child development

Course Notes: ADHD

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

This year, I started the process of becoming an ADHD certified rehabilitation services provider (ADHD-RSP). That means a bunch of certification courses on the disorder, the latest research, meds, and management. Let me just say that the lecture content has been quite eye-opening. ADHD is way more complex than I previously thought and it’s generally misunderstood, even with the decades of research and the ever-growing amount of information available these days. So for the next two weeks, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned and hope that it will shed some light on what ADHD is, how it affects our kids, and effective ways to address it. Today, we’re breaking down the disorder; from its name, misconceptions, and how it’s diagnosed.

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Money-Driven: Kids and Money Management

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Welcome back to #throwbackmonth! For those not familiar, to get us back into the blog-writing groove for the month of July, we pick a past post each week to spotlight. Then we do a deeper dive on that topic to revisit the content and talk about some other things that may be related. On Tuesday, we picked our double post on Introducing Chores and Chores by Age.

When my son first started showing interest in helping around the house, I was ecstatic. Awesome, he wants to do chores. That means he’ll ALWAYS want to do chores. Haha, silly me.

Now that he’s 7, he groans when he’s reminded of his duties. Although he understands that chores are a part of his daily contribution to the household, he’d obviously much prefer to be doing something (anything) else. While research shows that chores provide positive outcomes for kids (like autonomy, self-control, empathy, and overall success), it can be difficult to get them to participate and WANT to do it. Jennifer Aniston wants you to WANT to do the dishes….

One motivator that we are all familiar with is paying our children for their hard work (aka an allowance). I’m sure we’ve all received payment for doing good deeds around the house, from doing dishes to maintaining a tidy bedroom. In fact, a survey conducted by the American Institute of CPAs found that 4 out of 5 adults say receiving an allowance taught them financial responsibility. But are money incentives really teaching responsibility? Yes, but not in the way you’d think.

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Child(ish) Review: Inside Out 2

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

When we first saw the trailer for Inside Out 2, we knew we had to get it on the blog ASAP. From the Whole-Brain Child to executive function, our posts cover a lot of a child’s emotional development as well as physical development. So we made it a movie night and now are bringing you our first actual Child(ish) movie review.

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Summer Slide

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

No more pencils, no more books...

For us in Georgia, it’s the last week of school. While our teachers are trying to get ahead of summer learning loss, only 48% of parents have heard of it. So what is it and should parents honestly worry about it?

Summer learning loss (aka summer slide or summer brain drain) is forgetting key information and/or academic skills previously mastered during the seasonal break. It’s most common in the US and Canada since we have lengthier summer recesses compared to other countries. So, while our kids soak up the sun, sleep in, and go on adventures, their education routine takes a back seat. Studies show that an average student loses 17-34% of their prior year’s academic gains over the summer. Kids who fall behind one summer are likely to widen that gap as more time goes on.

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The OT in Video Gaming

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

I’m just going to come out and say it: Gaming has gotten a bad rap.

Despite its associations with a sedentary lifestyle or as a catalyst for violence and aggression, new research has found that there’s much more to gaming and these negative connotations have no real proof.

That’s a good thing as gaming has evolved with our lifestyle and in its own medium. It is literally at our fingertips whenever we’re bored or want a quick escape from our daily life. And even if we don’t engage in video games, our kids definitely know about them; from YouTube videos and Twitch to classmates talking about it in school. In other words, gaming culture is here to stay and we’re here for it.

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