplies, spare g-tube extensions and an extra bolus syringe in the car for emergencies. To remind myself that something needs to be restocked, I toss it up on the passenger floor so I’ll see it when we’re unloading.

How else can you streamline your day? Can you organize your feeding or toileting supplies in the room to reduce backtracking and unnecessary steps? Can you purchase frequently needed supplies in bulk? Can you set out clothes and school items the night before?

3. We give ourselves extra leeway. Our families don’t operate on the usual timetable, so it does no good to try to squeeze into typical standards. While our destination may only be 10 minutes away, accept the need to start loading the car 30 minutes before we need to be there. Don’t fight it; go with the flow.

4. We are gentle on ourselves. We can’t get everything done in a day that needs to be done. But if, at the end of the day, our families tuck into bed safe, fed, clean and happy, we have accomplished something amazing. Be proud of your accomplishment. Do not allow the things left undone to steal your joy.

5. We MAKE time to do things that renew us. This does not happen automatically. No one is going to carve 15 minutes out of your day for you to do the things that refresh you. YOU must do this for yourself. You need this. Force yourself to find a way to grab a few minutes with something you love, whether it is time with a good book, time in your sewing room, time to relax with your spouse or in a bubble bath, time to train your goats...

There’s a corollary here that might help you locate a few minutes. It’s good to know everything you can about your child’s disability. Just be aware that you can lose yourself in researching the condition and its treatments (just ask how I know this to be true), especially online. It can be very helpful and quite fascinating, but hours can fly by without you realizing. Set a timer.

And when that timer goes off, take those 15 minutes of personal renewal. Please. You will feel so much better for it!

6. We learn to prioritize our commitments. We have to make what little discretionary time we have in our days count. Count Big. Count Big for the things we are personally vested in. Save the precious moments you do have left for the things that matter terribly to you.

I’ve heard moaning from several places about the noticeable lack of participation by special needs parents on school PTSA boards. Um, excuse me. Not only does our child with disabilities – and the rest of our family – require our time, but according to our life goals, the PTSA book sale may just not come up on top. Great if it does! PTSA is an excellent organization with good goals. But if it’s not a personal priority, we don’t need to feel obliged to make excuses.

We do not need to feel guilty saying “no.”

7. We learn to embrace our slow pace. I’ve told you earlier about my wise mentor, Vicki. Once when I complained to Vicki about how long it took to get through the basic routines of our day as I struggled with all my daughter’s “baggage,” she gave me a lovely piece of advice.

“Rose-Marie,” she said, “being forced to slow down is a gift. When you have to move through life slowly you will learn to see things you would have raced past before. Having to slow down allows you to savor life.”

Don’t you love her?

Several years later, Vicki’s daughter died unexpectedly. In one of our conversations when I asked how she was coping, Vicki said, “Something awful is happening. I am starting to hurry again like the rest of the world. I am forgetting how to live slowly...and it is terrible.”

There are days I struggle to remember that my slow pace of life is a gift. And Vicki is right. We may not accomplish as much in a day as our neighbors, but we have seen the small miracles.

We have given our children comfort and assurance. We have tangibly demonstrated love by our patience in accommodating their needs. Our actions show our children that they are precious to us. We have time to delight in these remarkable young people.

The hurry in life doesn’t matter; it doesn’t leave anything to show for itself but stress and gray hair and speeding tickets.

While I'm excited for what awaits on the other side, I’m in no race to get to the end of life. I might as well enjoy the scenery along the way. My child is teaching me this gift.

How about you? What advice can you share about living days where not all 24 hours are left up to your plans?

When Your Plate Gets Too Full

In the USA, we celebrate Thanksgiving each Nov. 25^th with an enormous meal. I’m sure every country has similar celebrations that involve heaps of food. Everyone reading, then, can probably relate to plates overfilled with delicious holiday fare.

We pile more enticing goodies onto our plates than any single human could possibly eat over three days (make that four days if my mom brings her Ambrosia salad). It’s no wonder we can’t eat all the food on our plates! There is simply too much.

But then Grandma comes out of the kitchen with her delectable warm apple pie and homemade vanilla ice cream and...oooo, yum!... We can’t say no (been waiting for this treat all year!). Oh no, we find a way to squeeze in a least a few bites of sheer bliss before we keel over in a euphoric state of overindulgence.

Parents have a tendency to heap more on our life’s “plate” than we can effectively manage. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end up in such a pleasant form of keeling over. It ends up in stress, poor health, damaged relationships, and a host of other nasties.

Much of what we heap on is by choice:  our careers, our homes, our church attendance, our hobbies and recreational activities, our pets, personal wellness, the extracurricular activities of our children, our fitness goals…the list is endless.

Some of what we deal with when our children have special needs is not what we would have chosen to add to the plate, but it is necessary for our kids’ well being:  medical routines, caregiving responsibilities, doctor and therapy appointments, IFSP/IEP/ISP meetings (don't you just love all that jargon?), 438 million phone calls to organize all these activities. Another endless list.

And then enters a plateful of “dessert” that we simply can’t walk away from—a crisis, an illness, some other unexpected circumstance that demands our immediate attention.

There are times all of this gets to be just too much. As difficult as it is, we must cope with our overfilled plates. Just how do we do that?

One way is to say no to anything that isn’t critical. If the candied yams with marshmallows aren’t your favorite side dish, pass them up for another that is.

You might decide that television viewing is a time luxury that you can’t afford. You might choose not to own pets (shhhh, don’t let our critters hear that one). You might limit the number of clubs and extracurricular activities that vie for your time. You might forego Twitter and Facebook.

Is there something you are doing right now that isn’t really necessary? If you stopped doing it, even temporarily during crisis, would your world really fall apart?

Another way is to scale back your portions. Take fewer bites of the things that matter. Maybe your hobby is what allows you to keep your sanity, but it may be necessary to cut down the amount of time you allow yourself to sew or sail or spelunk.

Scaling back is sometimes much more palatable than eliminating an activity all together.

Maybe your church’s home group is enough and all the extra women’s activities beyond that could be put on hold. Instead of visiting the library weekly, maybe a visit every other week is adequate.

What do you need to do or enjoy doing that you could do a little less of and still meet the need?

Streamlining your activities might be more of a cooking secret as we prepare that Thanksgiving feast than how we eat it, but it applies to managing all we have on our plate.

It’s become almost a game to me to figure out ways to save time or steps in my caregiving tasks. I save minutes by blending up a whole day’s batch of food for my daughter’s tube feedings instead of making single meals. By storing all her medications and tube feeding supplies in one cupboard, I save many steps in medication and meal prep. I use a quick checklist to send with my daughter to school each morning that takes only a couple minutes to complete and saves hours of phone calls later to clear up confusion.

Are there frequent tasks related to your child’s care that can be streamlined to save you time? Ask your friends who face similar issues how they approach the same task and learn from them (this strategy has helped me tremendously!).

Share what’s on your plate if you can. If you can’t eat it all, maybe someone else is willing to take several bites for you.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay someone else to do some of your work, then hire it out. Maybe you would be better off hiring someone a few hours a week to do your housework or mow the lawn.

Maybe you can trade tasks with another family. Swapping babysitting is a tough one where we live, but I hear from other moms that it can work well.

And be sure to ask. When a friend or relative asks what she can do to help, let her. Maybe she could drop off a package at the post office you’ve been meaning to mail.

Instead of trying to do it all yourself, what could you pass along to someone else? What creative arrangements might you design to make this possible?

And then, give up the guilt over what you cannot finish. No one expects you to clean your plate on Thanksgiving. No one expects you to “do it all” in life. If you expect that of yourself, you’re being a harder on you than you need to be.

Are you beating yourself up for the things you can’t get done? If so, give yourself permission to stop. Guilt isn’t going to get you anywhere.

Special needs parents have a lot piled on our plates that we didn’t ask for and that may not be favorite dishes. But this is our reality and we do have to deal with them. We have control over many of the other things we add to that plate, and we can:

chose to eliminate some,

cut back on others,

streamline our routine tasks,

enlist the help of others,

and above all, let go of guilty feelings when we can’t get all of it done.

Crystal Paine at MoneySavingMom.com has a free ebook on time management that is the single best book I have ever read on the subject of managing your time (and I’m desperately disorganized, so I’ve read shelves full!). If you need help figuring out how to deal with an overfilled plate, I recommend it highly. It’s a fairly short book written from a Christian perspective and worth digesting s-l-o-w-l-y to get the most benefit. You can download it here.

This weekend our house was hit with a stomach bug. It’s a great time for me to re-read Crystal’s excellent book and get my priorities in order for the extra heap of helpings on my plate right now. I hope you will download your own copy and join me in managing our full plates!

Here's to a lighter plateload for us all in the week ahead!

Photo credits go to purpleslog and Emily C. at flickr.com