Nature & Nurture-Occupational Therapy for Families

09/09/2025

Thankyou Nurture ADHD
Things you should let your child here you say!

30/05/2025

RSD…

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) is an emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by the perception of being rejected, teased, or criticized, often a symptom of ADHD. Here’s what parents need to know. Tap link in first comment to learn more. 👇️

23/04/2025

I was shocked when I heard that some children are being turned down by services for anxiety treatment ‘because they are autistic’. The logic, as one parent said had been explained to her, was that autistic children are expected to be anxious. It’s considered part of being autistic.

So, nothing to treat.

Hang on a minute? There are so many things wrong with this that I hardly know where to start. I’ve met hundreds, possibly thousands of autistic children, and I can tell you that they aren’t all highly anxious. Many of them were sometimes, yes, but not all. And not all of the time. So clearly not just ‘part of being autistic’.

The next thing? Anxiety isn’t set in stone. It changes over time, particularly as children grow up. Anxiety is a reaction to uncertainty. We feel anxious when we’re not sure that we can cope with whatever might be coming. As we grow in confidence and skills, we start to feel less anxious. That’s why the first time you drove a car was so much scarier than the time you did the school run yesterday.

If we can help children feel more capable, they will feel less anxious.

Children are learning about their emotions as they grow up, and the way that they learn to think about themselves and their feelings matters. How we talk to our children about anxiety matters. We should never be telling a child that chronic anxiety is ‘just part of who they are’.

And one more thing. Environment. Some environments are highly anxiety provoking, others are less so. A child might be full of anxiety in one situation but happy and confident in another. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them. It’s just part of being human. As a child grows up and starts to understand themselves, they can make decisions for themselves about the environments which work for them. When they are younger, that’s something that parents have to do for them. Finding the right sort of school, or way to learn, can transform a child’s experience. They go from anxious to happy. They stop chewing their sleeves and crying in the evenings. ‘They’re like a different child’ say their parents.

It isn’t good enough to accept that they will be chronically anxious ‘because they are autistic’.

That is not a real reason. We have to ask what is making them so anxious - and could it be changed? We have to ask what that child is learning about themselves and their feelings, and how we can help them to feel confident, capable and safe.

Parents can make a difference. The life that children lead makes a difference.

Anxiety tells us that something is up, and it should never be dismissed as ‘just part of being autistic’.

12/03/2025

Executive function skill & pixie dust.
Such great understanding and tips here…..
Thank you Neurodivergent Parenting: Think Outside The Box

When Your ND Kid is Having A Meltdown and You Need A Little Pixie Dust....
______________________________

When it comes to your kid falling apart and coping with enormous feelings.....

Sometimes you need to SEEM to do nothing.

Let me clarify--

You need to ensure that your child is physically SAFE and then just hold space for them,

saying nothing
or saying very little,

just modeling calm for them

and being present/available to them.
________________

It's easier said than done,

particularly if you have a bigger kid, approaching adolescence or adulthood.

Kids at that age, will often bait you.

Why?

Because they are frustrated, and you represent a lot of what they are frustrated with!
__________________________

You APPEAR to have all the agency they long for, and on top of it,

you make everything look EASY, because you are more practiced at Executive Functioning.

And Executive Functioning is everything!
_____________________________

Because you have MORE E.F., than they do.....

You rarely forget your shoes when you are leaving the house.

You KNOW to resist audibly calling your boss "an idiot" during staff meeting.

You can choose what flavor ice cream you want, without freezing in the aisle for a 10 minute pros and cons session.

You know to look outside at the weather before choosing to wear pants or shorts.

You are able to tune out sirens in order to focus on the information a doctor is relaying to you, over the phone.

You are able to Pivot from washing dishes to answering the knock at the door, without a visible transition meltdown.

You remember to gas up the car before it runs out, on the highway.

You are able to do mental math, KNOW something is outside your budget, and set the idea aside, so you will be able to make rent

You're even able to "tune out" Aunt Heather's constant criticisms about your haircut, and not let it bring your mood down....

And ALL those things are Executive Functioning skills!
_________________________

But to your big kids, these don't seem like skills.

They don't seem like things you had to practice and work at.

They just seem to be a part of you...a natural talent....something they didn't inherit....

Maybe even some magical secret you are withholding from them.

And it can be EXHAUSTING feeling like the only one who wasn't given the "Pixie Dust" (Executive Functioning),

and feeling like the people who HAVE the Executive Functioning are waving it in their faces and saying,

"Maybe if you just wished for it hard enough, you too, could do the unthinkable."
____________________________

Just picturing it--

I'm getting a mental image of Peter Pan, telling the Darling children to try flying by trying really hard to "have happy thoughts,"

but without having equipped them with the all-important Pixie Dust....

so the Darling children are trying over and over,

and face planting again and again

Doomed to fail...they don't have Executive Functioning (Pixie Dust).

Now, imagine being one of those kids, watching Peter flit here and there, chasing his shadow,

while you lay bruised and bloody on the floor.

Would YOU be happy with Peter?

Or would you feel resentful, envious, confused, and a bit repelled?

I would definitely feel resentful.

So, the fact that my big kids spend a significant part of each week, resenting ME, isn't really a surprise.

But there are some things I can do, to smooth things out. Things that look to an outsider, like I am doing a whole lot of NOTHING.
_______________________________

1) I can empathize with my child and validate their feelings.

(You seem angry right now. That's a normal feeling. You are allowed to be angry)
_____________

2) I can make sure they stay safe

(Grandpa Kevin, your raised voice isn't what Simone needs right now to feel safe. You can wait for us, over there.)

(Please go around us. My daughter needs to lay down on the floor for a moment. We don't need any help. Thanks for understanding.)
____________

3) I can stay quiet and let them vent out anger, disappointment, fear, and frustration without taking it personally or inflicting punishments.

It's just a part of how their unfiltered subconscious is processing, because their Executive Functioning isn't strong enough to filter things, yet.

(My kid might need a target for their anger, and I seem like a safe target. One who is strong enough to take a few hits without crumbling or costing them big. It's a compliment. They see me as invulnerable.)
___________________

4) I can continue to help them feel safe with acts of love.

(Offering a cold drink, squeezing a shoulder, covering them with a blanket, handing them something they dropped, sitting side by side with them, etc.)
____________________

5) When they are calmed down and happy enough to be back to acting like their typical self, I can be HONEST with them about how hard it was, growing up.

I can share stories of my struggles, with them...not one upping them...just being relatable.

I can tell them how my working memory HAD to improve because I was driving the Auto Club crazy when I kept locking my keys in my car multiple times a day,

and because Grandma was refusing to buy me another graphing calculator after I lost 2.

I can tell them about the time I drove to work on Christmas because I forgot the office was closed,

and about how impossible it felt to follow Uncle Terry's direction to "ignore" my little sister when she kept calling me "booger-head."

I can explain how hard it felt to concentrate in school,

and how a planner didn't help me remember to turn in papers on time, so I often got points deducted.

I can be HONEST and then tell them the best part: IT GETS BETTER.

Age and practice result DO improve things, and it WON'T always be this hard.
_______________________________

That is SUCH an important message for our teens and tweens, who are prone to depression, overwhelmed by stress, and confused about where they will fit in.

They need to hear that it WILL get better, and EASIER, with time.
___________________

And in the meantime, I give you permission to SEEM to do nothing, by simply acting enough to

*keep them safe

*let them say "rude," unfiltered things without punishment

*stay with them, quietly and calmly

*and let their basal, primal brains finish processing big feelings,
so their higher order, thinking brains can get down to business
____________________________

And let me tell you one last thing.

YOU are ALSO like one of the Darling Children, too...laying bruised and bloody on the floor.

Only YOUR Peter Pan, keeps telling you that if you "discipline" (punish) your child enough, you too, will fly

and everything will be shiny and happy and wonderful.

Only something is still missing.... YOUR version of Magic Pixie Dust...the secret ingredient has been forgotten.

You'll never fly without it.

And YOUR Magic Pixie Dust is modeling physical and emotional regulation for your frequently dysregulated child--

pretending to be calm even if you don't feel it,

staying silent if you don't have anything nice or supportive to say,

showing them unconditional love, that you will stay by their side, even when they are tear stained or wailing,

being the foundation they need to build themselves up.
___________________________

THAT is REAL discipline.

Not casual punishments, doled out to cause suffering.

We don't learn better from teachers who make us suffer and threaten us.

We don't learn quicker when we are scared.

Discipline is training your brain to do something in a controlled way.

Discipline is EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING.

So if you want to fly with your kids, you are going to have to use YOUR regulation skills to enhance THEIR Executive Functioning.

And the more you do it, the easier it will become, because IT GETS BETTER....

and eventually it will seem like you BOTH have ALWAYS had a little pouch of Pixie Dust in your pocket.

It won't feel shockingly rare, at all.
______________________________

Are you feeling low on Pixie Dust?

I bet you have more reserves than you realize.

Tell me 3 things that come easier to you now, than they did when you were a teenager.

I bet those things require Executive Functioning.
_____________________________

For instance:

1) I get lost less often, because I can remember the next few turns I need to make, even with the radio on

2) I make simple decisions much faster, so it doesn't take 30 min to choose which movie I want to watch

3) I haven't accidentally washed a cell phone with my clothes, in years.
____________________________

*Photo because some things are ALWAYS in fashion. Like Developing Self Regulation Skills and Growing Executive Functioning.

24/01/2025

Thankyou for describing this in such a relatable and eloquent way. Understanding school can’t and why school is tricky is so important. Not exploring this does often lead to the child feeling they are the problem.

“One person’s happy place can be another one’s nightmare”

Thankyou Dr Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker Missing The Mark for this important share.

I’m a trauma therapist and I work with families of children who are not fine at school. The more stories I hear, the more I am concerned that this area is full of psychological techniques being applied in ways which, unfortunately, can make things worse rather than better.

It’s a basic tenet of trauma therapy that a traumatic event needs to be over before a person is ready to process and recover from what happened to them. They need to be safe. If they aren’t safe, then the first priority should be changing the circumstances to make sure they are safe. That’s because there is nothing wrong with a person feeling highly distressed when the situation that they are in is dangerous to them. It would be far more surprising (and concerning) if they were calm. Fiddling whilst Rome burns, we might say.

I use the metaphor of the burning house to explain this to people I work with. If your house is burning down, and you go running to tell someone, you’re going to be frightened and distressed. Maybe you shout at them ‘My house is burning down! Help me!’. If their response is to tell you to quieten down and concentrate on your breathing and that they’re sure it’s not that bad, you’ll get more upset and probably angry. You know your house is burning down! You need actual help, right now, not a breathing exercise! They aren’t listening to you! You really need them to know how bad it is and they don’t get it. You’ll shout louder, or maybe you’ll push past them to get to someone else who does understand. They might get angry with you then because they’ll say you’re being aggressive and ignoring them. If they have power over you, they might even punish you for your behaviour.

Your fear and distress as your house burns isn’t a sign of you having an emotional or mental health problem, it’s a sign that your survival system is acting as it should, to keep you safe. That’s what it’s there for. It gets triggered when we are in dangerous situations. Of course, it does also make mistakes sometimes – perhaps you’ve experienced a house fire in the past, and when the smoke alarm goes off in the house your survival system gets triggered even though it’s just the toaster. Then we might want to intervene to help you feel safe again.

With children, there’s a tendency to assume that their distress, particularly about school, is always an emotional mistake. The assumption is that they are feeling the way they do in error, like running out of the house when the smoke alarm goes off. This means that the solutions offered are calming strategies or anxiety management – or even being told not to be so silly, just join in and stop making a fuss. Adults do this with good intentions. We want to show them that the world isn’t as scary as they think it is. We don’t dislike the things they dislike, and so we think that if they understood the world as we do, they would be fine. To this end, we tell them that they are wrong to feel the way they do.

What this means is that when child is distressed about school, they are offered emotional regulation strategies. It’s assumed that the school is safe and the right place for them to be, and once they learn that, the better it will be for everyone. The solution to the problem (from this perspective) is for the child to stop feeling distressed about school, and then everyone will be happy.

But school isn’t always okay, and one person’s experience of a school isn’t the same as another. For some young people, their school feels like a hostile environment, day after day. They find things like the pressure and comparisons, the lack of privacy, the frequent transitions, the playground and the way that people talk to each other extremely difficult, and that doesn’t get better by doing it more. This doesn’t have to be true for everyone in the school to be true for some young people. One person’s happy place can be another person’s nightmare (look, some people climb very high buildings for fun!). Some young people feel unsafe and unhappy at school, but everyone is telling them that the problem is them and if they just did some more mindfulness or deep breathing, it would all be okay. This is really confusing for them.

For them, it’s like the house is burning down. They are highly distressed, they don’t feel safe, and being offered calming strategies feels like they aren’t being listened to. Not only will they not work, but they also have the potential to make things worse, because they tell the child that the problem is them.

That isn’t to say there isn’t a place for calming techniques - but it’s when the problems have been listened to, acknowledged and changes have been made. It’s when the fire has been put out. Now the house isn’t burning and the immediate danger is over, so we might be able to take some deep breaths and regroup. At that point, we might need to calm ourselves down so we are ready to rebuild. We might be ready to use the Thera-putty, or the breathing exercises, or a guided relaxation. But they won’t help put the fire out. For that, we need water and a fire engine. Actual change.

With Eliza Fricker (). For more like this, follow me on Substack (Think Again).

21/01/2025

So much truth in this!

Thank you to all the amazing teaching who are honour childhood and play in doing things differently. Unfortunately this description is still the reality for many.

One of the mysteries of life for me is why we have designed school in such a way that it requires children to do so many things which are very hard for them - and which become much easier in adulthood.

We require them to sit still when they are desperate to move. To stay in their seats when they want to crawl under the table. To keep quiet and listen when their body wants to play and shout.

We tell them to walk not run, when every part of their body longs to move fast. We put them into nylon trousers when they’d prefer soft leggings. We make a big deal out of things they can’t do yet, but which almost everyone learns as they grow up. Shapes, colours, telling the time. We teach them to read before they have the desire for themselves, and make them do maths which they find incomprehensibly difficult, but that a few years later will feel so simple as to be trivial. No matter whether you go to school or not.

We’ve designed school so that it’s hard for immature brains and bodies, and then we blame children and parents when they can’t follow the rules. We tell them they aren’t school-ready, or they need to try harder. We point out all the many ways in which they fall short. Too noisy, too active, too impulsive, too….childish.

By the time those children reach adolescence, the urge to roll on the floor or hang off the chair is fading, but the years of being told they have to sit still and listen have taken their toll. They’ve lost the raw energy of childhood, but it’s more than that. They’ve lost their joy in learning, because school wasn’t built for the child they were, any more than it is for the teenager they’ve become.

And then again, it’s them who are blamed. Disruptive, rude, bad attitudes. It would be so much better if they simply did what they were told.

But what we’re telling them to do in school is squashing our children. Children aren’t built to sit still and absorb information. They are built to keep moving and playing. To hang upside down and climb on the roof. To dream and shout and talk all the time.

But when our children tell us so, we’re not listening. We tell them that the problem is them. Their behaviour, their energy, their whims and their propensity to roll on the carpet if they get the chance

Who are the slow learners?

Not them.

20/12/2024

Holiday gatherings of family and friends give parents a special chance to teach their daughters an empowering lesson: you don't owe anyone your physical affection. To read more from experts on why this matters, especially for girls, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=21616

To start teaching children -- girls and boys alike -- from a young age about the need to respect others and their personal boundaries, we highly recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 at https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries

For older kids, check out the excellent "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 at https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids

There is also a charming picture book about a young lovebird who learns there are many ways to show that you care, "Rissy No Kissies" for ages 3 to 7 at https://www.amightygirl.com/rissy-no-kissies

For more books for young children that establish an early foundation of respect for personal boundaries and bodily autonomy, visit our blog post "Body Smart, Body Safe: Talking with Young Children About Their Bodies" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11069

Thanks to Safe kids, thriving families for sharing this image!

09/12/2024

👌

Here’s a secret formula that I refer to as “the proprioception pattern”.

Proprioception is sensory input that is sensed by deep receptors in our body. It’s kind of like our sense of touch, but deeper; our sense of touch is sensed by our skin, and our sense of proprioception comes from receptors in our joints and muscles. If I squeezed your arm, you would feel my hand on your skin, but also the deeper squeeze.

Proprioception is also a very regulating sense. There are different forms of proprioception, but some form of it is felt as regulating by most human beings, kids included. And, human beings who are in touch with their bodies can often instinctively sense this! So, if they’re about to need to be settled down, they might lean really hard into seeking proprioception.

If I’m about to go give a big business presentation, I might stand in the hallway first, clench and unclench my fists, then shake them out and let that shake take over my whole body, wiggling my nervous energy out, before going into the meeting room.

If I’m working on a super fiddly little building project and a piece snaps, I might move away from the project, roar my frustration or even pound my fist into a pillow, and then move back to the project that requires my steadiness, calm, and precision.

And if I’m about to go to bed, where I’m expected to lie still and close my eyes until sleep overtakes me, and I’m a little kid who doesn’t feel sleepy yet, I might get super high-energy, zooming and tumbling and laughing and playing.

All of these are forms of the same thing: expending body energy through a strongly proprioceptive activity first, then, once your body is sensorily soothed and resettled, going to the lower-energy activity. And it’s so common that it’s nearly ubiquitous of a parenting question, “When my kids are supposed to go to bed, then they suddenly get all wound up. I try to calm them down, but literally every thing I do seems like fuel for the fire.”

So, if you want to harness the power of proprioception and lean in, rather than trying to battle against your own or your child’s natural instincts to use sensory input to self-regulate, what can you do? That’s where the Proprioception Pattern steps in.

Here’s the formula that I usually start with for children:

15 minutes of proprioception-rich play (i.e., roughhousing, being silly etc)
+ 5-10 minutes of transition time that I expect to be bumpy and go badly (it’s usually slightly more than 5 but less than 10 in my family)
= settled down afterward, after all that time is spent.

This applies to bedtime and also to other transitions in life. I do this with kids in therapy to figure out small tweaks to their “timing” (maybe 12 minutes of rough play + 8 minute “bumpy transition” is their key, or whatever) and then measure how long the effects last afterward… some kids stay settled for 4 hours, some for 30 minutes, before they need more heavy play again. (At bedtime of course the hope is that they fall asleep in that settled window 😊)

When I say a “bumpy/bad transition” what I mean is that I am reminding myself in my head to be patient for 5-10 minutes and not give up yet, to keep modeling, doing, and expecting a calm activity but actually secretly knowing that I expect them to, well, do it badly, lol. So if I sit down and read a book (usually my bedtime choice), I keep patience in my head by really secretly knowing they’ll probably be climbing on my head, but acting patient, letting my own body be regulated, my breathing be calm, my reading voice be calm, etc, and wait for the shared regulation to sort of wash over them.

If they’re doing something that could hurt me, that snaps my calm right in half immediately and ruins the whole pattern, so if that’s the case, I don’t sit down and read where I could be in the “accidental hurt zone”. I stand up and do something else calm for “bumpy transition time”, maybe sing a song or rock them in my arms or something like that where I can move the energy in the room from high to low. When I’m doing this at work, I might switch from a high-energy activity into something like drawing, writing, or playing with a fine motor toy. I am not insisting that the child also switch at the time that I switch. I’m simply modeling, and reminding myself in my head, “this is the ‘bumpy transition’ time” and expecting the child to still stay hyped up until the regulation has had time to sink in.

As with all things, this is a starting place from which you can experiment, trial-and-error, grow, learn, and play. It won’t be perfectly one size fits all. But if things aren’t working right now, there’s really no harm done if you give it a try.

[image description:
A blackboard background, with “chalk” style writing on it, that reads:
The Proprioception Pattern
The rest of it is set up like a math equation and reads,
15 minutes of proprioception-rich play + 5-10 minutes of “bumpy transition” = Regulation that lasts…???

My handle, , is also on the image. End description.]

15/10/2024

14/10/2024

Free link for the FLOURISH with your complex child Summit!

Absolutely great, affirming speakers!
Such a great in initiative.

This amazing summit starts on Tuesday! It's almost here!

Register for free here! https://gregsantucci.krtra.com/t/RkjoM3aTbprK

There are a lot of great speakers in this summit! Watching on each day is FREE, which is AWESOME! If you need more time to take it all in and want to make sure you don't miss anything, there's a paid option that will get you all of the recordings so you can listen at your own pace. The paid option is discounted when you register, and that fee supports our advocacy work.

I'm grateful to Sarah Rosensweet for putting this summit together, for including me and for sharing this important information with caregivers around the world! I'm excited to hear the reviews!

Hope to see you there!

Greg

19/09/2024

Instead of stop crying……

People ask me all the time, “But what am I supposed to do instead? What am I pragmatically supposed to do?” (And that’s fair. I write in the realm of “theory” a lot.)

So here’s an action step.

Pick one of these this week. Memorize just one of them. Keep it in your pocket for the next time that a small person you love is crying.

Bite your tongue. Take all the time you need to pause mindfully and remember that you want to say something different, instead of just telling them to stop.

Then try it out. Try out the one you’ve memorized and practiced.

See how it goes. See how you feel. See how they feel.

[Image description: a stylistic illustration of a ship on the waves, and above it is a raincloud, raining tears into the ocean. The title of it is, “10 Things to Say instead of Stop Crying.” These are the 10 things, written on the waves:
1. It’s ok to be sad
2. This is really hard for you
3. I’m here with you
4. Tell me about it
5. I hear you
6. That was really scary, sad, etc.
7. I will help you work it out
8. I’m listening
9. I hear that you need space. I want to be here for you. I’ll stay close so you can find me when you’re ready.
10. It doesn’t feel fair.
The image was made by happinessishereblog.com and The Gottman Institute. End description.]

15/09/2024

Whenever I write about keeping children’s curiosity alive through more choices and more play, someone says something like ‘well I’m glad my doctor learnt how to follow instructions’. Or ‘Naomi would like to see a world where people choose how to drive and don’t bother about following the Highway Code’.

This is why an understanding of child development is so important in education. When adults learn a specific skill (like medicine or driving) they use mastery learning. This is the type of learning which enables us to become experts. Deliberate practice. Goal-oriented exercises which aren’t about the here and now. Intentionally practicing your French verbs so that you’ll be able to speak French when you go to France next year.

It is often quite narrow in scope - learning to be a doctor won’t qualify you to work as a lawyer. It enables us to develop specialist skills.

This isn’t how young children learn. Their brains are literally structured differently. They are discovery learners. This type of learning enables them to explore and find out about the world. It is wide in scope. When they learn a language, there is no deliberate practice of verbs going on. They watch, they listen, and they give it a go.

To adults, it often looks frustratingly unfocused. That’s because discovery learning is about widening children’s experience of the world, not about becoming a specialist or an expert. They flit from thing to thing and lose interest fast. The results can be hard to measure.

The capacity for mastery learning starts to develop as children approach adolescence. It improves gradually over time. By age 17 or 18 they are approaching learning in a very different way. This takes longer for some of them - the brain changes of adolescence continue until at least the age of 25.

As adults, we tend to overvalue mastery learning and dismiss discovery learning as ‘just play’. We want to hurry children onto learning measurable knowledge and skills. We try to sit them in desks and give them worksheets to do, whilst they often fight us to be allowed to run around and pretend to be superheroes instead.

Discovery learning lays the foundations for everything that is to come. It is a special and unique time of life. Following instructions and colouring in the lines can come later, but once you are grown, you can never go back and learn like a 6-year-old (or an 8 or 10-year-old) again.

Humans are pure discovery learners for a short and intense period of our lives. We have our whole adult lives to specialise, but you’ll never again have quite the same drive to play.

(For more about discovery learning, I recommend Professor Alison Gopnik’s book The Gardener and the Carpenter)