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I’m excited to announce that I am Devon’s Women in Business, business woman of the week!

The Women in Business community has been really important in supporting my growth and business, and I feel honoured to have been recognised! 😀

 

Here’s a quote that wholly and fully sums up what it means to be in the field of ABA – every, single child deserves advocates to  fight for and maximise their potential! ❤️

This was posted by BehaviorBabe years ago…and yet, this picture still comes to my mind every day…   

Who says learning to tact (label) actions has to be done at a table? We spent our afternoon creating an action snake…labelling the pictures, doing the actions (both ourselves and sometimes toy figures too), imitating me if not known, identifying which action I’m doing…the list of skills was endless!

It shows how going with the flow and maximising those moments of motivation and engagement are key – loads of skills were taught and practiced here…and most importantly it was so much FUN this activity was actually requested after playing it last week! 🤗😁

I am so regularly amazed by the children I work with – yesterday I took some new building blocks with me to my client.

He looked at them and started building. He asked for each specific shape/colour block (requesting for previously unseen/known items).

Once he had the blocks he spent aggeeessss trying to balance the yellow triangles (I had no idea what he was making at this point).

He eventually asked for two extra blocks to balance the triangles on (nice problem solving!).

With huge pride he looks up and says “It’s a boat!”…well of course it is…what amazing initiative and imagination! 👍😃⛵️👍

 

How many activities, tasks and physical exercises could you do first try?

How many did you have to fail and practice, fail and practice, fail again and practice again to succeed?

How many more times did you have practice to hone and improve and make your skill more fluent/effective/bigger/better?

There are very few people in life (I’d argue there are none) who are born with skills which require no practice – the best sportsman will be training and practicing for hours a week.

So will the best musician, the best public speaker, the best artist…success takes practice…and a little bit of belief and determination too! 👍💪🏻🙌

I love this video!

Often, our go-to response when a child is sad, angry or scared is to want to stop them feeling/looking that way…either by telling them to stop it, or by masking or hiding whatever it is that’s causing the emotions.

It’s important we don’t do that – that we acknowledge these natural, useful, and sometimes uncomfortable emotions and teach our children it’s ok to feel these things, and show how they feel.

That way we can then teach how to manage and cope when we do feel uncomfortable emotions!

Check out this well-explained article on the difference between effective positive reinforcement and bribery:

http://ed.gr/f4s7