Friday, June 18, 2010

Before and After

All those years since he was two I kept waiting for our Timmy to just grow out of it. I'm not sure I can explain but I felt I always had to;

  • follow him around like a two year old to make sure he was understood
  • guide him to a more appropriate way to handle a situation
  • intervene quickly before a catastophe happens
  • make sure other kids were not taking advantage of him
  • make sure he wasn't doing too risky a feat
The it we found out was ADHD.  Now Timmy has been on medication for a whole month. It would be great to have an assessment from the school teacher on a before/after but unfortunetly the teacher became very ill the week after he started medication and has not returned. He had a couple of different teachers during those weeks. One of the relief teachers said he was doing good. Not sure what that meant but I do know that I didn't receive any school calls so I guess I can assume all is good.

It would be nice to have a spot the difference picture -like the ones in those puzzles books where they have the two pictures side by side. 

Picture Before                               Picture After
*Timmys lone desk                         *Timmys desk grouped
   with a masked tape boundary          with the other desks
*Timmy fidgeting in his seat             *Timmy seating still in his seat
*Timmy blurting out whenever         *Timmy raising his hand

 The term is over and he is suppose to be getting a new teacher next term.  So maybe we can start over again. I keep thinking about his lone desk. I would love to go in there and move it into one of those small group of desks and rip the masked tape up from the ground.
             
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Monday, June 7, 2010

1-2-3 Magic

How do you stop those annoying kid behaviours?  You know they can stop screaming in an instant.  You count them thats what you do.

Well there is a right and wrong way to do the 1-2-3 count? Yes, I have been doing it all wrong all these years. I guess you can attribute it to the same outcome as when you played "telephone tag" as a child. You know the game where you have this big long story and tell it to the first person in the circle who tells it to the next, and then the next and final end up with something totally different then when you started.

There is a book the psychologist recommended when trying to sort out Timmy, our recently diagnosed ADHD kid.  Its called 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas W. Phelan, Ph.D.. Can't mess with that. And apparantly there is a whole web site dedicated to it http://www.parentmagic.com/. I'm going to have to check this one out later.

The book states there are two behaviours that you are trying to control (stop and start behaviours). Stop behavours are (teasing, whinning, etc) and start behaviours (clean your room, brush your teeth,etc).

TO STOP A BEHAVIOURYou must show NO emotions, NO explanation
  1. Say; "Stop screaming"
  2. If they dont stop say: "Thats 1" say nothing else and give them a second
  3. If they continue say; "Thats 2" say nothing else and give them a second
  4. Still screaming, say; "Thats 3, you have 5 minutes in ___" 
  5. If they dont' go to ___, then say they have additional minutes if they dont' go.
Works perfect if you are consistent and REMEMBER NO EMOTIONS, NO EXPLANATION

You want them to stop and you know they can. Don't give them the control by seeing you scream like them.



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