I'm sharing a parent question and answer video I made from my new Facebook group, Positive Parenting Q and A, today.

Today's video focuses on understanding why a child might be responsive and compliant with one parent and not with the other parent and how I address it in therapy. This is a very COMMON question!

I discuss three big reasons for this phenomenon. I also discuss how I approach healing the parent-child relationship to…

If you're like me, you've been a bit more stressed recently. It's hard not to be. On top of normal everyday life stress, we're having a pandemic and a long awaited social awakening to systemic racism.

It's hard to be present and feel 100% everyday. So, I wanted to share how I'm taking care of myself. I'm specifically going to focus on mindfulness and body awareness. They go hand-in-hand, of course. And if you feel this is a little woo woo of a topic, just hold on through the next paragraph...

Psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. wrote a New York Times Best Seller on trauma and the body, The Body Keeps the Score, that went into amazing detail about how our bodies hold the scars of emotional, verbal, and systemic trauma (in addition to physical trauma of course) through dysregulation of our fight or flight or freeze response. In the short term this can lead to poor sleep, digestive distress, and irritability. But, the long term consequences can be devastating. The ACEs Study found that chronic diseases, like hypertension, alcoholism, depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, obesity, and other poor future behaviors and outcomes, like high-risk sexual behaviors, smoking, and suicide and more likely to occur in adulthood with increased risk factors in childhood, including multiple forms of trauma. See ACEs Info here.

When I work with a child, I always consider …

It's finally summer!! The stress of homeschooling is over. The governor in Washington just announced that schools will be taking students in for a physical open in the fall. Ahhhh!!!

You deserve a break! You've worked hard doing multiple jobs for 3 months straight. Go ahead and plan that getaway!!

Today's learning topic is for when you come back rejuvenated from break and the kids are settling into their summer routine. Just before they start in with the "I'm bored" statements. Today's topic is about reducing kid frustration and increasing their cooperativeness through environmental arrangement.

Specifically, environmental arrangement is …

I'm so excited to share with you a new e-learning tool I've developed, the How to Teach Your Child Directions e-Learning Packet. It is a free step-by-step guide of how to give effective directions to young children and how to respond to them to increase child compliance. The packet is for parents and teachers. It goes through the rationale for each step and gives examples and non-examples. I also give you pro-tips for creating your own two-week plan for using what you learn and noticing the change in your child and yourself. When you sign up to get the packet, you'll also get five emailed pro-tip videos across two weeks giving you additional information on how to stay motivated and effectively use the packet information. The e-learning packet is based on information from applied behavior analysis, acceptance and commitment therapy, and parent-child interaction therapy.

Dr. Blevins discusses another common fear brought up by parents when they've been told by someone, often well meaning, that their child may need therapy or counseling. This fear is that their child may be "crazy" or have something permanently wrong with them. Dr. Blevins discusses how this is not the correct outlook, especially with children. Children are developing rapidly, and often therapy is meant to intervene and get them back on track. With most DSM-5 disorders for children, the symptoms can be remediated with evidence-based, high-fidelity interventions, or therapy. A new way of thinking of therapy is coaching for the soft skills in life, like emotional, social, executive functioning, and language skills, that a child will need to be successful. This is similar to having a physical trainer, a coach for a sport, or a tutor in math.

Functional academics are the basic life skills that academic learning helps us to do competently. This gets right to the point of academics. It's where the classroom meets real life. Does your child understand why and how they might use academics in real life? Homeschooling can be fun because you can focus on exploring more rather than rote practice. Maybe you do some FUN activities at home to demonstrate the usefulness of academics (while getting them to do a little reading or math). This includes cooking, grocery shopping, fixing things around the house, getting dressed, learning routines, etc. These types of activities build math skills, reading, organization, memory, and social skills. You can go to previous Enilda Clinic videos about praise to learn more about how to really target these skills when you're doing functional academics. Be creative and take pressure off yourself and your child to sit for hours doing school work by focusing on the functional parts of academics.

This video is for parents of young children or other caregivers working with young children. Dr. Blevins discusses how to use verbal descriptions of your child's play, similar to how sportscasters describe athlete's plays, to help children stay focused. This strategy can support your child in learning to attend to various new parts of a toy or in more complex interactive play, it helps build sustained attention, and helps reduce impulsive movement from toy to toy.

Many parents want their children to understand the underlying values behind apologizing or saying "I'm sorry". They try to help their children to engage in apologizing by encouraging the behavior from an early age. But often I see a paradoxical effect where children experience resentment, agitation, anger, and relationship distancing when they are made to apologize. This video discusses how parents can decide for themselves what values they intentionally want to teach by encouraging the behavior of apologizing, and how to teach apologizing to emphasize those values with toddlers and preschoolers. We discuss modeling, praise, approximations of the goal behavior, rehearsing, and value labeling as strategies parents may want to consider.

In this learning video, Dr. Blevins discusses how parents can support their learners to complete less preferred or more difficult tasks easier by arranging them to occur just before tasks the learner is likely to complete. Do Harder/Less Preferred Tasks, then do easier/More Preferred Tasks. A big take away of this video is that during this difficult time, parents should give themselves self-compassion with creating an academic schedule that works for their family. Not everyone will be able to do what their schools asks of them, and that's okay. Find what works for you and your child. Hopefully small organizational and prevention strategies will help you all to get through this trying time easier. Squirrel Cat is heard in the video hunting for treats in her puzzle box.

Learn how telehealth therapy is set up, specifically for therapy with parents and young children. Learn how Dr. Blevins thinks about approaching parent training and engaging children in telehealth, managing safety, and keeping care to provide medically necessary treatment.

Exercise is a well researched method to improve your mood and your physical health. During these stressful times we still have the option to go outside. Whether you want to do something active like running or hiking, or sit in the sun and take a leisurely walk, time outside can promote health and help you feel better.

Many families are doing their part to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by staying home. With kids across the US out of school for the next several weeks, I'm chatting with parents about how to minimize boredom, restlessness, and cabin fever. The strategies discussed in this video include: using the space in your home to prevent whining during academic time, reducing child interruptions during parent work time, using parent-child play time to reduce child misbehavior, managing sibling misbehavior, and using toys strategically.

When you give your child reinforcement for completing a hard task or tolerating a new, higher difficulty situation is that really just bribery?? Parents want their children to be intrinsically motivated and values-centered in their choices to do "the right thing." But, how do you teach that? Dr. Blevins chats through the differences between reinforcement and bribery with children, and how a parent might consider these concepts when intentionally interacting with their child.

When a child is diagnosed with a developmental or mental health disorder, many parents start their own journey of becoming a new, tougher parent. It involves grief, self-compassion, finding your tribe and your voice, and becoming your child's advocate. I'm chatting today with my friend Amanda who is a mother of two children on the Autism spectrum. She eloquently shares her journey from novice to pro in developing her advocacy skills for her children in the school system. I know from working with families that Amanda's journey will parallel many other's paths. Her lessons learned may be helpful to some as they are sorting out skills they need or finding courage to be bold.

A few tidbits from this video:

1. The arc of Amanda's path was to first find her voice, then learn her legal rights as well as her child's legal rights, and now she is currently working on supporting her opinion with data when she talks with the school. 2. She uses targeted parent support groups online to find her tribe where she feels heard and can gain new ideas to help her children. She identifies this as her most valuable resource in supporting her children. 3. She discusses the signs of autism she saw in her own children in early infancy and childhood. 4. She discusses how she had to push to get an evaluation for her first child when no one else shared her concerns, and how this experience made her feel and led to a delay in diagnosis. 5. She shares how she learned about Washington state law to empower herself to share her opinion with her children's schools. 6. She shares how she pushes now for the school to collect data to support continued interventions in her child's ASD areas of concerns, like elopement and anxiety, and how she helps them to identify appropriate interventions based on the data.

I'm discussing the prevention of tantrums in young kids thru the use of language building. I'll specifically hit on Functional Communication Training, or teaching your child to use language to get their needs met instead of using the tantrum behavior. This is a preventive strategy designed to help the kid see language as an easier and more effective means to getting what they want than tantruming.

Remember that all Enilda Clinic learning videos are just for educational purposes. If you have a specific concern, ask your child's pediatrician about how to proceed or seek specialized support by establishing services with a specialized provider. Enilda Clinic is home to Dr. Leslie Blevins, a licensed psychologist and BCBA-D in Spokane Wa serving children and parents. Learn more at EnildaClinic.com or call at 509-844-0002. We're located at 705 W 7th Ave, Ste D, Spokane, WA 99204.

I chat with many parents who are concerned about their child's use of video games. In today's learning video I discuss what signs to look out for that may indicate you want to change things up at home related to video games, a framework for thinking about video games in the context of other life activities, and whether video games can be thought of as addictive.

Dr. Blevins discusses consistency when implementing feedback from a parent-teacher conference.

Dr. Blevins describes Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, which is a therapy used with young children and their parents to address numerous behavioral and mood difficulties as well as parent-child attachment. Learn more about Dr. Blevins child psychology practice, including assessment and therapy, at EnildaClinic.com. Enilda Clinic is located at 705 W 7th Ave, Ste.