Working with Special Needs Children, or High Performers: The whole person, not the "problem"

When I was 55 I took a weekend workshop in the Feldenkrais Method.®

I knew and loved this work. It had helped me with back and shoulder issues for years and I always recommended it go someone who had a movement issue.

I thought it was great stuff.

AND, after the weekend workshop I realized: THIS COULD BE ABOUT ME!! I  felt and moved as if I were ten years old again.

This was an invitation to a four year training, which I enhanced with a doubled up first year of training with a man who combined Zen and Feldenkrais.

Then I discovered Anat Baniel, whom I think has advanced what is already one of the most amazing systems on the planet.

Another 4 years.

So 9 years of training and I know this:

I am so lucky to WORK WITH THE WHOLE HUMAN, NOT THE PROBLEM.

A high level musician or a special needs child come in.

They have a brain.

They can learn.

A rock can’t learn, a tree can’t learn, a car can’t learn.

Many “body work” systems treat the person as a car, with a wheel or carburetor that needs to be fixed.

In the Anat Baniel and the Feldenkrais system, we are working with a whole person, whose brain and hence whose life can change.

The change happens a number of ways, and a simple version is the change comes from using these three essentials of radical listening:

Deep presence

Non-habitual options

Connection

So, an autistic boy who answered “Not Quite” to every question was not fixed, by being told his answer was wrong or nonsensical.

I looked at him in presence, connected with him by touch, and played with non habitual wordings.

How about

Not not quite

Not quite quite

Not not quite quite quite

At first he was confused. Then delighted. He started to hear what he was saying and realizing that there were other choices in the world.

And a child with a tight/ spastic fist, from cerebral palsy.

To fix, would be the pry the finger loose and massage or something.

This is nice, but, not any use to the brain.

But, slowly playing with a little little movement in the thumb and then the pinkie and going slow enough the child can feel the difference.

Moving the whole hand in a way that connects to the back and elbow and shoulder.

Moving the hand in many patterns, many options, all with tons of presence and searching for opening up connection in the child’s brain between that hand and other parts of the body…

This is transformation for the whole person.

Works just the same with the highly skilled fingers of the best violin player or pianist in the world.

Cheers

Chris

Become More Amazing

Being alive is amazing, right?

And then, within that, we all have our amazing talents, quirks, and inclinations. We are all amazing.

And just as perfect as we are, we can get even better. If we want.

Sometimes riding the contentment of exactly who we are is just what we need to do.

Sometimes these words ring true:  Life is Yes, and can get Better and Better and Better.

I work with high performance musicians who don't mind going to higher and higher levels of ease, learning and performance.

I also work with children who have either cerebral palsy, or autism. They are amazing. They can become more amazing.

This is what is amazing about them, and why they can make so much progress with the Anat Baniel Method. They can learn.

Many other systems teach them, but those systems unfortunately often teach them that they are failures, by over and over giving them tasks they can fail at.

However,  a sensitive Anat Baniel practitioner, by moving in ways that are slow and clear, and creating small differences that the child can feel and notice, creates actual rewiring of the brain.

Learning is the noticing of differences that make a difference.
A slight new movement of the hand, in awareness, in learning, is vastly more important than being sat up because that's what the child is "supposed" to be doing at a certain age.

A child that can feel the difference between a little finger and a thumb, between a shoulder moving this way, and moving that, between the arm moving with connection to their back, or moving without connection, is a child on the way to learning the vast array of distinctions that allow functioning to happen.

Training and learning.
Training vs learning.

This is a big subject.

Even "regular" kids are so much better off if the parents and the teachers are setting up conditions about learning.

And relationships, ah. how much time to we waste trying to train our partners, when what we really want is love and connection.

And how does that happen?
Learning what that other person is really like, how they are different from every other person in the world.

Including us.

What a thought?
What a joy.

Alright. Have a good evening.
Chris

From Special Needs Kids Blog: Limitation, vs Possibilities, the power of the Anat Baniel Method

This is from my Special Needs Children Blog

.....

The Anat Baniel method uses Brain Plasticity,
and the incredibly
wise
kind
and effective
philosophy of only working with a child, exactly where that child is at

And always working for a small
but real change
in the brain

Which means a new perception
of
a
new difference


And when children are shown small differences,
that they can feel,
they learn

And when they learn,
small step
by small step

miracles happen

One step at a time

And this all adds
up

Into huge breakthroughs.

Here's a six minute video, with various parents and their special needs children,
telling the benefits that they found for their children.

As Anat explains an overview.

The most potent remark is that of a mother who says, essentially:
"Going to the neurologist, is going to the office of limitation.
Coming to the Anat Baniel method, is coming to the home of possibilities."

Come to the home of possibilities,
for
you
and your children

Learning as a game of variation, Why Not?

From my Special Needs Children Blog

And lots of fun ideas for any parent, any relationship, any life.

Waking up is fun, if we let it be.

Yes!!!


........
We can change our lives. And the Chinese said it a long , long time ago: the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

With your child, what little variation can you create on something they already like and enjoy doing?

How can you, today and every day, make learning and play a big part of your interaction?

And remember:
Learning is not the memorization of facts, how far the Earth is from the Sun, say, though kids are often gaga about facts.

Learning is what?

Learning is the perception of a difference that makes a difference. That we didn't know about before the learning took place.

It's crazy fun how many possibilities:
A kid sucks their thumb.
Great, How about sucking the first, second, ring and little finger, one at a time?
And the fingers on the other hand.

A child is whining.
Great.
Can you whine in a higher pitch, a lower pitch, a staccato pattern?

Time of bedtime story.
Great.
Rest at the end of several sentences,
or a page,
and let's make up a little different story.

Or let's look at the pictures upside down.

Food:
How many ways are there to hold a spoon?

Can a piece of lettuce be a spoon?

How many things can be a spoon?

You get the idea:
Learning and play and imagination and getting out of the box, of how we thought about things before: this is a daily game.

You can play with your child.

You can play with your habits.

How many different ways can you sit, and shape your back and neck and ideas and breathe as you read this?

Can you write about this after,
with one hand and then another.

Can you draw a picture that you wouldn't normally "waste" time doing as the post reading "game?"

What is it you'd like to learn, and how many new and delightful ways could you go about that?
email me, if you want, with ideas and results.
chriselms@vom.com

Cheers,
Chris

Flexible Goals, from Kids blog, but worth pondering/ realizing for all of us

If you push your child to get to the result that YOU want,
it may well be something
out of their capabilities

Results:
they will feel awful

They will learn to think of themselves as a failure

You and they will miss all the little bite sized steps that they COULD be doing



There is a wonderful story in this chapter,  of a child, with developmental delay,
who,
in the first set of lessons,
when she wasn't pushed to "do it right" and crawl this instant,
or do something in the therapists or parents wanted,
but took small learning delights, that when she wasn't pushed, 
but was followed where she was at,
and then her learning took off...
she made deep and  real progress

Then she went away for awhile,
after having learned rolling over and crawling and all the things
she hadn't been able to learn when they were being foisted on her.

She went away for awhile.
Alexa did.

When kindergarden came the pressure was on big time to talk.
She wasn't taking lessons any more.
A speech therapist at school was busy trying to strengthen her facial muscles
Alexa was having tantrums
and not learning how to talk

She was miserable and the goal of cramming speech down her throat,
more or less literally,
was backfiring big time.

So Anat, gave her a lesson where,
one,
she talked and talked and talked, Anat did,
demanding nothing from Alexa, but flooding her with language.

Suddenly, when Anat asked a question, Alexa gave a "Yes" back,
because she was enjoying the connection, ( Anat was moving her body
in the amazingly gently and feeling great ways of a lesson
(( COME GET A LESSON, OR A SERIES--- dear  PARENTS,
IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE)) -- the talking was "extra" over the body
learning and bliss.)

Alexa felt no pressure to talk,
so she did.

Two:
Then Anat started talking a bunch of NONSENSE SYLLABLES
to Alexa.
Who was fascinated.
Then Anat turned the nonsense syllables into the clear intonation of a question,
and Alexa gave her back a nonsense syllable answer.

 (An aside, this is a great way for grown up couples to argue)

She was talking,
at a basic level, for the first time in her life.

Anat ended the lesson at 30 minutes.
The lessons are about giving the child the maximum for real learning.
Too much can degrade the learning.

But the little girl said, "No."
A first.
She didn't want the lesson to end.
Anat playfully, "yes."
then "no" "yes" back and forth as a game.

Then, Alexa leaves and runs back, "No, No, No"
"Yes, yes, yes."

Anat agrees to continue lessons in the following weeks
if
No more speech therapy
No one in school or at home tries to get Alexa to talk.

This is agreed,
So, of course,
she learns.

Almost instantly, once the learning becomes a game
and the
pressure is off

And so, gentle reader,
Anat offers several key suggestions:

Identify 
small changes as subsets of a bigger goal

Back Off
if you discover yourself pushing where you want to go,
not where your child is ready to learn

BE ALERT
( this is mine)
pay attention to any and all small learnings,
have fun there

Don't buy into the standard stuff
Like "tummy time"

Play
Where learning is happy, the brain groves it in

Embrace the process, not the goal:
Same as the whole post...
It's the discovery that makes a bigger brain and a happier child

Reversibility
Change direction,
Sail where the wind will let you
Don't force the river
all that good enlightenment stuff
applies to the simplest learning of your wonderful child

This is backing off, but the more active version:
back away from your set course,
and try something else

try anything else

Embrace mistakes:

Cherish the Connection
not the product/ goal/ task

These last two,
 should be mottos in everyone's life

but only if they want to be happy

From special needs blog, but you can/ we can all use it too: ENTHUSIASM

extrapolate to your adult life,
to your relationships,
to your parenting,
 this will be usedful.

 here's the post,
from
SpecialNeedsChildren-chriselms.blogspot.com

Wow,
this chapter says a lot

It's like the magic spice
to make the meal of your child's improvement
delectable

Here's the deal:

It's not jumping up and down and clapping
It's not hovering like a hawk, pressuring the child to do something great,
so you can whoop it up

It's subtle
and extremely powerful.

It's your own, inner delight,
a smile pouring out from your heart,
and delight in your whole being

AT SMALL AND REAL CHANGES

If your child can't walk,
and your are waiting for that to get happy and excited,
your child may never learn

But is she gets interested in her toes,
or plays with rolling her hips,
or arches and rounds her back in a way that she's enjoying and noticing,
or....
on and on,
any little change, any little improvement
any little learning

this is what you can be noticing and feeling good about,
and radiating out that you feel good about it

sometimes you can say something,
sometimes, it's better to wait a bit

Anat makes some good distinctions that are not usually made:

No applause when a child does something the first time.

the first time is always something like an accident, a happy stumbling into something new,
but an unknown combination of their prior skills,
but it's new
and if you make a big to do about it,
their attention gets hyjacked into your attention,
not their own feelings and sensations

they need their inner awareness

they will repeat,
from within

wait, and see,
don't distract them into thinking the world is about outside approval
too much of life is wasted there

they need the inner time

and again,
another subtle point:
same thing, really:

DON'T ASK FOR AN ENCORE
if it's new,
they are busy getting excited and learning in their own
way
and may very well not be clear of how this came about
asking for a repeat will completely derail their inner learning

So,
what do we have:

It's about you,
feeling excited, positive, loving, aware
of little changes,
small changes
and conveying that without a big fuss to the child

( in the Son Rise method, they like the big fuss.
this might work better on the spectrum, but I'd pay a lot of attention to the
difference
between positive reinforcement and enthusiasm-- see which really would feel the best for you, a rah, rah talk, or actual deep and present awareness and appreciation)

There's a great anecdote about a couple,
one of whom, the dad Ton, was quite, but clearly aware of the changes his son was making,
the other,
the mom Jackie,
was always worried about how much more progress was needed.

Though neither voiced this ,
the child, Jacob, clearly learned more in lessons when the father was sitting in the room full of delight and inner encouragement
than when the mom was in the room, feeling discouraged the child has "so far" to go

And what's the Mom to do?
What are we to do?

One:
If you can do it, do it. Show enthusiasm, quite, powerful, inward, toward the smallest of your child's learnings.

And if you can't: BUILD THE ENTHUSIASM MUSCLE

How.
1. Get honest or at least make an attempt to discover what's stopping you, what inner story

2. Remember times you were enthusiastic about something, and  feel that feeling inside

3. Practice applying that feeling to a situation you might not ordinarily feel enthusiastic about, like doing the dishes

4. Now apply it, to your child, when she or he makes little improvement

This is cool stuff, because this sort of enthusiasm and appreciation can be lavished on many people and many situations, to grand effect in lots of areas in your life.

Here's Anat's words on what this chapter is about:
"DEVELOPING YOUR ABILITY TO CREATE AND AMPLIFY YOUR CHILD'S TINIEST CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS"

Enthusiasm, is the joy juice that amplifies what was learned in your child's brain, and helps that learning get grooved in.

Not just grooved in as important.
But grooved in as happy.
As joy.

It's fun to learn.

And can be done daily, and even more than that.

Get cracking.
But slowly, subtle, with variation, awareness, and
enthusiasm.
Cheers
Chris

Monday, Special Needs Kids Blog...Connecting NOT fixing

This is from Monday's blog at SpecialNeedsChildren-ChrisElms.blogspot.com


Alas, in our wish to "help" children with special needs, we often delay their progress, and make them miserable, by insisting that they do what they cannot do.

As Anat well says: "If she could, she would; if he could, he would."

A child who can't sit, plunked into the sitting position, might look like she is sitting, but she hasn't the skills to do it on her own, and she'll know that. She'll feel frustrated.

A child who can't roll over, being forced into "tummy time" is being put where he can't move to under his own awareness and skill himself, so he can't return himself to his back, and he is nervous as heck about what he is doing trapped there,  and will develop all sorts of unnecessary tension in his middle area.

A child who can't crawl, being plunked into the crawling position and told to go for it, will collapse in frustration. She doesn't have the hundreds of prerequisite motions and learnings and body brain wirings that would give her the pieces to really "go for it."

Since a child learns it's experience, the experience of being made to do something they ( or we, for that matter) can't do, always teaches that we are incapable, or to them, it teaches that they are good at failing.

This is not what we want them to learn.

How to make a child feel better? And learn?

Let him learn in small steps, something just slightly beyond what he knows.

Teach her something fun, that allows her brain to discover the information that all rich movement requires. Anat describes the "random movement" so crucial to every child's learning. With special needs children, big chunks of normal random movement are usually unavailable.

Coming to "lessons" is an opportunity for the child to be giving a short cut sampler of the most valuable of the smaller steps and even this isn't cookie cutter. I am feeling precisely and in the moment exactly what each child is capable of learning and expanding into at that moment.

At home, you can bring every down with the essentials, slow, variation, enthusiasm, ... we'll go through them one by one.... and the point is... you, too, as parents, can create conditions for learning.

You don't teach and they learn.

In my lessons, to adults or children, I don't teach and they learn. Brains and meant to learn and to rewire themselves. The Nine Essentials maximize the chances of this happening.

And with the nine essentials, we can begin to give digestible, delightful, exciting even, food to the child's brain. Food for learning new ways to move, to think, to comprehend the world in more rich and complicated ways.

In fixing, we do the work for the child, and the child doesn't make new connections inside. And the bad feeling in the child cuts off our person to person connecting.

In connecting, we meet the child where she is at, and find fun and interesting "next step" movements, or sounds, or words, or even ideas, for her to build upon.

In this connecting mode, life is simpler for the child, because learning is what brains love to do. It's simpler for us, because we need only just one bit of new and interesting information at a time to offer our child, and almost always that information is about distinguishing a difference, or making more clear a difference, or having fun with a difference.

The Nine Essentials ( Anat likes to capitalize them, and yes, they are brilliant and important) are pathways to help your child better find these differences.

Just remember: small steps, baby steps, one little doable, interesting, fun step at time.

Make your life easier.

Make your child's life a pathway of fun, learning, delight and connection.

Breathe.

Watch your child.

Something small and fun and easy will come to you.

And then the play/ learning/ connecting is on it's way.

Cheers.

Let's ReRead Kids Beyond LImits: Brain Plasticity and Children

I'm going to get back to my weekly blog posts on my special needs children blog, 
it's at SpecialNeedsChildren-ChrisElms.blogspot.com


I'll be going through Anat's book, chapter or section by chapter or section at a time.

Here's the start

In the introduction to Kids Beyond Limits, Michael Merzenich, PhD, makes clear his profound admiration for Anat Baniel and his delight and astonishment that in her own separate way, she has come to discover BRAIN PLASTICITY (his field of expertise, he was one of the first to discover and prove this in monkeys, and then humans) as the key element to human change, especially change in special needs children.

Brain Plasticity.

Our brains can rewire.

They are meant to rewire.

They love to rewire.

Dr. Merzenich discovered this in the laboratory. Anat in her work with thousands of children over 30 years.

Dr. Merzenich makes two points of emphasis:

One: The principles that underlie the limitations of the “special needs child” are the same principles that underlie brain plasticity.

Two: Most so called “hopeless” cases, aren’t hopeless.

Then in Anat’s introduction, she gives her urgent framework. This work has transformed, again and again, the lives of many children. She wants to get the principles, what she calls the Nine Essentials, out to as many parents, caregivers and clinicians as possible.

She wants the “secret” to stop being a secret.

And it isn’t really a secret as much a waking up to the understanding that her mentor Moshe Feldenkrais, a PhD in physics and the first European teacher of Judo, brought to improving movement for adults and children.

Movement is about learning.

Movement is about awareness.

The brain is where both these happen.

“Miracles” begin to happen when we stop buying into anyone being fixed in their movement or their behavior. (This includes ourselves).

Anat then brings her story to open with the story of Elizabeth.

 ( There is a moving  7 minute PBS video of this, back when Anat was still within the Feldenkrais world, and hadn’t felt yet, because it the constraints in the Feldenkrais world), the need to create her own sperate (and more advanced, to my mind) method. The video is at Healing What the Doctors Couldn't )

She starts her story with her first meeting with Elizabeth. She didn’t plan it, but everything started with her own desire to calm the crying Elizabeth when she was first brought to Dr. Feldenkrais ( to say nothing, which she doesn’t mention in the book, of her considerable touch and awareness based skills having studied with Feldenkrais for 4 years), she discovered how profound an experience life could provide when she looked beneath Elizabeth’s real and profound limitations and saw, really saw, the person, the real and amazing person locked inside these limitations.

She then shares how much Elizabeth transformed in the first two lessons with Moshe Feldenkrais’ intentional and highly skilled touch. How Elizabeth began to wake up to herself and her body, and began to play for the first time in her life.

Fast forward to seven years old and Anat plays with a tissue, and Elizabeth learns not only how to catch, but to walk.

Brains learn.

People transform.

Beginning of the story.

And, how can we rewire our brains today?

How can we help our children?

(Read ahead in the book for answers to both.
Go to my blog (http://PoemsFromNow.com) , and search for a “Movement lesson” you like, and you can spend 5 or 10 minutes rewiring your own brain, right now.

Here’s the link straight to a series of at least 30 lessons that could delightfully help you feel easier in your body and smarter in your brain.

Click on Movement Lessons

And if you want more on Brain Plasticity from Dr, Merzenich, here’s a TED talk Merzenich on Brain Plasticity

Why have lessons, for a child.... Why live a life, is simple language, for us all

The reason to have lessons is this:

You are wonderful, and these lessons help you become more wonderful.

You have a brain.
The brains' main job is learning.
Learning comes from noticing differences.
The lessons show more and more differences, that you can FEEL in your body, and FEEL in your movement.
They give you a smarter brain.

You have a heart.
Hearts are to love and to be happy.
Loving and liking are close.
The lessons are to help find more and more ways that when you move you feel happy.
The lessons are to help find more and more ways that you like to move and love to move.
The lessons are to make you happy by discovering ways of moving and learning you never knew before.

You have a body.
Bodies like to move.
Bodies like to discover.
Bodies like to play.
Bodies like to be more easy and graceful.
Bodies like to move with us in our brains and attention noticing them You have attention. Or call it awareness. Or call it noticing. This is close to who we really are. These lessons help us develop the fun and skill and joy of awareness . Awareness of our hearts and our bodies and our brains. It's a fun game, getting better at life. This is what the lessons are for.

Special Needs Children: 3 ways to go with a heel that won't touch the ground

 

Change from outside vs. change from inside:
Or: Fixing vs. connection

This happens: a child with cerebral palsy, through great inner desire and perseverance, comes to walk. And yet, the putting their heel to the floor eludes them, so it seems as if they are walking on their toes all the time.

There are at least three ways adults can react to this, three routes to take.

To the rescue: the knife

One route is the surgeon's scalpel, cutting into the Achilles tendon, to allow the heel no recourse but to lower. If we discount what a child goes through in surgery, this seems to solve the heel down problem. But…

Push, prod and correct

Parents and various professionals can try to soften the tissues by “stretching,” or massage, or both. They can try pressing the heel forcefully down to the floor. They can “remind” ( nag, usually, unfortunately) the child with some range of possibility to do what she or he is “supposed to do.”

Braces can be put on the foot, to mold it to “how it should be.”

Again, a step in the right direction it seems, but…

The problem with these

These are all outside forces. They demand and force the change. Not only are they teaching the child, One: there is something wrong with you, and Two: only by outside initiation can any change happen, they tend not to work very well. Stretching, botox, scolding all wear off. Even the surgery often begins to undo after the foot begins to heal from the trauma.

Calling on….the brain.

What if the child in this story is not missing a foot that defaults to a 90 degree angle with the leg, but she is missing a representation in the brain, totally missing a feeling and idea and body awareness sense of what it’s like for a heel to press against the ground? That just doesn’t compute for her.

And if pushed and stretched and prodded, the feeling of touching the floor is always vastly diluted by all the stress and effort going on.

So, here’s the solution in the Anat Baniel Method and the Feldenkrais Method®. The child lies on her back, already a great start from the complexity and demands of walking. And then, instead of pushing and efforting the foot to 90 degrees, a false floor is brought to the foot.

The false floor

A book is held against the child’s foot, exactly at the angle of the foot. Slowly pressing the book against the foot, the whole foot more or less touches at once. Other things are done that make sense from having had a 4 year training, to help deepen this, but you get the idea: the foot feels the way it would if it were “normal” in terms of the contact of the entire foot with the ground.

The brain = the child is now in the picture

Now, the foot, and the brain and the child all begin to expand her idea of what a foot is, and how the heel really is part of the same “story.” Connections with the whole foot and the rest of the body are made.

Ideas and pathways are laid down in the brain with this “whole foot” feeling of the thing at the end of the leg. It’s a delight and a revelation, and the child is smarter, and has one more experience of creating change by creating more awareness.

Awareness is life. Awareness is freedom

This learning will spill over to other movement improvement the child is ready to make.

This learning will “work” not just in movement, but speech and school and play and life. The more differentiation and awareness we have, the more freedom to become and do something different.

What can a parent do?

Bring the child in for lessons.

Watch the lessons, be enthusiastic about small changes, encourage the What Is, of even the most minute improvement. All improvement that involves the brain spills over to almost everything, as mentioned about.

How about the book on the foot?

No, not really.

But parents can remember not to scold. IF THE CHILD COULD DO IT DIFFERENT, THEY WOULD.

And the parents can play with variations of many other things: directions of bringing foot to the mouth, pitch and length and texture of sounds, ways of moving a ball or a toy or a small chair.

Kids Beyond Limits, Anat’s new book!

Read and reread Anat’s book. It’s full of small and non demanding activities that don’t take much time, that create pathways for learning, and maybe best of all, create time and quality for bonding and love between you and your child.

My kids' blog, specialneedschildren-chriselms.blogspot.com/, too, has many examples of small but significant actions you can take. For example: do anything you usually do at half speed, and make this a game.

Another: follow your own breathing, for your own relaxation, and to create a "vibe" of inner awareness for your child. As above: awareness equals freedom. For you and for your child.

If you haven’t signed up for lessons recently…

Now is a great time to do so.

A Moshe story, about little differences, adding up

From my special needs children's blog, an entry, almost every Monday, see index at INDEX FOR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN BLOG

Moshe Feldenkrais once got wupped in an arm wrestling duel
He challenged his tower opponent to a rematch in a couple of months
(don't have the facts on time, let's say a couple of months)

He went home and swung a hammer back and forth
as if arm wrestling on his first day of practice.
A nice light hammer.

The next day,
he wrapped a piece of copper wire near the head of the hammer
and swung it back and forth

So small a difference he's brain didn't register,
but his body had to do something slightly different

Each day
one more piece of wire

slowly
slowly

and then:
by two months (or whatever the "real " amount of
time was), the hammer was massive and no
changes had been bothersome,
or even notice-able day by day

and he won the rematch


And,
in our lives,
and with our children
all our children
how can we do something small
and amazingly slightly better
more clear
more aware
more...happy

who knows
what little difference might add up
and up
and up?

Love and learning in the world of special needs children parents

Each day is a chance, for your child to learn something,
some little connection,
some little difference,
or to learn a difference a little better,
the big toe and the little toe,
or to learn a connection a little more clearly,
the heel and the hip,

that's what brains are for,
when used to make our lives
bigger and better:
they discover, note and make rewiring to be able to use again
this:
differences that make a difference.

Feed your child's brains:
differences,
variations,
options,
possibilities.

Make it new and fresh
for them,
and you,
the delightful worlds of continuous discovery.

This is why I think
it's so wonderful for
parents to be
having lessons
and studying
reading
experimenting from
Anat's new book,
you know the one,
Kids Beyond Limits.

If you, the parent,
can feel how pleasant
and useful it is,
the feel
as sensation,
without any words in the way,
just FEEL a connection,
say from your hand back into your shoulder blade
and back even more into your spine,

If you can feel this
sense this,
know this in yourself,
you can begin to realize how powerful
and playfully useful you can be with
your child,
just "playing" with her hand.

This is love.
Attention to yourself,
just perfect as you are now.
Attention to your child,
just perfect as she or he is now.

A hand, a rib, a cheek,
a toe,
all these parts are so amazing
and connect with so many other parts,
and are so happy to be moved
gently and in a way
that makes them "wake" up to
possibilities of new and different actions.

And so,
there are no mistakes.
Your child moves this way,or that,
it doesn't really matter,
all motions  can have four or five variations.

The child moves a way someone else might call
a "mistake,"
and with enough variations,
some more useful options will show up,
and if they really work for the child,
he or she will pick them.
With no scolding, repremanding,
being told to "stop that,"
or "do it this way."

If it's a game
and a better way is practiced,
the better way WILL be adopted.

We are always at that crossroads
of sleeping through our life,
doing what we've always done,
and waking up the the intense magic
and possibility of NOW>

And still,  habit says:
do what you always did.

Learning is always whispering (or more):
I wonder what this change would be like.

Play with the changes,
in you
and in your child
and in your movement with your child.

You'll have a lot of fun.
It will feel like love,
because it will be love.

And the changes will come,
at just the speed they are supposed to come.

ciao
for
NOW,
Chris

Monday, Special Needs Children: An elusive obvious: Don't try to get the child to do what the child can't do

A tragedy of much change work, whether therapist with special needs children,
or people with their mate,
is that of trying to "get the person to do what they can't do."

"Just be happy," to an unhappy mate,
is the same as,
"Come on, let's get you crawling," to a child who can barely roll over.

As Anat says so well in her book and in her lectures:
If they could, they would.

It's as if someone came up to you and said:
Start telling me about your day in Chinese (assuming you don't know the language.)

And if you said you couldn't, they just demanded you "try harder."

If you could you would.

So what's the alternative.

It's so obvious: do little things,
that the child can do.

Small movements, done slowly and gently, that link up one area of movement to another.
But little.
And important.
Just the connection between an elbow and a wrist. Or an elbow and the back, can make
all the difference in the world.

This can lead to being part of crawling.
This can feel good to a child as they learn it.
This can fill in for them their picture of who they really are.
This can soothe their nervous system.
This can create learning and wiring in the brain.
This can get them in the habit of knowing what they are doing.
This can get them in the mode of succeeding in small things, that can lead to bigger and bigger
success.

So, ti seems pretty useful, doesn't it?

Special Needs Children, Monday Post: milestone vs learning

(Even with her hand "fixed" in her mouth: 

the difference between hand and elbow,

and between elbow not bearing weight vs elbow bearing weight 

is HUGE in this moment for Harper)

Here's the Normal Doidge quote again, bold and all:


"Following in the footsteps of the revolutionary scientist-clinician Moshe Feldenkrais,
 the greatest thinker about how to improve movement in the twentieth century, 
[Anat] Baniel show why our mainstream approach to these children is often wrong, and at times damaging, 
because they train the children 
to 'ape' developmental milestone they are not developmentally ready to meet. 

The approach here, 
far wiser, far more subtle, 
truly holistic, far more ingenious, 
far more in accord with how brain development occurs, 
show ways to access the child's OWN brain plasticity, 
and yields far greater results, so that the children can spontaneous grow from within."

I broke it down into pieces,
and maybe it's easier to read that way.

If so, that itself begins to illustrate the genius of the Anat Baniel Method and the Feldenkrais method:
it's about discovering the pieces to learning, not trying to
get the child to do what the child can't do.

I'll say that last part again, because I've seen PT and OT and good meaning body workers
over and over do this,
with children,
with injured adults,
with themselves.

If something doesn't work, the main goal
of the "fixers" is to
get the thing that Doesn't Work
to Work.

(Like when someone tells you: Say something funny,
and you aren't in a good mood.)

Now, with an adult, whose shoulder "used" to work,
whirling away "trying" to improve "range of motion,"
though painful and ineffective, is not necessarily harmful.

Well, actually it is harmful,  but not in the massive way
this approach is to a child.

Think about it:
A child can't sit.

The developmental milestone of their age is to sit.

So someone shoves, pushes, helps, prods, pads the child into sitting.

Since the child doesn't have the pieces and the learning of pelvis and ribs and head
and back and shoulders to sit, what does it learn?

Failure.

It learns that people are trying to get it to do something
and it is going to fail over and over and over.

What is missing is not the "how to sit" program, but the brain's awareness
of all sort of small differences that make up sitting.

As Anat clarifies it in her book:
(Kids Beyond Limits)
the brain needs to/ loves to/ wants to/ is designed to
DISCOVER that
Thing One
is
different than 
Thing Two.

I just finished a section in the book, describing her work with an autistic boy
who could barely speak,
and could hold toys only for brief periods
and seemed unable to finish any sentences.

She helped him distinguish Thing One
and Thing Two
of back and shoulder
and
back and head

and one finger from another
and one hand from another

his speech and his drooling and his thinking
all rapidly improved

no work on speech or drooling or thinking
but
he could and wanted to live at a more complex level.
Why:
  his brain had become more clued in and excited
to be doing what a brain is meant to do:
distinguish differences.

Or better said:
Learning is distinguishing differences
that make a difference.

( If you are married, try this for a difference that makes a difference:

Thinking and saying: "Why don't you stop doing....." when there is unwanted behavior.

Vs

wondering and asking: "Is something bothering you?")

Two quotes from Kids Beyond Limits, both way at the beginning: Life is Transformation, remember, remember, remember

Anat Baniel doing her gentle "magic", i.e. helping this child's brain rewire to a higher and more advanced level, touch by gentle touch

From Anat's first page:

"Just yesterday I saw, for the first time, a fourteen-year-old boy who had suffered severe brain damage in infancy. The injury had left him blind, with no language abilities and with no voluntary movement. After just a few days of sessions with my colleagues and just one sessions with me, for the first time in his life he began vocalizing and moving his legs; his arms were freer, and it was clear that he was engaged in the process --- he was even able to follow some simple movement instructions I gave him-- and loving it. He was waking up to himself."


From Norman Dodge, MD, author of The Brain that Changes Itself:

"Following in the footsteps of the revolutionary scientist-clinician Moshe Feldenkrais, the greatest thinker about how to improve movement in the twentieth century, [Anat] Baniel show why our mainstream approach to these children is often wrong, and at times damaging, because they train the children to 'ape' developmental milestone they are not developmentally ready to meet. The approach here, far wiser, far more subtle, truly holistic, far more ingenious, far more in accord with how brain development occurs, show ways to access the child's OWN brain plasticity, and yields far greater results, so that the children can spontaneous grow from within."

His intro is longer. Anat has a whole book to take parents through her nine essentials.

Please jump to her webpage, read more about it,
and BUY AND USE THE BOOK.

http://www.anatbanielmethod.com/children/kids-beyond-limits

EVERY DAY USE IT.  ( Your brain will love it, too.)

Special Needs Children, lessons to "imitate" the daily action of "normal" children, learning is the aim

A "normal" child is pushing into the floor, into the chair, into everything, and pulling herself along,
or rolling herself over, or figuring out strategies of moving, and sitting and going up and down and crawling, and doing just about everything.

All day.

Each hour of each day is a lesson for the average child.

For a special needs child, life is full and wonderful, too, but the spasticity,  or the limited repertoire of successful motion, or the disabled attention abilities keep the learning less than full time.

This is where lessons come in.

We practitioners create the connections and the pushes and the pulls,
slowly,
gently
with variation,
to mimic
but much more effciently,
the learning all children need about how,
say,
the hand pushing into the floor connects through to the ribs and spine and pelvis.

How the rotation of the pelvis affects the legs and spine and head.

How the chest and ribs affect the back and the pelvis and the head.

It's all the miracle of this body and this brain,
a brain that doesn't start out knowing how to roll over,
or crawl or walk or talk.

What is learning?
It's adding on an ability to perceive new differences.
This is what children's lessons are about, whether it is "normal" children
moving themselves around experimentally,
or the special needs child lucky enough to get our lessons
to simulate and encourage this learning.

Life is amazing, and lessons,
for adults and children,
at all ranges of activity,
can increase the ability of the whole person
to perceive the whole person, the self,
the "me" inside of each of us,
as an independent source of motion,
and intention and action.

Action is us living our own life.
Action is what brings the children in for lessons.
Action is the life expansion for the children,
however small, bit by bit, after each lesson.

This is the little miracles that can add up to such big ones.

Hope to see you and your child soon.


Chris

Special Needs Children: perhaps compression, for sure: increase perception of differences

Caveat: this is not official Anat Baniel Method,
and
compression is recommended by my friend,
fellow ABM practitioner, and special needs mom,
Michelle Bensky
(She advised the remarks and writing on the earlier
post called:
On the Spectrum: Fragile X and Autism)

I thought of compression again, after having heard from
Mischelle that she threw out the brushing idea, and kept the
compression from PT, because this weekend I had a number of
very successful sessions with a baby with Prader-Willi Syndrome.
His Mom had just started squeezing this and squeezing that,
and the baby liked it, and it seemed to be useful to his learning.

My addition, of course,
is to always have differences and contrasts and teaming up
in mind.

Which means?

Compress/ squeeze the left knee, say knee.
Do this three or four times with different intensity.

Then compress/ squeeze the right elbow, again
with variations, and saying the word elbow.

The perhaps do the two together.

Or, perhaps work your way up the leg.
Slowly.
Gently.
Saying different parts as you come to them.

Or right left differences,
squeezing back and forth the right hand and the left hand,
right thigh, left thigh.

Go slowly. Let whatever "good" the compression does,
and it certainly wakes a child up to the locations of itself,
can be sweetly increased by having contrasts and the verbal sounds,
and going slowly enough so that each compression/ squeeze can be registered.

Registered where?

The brain, of course.

learning vs pushing someone/ the child to do what the person/ the child doesn't know how to do

This is a distinction (the title is:
learning vs pushing someone/ the child to do what the person/ the child doesn't know how to do)

Distinctions
Differences
Getting clear in thinking
Increasing complexity
Understanding subtleties int the world

It's a big wonderful game.
Called learning.
Called being human.

Notice that: it's how we learn:
perceiving differences

It's how the children learn:
any difference
big toe and little
big toe and thumb
arm going forward with the belly in
arm going forward with the belly out

it's all part of getting smarter and smarter
and more able to move
in ways the child intentionally chooses to move

And so the title:
learning vs being demanded / shown to do what you can't do

And it's obviously not a great strategy,
being demanded to do what you can't do,
and so much of traditional "teaching" and "therapy"
is that:
someone has a stroke; stand 'em up and start them walking again
never mind teaching the connection of arm to shoulder, of foot to pelvis,
of back to head,
just: hey, you need to walk, get walking


and again and again with the kids in traditional therapies:
you are "supposed" to sit by now,
so let's crank you into a sitting position

arms don't cross the midline,
hey,
let's crank 'em across

The sadness of all this
is forgetting how fun and amazing learning is
and
anything can be broken down into little enough
pieces so that someone can learn it.

Even us.
Working with kids.
Parents to kids.
If there is some help or teaching we "can't quite do"
YET
it's  a chance to slow down and find
a small piece we CAN do,
and Can at least experiment with doing

This being present thing.
And the trying different possibilities thing.
And observing the results from what we tried.
And being honest and backing off
and trying something else just to see if there's
a better way.

This could all make for a good life for us "adults"
and certainly for our
relationships.

Okay. That's our game this week:
think about when we demand of ourselves
or any of our children that we or they instantly
do what they or we don't know how to do yet,
instead of giving ourselves the pleasure and thrill of
discovering for ourselves:
how can this be learned.

Ciao
and happy cooler weather
if you are in Texas,
and around the country
it looks like rain and real fall are coming along.

Good.

Chris

Training or Learning// Why parents need to take the lessons

Parents don't need to take the lessons
with every practitioner,
and I'm going to start requiring at least one
full lesson each month
from parents who want deep and amazing changes in
their children.

Why?

1. To feel in their bones and nervous system how
Small
Slow
Aware
Directed/ connected
Discovery movement

can feel so good
and make such a huge difference.

2. To know when they watch their children's lessons that
this is happening.

3. To resist the temptation to move their children
in too big and too strong of movements in an
attempt to "help" at home

4. To get the "soul" benefit from their children being on
the journey they are.
This sort of ease and transformation is something very
few people get to experience and the stress and demands
of parenting are high enough, even with special needs children.
So, it's like the air / oxygen in the airlines.
When in stress, the parent is supposed to take the oxygen first.
Then they can be of real use.

5. To realize over and over and over
that this isn't about "fixing" the child,
it's about learning,
and that we all can learn,
and the perception of differences is how we
learn,
and to feel this
and experience this in their bodies
how this work is about:
"making the impossible possible,
the possible easy,
and the easy pleasant."

Good.

And getting Anat's back or shoulder or scoliosis DVDs and doing the group
lessons at home is an added treated:
for yourself
and for your improved way of understanding,
touching
and enjoying
your special, special, wonderful child.

Happy Monday.

Shorty but goody, for special needs parents, and....all of us

This is going to be short.

Find anything
your child is learning,
or enjoys
or does well
or does slightly better than betfor
or is happy about

and be enthusiastic about that

And realize what a miracle a human
body is
and
get enthusiastic about taking lessons yourself.

You know all the reasons.

And if you only know the tiniest smallest littlest
reason,
get enthusiastic about that.

Good.