Proprioceptive

It’s Thanksgiving day and there is a lot of flurry and activity upstairs while people get ready for our family dinner.   We have a small group this year in comparison to some years, but it’s family and I love having family in town and visiting so it’s all good to me.   My children are happy to have four grandparents and two uncles visiting them.   They’ve been doing all sorts of things with them.  Or rather my daughter has been monopolizing the time of any adult that she can find and corner.

My son is interested in screen time (which is something he’s always interested in).  The children have been put on a stamp-based system where they have to do things to earn stamps, which they can spend (or waste as they call it) on things like screen time.  This has limited the amount of time they can use screens.  

My daughter is collecting stamps like mad.   She enjoys collecting them but doesn’t have a lot she wants to spend them on, but that hasn’t been a deterrent for earning them for her.   My son is on the verge of being out of stamps almost all the time, but this has encouraged him to do things like make our bed and remember to wash his hands after going to the bathroom, so we’re getting good habits reinforced and seeing less screen time for him as a side effect.

My son has been having issues at school and on Tuesday I had a meeting with their play therapist to discuss what she’s seeing.   There was a lot she told me and, as always, it was insightful and not at all what I thought was going on.   My son has entered another developmental plane and his anxiety is spiking again.   His teachers are saying the work he’s doing isn’t more difficult, but Dhruti says that it’s not the difficulty, it’s his ability to process.  The work isn’t harder skill-wise, it’s harder cognitively for him.   And that means that while his brain is processing what’s going on within and around him he ends up getting out of whack, or disregulated.

He’s seeing what the students two years his senior are doing in his class and that’s adding to his anxiety because he sees them easily able to do what he’s struggling to do.   The anxiety is making him hyper sensitive sensorially.    And so he spins.  And does parkour moves and does other vestibular things to help him, only it’s not helping.   His anxiety is causing him to try and control things (negotiating, whining, resisting).   In school he’s also not sure where he fits in with the social dynamic which is different in his new class and he’s struggling too find out where he is, “within the pack” as Dhruti called it.

His anxiety is added to because he’s a huge empath and yet he sees things around him constantly that he can’t change.   One thing (not the largest though) is his sister’s blindness.   In therapy he’s playing out scenarios such as having a “blindness power”.   He played through one scenario where he had a weapon that he used to poke a stuffed bear’s eyes out, making it blind so that he could then help the bear.   He wants to use the weapons to gain power.   He’s been doing imagination games in the classroom because, Dhruti says, children play out things that resonate with them.   He’s doing this because he’s trying to protect himself.

He told Dhruti, “I get attacked all day long”.    He created one scenario in which he set up a lot of army men and one of them represented him.   He said, “nobody is noticing me.”  Dhruti asked if he wanted to be noticed, because he’d put himself in the middle of the characters.   He said, “that guy is protecting himself and I am this guy not being noticed.”   Dhruti asked him more about the character representing him and then she said he surprised her because he articulated how he felt so well.   He said, “this guy is going to do more and more until he gets noticed.”

So we have to change some things at home and at school to help him so he can move forward.   We have a chart up on the refrigerator now for when my son whines, negotiates or does Parkour/tumbling when he shouldn’t be.   This isn’t a punishment, it’s for awareness.   We made it very clear to him that it was to help him realize when he was doing these things (because Dhruti says he isn’t realizing how much it’s happening).   When he gets three marks on the chart we have a “Time In”.

The time in is three to five minutes only, with a parent, in which we focus on the proprioceptive instead of the vestibular.   We go somewhere quiet and do things like squeeze Therapy Putty really hard.   He might lie on the floor and be rolled up in a blanket tightly like a hot dog or lie on his stomach and have our hands firmly press on him, pretending to make him into a pizza.   He needs tactile, something like a strong, long hug, something to get him in tune with his body so that he can let go of some of the stress.

We’re also going to focus again on the pompoms, rewarding him randomly when we see he isn’t doing things like whining, parkour indoors or negotiating.   This will help build his self-esteem back up because he’s in dire need right now of a more positive self-image.

I’ve only done one time in so far but the result was dramatic and immediate.   I’ve also been working on coming up to him and giving him firm hugs (no kissing, he hates the kissing part) or putting my hands on his shoulders and squeezing him.  

We’ve only been at this two days now but with the few changes alone, I can already notice a difference.   I don’t know what we’d do without Dhruti to help guide us in this journey called Parenthood.

The Big Boy Update:  Papa walked by my son this afternoon and heard him talking, although no one was around.   Papa said to my son, “who were you talking to?”   My son said, “I’m talking to myself.”   Papa asked him if he was having a good conversation and my son replied, “I’m having a great conversation.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  While my son may have a low self-image, my daughter does not.   We were in the car today playing a copying game.   She was copying me and I was naming family members I loved.   She said after a bit, “you forgot me”.   I told her she was coming up and said, “and last but not least is Reese”.    She told me, “I don’t like that, say, ‘and last but best is Reese’”.   She said she liked her the best.   I explained what the phrase, “last but not least” meant but she wasn’t having any of it, saying she liked her way better.