Speaker 1 (00:00): What’s important to know about this is that even though your child may have mastered or is showing the ability of a certain skill, it doesn’t mean they always have access to that skill because when the child’s nervous system is dysregulated, their brain reroutes a lot of their resources and energy to the survival part of the brain, which is the lower brain. So just because your child could sit still and focus last week during library time, maybe this week, they don’t have access to that part of the brain because they’re dysregulated. So if the gap is too big between those demands and the skills that your child has in that moment, that’s when we see a lot of the big dysregulated behaviors and these then often get misidentified or misunderstood as kids being bad or just not listening, or not wanting to participate or being disrespectful. (01:04)Welcome to the Sensory Wise Solutions podcast for parents where parents can get real actionable strategies to support kids with sensory processing disorder. I’m Laura OT and mom to Liliana, a sensory sensitive kid who inherited my anxiety and my love for all things Disney. Consider me your new OT mom, bestie. I know my stuff, but I also know what it’s really like in the trenches of parenting a child with sensory processing disorder. Okay, mom, enough about me. Let’s start the podcast. Welcome everyone back to the podcast or welcome to the podcast. If this is your first time listening, let’s hope I can get through this episode without a disruption from the tiny human who is home instead of at school because they’re on their break, their fall break work from home parents, you know, the struggle. So we are here today talking about the gap. The gap where behavior lives, which is the way that I like to explain dysregulated behaviors to parents and educators. (02:16)So in the last three years now that I have coached parents virtually, I’ve had to not only coach them on how to handle dysregulated behaviors and how to support regulation around those behaviors, but I’ve had to teach them how to become good observers. I actually remembering, I think it was in my fifth grade science class, that being a good scientist means making good observations, and I can still remember highlighting that word in my science notebook and that thread of being a good observer has carried on all throughout my work with kids and also in grad school and in the clinic. And of course, as a parent, I’ve just been fine tuning and sharpening my acuity for observing kids. And let me tell you, it is a gift and a curse because I just cannot turn it off. Now, in any public setting, I am constantly observing every single behavior that every child is doing, and sometimes it’s entertaining. (03:29)A lot of the times it’s exhausting it. Moving on. What I didn’t realize is that these kinds of observation skills had to be explicitly taught, and it’s been clear over the last few years that parents or just non OTs really, really benefit from guided direction on what exactly they need to be observing. So today I’m going to help you through that. This is one of those listen and take notes episode. It will be jam packed with tons of information and it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what we cover in my free detecting dysregulation training, which is now available for you to register@theotbutterfly.com slash training. It is accessible until October 27th at midnight Pacific Standard time. Hopefully you’re listening to this before then. So whether it’s notes from the teacher that say your child won’t stay with a group during circle time, or it’s your child being so snappy and rude and irritable with their sibling or your child is having extreme aggressive behaviors after school. (04:41)Let me draw your attention to something called the gap. So for every scenario, environment, context or activity or task, there is a set of demands that are placed on the person who’s participating. So for this case, let’s say it’s your child. There’s a set of demands that are placed on your child’s brain and body. By demands, I mean anything from cognitive demands, social emotional demands, physical demands and nervous system or sensory processing demands. So for cognitive demands, I mean things like having to wait your turn or having to focus on a particular lesson or knowing to answer a question that someone’s asking for social emotional demands. I’m thinking having to say bye to mom after drop off or having to share toys or space with your sibling or peers. Physical demands includes things like being able to have an upright posture at the dinner table or sitting crisscross applesauce or the visual motor demands of writing your name Speaker 2 (05:57): Or knowing how to stack blocks nervous system or sensory processing demands include things like being able to tolerate the bright lights in the classroom or the competing background sounds in a restaurant or the constant nagging from the seams of your socks. Those are the demands. Then there’s your child who’s participating in that environment or that task and they have a set of skills that are currently available to them in that moment of time. So your child has a certain level of cognitive, social, emotional, physical development and nervous system processing skills. What’s important to know about this is that even though your child may have mastered or is showing the ability of a certain skill, it doesn’t mean they always have access to that skill because when the child’s nervous system is dysregulated, their brain reroutes a lot of their resources and energy to the survival part of the brain, which is the lower brain. So just because your child could sit still and focus last week during library time, maybe this week, they don’t have access to that part of the brain because they’re dysregulated. So if the gap is too big between those demands and the skills that your child has in that moment, that’s when we see a lot of the big dysregulated behaviors. And these then often get misidentified or misunderstood as kids being bad or just not listening or not wanting to participate or being disrespectful. (07:46)The thing is that demands for each environment or task is universally the same for every person participating in that activity or environment, but each person participating in that activity or environment may have different skill levels. Think of a classroom during circle time. Everyone has the same expectations placed on them, yet not every child has the same level of skillset to perform properly for those set of expectations, and that is why we need things like accommodations. So let’s get concrete. Let’s talk about a very specific example. So set the scene, it’s seven 30 at night after bath time, and it’s time to finish up the bedtime routine. So you say to your child, alright bud, let’s get those PJs on and then we can read a book before bed. I’ll come right back to check on you in a few minutes. Maybe you say it more explicitly than that. Maybe you say, Hey bud, put your PJs on and let me know when you’re done and we can read a book however you say it, but you have delivered the instruction to put their PJs on after getting out of the bath. (09:00)What are the task demands? There’s a lot more than what I’m going to list out, but I’m going to list out some for you. The cognitive demands placed on the child, they need executive functioning skills like task initiation, sequencing of steps, impulse control that they need to not stop and play with the Lego set that’s on the way to their bedroom. There’s a set of social emotional demands. There’s dealing with the disappointment that bathtime is over and that it’s near bedtime, which means sleeping alone in the room. There’s a lot of sitting with thoughts and emotions maybe at this time of night for them. Then there’s physical demands, the bilateral coordination, the fine motor skills and gross motor skills that are needed to actually get dressed. And then there’s a variety of sensory and nervous system demands like tolerating the coldness and temperature from getting out of the bath and changing into pajamas. (09:57)Maybe the tactile sense of feeling the underwear and pajamas on the skin or the tactile sensation of wet hair dripping down their body. Maybe there’s also some interoception sensations going on as well. Again, as an o t I can tell you a task is much more than just three or four steps or three or four demands. It can be broken down and be so multilayered. I could go on and on about describing that simple task, but for now we’re going to leave it at that. So let’s think about what skills does the child have access to at that moment. Let’s say this kid is six years old. So for context, it’s the end of a full day at school towards the end of the week from a nervous system perspective, this six year old is on the edge of dysregulation. So the cognitive skills that they have at this moment in time, they do have the executive functioning skills to know what steps it takes and what order it needs to be done in order to put the PJs on, but maybe their impulse control is not very functional right now and they’re extra distracted at this time of night or this time of the week, and they keep getting distracted by Legos and things that they see along the way from the bathroom to where they get dressed in the bedroom. (11:17)What kind of social emotion demands, what kind of social emotional skills do they have at this moment internally? Maybe they’re struggling with feeling like they didn’t get enough connection with you that day, or perhaps a friend was unkind to them that day. So they’re feeling more vulnerable and sensitive at this time and they easily lash out the physical demands. Let’s just say for the sake of this argument, to not have this child be challenged with every skill. Let’s say for the sake of this argument, they have full control and access over their motor skills, but as we mentioned, their sense, their nervous system is dysregulated. Maybe we also know that they are a sensory sensitive kid. So at this moment in time with their current state of their nervous system, cold temperature from getting out of the bath and the wet drips of water when their hair is wet, feel uncomfortable to them. So what we have here is the gap is too big between what the task and the environment is demanding of them and what their skill level is at. So they are behaviorally what we’re seeing is they’re running around in the hallway acting silly and then maybe you reprimand them or tell them, I said, get your PJs on, and they immediately start melting down. (12:34)Don’t feel guilty if you’ve done that or feel triggered by hearing me go through that. I have definitely, definitely been there. So what do we do about this? How do we close the gap between the environmental demands and your tasks and your child’s skill level? Technically you have three options, but not all of them are great options, but they’re still options. So first option is my go-to and it’s the most neurodiverse affirming option, the lowest hanging fruit, the quickest results option. This is the task and environmental modification option. You’re going to just decrease those demands in the first place. This is essentially what it is when we’re talking about meeting your child where they are at. The pros of this is, as I mentioned, it’s easy to do in the moment. You can usually see quicker results. It’s neurodiverse affirming for each individual and it can help so much with behavior and confidence boost in the child. (13:40)The one con of this is that it’s hard to do this in the moment when there are multiple kids. So for teachers, it can be really tricky to lower the demands just right to each child, and I see that, and it’s still the best option if you can strive for it. So back to our example. One way we could decrease the task and environmental demands is by maybe walking the child to their room first instead of giving them the task instructions in the bathroom. So then they have to transition to the room, or maybe you bring the PJs to the bathroom. So it’s one less transition or step for them to remember, or maybe you start the PJs for them, put their top PJ on, and then let them finish the rest. There’s a few different ways this can look. Maybe you accommodate their sensory demands as well by helping them fully dry their hair. (14:36)For us at home, I have to leave a towel around her shoulders when she’s changing, and I sometimes have to hold her long hair up because she doesn’t like when it drips down her legs. There’s a whole dance we do around it. But you know what? I do it to accommodate her sensory needs so that she can do the rest of her routine. So that’s the first option. Again, my go-to option. The second option, it’s more of a long-term solution, which is great, but know that this does take time to notice improvement, so you need to stick through it and be consistent. I’m talking about decreasing the gap by increasing the child’s skillset. Now remember, they may already technically have the skills but can’t access them because they’re dysregulated in that moment. But in any case, let’s say you want to improve their impulse control or executive functioning skills to help with this part of the routine, great, you can do this, but the important thing you need to know is that teaching these skills need to happen outside of the moment, and it takes time, as I already mentioned. (15:49)Now, you might have your ways of working on these skills at home on your own, or maybe you have an OT that your child works with, or maybe you have a course or you consult with an OT online. Okay, I said there’s three options. Here’s a third option, and I’m going to start out by saying it’s one that I don’t recommend, and that option is doing nothing or expecting, wishing, willing, bribing your child to just do it. If the gap is really big, this will definitely backfire. It would be like you telling me a five foot tall, petite person. If you just kept telling me over and over again, just grab that box on the top shelf, don’t you see it? It’s right there. Get it. Come on, get it. Give it to me. You’re not listening and you’ve given me no step stool, no boost, no ladder, and you’re just expecting me to just grow physical inches in that moment, and it’s just the item let’s say is on the top shelf. (16:59)It’s a full two feet out of reach. It’s just not going to happen. So I know from time to time, it’s hard for us to know in that moment, is this a gap? Is this a skillset my child doesn’t have? It’s hard to know. But the more that you practice and the more that you really observe your child at the patterns of times of day and the week or the tasks that they constantly seem to have behaviors around, you’ll get better at responding appropriately, and you’ll get better at identifying the best accommodations to make. So what are your next steps? How do you put this into practice? I have a feeling because you’re here and you’re putting in the effort to learn about this, that you’re ready to stop doing option three and ready to take more of an intentional approach of using maybe a combination of options one and two. (17:55)Excellent. I am here for that. I want to help you and I have your first step. It is registering for my free detecting dysregulation training if you’ve never heard of it before, it’s a training that I’ve hosted a couple times, usually live on Zoom, but this time I’m offering a prerecorded version that you can watch at your own pace. It’s available to watch now and it will go on until October 27th. But if you can, I would highly recommend watching it asap. So you can join us for the free pop-up community that comes with it. That opens on October 22nd to the 27th. So in this community, this is where I get to interact with all of you daily and share even more insights and answer any of your questions that come up from the training that you watch, and you’ll also get to meet and mingle with other parents and caregivers who are in the same boat. (18:52)So in that detecting dysregulation training, I’m going to teach you how to identify your child’s specific dysregulation behaviors because it looks different for all kids. I’m going to teach you what the nervous system is. I’m going to teach you the difference between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and the importance of why you need to recognize the difference. We’re going to talk about what happens internally during periods of dysregulation and what surface level behaviors that you might notice. We’re going to talk about how to track those dysregulation, behavior patterns. We’re going to talk about how the nervous system processes sensory information. And lastly, but probably most importantly, out of this whole process, I’m going to teach you how to talk to your child about their nervous system and its regulation so that they can be on board when you are ready to start step two and explore sensory regulation strategies with them. So head to the ot butterfly.com/training, or just scroll down below this episode. Wherever you’re listening to it, there will be a link for you to register. I hope to see you there. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider rating it and leaving a review, which helps other parents find me as well, want to learn more from me. I share tons more over on Instagram at the OT butterfly. See you next time.