Stacey Armstrong Occupational Therapist

We're running a Holiday Club this holiday on 23, 25-27 September. Early Bird special has been extended to include today. 082 852 7281 to book or for more information.

🚀🚀 here's what's included in the process of those who join our Fall Prevention Clinic starting in Howick, next month.

📢📢📢Help us get the word out about our clinic launching in 🎉April 2024🎉.

Here's what is included:

Here's who is eligible for our Fall Prevention Clinic which kicks off in April...

Who can benefit from our program??

😎I am partnering with 🫱🏼‍🫲🏼 Lauren Drummond Physiotherapy🫱🏼‍🫲🏼 with an exciting new Venture!

👴🏻👵🏻This one is for our senior citizens👴🏿👵🏿:

Falls and the Fear of Falling is a huge limiting factor in the older population with decline in health, increase in mortality, reduced social participation, social isolation and loss of meaning in life being some of the far reaching consequences.

The Midlands Fall Prevention and Balance Clinic is launching in April and aims to serve those who are 60 and older. Research on our program shows that those who are 80 and over receive the greatest reduction in Fall Risk.

If you know someone who might benefit from our services, please direct them to our page ❤️ Midlands Fall Prevention and Balance Clinic ❤️ or encourage them to contact us for more information. We aim to offer our first Clinic in April - help us get the word out there!

Lauren Drummond Physiotherapy 083 291 7652
Stacey Armstrong Occupational Therapist 082 852 7281

Parent Connect this evening from 6 to 7pm.

Come hear some highly practical ways you can enhance your child's readiness for learning. From healthcare interventions, to some within-the-home solutions, you should walk away empower to help your child achieve their best.

Spotlight on Tactile Processing!

Does my kid struggle with Tactile Processing? Tactile processing can feel abstract. Here's how to identify difficulties, what other areas may be impacted, and some activities to help address tactile processing difficulties. ...

Parent Connect Term 1 💚🤍💚

We would love for you all to join us on Tuesday next week for our first Parent Connect of 2024. We will be having Occupational Therapist, Stacey Armstrong, talking to us about “Setting the Stage for learning”.

There are two sessions, a morning and evening session. We hope that you can join us for one of them.

The cost is R20 per person which includes coffee/ tea and a muffin.

Suprema Quaero 🦁

I doubt it is possible for a child to be raised with *more* discipline than the self-discipline of the parent raising them.

(I think the same is true for kindness, compassion, emotional intelligence...)

I do think the child can be raised with *less* though.

We need to cultivate within ourselves first... and then be intentional about imparting what we have.

If you're a parent, you will expend energy on your kids.

But you have a choice!

You can use your energy to deal with chaos and meltdowns, or you can spend it on consistently establishing routines and communicating expectations.

The second option may still come with a level of chaos and a number of meltdowns .... But on the whole it offers a compounding return on investment.

You cannot trick your child into good habits. Whether acquiring a good one (eating veggies, regularly exercising) or giving up a bad one (social media, mild addiction).

Good character is not gained by a happy coincidence (or parental contrivance) of circumstances.

Good character is built intentionally and with consistency, over years.

Can you sneak veggies into a meal? Pay your kid to exercise? Manipulate circumstances to make bad choices less accessible? Sure you can.

Should that be your main parenting strategy? Definitely not!

You are giving your child a fish , but not teaching them how to fish.

Fellow parents: let's teach our kids to fish. Let's equip them with the character they need to do difficult things, to overcome obstacles, to stand up and step forward when others are shying away.

I think South Africans still have a little more risk in their play than some first world countries... But with changes in lifestyle and increased availability of screens, I think we tend to be more sedentary than we were 20 years ago.

VESTIBULAR SYSTEM: Bring Back Playground Equipment with a Little Danger - Integrated Learning Strategies Playground equipment no longer supports vestibular systems. How to use indoor playground equipment at home to improve your child's vestibular system for higher learning.

Midlands Mums and Dads,

This mornings talk, by Dr Penelope Alison was well worth the time investment!

She is a font of practical wisdom! And she is giving the same talk tonight at Howick Prep, 6 to 7pm.

Whatever the age of your child, come better equip yourselves on parenting in the unique challenges of this generation. Start the conversation... Start thinking... Get intentional about your parenting.

Meet other parents who are intentional about their parenting.

Thank you Howick Prep School for making this available, and open to anyone in the greater Midlands Community!

Parents connect ☕️

Please join us on Thursday for a connect time. Dr Penelope Alison will encourage us with some tips of how to plant seeds of connectivity for your child’s emotional well-being.

Invite your friends and neighbours. This is not restricted to Howick Prep parents .💚🤍💚

Suprema Quaero 🦁

Yes yes yes! This is a message I have been beginning to articulate recently, though it's something I have felt for a while longer.

Thank you The Occuplaytional Therapist for keeping the balance in the message we give to parents. It is possible to have parent with empathy AND with boundaries.

Editing for some clarification, and then closing comments because I don't have the bandwidth for intense moderation this week. (And I seem to be struggling with saying things in a way that people understand, this week! Or maybe that's just part of growing and expanding to an even larger audience who doesn't know me very well.)

Anyone can call anything anything. I can go on the internet and hawk a theory that we should all leave our houses and go live in a communal pool full of jelly and call that a "respectful parenting idea". That doesn't mean that it *is* a respectful parenting idea, it means that anyone can say whatever they want, and they may or may not be informed on what they're talking about.

In a lot of parenting groups that I am in and have been in for years -- not necessarily pages, or expert-led discussion, or books, or education, or teaching, but rather just person-to-person, parent-to-parent advice groups -- I have noticed a trend.

People will talk about their own parental overwhelm, feel stressed about their inability to leave their baby in a safe playpen for 20 seconds to go to the toilet, or their inability to leave their toddler in a safe yes-space to go to the other room and put laundry in the dryer. People will use the phrase that their child won't let them do xyz. And parents responding to those overwhelmed parents will try to encourage them by trying to get them to just sacrifice harder to be there for their child's needs, while referring to attachment science in ways that may or may not have anything to do with attachment theory.

In the same way that I don't support adults coercing children into doing things by guilting or shaming or wheedling them into it, I also don't think that this is particularly helpful between adult to adult. I know lots of parents who are afraid that putting their baby down is "traumatizing" or will use words to describe stepping away from their child for 5 minutes like "abandonment". This wildly misunderstands attachment theory.

Babies and toddlers go through phases of neediness, but through all the phases it is true that going away and coming back is part of being securely attached. You're proving that grown-ups come back, that your safe people will come back to you every time.

***

Many popular ideas right now suggest (either directly or indirectly) that babies and toddlers and children are, or ought to be, fragile and clingy and needy and desperate for your attention every second of every day. They often get lumped under the header of "attachment parenting", whether or not they actually represent the foundation of that parenting style.

And I earnestly believe that when parents believe that and treat their children that way — added up with lots of other things, like adults directing their children’s play, and constantly correcting the children’s play, and taking away all elements of risk, and intervening in every social encounter for the children, etc, etc — then the children start to believe it too.

A lot of this grows as the child grows. A lot of this develops from the earliest foundation. Parents are afraid to let their baby be annoyed, or frustrated, or to struggle. And it makes sense, because it feels hard and awkward and cruel to sit back and let somebody else struggle when you can help them — and I’m not saying to leave them alone in distress. But I am saying that it’s okay to slow down enough to learn to differentiate between distress and determination.

(And I am also saying that we need to stop using extremely hyperbolic words like “distress” and “traumatized” and “abandonment” for perfectly normal life situations, although that’s a ramble for a different time.)

So how does that all relate to this? It relates because parents are also afraid to let their baby be bored, or lonely, even in small doses. Even enough to step away to use the toilet, or take a shower.

It’s okay to set up their space to be safe, and then to allow them to play by themselves for a few moments at a time.

That’s the foundation that grows into independent play later, and we know that independent play has so many myriads of benefits.

“Everyone needs a little alone time every once in awhile” — refers to you, yes, YOU. But it also refers to your child, too!

[Image description: A picture of a baby, with blurry bars in the foreground that suggest the baby is behind a baby gate. The text around the image reads, “Your baby may want you to be by their side 24/7, but that’s not possible, or even advisable. Everyone needs a little alone time every once in awhile.” The image is by Deborah Carlisle Solomon, whose website is www.deborahcarlislesolomon.com. End description.]

I fear for the up-coming generation and their propensity to make mountains of mole-hills.

Instilling Empathy has become the holy grail of parenting. Empathy has its place, but should not replace a solid foundation based on facts, reason and critical thinking.

Stacey Armstrong - Occupational Therapist 🚢 on Twitter “I fear for the up-coming generation and their propensity to make mountains of mole-hills. Instilling Empathy has become the holy grail of parenting. Empathy has its place, but should not replace a solid foundation based on facts, reason and critical thinking.”

I was chatting with some friends of mine on our beach vacation over the summer and they commented on how little my teens were spending on their phones.

"I'd pay good money to get my kid off their phone," they said. "How'd you do it?"

And I replied, "It wasn't easy. I had to show them that there were things worth doing that weren't on their phones--even when I didn't feel like it."

And they countered: "But don't you remember how we never had to be told how to fill our time? We just did it."

That's when I said, "Yeah, but we didn't grow up with iPads on car trips and every toy lighting up and a phone to play with at every juncture. I know how hard it is for me to put my phone down, and I remember a time without them. They don't."

You see, when my kids were babies, I would watch when my mom would get down on the floor with them and play. I just wasn't into it and always wanted them to occupy themselves for a few minutes so I could do dishes or pick up a few things.

She would show them how to stack blocks and how dolls could have tea parties and how a box could become an airplane. She worked as a nursery school teacher many years ago and explained how kids sometimes need to be taught how to use their imagination and learn to play.

She used to say, "It takes time, but it will pay off later when they can entertain themselves."

And she was right. Eventually, my kids did learn to play by themselves more, and I was so appreciative my mom showed me how to do that.

About 18 months ago, I realized my teens were in a bad place with their phones from the pandemic. I often found them in their rooms mindlessly scrolling or watching videos for hours. When I asked them to put their phones down, they usually would, but only to roam around our house moody and sullen until I found them back up on their beds an hour later.

I knew something had to change. I had to teach them things to do without their phones.

So, instead of simply telling them to put their devices down, I would say, "Hey, let's go thrifting." Or, "I looked up a new trail to hike." Or, "Let's watch an episode of that show you like." Or "Do you want to go to the bookstore with me?" Or "Sure, I'll drive you and your friend to X."

Anytime they expressed an interest in something that didn't have to do with their phone, I tried to pounce on it.

When my daughter said she wished she didn't quit piano, I dug our old keyboard out and showed her an app where she could learn her favorite songs. When another said she loved live music, I tried to find every opportunity to take her to some free concerts. When another said she needed volunteer hours, we did a few opportunities together.

Don't kid yourself. My three teenagers did not welcome these opportunities with open arms and phrases like, "Oh, mom, you are the best! Thank you so much for limiting my screen time!"

It was exhausting for me to work and try to fill their phone void. I had to sacrifice a lot of my free time and the things that I wanted to do for myself. I had to endure a lot -- A LOT -- of eye rolls and sighs and how they could turn the word "mom" into three syllables.

But I kept at it.

When Starbucks had half-off days, I took them there. When they mentioned a local place they wanted to go, I scheduled the time to do it. When they wanted to bake a cake at 10:30 p.m. even though I was bone-tired from a long day, I took a deep breath and said sure, why not?

And excruciatingly slowly, I noticed a change.

One day, my daughter asked if she could get some books from the library, so I dropped her off while I ran an errand. She plowed through an entire series, and I tried not to make it a big deal (although I was so happy I could have cried.)

A few days later, two of my daughters and their friends went to watch the sunset with a picnic for a few hours at a local park while the other had some friends over for S'mores. The only time I saw the phones out was to take some pictures.

They are now starting to fill their own voids in healthy ways.

Don't get me wrong. They spend PLENTY of time on their phones still, but when I talk to them about it, they've definitely made progress.

I was surprised when at the beginning of the summer, one of my almost-18-year-olds told me she didn't want to keep her phone in her room at night because she found it too distracting, and my other daughter said she took Instagram off her phone "for now" because she didn't like the way it made her feel.

And now, when they have a bad day, or I can tell something is wrong, I don't see them rushing into their bedrooms and sitting on their phones all night. I see them going for a jog, taking the dog for a walk, or sometimes even journaling.

I don't think they would have made these healthy choices if they didn't know what it felt like not to be tethered to their phones. They no longer use them to soothe their minds or hearts.

Here's the thing: We can complain about technology, phones, and social media. We can focus on how different things were when we were growing up. We can try to put all the monitoring software and screen time limitations we want on their devices.

OR we can do something about it. We can teach them how to live life in a different way.

I'm not saying it's easy. But I am saying they are worth it.

*Shared with permission from Fleming Writes

How specific are you in your hopes for your parenting outcomes? Are you able to be more specific than "I want them to be truly happy"?

It can feel vulnerable to be specific, as there is an increased level of accountability. You've just upped the bar for success.

It can also feel presumptuous: like perhaps we don't get to choose our children's destinies... that's theirs to determine?

Notice that this sort of prayer 👆 is both specific, and open ended. I hope to provide solid guidelines, from which they can each launch into their own destinies. Carving out a unique space for themselves in the world.

Several of my posts on parenting have voiced arguably unpopular or 'off-center' opinions, given the predominant parenting culture of our time.

This post articulates well, some of the concern I have at the parenting posts and practices I see daily. It also has some helpful pointers on how not to be overly positive / overly affirming.

How Not to Raise a Narcissist "Too much love" is not love at all.

There's an overly positive message given to moms, that truly 'attached', available moms, embrace their child's sleeplessness with patience and sacrifice.

Shame (guilt, feelings of inadequacy) often prevent parents seeking the help their little one needs.

I have loved feeding my boys to term. This is some really helpful advice, not just for breastfeeding but for parenting in general.

I love the balance in this message. You can maintain a boundary with your child and still show love. You can (and should) model for your child how to uphold healthy boundaries.

Breastfeeding a toddler can be a bit of a strange place to find yourself. You’ve had a year or more of being told that you need to breastfeed “on demand”, but all of a sudden, your tiny human is eating solid food and for some reason wanting to breastfeed more than ever! (Other toddlers don’t do this, don’t panic!) This can bring up a range of feelings for parents.
Some embrace it and go with the flow, but many others start to feel touched out or a bit “done” with breastfeeding when their nursling is pulling their top, asking to feed 10 or 20 times a day! I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be this way if you’re struggling with it. We can use breastfeeding as an introduction to boundaries, bodily autonomy & respect.

Boundaries are essential for parenting. I want to be clear; I don’t mean strict rules, yelling, or the use of punishments. I simply mean, clear, firm, but loving guidance, according to your values & parenting style. When we implement & stick to boundaries, we show children that we're trustworthy & safe. We also model self-respect to our little ones. You can bring in boundaries around feeding. Those boundaries may change according to day, location, or how you’re feeling. You don’t have to be rigid here. It's showing little ones that this body is YOURS & they have access to it when YOU consent. The consistency you're aiming for is simply “when I say not right now, I mean it.” That’s it. It doesn’t need to be a complicated set of rules.

When they become distressed over a boundary, & we listen to them and support them to express their feelings, sticking to our limit, we allow them to feel safe with their tears & not ashamed of them. Shame of big feelings as a child leads to suppressed feelings as an adult! You can show empathy without changing your mind. These are important lessons for young toddlers, and for adults who struggle with boundaries.

If this resonates with you and you want to learn more we have Zoom workshops every few months about breastfeeding toddlers. Check my website for dates.

If you're aiming at creating a 'therapeutic' parenting space for your child, (if your parenting looks and feels like a therapeutic interaction) you are not preparing your child for the real world.

You are preparing them to thrive in therapeutic spaces.

Be the Parent. Not the Therapist.

A message to moms and dads. Your kids are incredibly precious. And the weight of raising these humans can be huge, especially with so much access to experts and therapists and people with loud opinions.

I want you to know: Your child needs you. They need a *parent*. You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to be a mini-therapist. Just be a parent - love, guide, train, discipline. You have so much to give.

"Nothing" time.

I don't mean time truly doing nothing (although maybe sometimes that's exactly what it means), but time when there is nothing on the calendar - nowhere we 'have' to be.

Honestly I never thought about it much before become a mother. In the list of all the things I imagined doing as a parent - feeding and clothing them or teaching and bedtime kissing them, I never really considered 'guarder of nothing time' as one of my sacred job duties.

But here I am, pretty fledged into parenthood now, and finding that as a modern mom I've had to learn how to do just that - protect 'nothing' time.

Because we are busy folks.

Buuuuuuuuuuuusy.

I have four kids. Four kids who love sports, who love music, who want to do and sign up for alllll the things. And we are on.the.go.

But as much as they love and want to do it all, as much as they gain and grow from being part of different teams and activities, I'm also keenly aware that they need down time. We need down time. And frankly, we need time simply together - to teach them the things only we can teach them.

We need 'nothing' time.

Time in our schedule and in our routine for blank spaces. Time to be bored - and for them to figure that out. Time to pick up a book or a sketch pad. Time to run through the yard. Time to sit at the dinner table. Time to pitch in with chores or learn to help in the kitchen. Time to have the conversations we've been meaning to have and the unexpected ones that pop up when the rush is removed. Time to pile on the couch and feel the warmth of laughing out loud at a movie together. Time to attend to their hearts and to teach them the How's of working through conflict. Time to connect. Time to rest. Time to grow some of those deeper layers that aren't born in a classroom or on a field, but in the home.

We need 'nothing' time.

Because in the race of raising kids today, I've learned that 'nothing' time often has the very richest kind of fullness.

And while I'm grateful for all the opportunities modern living offers kids wanting to engage in their communities and pursue their talents and interests, I'm not willing to sacrifice all their souls need and soak up in those precious 'nothing' hours at home.

So I’ll give my everything, to make sure there’s enough time for nothing. ❤️
You Are Loved - Emily Roussell

Some food for thought before purchasing Christmas Gifts. 💝

“Research increasingly acknowledged, the best toys are the old ones; sticks, blocks, dolls and sand”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/24/have-toys-got-too-brainy-how-playthings-became-teaching-aids-young-children

Try this activity with your little one and see how easy or challenging they find it. Remember to keep it fun! You can take turns giving each other a challenge.