Potty Training Tips
Children will typically show signs that they’re ready to be toilet trained.
Signs of readiness can include:
Interest in visiting the bathroom
Pretending to use toilet paper and flushing
Wanting to observe others using the bathroom
Reporting to a caregiver that they have soiled their diaper
Getting upset when a diaper is soiled
Children typically begin to express these behaviors between 18 months and 3 years.
Your child is learning about their body and the cues it’s giving to them to know when to go. To help encourage this behavior, it’s good to set a routine for potty time.
Consistently encouraging toilet use at established times such as when waking up, before a meal, before leaving the house, and before bedtime, encourages routines. It’s also important to allow the child to initiate potty use; If you see a child who is squirming, wiggling, or grabbing their clothes if they need to use the bathroom is good, but it’s important for children to learn to recognize the cues their body is telling them and to go on their own.
Make toileting easy for toddlers. Dress the child in clothing that can easily and independently be removed and put back on. Go for elastic waistbands and avoid snaps, buttons, and overalls when potty training.
General Potty Training Tips:
Provide a comfortable and calm space
Keep toilet paper within easy reach and provide a stool near the toilet to help the child feel secure and confident.
Address the different noises your child will hear and explain how a toilet works to calm fears.
You can include a favorite book while on the toilet
Talk about the bathroom to reduce fear
Use scented soaps or fresheners to create a fun space
Adapt the toilet or the potty chair/ring as appropriate to help the child feel secure.
Be patient. Children may need to sit for a while, run water, sing a song, or look at a book to help relax and initiate toileting. When in a different bathroom, the time to use the toilet often takes longer because of fears or curiosity about a different environment. You can even post a series of pictures in the bathroom of the tasks they need to complete as a reminder.
They may need assistance on knowing how much toilet paper to use, coaching from parents. A sturdy stool may help adults with hand washing (less strain on you). Facilitating independence on even use of water faucets and access to towels will help their development, with also educating safety for hot/cold water.
Encourage positive behavior. Reward children for their participation with lots of praise. Remember that toileting accidents are part of the learning process.
Resource: https://www.aota.org/Publications-News/ForTheMedia/PressReleases/2015/021815-ToiletTrainingTips.aspx
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Digital Diets and the Impact of Screen Time on Development
Let’s start with some statistics
In 2011, 38% of children, age eight and under used tablets and smartphones. In 2013, it went up to 72%. COVID-19 2020 could not have helped. In 2018, one-in-four children under the age of 6 had a smartphone. Use of mobile devices and children has risen from five minutes a day in 2011, to 48 minutes a day in 2017. Recent studies are revealing that kids and babies, under the age of two, are spending more than double the time in front of screens than they did in the 1990's. However, it’s not until around the age of 18 months that a baby's brain has developed to the point where the symbols on a screen begin to represent their equivalent in the real world. So what are they focusing on? Children under the age of two are wired to learn and remember things through experiences and by doing, but what researchers found is that children watching screens imitate 50% less actions than those children who engage in live three-dimensional interactions. Hindering their learning.
Let me give you an example of this hindrance - Baby Einstein videos have seven scene changes in just 20 seconds of video. So there's about one scene change every three seconds. What's actually keeping them engaged? The color changes and continuous changes in the screen! As a result; a real farm isn't keeping them engaged, and for every 30 minutes of screen time, there is a 49% increased risk of expressive speech delay. This statistic comes from a 2017 Canadian study by Dr. Catherine Birken, the first study that reports a link between handheld devices and expressive language delays. And now there are over 200 peer reviewed studies that point to screen time correlating to increased ADHD, addiction to screens, increased aggression, depression, anxiety, and even psychosis. The National Institute of Health is currently doing a $300 billion study using functional MRIs to examine the changes in brain structure among children who use smartphones and other screen devices. The first batch of results shows that kids who spend more than two hours a day on screens scored lower on language and thinking tests, kids who spend seven hours per day on electronic 5 devices show premature thinning of the cortex (underdevelopment).
Recommendation
From an OT’s perspective, I would recommend less than 2 hours a day 5 to 18 year olds, no more than one hour a day for children aged 2 to 5, and none for children younger than 18 months. Per day.
Research is showing us that children aged 3 to 5, whose parents read through electronic books, they had lower reading comprehension, compared to physical books because of all of the interactive features from electronic books that distract them from a focus on the actual story. Distractions, and being able to touch a feature of the visual representation is making it a different activity that doesn't involve as much learning required for reading comprehension, and word meaning. 80% of learning apps are targeted specifically towards young children, many claim to help children learn to read, but most don't.
Let’s take a look at some of the people that invented the tech
Most of the tech executives don’t allow children near certain devices. One specific school in the Bay Area where 75% of the parents are tech executives, do not allow any tech in the school. No iPads, no promethium boards, no whiteboards, no Chromebooks. Also, Silicon Valley nannies actually have to sign no technology agreements, meaning they won't be on a device and they won’t allow the children on a device while they're in their care.
It makes you take a step back to think about how these applications are made. Tech devices were made to keep people invested and entertained, not for learning. It’s recommended to use technology as a tool, not a toy.
There is much more details to go into so if you are curious and want to know more. Please feel free to reach out to me and book a free 30 minute consultation!
Primitive Reflexes - What Are They and How Long Do They Stick Around?
Humans are pretty amazing. We have been programmed since birth to react to external factors. For example, when there’s a bright light and you blink, your eyelids are acting involuntarily. This autonomic, innate response to environmental stimuli is a reflex behavior. They’re controlled by lower brain centers that are in charge of other involuntary processes, such as breathing and heart rate.
There are an estimated 27 major reflexes for infants! Typically present at birth or soon after birth (Gabbard, 1996). What Occupational Therapists call Primitive Reflexes, such as sucking and movement related for feeding early on, are related to instinctive needs for survival and protection. They also help with the early on connection to the caregiver. Some reflexes are related to human evolution; for example, the grasping reflex (child holding your finger tightly) which enables infant monkeys to hold on to their mothers’ fur.
Typically, these reflexes do not last too long. They may help with some necessary activities early on, but once we develop physically and cognitively to do things on our own, they’re not as needed. Higher brain centers become more active during the first 2-4 months, babies start to show postural reflexes; changes in position or balance. For example, babies who are tilted downward have a reflex to extend their arms in the “parachute reflex,” an instinctive way to break a fall. Some “locomotor reflexes” for walking and swimming are not present until months after the primitive reflexes disappear.
Most of the earlier reflexes disappear by the first 6-12 months. The reflexes that continue, like blinking, yawning, coughing, gagging, sneezing, shivering, and dilation of pupils in the dark, continue as protective functions. Disappearance of the unnecessary reflexes by a certain age is a sign that motor pathways have myelinated (developed), allowing your child to shift to voluntary behaviors. That is why Occupational Therapists can evaluate a baby’s neurological development by seeing if certain reflexes are present or absent.
If a child is having trouble with meeting certain developmental milestones, there may be some underlying cause for concern, as explained in the neurological development of your child. We are happy to talk to families about their child development, and help with occupational therapy if needed. Please schedule a FREE consultation to learn more!
What Affects Children’s Memory for Learning?
Pretty recently, I saw a post on Instagram saying something along these lines…
Kids Remember:
10% of what they read
20% of what they hear
30% of what they see
70% of what they say & write
90% of what they do
Which is great visually, it makes you consider how important learning by doing would be in comparison to reading. But the neuroscientist in me made me question all the even numbers. As much as I’d love to see a list of numbers rounded to the tenth degree, it almost never happens when we’re reading research. It also made me consider my experience as an OT, and other kiddos in treatment that learn differently. I have read research that states people who are using different sensory systems to learn a new task or skill, have a better chance at retaining it. But, I couldn’t help but question where that statement derives from.
Here’s what I found…
There was an educational theorist named Edgar Dale in the 1960’s who developed a theory that “learning by doing” allows for individuals to learn better as opposed to hearing, seeing or reading information (See Table Below). This has become known today as “experiential learning” or “action learning”. As much as the premise of his theory may hold true, the numbers don’t seem to play out accurately in research.
Here’s what we do know about kids learning patterns (based on research):
Everyone Learns differently. The way the brain stores information may be similar, but the efficiency and the way we process things as individuals vary.
Read with your child! The earlier the better, it has proven to support emotional well being, speech, reading (themselves), empathy towards others. Even having children read with caregivers helps children feel closer to their parents.
The more familiar children are with an item, the better their memory is on it. This emphasizes the importance of exposure to different environments/topics for learning.
Young children often forget the strategies for memory strategies, and need someone to remind them. Giving credit to the coaches in our families.
Preschoolers tend to remember things they did better than things they saw. Supporting Montessori style of Education.
One research study showed that children ages 2.5-3.5 whose mothers used highly elaborative techniques in conversation when talking to their children, recalled more detailed memories than those that did not. Mothers also tended to speak to girls with more elaborative techniques than boys, which may explain why women tend to have more detailed and vivid memories from an early age than men.
***Highly elaborative language techniques include; asking a child a question that elicits more information. For example, After asking a child “Do you remember how we traveled to Florida?” receiving an answer, “No,” from the child then asking “Did we go by car or plane?”
A low elaborative language technique would follow up with (repetition) “How did we get there? We went in the _____.”
Bilingual children tend to have better attentional control, which may enable them to focus on what is true rather than on what only seems to be so.
To see a visual of the E. Dale, Audiovisual Methods in Teaching, click here
To learn more, please feel free to reach out to me at smplytherapy@gmail.com.
Resources:
Subramony, D., Molenda, M., Betrus, A., and Thalheimer, W. (2014). The Mythical Retention Chart and the Corruption of Dale’s Cone of Experience. Educational Technology, Nov/Dec 2014, 54(6), 6-16.
Subramony, D., Molenda, M., Betrus, A., and Thalheimer, W. (2014). Previous Attempts to Debunk the Mythical Retention Chart and Corrupted Dale’s Cone. Educational Technology, Nov/Dec 2014, 54(6), 17-21.
Subramony, D., Molenda, M., Betrus, A., and Thalheimer, W. (2014). The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Bibliographic Essay on the Corrupted Cone. Educational Technology, Nov/Dec 2014, 54(6), 22-31.
Subramony, D., Molenda, M., Betrus, A., and Thalheimer, W. (2014). Timeline of the Mythical Retention Chart and Corrupted Dale’s Cone. Educational Technology, Nov/Dec 2014, 54(6), 31-24.