Taming Your Toddler

Children are natural explorers and the world is here waiting for them to discover it! Sometimes, when bedtime arrives, children can become very intent on delaying it for as long as possible, much to the frustration of a parent or caretaker. This is when its helpful to set up a bedtime (or nap time) routine to 'tame' the Wild Explorer & ease him or her into sleep.

I received this e-mail last week from a mom:

"Hi Barb,
I was just reading your posts regarding calming toddlers down and was particularly interested in the Starfish Relaxation techniques. I am having a little trouble getting my son to sleep so this might work well.
Also, I think I want to try the "Breathing Ball" for deep breathing. He tends to get frustrated, (thank God not all the time,) and throws things. He knows he should jump on the trampoline, tackle his tackle buddy or take a deep breath... However, the sphere is tangible and portable and he could use the imagery in places other than at home.

I love learning new things!
Thanks!"


Toddlers are dynamic bundles of energy. As a toddler, my daughter used to get wound up before bedtime or nap time too. She was (and is) very inquisitive and thinks she is going to"miss" something! At 11 years old, she still drags out and delays bedtime as much as possible!

What I have found is that the calm (and sleep) will come only after the excess physical energy is released and the active (or overactive) mind is guided to calm down. The key is to do this long enough before, yet close enough to bedtime so that the 'release' is sustained and the 'calm' can take effect.

Some effective ways to release excess energy are jumping on a trampoline, (if you have access to one) playing with thera-putty or heavy work activities.

While it seems counter-intuitive to put a child to work before bed, heavy work activities are known to calm the central nervous system down for the longest period of time (4-6 hours) Heavy work includes anything that combines movement with resistance. Lifting books, shoveling snow, pushing or carrying a laundry basket of toys, carrying a backpack, etc. are all examples of heavy work activities. The idea is to make the items or activity heavy enough to challenge and work the muscles but not so heavy as to frustrate the child or hurt the joints. This can be the start of your bedtime routine up to an hour or two before the "calming" rituals start.

I used to play "Log Roll" with my daughter. I would have her lay on the floor, hands at sides, like a log, and I would push & roll her over a few times and back again. Then, I would lay like a log and have her try and roll me over. I could use my own muscles to vary the amount of force she needed to move me and resist her enough that she would have to push pretty hard to roll me-or, I could let her roll me easily at times by "helping" her. She never knew if I would be a "light log" or a "heavy log" .  She would dig in her little legs and push with all her might when I was "heavy", and sometimes sail over top of me when I was "light". We would both be laughing hard by the end of a 15 minute game. (Laughing, by the way is another-no-its the best way to release muscle tension!)

The added benefit of these activities is that they also help improve balance, respiration and body awareness and this has an overall stabilizing, grounding & calming effect on the body.

After the muscle tension is released, then you can use a story, the "Breathing Ball" or any of the other calming breath & imagery or art techniques to further facilitate & encourage inner quiet to the busy mind and active body.

One of my favorites is the Starfish Imagery. You can guide your child or your students through this until they know the "story" and can guide themselves. Most children can easily relate to and visualize a starfish, resting quietly, in the sand, under the ocean waves. Its also easy for most children to lay down like a starfish-arms out & legs out like a star. (There is even a Starfish art activity to go with the Imagery, so that each child can have their very own Starfish to help remind them when & how to be calm.) You can use some soft music to set the mood and make a deeper association with the calming imagery.

For the wintertime, you can adapt this to be a Snowflake Imagery instead-and the little delicate snowflake floats softly from a cloud, through the air and slowly down to the ground with the other snowflakes (or by itself) and as the sun comes up and shines down on the snowflake, it gets warmer & warmer and then slowly, it melts...

One of the reasons yoga is so calming to the body is because breathing deeply & correctly & moving specific large muscles simultaneously work directly on the central nervous system. This is especially true with children and toddlers. If the process is made fun and engaging, and a regular part of a daily routine, the child learns the techniques in a natural non-threatening way and will eventually self-regulate & apply the methods themselves as they need to.

I like to add stories, fun games, puppets, props, art & imagery activities to Children's Yoga. This helps to keep them engaged, actively moving, focused and, when the time comes, as tame as possible so they can rest and be ready to explore the world another day!

For more information on incorporating movement games & art into children's yoga visit: www.bodylogique.com

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Snowmen At Night

One of the things I love about my work is the inspiring creative people I get to meet, talk with and learn from every day. We all share, use and adapt ideas to what our children or students are working on at the moment. I LOVE the creative ideas and inspirations I get back! I received an e-mail last week from one such inspiring, energetic teacher.

Her name is Margaret Ricciardone & she has been working with children since 2004. She is a yoga teacher at Ridgewood Montessori in Paramus, NJ.

Margaret has also provided yoga programs for several preschools in the Bergen County area, as well as storytime, art, and cooking classes for the Saddle River Cultural Center. It is her mission to share her love of yoga with children in a warm, fun, non-competitive environment.

As a new mother, she participated in "Mommy and me" yoga classes with her two boys and worked as a co-op mom in their preschool, making her realize that working with children is her heart's desire.

Storytelling is an integral part of Margaret's curriculum and the children use their imaginations & bodies to become an active participant in the story. Margaret wrote to me about one way she creativity engaged the children in the story of  "Snowmen At Night"  and it was so awesome that I wanted to share it with you here:


Hi Barbara,

Just have to tell you, it was a fun class yesterday. Thanks so much for your ideas. Here's what we did:
 We opened with the Namaste song from Storytime Yoga. Then we [warned our hands by rubbing] and woke up our eyes, turned on our ears to listen better, etc. We became sprinklers/fountains, watering the grass and it started to get cold and the water turned to snow. Then we were snowflakes gently falling, then became a blizzard and then freezing rain.

I asked them what they liked to do in the snow and that led of course to our "SNOW-GA Adventure"! (I used Music-'Wipeout' to take them through the activities they were telling me). We then became snowmen. Our snowmen slowly melted and we put them back together using happy baby pose and rolling up and down on our backs to form the snowballs. Then we rested with Snowball Breath by imagining a snowball in our bellies getting bigger and bigger until it was big enough to throw. On the exhale we threw them....and they pummeled me with snowballs!

After that, we dusted ourselves off and read "Snowmen At Night". The children then imagined what snowmen did  and  we played a game where we did what we thought our snowmen do at night... dancing around, sledding, skiiing, etc (to the music of "Squirrels in my Pants"!) When I stopped the music, they had to "freeze". I pretended to be shocked that the snowmen were not as I had left them, commenting on each snowman and sometimes trying to move their frozen limbs. They loved it!
For relaxation, we imagined we were snowmen melting in to the yoga mat. To wake back up again we rebuilt ourselves in our minds.

I was going to have them draw their snowmen, but we ran out of time. I'm saving the "Snowflake Dance" for next time. I used coffee filters to make them (using kids scissors that cut jagged/curvy lines) and they can take them home next week.

PS- I was thinking about "The Mitten" story. If you use a bed sheet as the mitten, when the kids are all in the middle, hand them (or they can grab) a piece of the edge and bring it to the middle and up to their chins to look like they're in a mitten. Then they can give a giant sneeze, jump up and let go of their end. The same for a yoga mat - after they roll up, they can 'sneeze' their way out of it.

Thanks again for all the inspiration/ideas. Yesterday was a blast and I can't wait for next week!

Talk to you soon,


Margaret
 

You don't have to be a very experienced "Yogi" to play & move with kids and teach them in this manner. You can find a qualified children's yoga teacher to present a program for you. In the meantime, you can just grab a book and look around for inspiration! Don't just read a story BE a story!

(Thank you so much Margaret for sharing your fantastic ideas with us! : )
 
To contact Margaret about classes or to read more about her you can find her bio  here at Storytime yoga (under "Find a teacher in NJ"):  http://www.storytimeyoga.com/teacher_mRicciardone.html

To order a copy of "Snowmen At Night" click the link.




Contact: barbara@bodylogique.com

Lessons of The Purple Tree

I was cleaning out some old boxes and files in my office last week and came across a picture that one of my elementary school students had made several years ago. It was of a tree.

"Oh-that's cute-a Tree!" you think. However, this was no ordinary tree. It has become my favorite tree- a tree of miracles. A symbol of what I need to remember as a parent, an educator and as a human being.

This is a perfectly majestic, magnificent, magical  Purple  Tree!

Now most would  say...'shouldn't  a middle school child be old enough to know that trees should in fact be colored... 'green'.

So before you rush to judge, and get stuck in conformity and the way things "should" be, let me explain to you that this student was a non-verbal child with autism, and to him, at least that day, trees should be purple.

I remember clearly the day that the students did this activity. A newly hired & well meaning 1:1 aide kept attempting to impose "green" on him, but this student insisted on [his verbal approximation of] "purple". The aide was very flustered and I gently suggested to her to just let him use purple. She asked me how would he ever learn the "right" way to color it if she let him use purple instead of green ?

I pointed out to her that the important thing was to first get him to color-which she sucessfully did. None of us had been able to get him to sit for more than 2 minutes. He hated the smell of crayons and would ultimately peel them, break them into pieces and wind up sliding himself onto the floor, crying.

To many this may not seem so monumental. But to us, his therapist, his mom, and to parents of non-verbal children with autism everywhere, they can appreciate the miracles here....that he asked for purple...that he actually sat still in the chair, drew & colored with other children. That the smell of the crayons did not gag him this time, sending him into sensory overload. That he asked for and shared the crayons...and he left most of the paper on them...that he was engaged, calm and creative and that he completed the activity. This is huge!

This is what makes this Purple Tree so special and so beautiful.

I often see a good amount of rigid thinking and imposed knowledge in educational settings which makes me all the more appreciative that I am able to provide a break from that in the form of creative movement, art & other enrichment activities: to give them a structured activity that still allows for free exploration and creativity; that lets them be children.

I know of preschool and Kindergarten teachers who will not put out puzzles, dolls, play tea sets or art supplies in the classroom because they "make too much mess".  This does them a great disservice. I say, let them make the mess. Let them have fun creating. Be there with them as they mess/create. Messy activities also create a perfect opportunity to teach them about "cleaning up" ! Don't rob the kids of the experience because of a mess-one that can easily be cleaned up.

While lesson plans, structure, ABA, schedules & procedures are absolutely needed and have their place, too many times we are so quick to fence ourselves, our children and our students into compliance & conformity, forgetting the higher skills/lessons that are being learned in the creative 'free play'  process.

Take a moment and think: is it more important that the tree is colored green or that the child is coloring & interacting appropriately? Is it more important that the room is "mess free" or that the child has experiences that teach him to interact & play appropriately? We need to pick our battles more carefully & strike a balance between these worlds, in the best interest of ourselves and the children we are influencing & setting examples for.

So I will suggest that the next time you-or your child wants to color a tree purple, or a cat green, or wear 2 different socks to school, let them. (My daughter's signature fashion statement has become her two different, yet color coordinated socks. Children & adults alike ask to see her socks and I assure you, no harm has come to her because she is not "matched" !)
As my former business partner used to say: "Sometimes we have to get out of our own way" [as a parent, educator or therapist] "and just be with the child-let them lead you to the lesson that needs to be taught."
Let them Play. Let them be children. Let go of how you think things "should" be & let them teach you how to play too.

These are the Lessons of the Purple Tree.

Have a Magical Day!

~Barbara

*Here are a few of my favorite books about colors! Hope you & your child enjoy!

When the Teacher is Ready ...

‎There is a Buddhist Proverb that says:  "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." As every year passes, I always am amazed at how many "teachers" appear in my life at my children's yoga classes.

Even though I go out the door to my classes with my mat, my lesson plan and an expectation of what I will teach the children that day, I come home, humbled with the lasting impressions and lessons that the children teach me.

"Friday Yoga With Lisa" always proves to be fun and full of surprises such as this, and spontaneous (incidental) learning for everyone!

Lisa is a is a very talented, experienced nationally board-certified, PA state licensed Pediatric Occupational Therapist and the owner of  KidsPlayWork  in Cheltenham, PA. We have been working together since the fall of 2010 to provide therapeutic yoga classes for a group of 6 children, ages 4-8, with varying degrees of autism, cognitive, sensory and behavioal challenges. Our most recent Friday class was even more special than most.

In this session, we have been working on 2 main group goals of respecting boundaries & facilitating smoother transitions. Each child has 2 or 3 individual goals as well. We are using color association to teach the children about emotions and self control, (based on the book "Majhical Mee, The Rainbow Inside of Me" ) and specific yoga movements to acheive the desired state of emotion. (Red & "Peace Pose"  are for confidence & connectedness; Orange is for warmth, like a sunset and we do "Sunset Pose" [Forward Bend], and so on for each color.)

"Story Stick"

The group worked very well together last night. We began with our "Breathing Ball" exercises then used the "Story Stick" in the circle to greet everyone. We did our "Warm Ups" and "Sun Salutaions" before we took our "Majhical Mee" Rainbow Yoga adventure!

The most special moment came, after relaxation, when we got to sing "Happy  Birthday" to one of the students. Each child then held a special "Singing Bowl" and sent a happy  "Birthday Vibration" and a special birthday wish to her.


A "Singing Bowl" for birthday wishes!

 The room was transformed. The children were very solemn & intensely focussed on sending the most special wish they could think of to the birthday child: happiness, lots of toys, a flower pressing kit, new friends, birthday hugs, etc.

As each child took their turn they looked the birthday child in the eyes & concluded their wish with a *Namaste, then passed the bowl to the next child. The room was filled with love & they all were absolutely glowing!

After all the children sent their wish, we then gave the birthday child the bowl, and Lisa asked her if she had a wish for herself. She hesitated a moment, the whole room quiet, waiting. She slowly looked around the circle, making eye contact with each of us, smiling, as if thinking of what to say next.

Then as she was still looking around the circle, she said in a very sweet slightly quivering voice, her eyes very wide, "I wish that I could always have this love from all of you; my friends." 

I was so filled up with the profound simplicity of it; at that very moment, I was ready & student became my teacher. It was so clear & tangible to me that at our very deepest level it is what we all wish for:  to be loved.

Eac of us expresses our wish differently, and some not at all, yet it is the one common thing that bonds us; the one thing that makes us all the same on the inside, regardless of how we speak, act, or look on the outside.

Namaste!



*Namaste: (Na-ma-stay) An Indian [Hindu] greeting which means “I bow to you” having the underlying significance of negating, reducing and humbling one's ego in the presence of another.


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