A Short Feeding Therapy Primer, Change Your Attitude To Change Your Future, & 30 Reasons For Child-Directed Play

If you’re anything like me, it doesn’t matter how much you learn about a subject, you’re always looking for more resources about it that may explain old concepts in a new way.

That’s how I am about feeding therapy. I have taken a bazillion courses and I have done A LOT of feeding therapy. But feeding therapy is hard, and treatment progresses so differently with every family I treat. I need all the resources I can get.

I love this simple webpage about feeding therapy. It was written by Marci Wheeler, M.S.W., a noted autism expert, and it is GOLD🏅. I have yet to find a better primer in such a small package.

This is a great free resource for you and for some of your more motivated families. It explains a lot of concepts simply and concisely. The bibliography is also fantastic.

Oprah Winfrey, the patron saint of bootstrapping your way to massive success, once said “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”

This is basically what we try to teach kids all day, right? So why is it so hard to do it ourselves?

I think the reason many of us, including yours truly, have trouble really taking the reigns in our lives is because we are too busy sabotaging our goals with faulty mindsets.

We allow the “gatekeepers” to tell us when we are qualified to have an opinion.

We become rule followers even though it’s obvious some of those rules are arbitrary and designed to keep us from succeeding.

If you think your mindset may be affecting your progress toward your most significant goals, check out this article about 7 common mindsets that can derail your life and your career, and what to do about them. The offensive mindsets:

• I don’t have the credentials
• I’m not creative enough
• I tried before, and I failed
• I don’t like to be led
• I don’t want to start something else that I’ll never finish
• I don’t deserve it

I saved this article to an Evernote notebook so I can read it again when my brain refuses to cooperate with my goals.

The author quoted in the article, Keld Jensen, recently released another book called 101 Excuses That Will Block Your Success Post The Corona Virus*. It’s filled with tons of ideas for busting through negative mindsets. I highly recommend it. Bonus: it’s currently available to read for free on Kindle Unlimited.

My approach to therapy is concept-based rather than activity-based (principles vs. prescription). Most of my treatment sessions are play-based and largely child-directed.

I’m absolutely convinced about the power of play and child-directed learning, and I’m always looking for resources to help explain the benefits of play to the families I treat.

Here’s an excellent infographic I found recently. It lists 30 reasons why play is so important for child development.

Some of my favorite reasons from the list:

• “Free play gives children an outlet to express their emotions and feelings and helps them develop a sense of who they are.” — KaBOOM
• Free play changes the neurons in the prefrontal cortex during childhood, prepping the brain to regulate emotions, make plans, and solve problems.
• A 2014 study found that 6-year-old students who engaged in free play developed stronger levels of executive functioning, or the ability to manage oneself to achieve goals.
• One study showed that play stimulates the fight-or-flight response without triggering cortisol (the stress hormone), so children can practice handling danger.
• “A moving child is a learning child.” — Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy

Bonus: the website, a playground equipment retailer, provides the embed code for the infographic so you can easily add to your website or blog.