Category: On My Mind…

Every Minute of Every Recess for Every Student!

Recess is a critical part of every student’s day! As an occupational therapist who has treated children with sensory processing and other special needs in outpatient clinics, schools and as a mom of children whose favorite part of the school day is recess, I will always advocate for every minute of every recess for every student! I’ve shared my professional opinion of the importance of recess for all children with many parents, teachers and administrators. Recess that includes physical activity, unstructured play and socialization with peers improves student behavior, attention and academic performance, as well as the more commonly known physical benefits.

VIDEO: See Tera talk about the benefits of school recess with FOX 13 The Place here.

Several years ago, the local schools in my community began cutting recess time to give more time to academics. Although my children did not attend these schools, I felt passionate about raising concern about this trend. At this same time, I was treating many children with sensory processing or sensory integration disorders who had high needs for vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (muscle and joint) input who were also losing recess time through school policies to give more classroom instruction time or as a result of poor behavior or academic performance in the classroom. These children struggled even more in every aspect of their day when their recess time was cut. If only the school staff understood that increased movement and physical activity would improve their behavior, attention and learning while in the classroom! And also understand that student behavior, attention and learning suffers when recess time is cut for any reason!

I want to share some good resources to help advocate for every minute of every recess for every student. Share this with other parents, teachers, administrators and policy makers so best practices for our children’s recesses are put into practice at every school in every classroom for every student!

A new document, Strategies for Recess in Schools, from the CDC and SHAPE America, was recently released in January 2017 with evidence-based recommendations given from experts about recess! The document references 41 other research studies and documents on the importance and benefits of recess. The website also includes links for a Recess Toolkit with ideas and resources for parents and schools to advocate and plan for successful recesses at their school and in their communities.

BENEFITS OF RECESS (pg 4)

Increased physical activity
Improved memory, attention and concentration
Improved on-task behavior in the classroom
Reduced disruptive behavior in the classroom
Improved social and emotional development

RECOMMENDED GUIDELINES FOR RECESS (pg. 5)

Recess time and physical education time should be separate and should not be used to replace each other.
Schools and students should be provided with adequate spaces, facilities, equipment, and supplies for recess.
Spaces and facilities for recess should meet or exceed recommended safety standards.
Recess time should not be taken away for disciplinary reasons or academic performance in the classroom.
Required physical activity during recess should not be used as punishment.
Recess time should be scheduled before lunch.
Staff members who lead or supervise recess should be provided with ongoing professional development.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also issued a policy statement in January 2013 on The Crucial Role of Recess in School with 47 reference documents.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child’s development and, as such, it should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.” (pg. 1)

“Ironically, minimizing or eliminating recess may be counterproductive to academic achievement, as a growing body of evidence suggests that recess promotes not only physical health and social development but also cognitive performance.” (pg. 4)

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RECESS: (pg. 4)

Recess is a necessary break in the day and should be considered a child’s personal time. It should not be withheld for academic or punitive reasons.
Cognitive processing and academic performance depend on regular breaks from concentrated classroom work. The frequency and duration of breaks should be sufficient to allow the student to mentally decompress.
Recess is a complement to, but not a replacement for physical education.
Recess serves as a counterbalance to sedentary time and contributes to the AAP’s recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day.
Recess should be safe and well supervised.
Peer interactions during recess are a unique complement to the classroom and build skills for a foundation for healthy development.

Any questions? Now go and play!

The Messy Magic and Choatic Splendor of Child-Directed Play in Our Home

Brittany Graham from Utah’s FOX 13’s The Place recently asked for my opinion on a blog post titled, “Get Out of the Play!”. I loved it and ended up writing my thoughts in this post about how our family allows child-directed play in our home.

VIDEO: See Tera talk about the magic of child-directed play on FOX 13 The Place here.

Stop by my house at anytime and you’ll not find the spotless, well-kept, Pottery Barn decorated images filled with littles dressed in clean, adorable outfits with perfectly done hair… These were the images of my dreams before my husband and I started into the magical journey of parenthood.

Instead, you may find a yarn ball explosion with children creating pulleys across railings, hallways and doorknobs or a make-believe laser beam obstacle course as they challenge each other to make it across the hallway without setting off the “deathly laser beams”. Maybe you’ll find a collection of bugs with leaves and dirt in containers sitting by the collection pile of very special sticks gathered over the months from our hikes on the trails and walks to the park. You might look in the back yard to see a princess in a sparkly gown and tiara digging for worms in the mud. Walk upstairs and it could be some “witch’s brew” of magical ingredients being stirred in the “witch’s cauldron” or more realistically described as hundreds of tiny scraps of different-colored construction paper being thrown across the floor. You might find the goofiness of inserting a balloon head on top of a brother’s head in his hoodie! If you peek in my freezer, don’t be alarmed by the dead baby snake in a plastic bag that my son was sure he needed to save for further exploration!

These scenes of mess and chaos may give you anxiety. They have almost given me a few panic attacks, but usually, after several deep breaths and reminders for more deep breaths, I’ve stopped myself enough to share the magic and splendor of childhood play through their perspective. As my children are growing, I now swoon over the long days of tired and exhausting bliss and wish they weren’t passing so quickly.

In my training as an occupational therapist student at Colorado State University, I was fortunate to have studied with Anita Bundy, ScD, OT, FAOTA, an internationally recognized expert on children’s play. In addition to my general pediatric OT studies, I also spent a semester with her studying play. I’ve been fascinated with children’s play ever since.

As a practicing pediatric occupational therapist for over 15 years, I’ve spent my career therapeutically using, studying and intervening to support children’s play to improve their everyday lives. Twelve years ago, I started my journey into motherhood, where play was an everyday event in my own home. My OT studies and career have made me a better mom and has had a definite and strong influential impact on my parenting style and philosophies.

What is true play? According to Anita Bundy, basing her theories on the work of previous play experts, play is characterized by three important aspects:

Play is intrinsically motivated. Play is done for the pure enjoyment, excitement and interest for the process itself, not for any end result, product or destination.
Play may extend the limits of reality. Play can always include purple unicorns in a magical kingdom, jet packs that shoot you to Mars, pixie dust to make you fly through the sky, magical staffs to cast spells, spoons becoming phones, empty paper towel rolls transforming into telescopes, pool noodles making excellent swords… True play is never limited by reality.
Play allows the player to maintain control. If another takes control of the direction of the play without consent or the rules of the environment are overly restrictive, true play is lost.

As adults, we feel a heavy responsibility to guide and raise our children to be happy, healthy and successful individuals. We see the end result and feel responsible to be sure they arrive at that destination. We tend to imagine the direct path they will travel to their final finish line of happy, healthy successful adult.

I’ve seen parents at the park telling children to keep their shoes on, not play in the dirt, don’t climb so you don’t fall, don’t throw grass, don’t get wet… with a constant barrage of direction and intervention to make sure the child doesn’t get hurt, doesn’t break adult rules of politeness, doesn’t get dirty, doesn’t make a mess, doesn’t mess up their hair, doesn’t make anyone wait too long… I do believe these parents’ intentions are good. But this constant adult direction doesn’t allow a child to fall into the process of true play defined by intrinsic motivation, suspension of reality and a sense of control.

Play is the work of children and if you observe children deep in play, they are intent, focused and in an absolute sense of enjoyment. Children learn insurmountable amounts of essential physical, emotional, cognitive and social skills necessary to become happy, healthy and successful individuals through years and years of true play. They take risks to stretch their abilities. Yes, risks that will often cause adults to feel uncomfortable. When we get in the way of their play process, we impede their development of these essential skills and opportunity to build confidence in their own abilities.

So, how can adults allow and protect child-directed play?

Create and protect time for child-directed play. Allow downtime each day without scheduled activities or screen-time where they are passively entertained. For me, I have to be patient and slow myself down and remind myself that during this time, we are on the child’s time table. I’m constantly monitoring my rushed thoughts so we can spend our time together enjoying the journey, not focusing on the destination. So, when my son spends so much time collecting and intensely inspecting hundreds of rocks on our hike that we never make it to the final waterfall destination with everyone else, that’s ok. We shared in the splendor of collecting and over-filling our pockets with all the special rocks we could find.
Create and allow physical space for child-directed activities. Where can your children build an obstacle course, paint pictures, dress up, make-up their own dance, perform in a marching band, explore bugs, jump, run, wrestle…? For over 10 years, we had a huge bean bag instead of a couch downstairs to allow jumping, crashing and wrestling. That was the main attraction of our house for friends coming to our house to play for many years. Our children have spent endless hours climbing up a table, jumping, flipping and crashing into the bean bag over and over.
Allow messes in the space you’ve created. Let them play with their food, play in the mud, jump in the puddles, play with play dough, paint… My children wear old play clothes to the park. Hair gets messy and dirty feet are common. Set some boundaries for the mess, but allow the mess to happen. My daughter had so much creativity oozing onto walls, scratching into car doors… So, we painted chalkboard walls in the playroom, bought an easel for painting and allowed her to draw anything she wanted on both sides of her bedroom door since the door had a hole and eventually needed to be replaced. We still have the door after many years and we’re keeping it for more creativity. Don’t stress during the process and leave clean-up until the end. Messes give many great opportunities to teach cleaning up.
Allow risk-taking behavior within physically and emotionally safe environments. Will your child get bumps, bruises, feelings hurt? Yes, again and again and again. We all learn best from mistakes rather than being protected from ever making one. Let children do this also. Keep children safe from life-altering injuries, but falls, bumps, bruises, cuts, even broken bones will heal. Kids learn their own vigilance to keep themselves and others safe in their risk-taking behavior. Allow time for children to try to negotiate and solve social disagreements on their own. They will began to recognize how others react to their own behaviors and how to work together. Be available to help, but not too close to interfere (reading a book, folding laundry, talking to friend). If needed, use problem-solving questions such as, “What might happen if you jump from the top of the slide?” Or, “How can you all solve this problem together so you all can have fun?” Stay away from adding more and more defined restrictions like, “No running. No climbing….” My sons love to climb. I remember the day my oldest son decided to climb a huge tree and shimmy his way to the edge of a very high branch at our local park. While I was watching closely from a short distance, several other moms rushed to the tree and suggested he should get down so he didn’t fall. I knew he was taking some risks, but I knew my son and his abilities and allowed him to stretch that day. If he fell, I was watching and could immediately run to help him. He didn’t fall and fully enjoyed the journey to the edge of the high branch and back.
Leave your own plan behind, take your children’s direction and follow them into the magic of childhood. Let your children amaze and delight you! Enjoy it as much as they do! One Christmas was extremely busy for us as we were remodeling another house and planning a move. I only had time to set up the Christmas tree, not decorate it. One day as I was working on a project downstairs, my children, ages 2-6, took responsibility to decorate the tree themselves. My 4-year-old daughter organized her brothers and they searched out tree decorations together… stuffed animals, hair accessories, loose parts of school art projects, socks, ribbons, bracelets, watches, baby blankets, old wrapping paper, an old plastic hose to a small ball pump, superhero figures… Never would I have allowed this to happen with my idea of an ideally decorated Christmas tree… until they pulled me by my hand up the stairs to excitedly present their decorated Christmas tree with such pride in their work! This will always be one of my favorite Christmas memories!

It’s all about balance. There’s a time for adult directions, structure and reality. There’s also a time for the child to have control, give direction and lead. In my professional and personal experience, the cost of mess and chaos is worth the benefits of the journey through the magic and splendor of child-directed play!

My Life is a Gift. My Life has a Plan.

I have a vivid picture in my mind of the biggest toothy smile I’ve ever seen on the face of 10-year-old girl with thick black hair. The thought of her grin brings tears to my eyes every time I hear her favorite song that she’d sing every time I’d see her for her occupational therapy visits with me. I’ll call her Sara for this article.

Sara and her siblings had been removed from their home with accusations of sexual abuse and other child abuse from her parents. She had been referred to me to address her sensory processing difficulties and helping her to learn to calm herself appropriately. She had been placed in a wonderful, nurturing home with a foster mom who happened to have a background with disabilities and was determined to help Sara and her siblings find the help they needed.

Sara loved intense swinging on a flat platform swing. She swung as high and as hard as she could, occasionally hitting the wall of the therapy room that no other child had hit with the swing before from swinging so high. Sara had one volume of voice that I’d describe “as loud as you can”. Her foster mom and I had finally problem solved that she could quiet her volume while chewing on Slim Jim beef sticks and swinging.

Sara had been going to church with her foster family and attended the children’s class. She had memorized one of the songs she’d learned and would sing it for me while she swung as high as she could on the swing in her loudest voice.

As I watched her, I often thought of the awful, terrifying experiences of abuse she’d experienced in her short life. Then I’d watch her up in the air singing at the top of her lungs, “My life is a gift. My life has a plan. My life has a purpose in heaven it began…”

In those moments, I felt at peace that this young girl was being nurtured and loved out of her past horrors. She had already begun to show the effects of that nurturing, developmentally and emotionally. But those words sung with such fierceness, were the perfect soundtrack to accompany her on her new path. Her life WAS a gift. Her life COULD have a plan. Her life DID have a divine purpose that was not lost through the crimes committed against her.

I’ve been fortunate to be the pianist in the children’s class at my own church for the past 2 years, where the children sing this exact song. Tears run down my face every time I listen to them sing this song and memories of Sara rush back to me, swinging up high, singing as loud as she can, “My life is a gift. My life has a plan. My life has a purpose in heaven it began…”

How important are these words for a young girl whose purpose for almost 10 years seemed to be nothing but an object to be acted upon to satisfy the desires of self-serving adults who could not see or understand a child’s worth? And how blessed was Sara that within a few months of love, nurture and the right treatment could start to feel the healing effects and the new path of hope she was on? I hope and pray that Sara engraves those words into her mind and heart as she travels through life with love and nurturing and she begins to truly understand her true value and worth.

First Grade

When was the last time you were in first grade? Lucky for me, I was there just yesterday. I’m 37 years young and still get to go to first grade. I’m also lucky enough to get the chance to just watch those bundles of energy… all kinds of energy… attention-seeking energy, excited energy, working-really-hard-to-please-your-teacher energy, frightened energy, running energy, please-come-be-my-friend energy, shy energy, I-hope-I’m-doing-this-right energy, creative energy, yelling energy, I’m-trying-to-be-so-good-but-it’s-oh-so-hard energy, wiggly energy… Those are just a few I saw yesterday and when I go back tomorrow, I can add to that list.

I’ve worked with children and adults with special needs in a variety of settings as an occupational therapist for almost 15 years now. My heart has always been drawn to those that are misunderstood and don’t quite fit in. Maybe that’s why I’ve been drawn to working with children with Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder and other difficulties that aren’t always understood at first glance.

This morning when I woke, I saw a Facebook post of a beautiful, full-of-love video by Emilie Parker’s mom, Alissa Parker. The video is called Evil Did Not Win. Emilie Parker was a first grader at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut on a fateful day in December 2012. I remember driving to school to pick up my own first grader as I heard the news of the shooting and I burst into sobs. I could not drive and pulled to the side of the road, sobbing for another 5 minutes. Later in the day, I learned that close family friends were involved in this tragedy. Emilie’s family still carries the unbelievable pain from that day when Emilie didn’t return home to them. I’m in awe of Alissa and Robbie’s strength, determination, faith and love through this tragedy. I love and respect these friends and would have anticipated this kind of strength and love from them by who I’ve known them to be. I pray that I might one day have the brave faith and determination they show.

I never knew Emilie, but I imagine Emilie having the creative, working-really-hard-to-please-you, energy. I see her getting lost in a blissful imagination of her own. I picture that no adult could do anything but love this little blonde, beautiful first grader.

There is another side to the Sandy Hook story that is the most difficult to talk about, that we don’t want to talk about because we don’t want it glorified and we simply don’t have answers to the questions. I 100% agree with this. But, when I go back to first grade tomorrow, I can’t help thinking about another once-upon-a-time first grader named Adam. He was the precursor of the Adam that became the horrific part of the Sandy Hook story. Because when I see the energies of those 6-year-olds, I have to believe that he had some of those same energies I saw in first grade yesterday. And I have to believe and have faith there was another option than the outcome at Sandy Hook Elementary. What turned that energy is my question? While this question may never be answered and I am not presuming to know the answer, I do believe this is an important question to discuss for all children’s futures.

This little first grade class I was in yesterday has gained the attention of the entire school. There are a few boys in that class that are already infamously known by teachers, administrators and students. Their energy is not the appreciated kind of energy in a first grade class, and their energy can hold an entire classroom and school hostage. How can this be at just 6 years old?

I wonder about first-grade Adam in his classroom, in his house, on the playground, going to tumbling class… When he showed that unappreciated kind of energy, what was the reaction of those around him? What kind of attention did he get with that energy? And from that attention, what did he learn about himself as a 6-year-old boy that eventually grew into a horrific mass murderer?

As I watch those harder-to-manage first graders, I see them searching franticly for some kind of reassurance from their peers and especially the adults. Many times it is attention, sometimes it’s the assurance that they have a sense of control over anything, other times it’s to know they will be safe, sometimes it’s acceptance.

The majority of children know how to gain attention, control, safety and acceptance because they learn well from the environment they’ve been living in. They’ve learned how to use the energy they have to feel this way. But what about the ones who haven’t?

Did Adam learn that to get attention, it had to be a bigger and bigger act to receive attention? Did he learn that the most immediate and quickest attention was when he broke the rules or hurt someone? Did he learn that the only two ways for him to feel safe was to run away or aggressively attack whatever felt unsafe? And had he learned that he really wasn’t ever accepted by any peers or authority figures for anything he did?

As I’ve worked with children with unappreciated energy for over a decade, I am reminded every day that there are no easy or perfect solutions—absolutely none. If you happen to know one of these children, you intimately know the constant, never-ending struggle. But, hopefully, you truly love this child without end and are willing to continue this struggle every day. Please never lose hope and never give up in your search to help this child feel loved with secure boundaries. Please come back the day after you’ve “given up” on this child, to keep searching and keep loving. Because this search and this fight will most likely change daily and give you more and different answers to find than the previous day. You may physically, mentally and emotionally scream and pull your hair out. Do that, and come back, knowing your hoarse voice will heal and your hair will grow back or you can start wearing a new hairstyle with less hair. 🙂

My plea to you, parents, teachers, coaches, grandparents, friends, is that you will make this first grader or any other aged-child, to feel just as attended to, in control, safe and accepted as Emilie felt by her loving parents and caregivers. I believe that we can make just as much difference with the struggling first graders as we can with Congress passing gun laws for the entire nation. There are many, many small and big solutions along the way that will make a great impact, but none of them are successful without seeing the child with love and compassion. Please persevere in memory of those 20 beautiful first graders and in the memory of an innocent, first-grade Adam.