The Three Biggest Mistakes Parents and Teachers Make
Do you know the three biggest mistakes parents and teachers make with their Autism and ADHD children that prevent them from excelling?
1. Not taking time to do mindfulness and meditation, 2. Reprimanding instead of modeling, and 3. Not realizing the value of cross-body movements to build new neural pathways, bringing the brain hemispheres together, and integrating the brain with the body.
I have made all three of these mistakes.
Number one, meditation and mindfulness. You're probably thinking, “yeah, that isn't happening.” I totally get it, because when you're busy you're just managing to keep things together from sun up to sunset. You wake up and don’t stop until you collapse in bed at night.
So much happens during the day. So much time is spent just to keep things from falling apart. Often the family dynamic, or the dynamic in the studio with ASD or ADHD students, can turn into fight or flight mode all through the day.
The good news? We don't have to think of mindfulness and meditation as being long, and involved. Even a couple minutes here and there throughout the day can make a huge difference.
For instance, doing deep belly breaths–take a deep breath very, very slowly, suspend it, then release it, and pause before inhaling again. Holding your breath takes you from the sympathetic nervous system, (fight or flight), into the parasympathetic, the rest and digest.This can be done in the midst of many activities.
Sometime during the day, weather permitting, get your feet in the grass. Or, take off your shoes and socks, rub the bottoms of your feet back and forth on the carpet, or a rug, to create really nice friction and heat on your souls. It's a very grounding sensation and it is wonderful to do before going to bed. You will sleep better.
Number two, reprimanding, instead of modeling. Reprimanding puts the child in defensive mode where they shut down. Modeling creates a sense of safety for children to explore new and unique situations.
I did a lot of reprimanding early on in my teaching. I think it becomes our default response when children misbehave, or when we think that's what's happening. We often think, “get it together. I told you to do this. Why aren't you doing it?”
So instead of reprimanding, do modeling. Modeling can be matching the child's speed at doing something. If you're out walking with your child, match their speed. If they go really fast, all of a sudden just slow down a little bit and say, “Hey, I just noticed you're walking ahead of me. When did that happen?”
Comment on the behavior or action. Use a lot of nonverbals, a lot of facial expressions, instead of words. This helps them learn to pick up on social cues and expressions. The ability to read social cues, (the mirroring ability) is working in their brain, it’s just turned off, because most of the time they are in defensive mode and aren’t able to focus on those cues.
In the studio, modeling can occur by playing along with a student. Use the same steps mentioned in the above paragraph. Again, modeling, instead of reprimanding, creates a sense of safety for the child so they are able to learn new things.
Number three, not realizing the importance of cross-body movements to develop new brain tissue. In the brains of people on the spectrum, brain research is showing the Corpus Callosum tends to be either smaller, or there tends to be a lack of some of the tissue.
The Corpus Callosum is the white matter which joins both the left and right hemispheres, allowing communication between those hemispheres.
One integrated, cross body movement could be the Cross Crawl.
The Cross Crawl is like crawling standing up. You cross the right elbow to the left knee, then the left elbow to the right knee. The best results happen when doing this in slow motion because it helps develop the vestibular system (the nerve bundle located near the base of the brain and connected to the inner ear) that has to do with balance.
You could also crawl on the floor with your child, or get them climbing, doing yoga, or Tai Chi. Anything that gets them moving in a cross-body fashion helps to build new neural pathways, or you can think of it as new railroad tracks in the brain.
To recap, the three biggest mistakes parents and teachers make is not doing mindfulness and meditation, reprimanding instead of modeling, and not realizing the importance of cross body movements in building new neural pathways and cohesion in the brain.
If you’ve made these mistakes, it's okay, I've made them too.
If you would like more ideas, or to find out how I work with adults in a deeply supportive way, you can book a free support call with me. Just click this link here, or in the comments below.