child behavior

Course Notes: Challenging Behavior, Pt. 1

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

The shrieks! The screams! The calamity of it all!

No, this isn’t a trailer to the newest horror flick. It’s just another day in my house with the kids. *sigh*

Children are not easy obviously, but especially so when their behaviors are on another level. But behind every bit of challenging behavior lies a need that your child can’t quite articulate.

Last fall, I took a CEU course called “Identifying the Root of Challenging Behaviors.” So this week, we are giving you the parent takeaways. This first part on the developing child brain is a lot of what we’ve previously written about, but it sets the stage for how all of these parenting/OT approaches and strategies come together effectively.

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So I Raised an Axe Murderer

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L
Cannot find art origin. If this is yours, let us know!

“Charlie, have you ever stood at the edge of a cliff or subway platform with someone, and you thought just for a split second, ‘What if I pushed him?’”

“Well, not really. Usually, I follow the Judeo-Christian ethic of ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but that’s just me.” (So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993)

Sometimes we wonder if we’re raising our kids to be good humans. We question if we may have been too harsh or hot-tempered in the moment, and that our actions will leave our kids with permanent emotional scars. We worry that if we don’t get this parenting thing right, our children may become one of those psycho killers in a slasher movie. I recall sobbing to one of my friends that my then 2-year-old son was going to grow up to be a serial killer because I yelled at him one time.

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Your Restaurant Game Plan

| Patti Webb

It feels 100% weird that I am writing this post on taking kids to restaurants when I just had a very frustrating experience on Saturday. But here we go…

When I was in high school, my little sister was about a year and a half old. My stepmother had made it a point that every Friday, they would go out to a restaurant for lunch and work on manners. I’m not exactly sure what this meant because I didn’t really see any actual teaching or etiquette going on. Instead, it was more like sitting in a booth with a toddler and correcting every single move she made.

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Role Models: Raising a Mini-Me

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“You’re a chip off the old block.”

Our kids can be like us in so many ways, from their physical resemblance to how they carry themselves. Although genetics has a hand in how similar they are to us, the majority of how our kids develop comes from what they observe and experience. It’s fun to have a mini-version of ourselves running around, but it’s important that we allow them to find their individuality and embrace who they are. How do we do that, especially when we are their main models?

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What Makes a Good Parent?

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

We all know that parenting is not for the faint of heart. Parenting is a skill developed over time and is influenced by many, many factors. We know families have tough days and we know to take people’s perfect Instagram feeds with a grain of salt. But whether you have kids, are planning to, or are watching from the sidelines, we all have our opinions on what good parenting looks like; and sadly, we are prone to judge.

We look at kids and how they behave, and we assume it’s because of parenting. We may witness a child have a tough moment and depending on how their parent responds, we judge if they handled it well or not. We might even investigate our own childhoods and determine what parental traits are worth keeping and which ones get the boot. But what makes a good parent, really?

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