Monterey Bay Forum

How parents can help ADHD & Autistic children be happier & achieve goals

Of course a child is not a car but think of the following analogy:

Every car to get to a destination needs a driver. Parents can assist children to get into the driver’s seat and drive their ‘car’ to appropriate ‘destinations’.

Here’s how to assist children who have difficulties with focus, attention, concentration, ‘executive functioning’ or ‘working memory’ difficulties. Executive functioning and working memory are words used by school psychologists. What the parent sees is a child who can’t seem to figure out what comes first and appear disorganized.

What to do: Get a pad of 8 by 12 inch lined paper.

On one per sheet of paper —
1) Write at the top, a Goal that parents/teachers want the child to achieve.
2) Write out all the Steps required to accomplish the Goal.
3) Order the steps from first to last using KISS (Keep It Simple, Simple)
4) Figure out an appropriate Reward for child accomplishing the steps.
Set it up so child can get partial reward for partial completion.
5) Decide the number of Days child needs to complete the Goal.
6) Draw up a Graph with Days across Top of Page and Goals listed on left.

Here’s an example of a Behavior Plan for a child who shows symptoms of both ADHD and ASD:

Gina is 8 years old and was exposed in utero to illegal drugs and alcohol. Her biological mother lost parental rights and Gina has been in foster care since age two. Since age four, Gina has received County Mental Health therapy and medication to assist with focus, attention and concentration. The therapy provided by County Mental Health focuses only on helping Gina to label emotions and better express her emotions appropriately.

Gina’s foster mother and her teacher agree that Gina’s adaptive functioning abilities are considerably below what they expect for her age. Her foster mother wants Gina to 1) wash her face & brush her teeth; 2) make her bed; 3) put toys in basket in her room; 4) set the table with utensils and plates before dinner.

Goals:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Wash face & clean teeth
Make bed
Put toys in basket
Set table with utensils & plates

Spiritual/ religious beliefs need to be integral to a successful Behavioral Plan.
For example, Gina’s foster mother goes to church and rests on Sunday. Therefore the behavior plan is for six days a week and no work on Sunday, their day of rest. Six days a week time four goals = 24 Goals for Gina to achieve. For each Goal achieved she earns one (1) dime. During the week she puts stickers on the sheet and gets her motivators (dimes) which she puts into a plastic, clear jar. That way she can see exactly what she has earned towards a new toy on the weekend. Her foster mother believes Gina can find age appropriate toys for around $2.50 to $3.00 a toy.

What makes a Behavioral Plan successful?
The answer is simple: practice and more practice so the Steps are as simple as possible and the child gets rewarded for partial and then complete finishing the Goal.

For example, Gina when we started could not make her bed said her foster mom. Well, the cover was too big and too heavy for a thin, small 8 year old to move around. Thus, by simplifying and making a bed simply tossing a light duvet (down comforter) on a twin bed and putting the pillow in place — then making a bed by an 8 year old is simple and possible.

A second example:
Gina has never set the table for dinner. Part of the reason is that the plates are too high for her to reach and they are china easily breakable. Also, the utensils are not easy to get to. This is easily solved by moving plastic plates and smaller folks and spoons to one drawer that the child can reach. The point is to set it up so the child can successfully achieve the Goals.

Overall point: Parents can set simple ‘destinations’ for their child to drive their ‘car’ towards and by keeping the steps simple and practising the steps again and again their child can achieve those destinations to goals that parents set.

Very important: the hugs and ‘You did great!’ and ‘Keep trying!’ are as important and at times more important than any reward system. Parents – whether biological parents or foster parents – are the fire to ignite important, life long change in children.
Send comments to DrCameronJackson@gmail.com

Are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services boring?

Many people show up for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day services. But what do they get?

Here are his words:

_______________

“The church year begins with “Advent” – a season that makes a blessing of our ambiguous situation, sometimes joy and sometimes anguish, being stretched between incredible promise and having to wait for fulfillment. I don’t know about you, but I resist waiting.

“We live between the immeasurable gift of God’s presence in this world as a human being with all that means for our potential as individuals and as the human race, the maturity and fulfillment that is promised – between all that and the disappointments of the daily grind.

“There is anguish in “between-ness.” We have evidence every day that our society, and all human society, falls far short. The more we desire goodness the more we feel the shortfall. We feel for those who are hurt or disadvantaged whenever someone acts out of fear and greed and thoughtless disregard.

“There is another discomfort in between-ness. We see the world fall so far short of the glory we’ve been shown, and we know that we so often contribute to the shortfall, by our actions or by what we leave undone, by our willfulness or by our lack of vision.

“And yet, it is only between-ness because there is glory. . .

” We have received in Christ a vision of what a restored humanity could be, and we have felt, in ourselves, what forgiveness and promise mean. We’ve been moved to courage we didn’t have before we knew forgiveness was real. We’ve engaged with life, with people, with needs that we wouldn’t have dared to because of the love of Christ that has come to live through us in this world. Hope gets restored here and there. We have intimations of glory that we might have been too cynical to entertain, until Christ became real to us in prayer or in community, in the Scriptures or in Holy Communion, however the Spirit makes that first entry into your life or my life.We are between. Between promise and fulfillment. Embarrassed, yes, but not without hope; and Advent is the season where we cherish that hope and nourish it. The season when we encourage prayer about the fulfillment – the glory – that God intends to bring about for all of creation. We encourage hope, in the form of an attitude of expectancy. “Watch” “Keep awake” “Prepare” are Advent words. We consciously, prayerfully cultivate a space in our lives, a wondering where God will make the next opportunity for us to act in love. We have to be awake enough to notice when we are being loved. Awake enough to notice when God is asking us to do some service, some kindness, some act of hope.

” God sometimes asks great things of us, never doubt that; but most of these moments in which we are needed to serve, to restore community, to restore hope in someone, most of them are a dime a dozen. I use that phrase deliberately, not to say they are unimportant, but to say that they are common. What is common matters. Hope in little actions matters. God doesn’t only call us to great and dramatic things, but in all kinds of little moments. It is when they become a way of life that we are becoming mature. It is when it becomes routine for us to be awake to others that we are awake to the Holy Spirit.

“When hope has been built into our lives, when a strengthening word, a ready hand, an understanding heart, a responsible act, a bit of generosity, a word that invites the cynical heart to trust – when these become routine – Advent is taking root. May God use this season and its disciplines so that Christ can be born in us, and among us, ever more deeply.”

_______________

from the Aptos Psychologist: <strong> Well, did the above wake you up? Assist you to beter uderstand the Birth of Christ which brings new life to you and yours?

When you go out tomorrow to get the newspaper on the driveway give blessings to God for the joy of breath, that you can walk and that you can love neighbor and family.

NOT the devil made me do it...

After a police report in Oslo said that Muslims were raping Norwegian women out of a religious conviction that this was the proper thing to do, a stormy public debate erupted. And “the government ministers, most of them avowed anti-Semites, claimed that the report and its publication serve Israel and its policy of occupation.”

Norway’s justice minister defended the police report but also said that “Israel must be glad to hear about it.”…
_______________

A justice system so wacky that the ACLU branch office closed and went to Vatican City.

JAJ48@aol.com

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s archaeology institute downplays theories that the ancient Mayas predicted some sort of apocalypse would occur in 2012, but on Thursday it acknowledged that a second reference to the date exists on a carved fragment found at a southern Mexico ruin site.
__________

When the election returns come in, then we’ll know if the Mayans were right. If we last that long.

FirenzeSage48@gmail.com

Bishop Makaya speaks on All Saints Day in Aptos, CA

The Bishop is from Africa. He is an Episcoplaian Bishop. His formal title is, Rt. Rev. Sadock Makaya, Bishop of Western Tanganyika. He is here in California for a week.

written by Cameron Jackson   drCameronJackson@gmail.com  

Race card played to explain opposition to raising debt ceiling

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Friday strongly suggested that members of Congress are making it difficult for President Obama to raise the debt ceiling because of his race.

FirenzeSage48@gmail.com

Delta says no Jews can fly to Saudia Arabia

Delta will add Saudi Arabian Airlines to its SkyTeam Alliance of partnering companies and would require Delta to ban Jews and holders of Israeli passports from boarding flights to Saudi Arabia.

Delta is now Juden Frei. Are Kosher meals out too?