Communicating during meltdowns
Hello Nature Friends!
Baby!
Meet the newest member of the NIN family! Admin assistant Kelsey Martin had her baby boy on March 30th. Everett Alexander Martin was born at 6 pounds 8 ounces and mama and baby are thriving!! Thank you for your patience with us as she eases back into work while adjusting to life as a new mother.
Join us at Rochester's
Earthfest
THIS Saturday, come see us at Earthfest! Kevin and baby Jem and I will be there from 9a to 2p at the Northrup Community Education Center. I always find out about a new community service that I didn't know about before when I go to events like this. And there's always hands-on activities to keep the kids entertained too!
Register NOW for summer!
With groups filling up, it's time to hold your spot for summer! We'll resend registration forms to current families; don't hesitate to reach out if you have any
questions.
Click here for more info and to register!
Feedback!
If you ever have a thought about something that we're doing that you like or don't like or have a concern about or have an idea for - please let us know! The benefit of being a small practice is that we can make changes fairly easily. Every little bit of feedback helps us serve the community better. You can reply to this message or fill out the contact form on our website anytime!
Communication during meltdowns!
No matter how much proactive problem solving we do with our kids, there are times that emotions or sensory input or physical needs overwhelm them. You may have noticed that they cannot respond well to verbal communication when this
happens! Here are some tools we use in my family to understand and help each other during these times.
- Co-regulate: Slow movements, lots of pauses, friendly and non-threatening posture, soft and slow words, and gentle sounds to indicate understanding and empathy.
- Talk to text app: We use Talk Free on our android devices and Text to Speech seems to be the equivalent for iphone. I love this because it forces us to take turns talking, and introduces a regulating pause between every exchange. If your kiddo cannot type words yet, look into something like CoughDrop that uses pictures to build sentences.
- Draw it out: When one of my kiddos gets upset, all his language goes out the window. Even typing is out of the question because the words are just not accessible. So I draw him a paper that has the following: Angry, Sad, Hurt, Happy, What My Body Needs. He draws and writes responses and the very act of slowing down to this helps us both so much. Often he is able to write more and eventually start talking again as we work through this sheet.
Bonus: When my kids are bored, often every suggestion I have for play is met with a cranky "no". So we have shifted to writing during these times too, since dysregulation is often the source of the boredom (NOT the other way around). I write a few ideas and they take the paper write an X, check, ~
or arrow to indicate no, yes, maybe, or later. Doing this helps us both feel calmer and more open to ideas.
Working through upset in a compassionate way while building skills is at the CORE of what we do during every group. Want more details about what our services look like? See our updated FAQ page!
