Parent Tips

Verbal routines are when the same words are repeatedly used in a predictable way in the same or similar activities.  

Helping children with emotion regulation early on is essential to their long term well-being. Children who regulate their emotions well are able to use different strategies to manage their emotions and thus are less likely to engage in behaviours that lead to negative consequences.

Despite being as smart and educated as other children of the same age, some children encounter persistent and impairing difficulties in particular aspects of learning. These difficulties may be identified to be a Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) which is neurological or inborn in nature.

Joint attention happens when children share a common focus on the same object, person, or event. It is a pivotal skill that emerges as early as the first year of life and is a must for communication, learning and relationship-building to occur.

Here we talk about five everyday (and easily purchased) toys and how you can use them to focus on developing and extending your child’s communication skills.

Visual perception is necessary for reading, writing, and movement. Without it, children may find daily tasks such as completing homework, solving puzzles, or getting dressed extremely stressful. It can lead to poor self-esteem and academic or social obstacles.

Interoception is our hidden “secret 8th sense”. In very simple terms, it is our sense that allows us to answer the question “How do I feel?” at any one moment. It does this by gathering information from our different body parts (joints, organs and muscles) and interpreting the information from these systems to determine how those body parts feel.

It is important to develop strategies to increase the behaviours you want to see in your child. By fostering positive behaviours, we help children develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments and to understand expectations and structure. This will in turn help decrease negative behaviours.

Sometimes discerning the difference between a ‘picky eater’ and a problem feeder can be difficult. Determining whether or not your child is a ‘picky eater’ isn’t easy.

Toe walking (or ‘idiopathic toe walking’) refers to when children predominantly walk on their tiptoes for no apparent reason after the age of three years.