Letting Kids Set Goals, Messy Play Makes You Smart, & A Winter Craft

Our therapy goals are largely driven by our observations and by the concerns of a child’s parents and teachers. We are taught to include the family in goal setting, but hardly ever discuss including the child when writing goals.

Teenagers tend to be more equipped to help with therapy goal setting, depending on their developmental capacities. But this study suggests that children as young as 9 years old can share the responsibility of goal setting in therapy.

The study concluded that “Children’s self-identified goals are achievable to the same extent as parent-identified goals and remain stable over time. Thus children can be trusted to identify their own goals for intervention…”

Obviously, this isn’t the best approach for every child. And I have yet to meet a 9-year-old who would independently choose to work toward a handwriting goal.

However, including school-aged children in goal setting is an excellent way to improve their motivation for therapy. It’s also a sneaky way to help them work on strengthening their executive skills.

Babies have an easier time understanding and naming solid objects like balls and blocks because they have fixed qualities – they don’t drastically change shape or texture when you touch them.

Non-solid objects, like craft dough or chocolate pudding, are more difficult for babies to understand. Understanding them requires more hands-on interaction.

The most common way that babies gain exposure to non-solid objects is through messy eating. Smearing applesauce and throwing oatmeal may be the best way for a baby to learn about the nature of those textures.

When children avoid those textures or don’t develop age-appropriate eating patterns, they may also be missing out on tons of conceptual and language learning opportunities.

It’s important to educate parents about the necessity of messy food play and how it relates to language development. This article is a great overview and it’s based on this study.

Best quote from the article: “It was the ones who were messy at home who, when we put them in the highchair in the lab, showed the best learning,” said Larissa Samuelson, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Iowa, who supervised the research.

The Natural History Museum in London has a treasure trove of nature-inspired crafts on their website. This one, a fat ball bird feeder, has been getting rave reviews from some of my school-aged patients.

It’s super easy and extra messy (in a good way) if you use your hands to mix the lard and the seed.

You just need 4 cheap things to make this project work:

• lard (natural peanut butter can work, as well)
• a pine cone
• birdseed
• string

If you need more guidance on which foods are safe for bird feeders, check out this article.