Difficult Getting Students to Focus? Try the Flashlight Technique

“How do I teach the flashlight technique” for re-directing attention in a “super easy way”.

As always, we begin with collaboration.

Talk with the child 1:1 in a kind and collaborative manner and tell him that you have been noticing he has difficulty keeping his attention focused on the work in class, ask him if he has noticed as well. Then have the “cognitive conversation” bringing to light an idea that might help.

Tell him that you once had a student named Max who taught you about imaginary flashlights. Max said that when his mind was drifting in class and he would catch himself, he would switch on an imaginary flashlight and point it where he needed to be focusing.

Ask the child if he thinks this might be helpful and talk with him about how you can help with questions and cueing prompts in class. Agree to the prompts, so that he feels helped and supported not humiliated in class. That’s it, super simple. A kind conversation, a social narrative story, and a plan, the two of you develop together, to help him learn how to alert, focus and sustain his attention.

Have The Cognitive Conversation

Teaching a child to use his flashlight is done in three steps:

1. Teaching the child to notice he is off-task.

Q: Where is your flashlight pointing?

2. Helping him alert his brain to salient information.

Q: Where does your flashlight need to point?

3. Pushing the re-engage button.

Prompt: You can use your flashlight to select what you need to focus on right now.

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Written for teachers, educators, and clinicians whose work involves playing, talking or teaching children who would benefit from better executive function and social-emotional learning skills, 70 Play Activities incorporates over 100 research studies into printable worksheets, handouts, and guided scripts with step-by-step directions, to empower children to learn and behave better. “With 70 Play Activities we aim to improve the trajectory of children’s learning by integrating the newest neuroscience with activities children love!” With over 70 activities designed to improve thinking, self-regulation, learning and behavior, your tool-kit will be full and your creative brain will be inspired to craft your own meaningful exercises. 70 Play Activities is available at amazon.com

Sleep: The Best Gift to Your Child’s Intelligence

As parents, we are faced with an onslaught of products that claim to improve our child’s learning and intelligence. Manufacturers of toys, games, and electronic devices all try to convince us that they will make all the difference in your child’s development.

It turns out that perhaps the easiest gift we can give our child’s developing brain is sleep. We all know the importance of sleep, but new research links sleep directly to the development of executive function in young kids.

Why is Executive Function Important?

You may have heard the phrase “executive function” thrown around in education circles. What does it really mean? Simply put, executive function is the mental processes that help you regulate your behavior. Things like impulse control, working memory and planning are all part of executive function.

From this description you can probably tell how important executive function is to kids performance in school, and perhaps more importantly, their functioning in later life. Kids who lack executive functioning skills often appear to be misbehaving or defiant. In reality, their brain just doesn’t yet have the skills to regulate their behavior well.

The Link to Sleep

Think back to the last night you lost a night’s sleep. How did you feel the next day? Groggy, slow-moving, perhaps even clumsy or forgetful? This is a perfect example of how sleep affects executive control. Without proper sleep even we adults are not at the top of our mental game in terms of executive function. Now imagine this same scenario in children, who have not fully developed their executive control anyway.

Past research has clearly linked sleep loss to poor executive function in elementary age children. In these groups, children who lose sleep either due to medical problems or purposefully in lab settings often experience deficits in cognitive skills and the ability to pay attention.

We are just now understanding, however, the ways in which sleep might affect executive function in very young children. The newest study on this topic looks at children as young as 12-18 months of age. While these kids have not developed a great deal of executive function skills, it is still possible to see differences.

The results of this study found that among kids who had more overall night sleep, their executive function skills were higher than among kids who had less overall night sleep. Additionally, the area that showed the most difference was executive functions that centered on impulse control.

As parents, we all know what this looks like in real-life. Your toddler skips a nap or gets to bed too late one night and they are a mess the next day. Cranky, unable to follow the simplest instructions and cries at the drop of a hat. Now multiply this by weeks or months of inadequate sleep and you can get a picture of how sleep really affects executive function.

So, forget all the fancy gadgets and electronic games. If you want your child to develop their intellect and executive function in the best possible way—just let them sleep as much as they can.

Did You Know Creativity Enhances Your Child’s Developing Mind?

Children are naturally creative: Their napkins become hats, their drinks are magic potions, and ketchup turns into paint. But aside from being endlessly entertaining, creativity is also critical to their developing brains. Creative and artistic experiences help kids express their feelings and come up with new ideas and ways to solve problems. Studies show that involvement in the arts boosts test scores and promotes academic achievement across the board.

These discoveries may explain why children’s art studios are popping up across the country, giving kids a chance to let their imaginations run wild with paint, clay, and in the case of Make-a-Messterpiece in Glenview, Ill., even bubbles. In addition to private studios (such as KidsArt in California and Washington) and foundations (such as Creative Art Space for Kids in New York), many YMCA branches and local art museums offer art programs.

You can also get your child’s creative juices flowing at home with some very basic art supplies and the right attitude. Bring out the creative genius in your children with these simple tips.

Start With a Blank Slate

Leave projects open-ended so kids are free to imagine the endless possibilities. For example, if you’re painting pumpkins, don’t paint one first as an example, because your kids are likely to try to copy it, quashing their creativity. Instead, simply give children paint and paintbrushes and let them begin. Keep in mind that there are no wrong ways to paint a pumpkin.

Forget Perfection

Focus on the creative process rather than the finished product. For example, your child may find tremendous fun and fulfillment in shaping, squishing, pounding and poking at clay for an hour – even if the end result is a shapeless lump.

Don’t Mind the Mess

Art is not a neat business, and nothing stifles creativity faster than a wet mop or a dustpan underfoot. Let your child get dirty – that’s how she’ll learn to take risks. (Plus, it’s fun!) You can wipe up the glitter later.

Mix It up

Spice up your at-home art projects by using different materials instead of the usual paint, felt, pipe cleaners and beads. Challenge your children to find art supplies in their environment: a sponge, chopsticks, gum wrappers, bottle caps and egg cartons, for example. Head outside and collect leaves, sticks, acorns and small pebbles. Supply children with glue and paper and give no other direction. Be ready for anything.

Expose Them to Diversity

Take trips to museums and zoos; see plays and concerts; attend an African drumming circle, a Mexican fiesta, a Chinese New Year celebration. Every experience your children have with people or situations outside their normal routine widens their range of creative expression.

Make Music

Encourage experimentation with musical instruments without showing how it’s done. Let her play piano with her toes or beat the drum with maracas if she wants. You can make your own instruments too. Dried beans in a toilet paper tube make a great shaker; waxed paper secured over a coffee can is a drum; rubber bands stretched over a shoebox make a guitar. Grab an instrument and play along for a fun family hootenanny.

Allow for Unconventional Ideas

Thinking outside the box is what creativity is all about. When kids come up with a new way of doing things – making a sculpture out of plastic hangers, for instance – go with it (as long as it’s safe, of course). Your support will encourage more creative thinking and problem solving down the road.

Brecker Bunny Safety Books: Bedtime Stories You Need to Read!

You don’t leave the hospital with an instruction manual on how to protect your child…you learn only by doing. I would do anything to not have learned this lesson the way we did, but it is our reality. Laying on the hospital gurney, cradling my 21-month-old, I sang our favorite lullaby, “Gentle Breeze” through tears. I tried to wish away the moment, but his screams and cries of, “Mama hurts, mama hurts” kept me firmly grounded in the heartbreaking reality…this was happening…and it was happening to my baby. All the wishing and singing could not ease his pain.

On April 6, after returning home from a walk, I received a frantic call from my husband. He was in the ER. Our son had been badly burned in the tub. Now, my initial thought, before I reached the hospital, was that it couldn’t be too bad. Like all concerned parents, upon moving into our newly constructed home, we made sure to have our son’s tub installed with a device to prevent him from turning the water on too hot. We also had asked to have our water temperature set appropriately. After seeing our son in the hospital, I knew something had gone horribly wrong.

In the time it normally takes for our son to go upstairs – and get his blanket and then come back down, my husband heard screams. Rushing up the stairs with our one-week-old in his arms, my husband found our son sitting in our master bath whirlpool tub, crying frantically as the skin peeled away from his legs and feet. His diapers and overalls provided some insulation for the rest of his body, but his feet were horribly damaged. After three weeks in the hospital and skin grafts, our son was allowed to come back home. But care was not over. He had compression socks for over a year and another surgery as well. And the time it took for this to happen?

Less than 10 seconds…

After careful investigation, it was discovered that our water temperature was set above 135 degrees Fahrenheit, which can cause third degree burns for a child in 10 seconds. At 126, third degree burns can occur in under two minutes. Legally, all water heaters must be set by the manufacturer at 125 degrees Fahrenheit, however, it is best if temperatures are set at 110 when there are small children in the house.

Sitting in the hospital and feeling helpless and like a failure did nothing to help Breck or heal the emotional wounds my husband and I had, so we began the process of reaching out. What could we learn? What could we do to teach our child and ourselves about safety? We were disappointed by what we found. We decided to do something about it.

It became our family’s mission to find out the top reasons why toddlers get burned and create a book that was a bedtime story with a purpose. Brecker Bunny Learns to Be Careful was born. It is the loving collaboration between burn nurses and doctors at University of Madison Hospital and Clinics , Wisconsin Alliance for Fire Safety (WAFS) www.wafs.org and me, the mom. After meeting with experts from the Burn Center in January of 2005, much research, finding an illustrator, a partner (WAFS), funds, a printer, and learning the publishing ropes, the first printing of Brecker Bunny Learns to Be Careful! A Lesson in Fire and Burn Safety was handed out to survivors and supporters at the WAFS Camp for Burn Survivors in August of 2007.

To date we have delivered over 120,000 of this title alone. We printed it in Spanish and Brecker has a lighter safety book called Brecker Bunny Asks for Help too! It’s currently available on Amazon in a Kindle verson. Next on the agenda…the rest of the safety series: water safety, passenger safety, bicycle safety, even stranger danger. All books with real lessons, about real kids (now bunnies), made easy and fun to read at bedtime. I wish that my Breck never had to experience his burns, but seven years later, my eight year old has helped to keep many children a little safer…and he even has the thank you letters to prove it!

HEALTHFUL HINTS

1. Tips when reading a safety book:

• Sit in close proximity with your child while reading. A snuggle goes a long way to help children’s brains chemically calm making them more receptive to what they are learning.
• Choose one to three things to emphasize each time you read a safety book. To stop and point something out on every page is confusing and overwhelming.
• Don’t be afraid to get up and move the book. Most kids and adults learn best by moving their lesson. If you are learning to stay three feet away from a fireplace…pace of three feet and practice.
• Make children partners in safety, rather than merely the recipient of the lesson. Look for opportunities to ask them how they can make a room or situation safer.

2. Tips on Burn Safety in and around the home (based on the top 3 accidental reasons toddlers in my area end up in the Burn Centers):

• Keep children 3 feet away from stoves, ovens and microwaves. There are so many children in burn clinics who have been scalded by caramel, coffee or hot water spilling as it comes out of the microwave. Usually these burns occur on little ones’ faces.
• DO NOT TRUST YOUR HAND TO TAKE THE TEMPERATURE OF THE BATHTUB! Test your water temperature by holding a water thermometer or candy thermometer under the stream of water after it has had the opportunity to heat up. If it is over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, change your water heater immediately. Consider setting the temperature below 110 degrees Fahrenheit if you have very young children or elderly people in your home. Their skin is thinner and easier to burn. Also, it is more difficult for them to get out of tubs quickly to avoid a burn.
• Candles and fireplaces should never be allowed to burn unattended.
• Keep a three foot rock perimeter around campfires and do not allow children within the ring. I get letters from moms telling me that they thought if they were standing next to their child, the child would be safe; yet, one quick trip or fall and hands and feet can end up in a fire.
• Most importantly, stay vigilant. Periodically do safety checks around your house. There are many great checklists online and of course, in the back of Brecker Bunny!

Be Bunny Buddies and keep your family safe!

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Editor’s Note: we first ran this post in April of 2010. The story of Brecker Bunny provides an excellent opportunity for parents to learn and teach a variety of safety messages in an entertaining and attention-getting format. We hope that reading this post again will help save more children from the pain and suffering of an unintended burn.

Squirmin’ Wormin’ Kids? …3 Ways You Can Help Them

Brain development happens over time. As the brain matures, children often gain better control of their attention, motor inhibition and their emotional responses to social situations.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Here is a video along with three resources for YOUR CHILD’S BUSY BODY

1. Kids who move a lot are often seeking brain stimulation. Creating days filled with a variety of calming and alerting activities is just the ticket. For calming activities, yoga, listening to music, drawing, crafts and art are body calmers. You can find an array of activities on Lynne’s community FB. For alerting activities consider 15 minutes outside several times a day for little ones and longer periods of time for older kids.
2. Research tells us that children who exercise remain calm longer, think better and socialize with less impulsivity. So playing outside, jumping rope, playing tennis in the drive-way, walking to day camp, shooting hoops or kicking a soccer ball are all good movement morsels to sprinkle throughout the day. SPARKPE is a terrific resource for schools and families.
3. Music can be both calming and alerting, so it’s pretty magical. Playing piano (even if you aren’t very good at it) for 10 minutes at a time can re-organize the brain and the body. For your kid’s listening pleasure visit The Kiboomers or Stressfreekids.com.

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Written for real parents with anxious, angry and over-the-top kids, Bloom is a brain-based approach to parenting all children. Taking its lead from neuroscience and best practices in early childhood mental health, it offers parents, teachers and care providers the words, thoughts and actions to raise calm, confident children, while reducing the need for consequences and punishment. The first book of its kind, it provides pages full of printable mantras you can carry with you, hang on your fridge or use in your classroom to raise emotionally competent kids. Stop second-guessing the way you handle misbehaviors, and learn why they occur in the first place. Bloom is available at amazon.com

An ADHD Dog Trainer Shows Special Kids How To Use Calm Energy

I have been writing articles about safe and healthy interactions between kids and canines for Pediatric Safety for over two years now, and in those articles I have shared numerous personal stories with you all… so I think it’s safe to say that through those stories many of you have gotten to know me pretty well. I have shared about what is was like growing up with ADHD and learning disabilities in a time where it was not really known about in my post: “Growing Up With ADHD – Have Things Changed?“. I broached the subject of being in recovery from addiction in “Kids, Pets & Your Holiday Party: Read this List (check it twice!)“ and I got into a bit more detail about it and also talked a bit about suffering for many years with low-self-esteem in “Building a Child’s Confidence Through Dog Training“.

So now, I want to combine little bits of all of that into this month’s article, because being a professional dog trainer, and especially being a member of a wonderful organization like the International Association of Canine Professionals (IACP) has changed me. There are so many observations and realizations I have made about myself since becoming a member; both personally and professionally! The changes I had to make to grow as a trainer helped me take a new look at the struggles I had so many years ago and how I might have handled them today. It is my hope that in sharing this story with you, I may be able to help many of you who have dogs and also a child who struggles with ADHD. I hope I can potentially offer you a different perspective on how they may see and perceive things, not based on years of research, studies and statistics, but based solely on my own personal experiences… who knows, maybe some of those same tactics can help you and your child too.

Early on in my career as a dog trainer, I really did not understand why I did not do well with toy breeds such as Yorkshire Terriers, Maltese, Chihuahuas, etc. It was obvious (even to me) that I did not do well with them, but I just couldn’t grasp the ‘why’ of it. So I shied away from them. I took all the calls for the mid-sized dogs (Cocker Spaniels, Beagles, Wheaten Terriers…) large breeds (Golden and Labrador Retrievers, German Shepherds, Huskies…) and even giant breeds like the Great Dane, Rottweiler’s and Mastiffs!. I was consistently successful with any breed that wasn’t tiny and typically nervous, so I referred those clients elsewhere. But I think deep down, it did bother me! Who wants to admit they cannot succeed in any area of their chosen profession? I sure didn’t!

But it was exactly this time, eight years ago, that I attended my first IACP conference!

To say that I ran the gamut of emotions- from excited to nervous, insecure, and petrified -would be a huge understatement! I do need to mention here that as a New Yorker, we all tend to talk a bit faster than most. I arrived at the conference a New Yorker with ADHD and extreme nervousness! Fortunately most of the other attendees acclimated to my hyperactivity pretty quickly… but I couldn’t help but notice how often words like, ‘Calm, tranquil, peaceful, and consistent’ were used in conjunction with the word ‘energy’ (ie: ‘calm energy,’ and ‘tranquil energy,’ etc.). Even the trainers who had their dogs with them … Both the trainers AND their dogs… were all so STILL! And my first thought was ‘CRAP! I can’t do that!’ I immediately flashed back to my childhood. It was a time in my life when the word ‘can’t’ first became my mantra.

But then came the main meeting…. And the main speaker, Cesar Milan, took the stage. His primary methodology is all about using a calm energy… building the dog’s respect for him by being assertive, firm and consistent…and CALM. At the end of his speech, when it was time for questions and answers, you bet I had some! But when I stood up to take the microphone to ask it, in my nervousness, the rapid speech was tripled, and my words seem to come out in a jumble, all tripping over each other! And Cesar, obviously having no clue what I was trying to ask, came to the edge of the stage, and in a calm and very thoughtful pose, looked at Peter, my husband, and asked, “How often is she this hyper?”

At this time the entire audience of trainers, all of whom had spent the last few days already with me and having already witnessed my hyperactivity, began to laugh… and in front of thousands, I began to cry. All that pent up nervousness, all of those hidden insecurities up until that point, all the overwhelming new knowledge (and with it, the self-doubt) came rushing to the surface.

I somehow regained my composure, eventually got out my question, and he answered it, but it was when we spoke afterwards that some things suddenly started to make sense to me. I envisioned myself arriving at a client’s home with a tiny dog, that is fearful and nervous, and me coming at them at a hundred miles an hour! How would I personally feel if I was afraid, and someone came at me like that? I was just lucky that I hadn’t gotten bitten yet!

As I thought more and more on this, other memories resurfaced…. How as a child, our dog Brandy would often come to me to rough-house and play, but if he wanted to cuddle, or just wanted to be calm and still, it was my sisters he sought out. As a kid, I took it as a personal rejection. Now I realize it wasn’t.

And I started to change the way I worked with my clients.

• When I had to work with a small dog, when I arrived at the house, I had to take a few deep calming breaths before ringing the doorbell. And I found when I calmly and assertively greeted them, both owner and dog seemed more calm and receptive!
• Another challenge I had was my impatience and aggravation sitting in traffic for an hour prior to arriving at a clients house…. So to combat that, I left an extra half hour earlier than I needed to to arrive on time. This allowed me to arrive, park near-by and do something (reading, listening to some music, etc.) to bring down my level of agitation prior to arriving at the person’s house… And amazingly, I found this not only worked well for the many small dogs I now worked with, but for the larger hyper pups as well!

When I tried to help my clients with hyperactive ADHD kids, and I would explain the importance of the kids being calm around the dog, there was one key fact that I forgot….

Almost anyone can be calm for an hour during a focused training session. But if I was able to curtail that hyperactivity full time, I would not have the diagnosis of ADHD! Was I seriously asking my client’s hyperactive kids to be calm full-time and expecting them to accomplish it?

I needed to figure out a way to help them interact with their dogs better, because I could physically see the different way the dog or pup reacted to the ADHD child versus older or calmer family members.

• With the calmer children, the dog was more relaxed, did not mind lying next to them and even cuddling with them….
• The ADHD child was filled with scratches and nip marks from the dog chasing them and jumping on them. Also a child that feels rejected by the dog that won’t cuddle with them will often try to ‘force the dog to stay with them’ by holding their collar or wrapping their arms around him. If a child physically restrains a dog and the dog wants to get away, there is a very high risk in that moment of the dog biting the child to free themselves.
• My toughest challenge was trying to figure out a good way to explain these dynamics to the child as well as explain to the parents the potential risks and dangers in a way so that they could understand and be receptive to the necessary changes.

What we did (and what you can do)

• The first thing I wanted to do was work with the child (and Mother) alone… without other family members present. (This made the child feel less self-conscious and more important – he was getting to work alone with the trainer)
• Next, I wanted to show the child that they too can have a ‘cuddling session’ with the dog. I sat on the floor with the child and we just talked a bit about the puppy, and I asked him if he would like to be able to cuddle with the puppy too, and he looked so sad when he said, “Yes, but the puppy doesn’t like me that way.” This was my opportunity to explain to him that if all they did was run and go crazy with the dog that would ALWAYS be their relationship, so he had to show the pup that they can do this.
• Next I sat side by side with the child, with my legs stretched out in front of me. I opened my legs a bit and I put the puppy on his back in between them, then gently held him in place. Once the dog had settled on me, I told the boy to gently pet all the way up, and all the way down the dog’s body, instead of quick rough movements in one spot, and to avoid the paws and ears for now, as they are sensitive areas on a dog that tend to get them easily riled up when messed with.
• The little boy did as I asked, and then when the pup was nice and calm, I switched the pup over to in between Mom’s legs and we continued the gentle petting. It was important that Mom was comfortable with this and understand what she had to do if she was going to be able to continue this when I was not around.
• After pup was relaxed with Mom, we instructed the child to sit the same way his Mom and I did, and then we calmly put the pup between his legs, and I let his Mom help him to keep the pup still and calm. We continued this, and much to the little boy’s delight, the puppy let out a huge sigh, and then closed his eyes!

When the pup was nice and relaxed, we got him up slowly and then put his leash on and all of us (Mom included) went for a walk. We worked on walking SLOWLY, and getting the pup to keep pace with the boy, instead of the other way around. The boy seemed to have a bit of trouble walking slowly for any length of time, so we practiced taking ten steps, and then telling pup to SIT. I praised the boy, and had the boy praise his dog (calmly and gently). We did this again and again…. Every ten steps we stopped and sat. The Mom told me she had never seen her son so calm and focused, and I pointed out to the Mom and the boy how receptive the pup was to his training.

A dog can be such a wonderful tool to help a child with special needs. All it really takes is a little know-how, some time, patience, and understanding. This is why they are so often used for therapy.

As an adult who has dealt with ADHD all of my life, I hope some of this helps you to help your child move out of the “I can’t’ Mantra, and into the “Wow… I really can!” all the while helping your child and pet build a safe and beautiful relationship!

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