and now these three things remain . . . faith, hope and love
and the greatest of these is love.  1Co13:13

Step 4. Re“appraise”

 Change The Way You Think
to help an Alphabet Soup Child
add...fasd...odd...ebd...adhd...pea...si...fas...fae...capd

By Jodee Kulp     www.betterendings.org

You would not understand color if you were born blind or interpret the rustle of leaves, if you had never heard sound. If your child was born with central nervous system differences, discover the missing bricks in your child’s development by discarding the “normal” template.  Your child’s only frame of reference is what they have experienced.

• Realize you may have a 10 second child in a one second world. Slow down. Give the child time to answer. I have had answers come days and weeks later.

• Reframe your thinking. Diane Malbin asks "is it your child can't or is it your child won't?" Step back and look at your child's behavior with new eyes.

  •  Don’t assume you know what your child is thinking or why the child is doing something. It is easy to think the child is being dis obedient or manipulative manipulative.

Examine the re-appraisal of the parents in the following examples:

• A child spit, sprayed and ate with her mouth open. The parents discovered the child was a mouth breather who believed that if she closed her mouth she would die. After the child was trained in nose breathing, table manners were possible for the child.

• A child who knocked over objects when he reached was found to have immature eye-hand coordination and was not be able to cross his horizontal midline (put his left hand on their right knee and his right hand on their left knee.) A cactus garden down the middle of a table provided a remarkable incentive to pass food carefully. Exercises increased range of motion. Vision therapy increased visual skills. Auditory therapy helped him with balance.

• A toddler who refused to eat and screamed at every meal. A dental examination discovered the child had no enamel on her teeth. Tooth capping made eating more pleasant.

• A child who could not sit still through a meal. A developmental assessment discovers the child has trouble with balance and must learn many new gross motor skills before being able to begin to sit still. Meanwhile the child is allowed to sit on a pillow, come to dinner last, fetch missing items and bus the dishes as family members finish and receive an allowance for his hard work and family contribution.

• As a child tired he seemed to be in constant motion. Often turning left and then right. A visit to the eye doctor discovered that the child's peripheral vision shut down as he tired and he needed to turn to see. 

• A child say's "I don't know" when asked why? A meeting with a neurobehavioral psychologist teaches a parent that the question why is too high level of question and sends the child's thoughts inward bouncing like a house of mirrors. The parents began asking what, where, when and how questions instead.