Sensory Nanny - Pick Your Hill

What is Your Hill?

In our family, it is often said that you need to pick your hill wisely. But what does that mean? Well everyday you are waging a little battle with what to focus on or work on with your child. The thing is . . . you need to pick the hill that you are willing to die on . . . the one that is worth fighting to the end to get over. The hills in our family change daily, but my husband and I have consistency so our children do not play us against each other. Now here is the time to make the important point that ALL children can be master manipulators. Families sometimes state that their child is not in control of what they are doing because of their diagnosis, and are therefore unable to manipulate. Although there are things that are going to be difficult for your child to do at times, I promise you that manipulation is not one of them. I have seen the lowest functioning kiddos control an entire room. They learn what they can do with one person will not work with another person . . . this is the reason that in a family, one parent often has a hard time getting the child to get dressed, while the other parent says that it really isn’t that hard. For one parent this task may involve just some gentle reminders like “don’t forget to put both socks on”, while with the same child, the other parent is faced with a child that will act as though he/she has never seen a sock before.

How do you pick your hill? Well, you have to know your kid and your family in order to decide the importance of a hill. Now it is time to ask yourself some questions.

· What is your child’s personality?

What makes your child tick? Often times it is easy to just get so wrapped up in the behaviors that we forget to actually look at your kid’s spirit and what their personality outside of the behaviors or diagnosis is. I will give you an example: I have 2 boys both of which have characteristics and behaviors in accordance with their diagnosis, but they are VERY different kids. One of my sons is a pleaser. He wants to know what he is supposed to do so that he can follow the rules and no one will be disappointed in him. My other son is an anti-pleaser. He wants to know the rules so that he knows what not to get caught doing. Now these personality traits are in no way connected to their diagnosis. They both like order and routine etc. but their spirit and approaches to life are very different. Brad likes to test the water and dip a toe in, then go to the ankle to make sure that it is safe before he jumps in the water. Alec just jumps straight in. It is important to take the time to look past the diagnosis to see what your child’s approach to life is. Every kid has their own way of doing things and viewing the world . . . so . . . what excites your child and makes them come alive?

· What is your family about?

Are you baseball fanatics that before kids would go to opening day each year? Do you love outdoor concerts and before you had children discussed how much you wanted to expose them to this experience? Are you mall rats that just love to wander at the mall picking up lunch at the food court? Whatever you wanted to do with your kids before the diagnosis should still be your goal. Now as the Sensory Nanny, I do understand sensory processing issues and the difficulty that your child may have in tolerating noise or people, etc. (I can help you with some strategies for that too.) What I’m trying to get you to do right now is to identify what activities, goals, or dreams you may have lost along the way.

· Is you child at an independence level appropriate for their age in general, and in the context of your family?

What are other kids their age doing? Also, what do you expect of other children in your household? If all the kids in your family are expected to do chores, etc., then you need to figure out a way for your child with special needs to do them too. By having your children do what everyone else is doing (picking a task that they will be successful at), you are letting them know that they are a part of something larger than themselves. Even if you think that they “could care less,” I assure you that you speak volumes to your child when you hold them to the same standards as everyone else.

Once you identify what are the important things to focus on, and which hill to die on, then prepare for some resistance. I promise you that when you put that stake in the ground of what you expect, there will be a fight. Remember that although the tantrums that we see are often word class, children without a diagnosis tantrum too. When do they tantrum? When you have decided that something needs to occur, and they have decided otherwise. This is NOT just due to the diagnosis; it is a part of normal development. Remember that the difficulty rests in the fact that for our kids there are several factors that need to be considered. You will need to use a compass to identify which direction to turn when tantrums occur.