Art Therapy Thursdays: New Blog Segment

 

 

 

Introducing a new weekly blog segment:

 

 

ART THERAPY THURSDAYS

If you are new to my blog, let me give you the quick summary of my family!  I am a single mom who has adopted three boys through the foster care system.  I am still a foster parent so we may or may not have some extra children in our home at any time.  My three boys suffered a great deal of early childhood trauma before coming to my house due to abuse and neglect.  As a result of their trauma my oldest two have experienced varying degrees of difficulty forming healthy attachments.  If you want to know more about the effects of early childhood trauma and attachment resistance I encourage you to check out Beyond Trauma and Attachment, Inc. (BETA) at www.momsfindhealing.com .  Parenting kiddos who have experienced trauma is unique and challenging but every step of progress they make is a huge blessing.  Knowing you played a hand in their healing is beyond satisfying, it is a comfort to your soul.  There are thousands of kids right here in the United States waiting for homes, it is not easy road and this whole parenting gig is not easy, but to that one child it matters.  I encourage you to look into foster care and/or adoption in your area.  If you have any questions I'm happy to discuss it with you!

With that background out of the way, my kids love arts and crafts of any kind! They beg to break out the glue, glitter, and scissors and I cringe at the suggestion.  Do any of you know how MESSY boys are???  My sons teacher calls him Houdini due the amount of mess he can make in mere seconds.  So how do I solve this dilemma, I turn this arts and craft time into a learning opportunity.  We have Art Thursdays at our house. It is almost as popular as Pizza Friday!  This means that Thursday afternoon/evening we have a craft.......well they think it is just a craft.  In reality the "crafts" that I pick for us to do serve many purposes.  First, we do the "craft" together to encourage some family bonding time.  Fun, no pressure bonding time is GREAT for our work on attachment issues.  Second, we focus on the kids using positive social skills, if you want to participate in the "craft" you have to use manners and be kind to one another, passing the materials, encouraging one another, and focusing on the task. Third, the "crafts" focus on therapy type things (so official sounding right 'therapy things'), feelings, self-image, social skills, trauma, etc.  There is always a hidden goal to the activities.  Despite my randomn unsuccessful attempt to get into Johns Hopkins University and study Art History, I know little about art or therapy!  There are some GREAT activities out there that you can do with your kids, especially if you spend an insane amount of time on Pinterest like I do :). Sometimes are activities are more "therapeutic" than others, the point is just to get the discussions and thoughts started.  Many times when I have thought the activity was a disaster, weeks later one of the boys will mention it in relation to something they learned.  Melts your heart!  

Each Thursday I will be featuring a craft or art activity that you can use in your home.  I'm hoping you find them as fun and helpful as we do.  Feel free to link up an activity or ask questions in the comments!

Doctors Visit

We went to the doctors office today for my boys' annual physicals.  I also needed physical forms filled out for our foster care license.  We get to the part where they tell them to undress and leave on their underwear. Apparently none of my kids were wearing underwear............REALLY??!!!!!  Oy vey, I give up!

 

ETA:  Shortly after this the neighbors came over to tell me one of my lovelies had thrown a stick of butter in their yard.  They found their dog eating it and were afraid he would be sick.  REALLY???? BUTTER?????

Calm Down Corner and Command Center

As I am mentally preparing to head back up the mountain with my middle son James, I spent the week making a "Calm Down Corner".  There were a few reasons behind having this corner.  First, I'm trying to develop a positive parenting approach with James to help with his underlying attachment issues.  Spending so much time focusing on everything he is doing wrong and being upset with him is not helping either of us with bonding and increasing self image.  We had been using the typical "Time-Out" with him, but it never resulted in any changed behavior.  Instead his anxiety increased exponentially and it turned into a battle of wills.  If I am trying to teach him to change his behavior I need to focus on his anxiety first.  Then we can focus on the actual behavior. Which brings me to the calm down corner.  We are working on a variety of strategies he can use when he gets upset or anxious.  I have placed these in the calm down corner with the hope that he will be reminded to utilize these skills to get himself back under control.  Once everyone has calmed down then we can discuss the behavior, what he can do differently next time, and then coming up with a way to repair any damage to relationships he may have done.

Here is the "Calm Down" Corner side.  It is located on the landing of our stair case.  This wall contains the calm down strategies and the other wall is out "Command Center".

 

 We are working with James on identifying emotions and picking up on emotional social cues.  I put this emotions poster in the corner so he can point out what he is feeling throughout the day.  Above the Emotions Poster is our House Rules which are Be Kind, Be Respectful, and Be Safe.  No matter what they are doing wrong I relate it to one of these rules.  For example if they are jumping on the couch I say, "That is not safe".  By focusing on these three words I believe we have seen a lot more understanding from my younger boys.  Less Talking equals More Listening :)

Here are larger print outs of the Relaxation Books I have talked about previously.  There are eight relaxation techniques that are kid friendly.  James really likes the Lemon one where you pretend to squeeze lemons with your hands for ten seconds.  Next to that I have a print out of a rose/candle to practice deep breathing.  I have the boys pretend to smell a flower through their nose and then blow out the candle through their mouth when we are "breathing".  Behind that is a printable to keep track of taking 5 breaths in the shape of a star.  I cant find the link for that one, but will add it if I come across it again!

Here are a smaller version of the relaxation cards that we can grab and take with us outside or to the store.

This is our calm down box, inside we have a few books about being angry, some I Spy books and a few little other things I will show you in the next few pictures.

We have a few glitter bottles that you can shake up and watch the glitter.

Here are balloons that have been filled with Play-Dough.  We drew sad and mad faces on them.  They can be squeezed like stress balls.  So far they are a favorite in the corner.

This was just a dollar store lacing activity.


COMMAND CENTER:

The other wall has our command center, basically everything important goes over here!

We have a weekly verse that the boys can memorize for a prize and a Character Trait that we are working on this week.  I will emphasize this trait throughout the week, giving out high 5's or stickers when I se someone demonstrating it!

 Our bulletin board has the weekly menu's and calendar of appointments.  I also have an individual behavior sheet that is used when someone is working on something individually.  Underneath the board we have what we are praying for this week, I have six categories (Family, School, Church, Friends, Country, Other Countries).  We rotate pictures and pray for different people in each category.  The "Friends" Category includes not only neighborhood/school friends but I have also laminated pictures and descriptions of kids we have received from Compassion International, so we will pray for them as well.  The Blue Schedule on the side was something I had picked up from the dollar store.  I keep James and Joel's afternoon schedule there since that is when we have the most issues.  It includes picture cards for the activities.  The white board above is Matthew's board.  It lists his chore for the day on the top.  Then there is a checklist for morning and a checklist for afternoon things that need to be done.  This has really helped, instead of me nagging him about making his lunch or putting away his coat, I just ask him if he's completed the list!  Its helped eliminate some control battles as it is no loner me telling him what to do.

Committee approved homestudy

So my homestudy worker for fostercare was out this morning. The committee he presented me to on Tuesday gave me the thumbs up. In fact they wanted to know if I would consider doing Therapeutic Foster Care as they were impressed with my credentials and experience. No thank-you! I told him I wasn't interested in doing that until I had a chance to see how my boys were going to do with everything. I think I will go ahead and start working on the training hours needed for the Therapeutic license though, just to have it. Next step in the process is he has to finish writing the report and adding some details we talked about today. he should be done with that next week and will give it to his supervisor to approve as well as give me a chance to look over it. Two of my boys need to have new physicals since the ones I originally gave him have now expired. I got those scheduled for Monday so it shouldn't slow anything down. He thinks that I should be licensed by mid-December and receive calls then. Fingers crossed I am almost done with this incredible long process to get licensed AGAIN :) Remind me not to move any more.

Treatment Plan Update

James' BHRS and Mobile Therapist were over yesterday morning to update his treatment plan as it is coming to its three month expiration. Despite some rather insulting, "So I read some articles on attachment and it said you should do X, Y, Z" comments, in the end we will be implementing more things I had requested. We will hopefully be using the time the mobile therapist is here to work on some social stories and social skills for making friends. Also trying to increase his time when doing activities without adult and peer attention, for example reading quietly for a few minutes so I can throw a load of laundry in!

Top 10 benefits of being a SINGLE Foster Parent

10.  You don't need to get your partners approval before spending tons of money on outings or toys!

9.  You only have to worry about one adults calendar when scheduling and attending the endless appointments, meetings, court dates, and visits.

8. Due to trauma and abuse some children do better with one gender adult over another, this type of kiddo can thrive in a situation with a single parent of the preferred gender.

7. You don't need to discuss and agree on rules, consequences, or other discipline issues.  What you say goes!

6.  You can snuggle that baby all you want, no one is lurking to take over the snuggles.

5.  Unless a case worker is coming by, no one expects you to clean the house or make something fancier than mac and cheese for dinner.

4. There is only one set of interviews and forms in the home study process!

3.  After a long day of dealing with the "system" and a house full of kids, there is no partner expecting you to take care of them.  You just get to enjoy a glass of wine and go to bed!

2.  There is no other parent for kids to try and manipulate or triangulate!

1.  When a placement call comes there is nobody you have to check with first!

What other reasons can you think of??

Proud Mommy

Matthew was upstairs crying tonight.  Mom moment of the year:  It went on for about 20 minutes before I realized he was crying rather than singing, oops!  Apparently he had a horrible, no good, very bad day today at school.  I got a note that there was an altercation on the bus this morning and that Matthew had lost his recess because of it.  Matthew claims that as they were getting off the bus another kid punched him "for no reason at all" and he punched him back.  I'm sure there was a reason, although it wouldn't surprise me that Matthew didn't know the reason.  He doesn't pick up on social cues very well.  I figured this was the reason he was crying, so I went up to talk to him.

Matthew told me that he had brought his Pokémon cards to school today and his teacher had confiscated them.  I absolutely LOVE his teacher!!  The kids are not supposed to bring the cards to school, we have discussed this numerous times and he continues to try and sneak them to school.  I usually catch him.  Im so glad the teacher caught him because if he gets away with things like this his behavior quickly spirals downhill.  I cant say enough good things about his school.

Anyway, the most amazing thing about all of this was that Matthew was crying.  He wasn't turning this incident into anger and rage.  He didn't blame it on anyone or anything.  He allowed himself to be sad and disappointed without the whole "flight or fight" response I usually see.  We discussed how taking the cards was a bad choice, but that he knew what could happen if he did it and he still made the choice.  We discussed how it is okay to be sad and the important thing is to take this incident and learn from it so we don't make the same mistake again.  He was able to articulate that bringing the cards to school to show his friends was NOT worth the consequence and that next time he needs to think it through first.  He then said that the rule is that they loose the cards till the end of the year but that the teacher has given another student back toys the next day.  We were able to discuss and role play how he could talk to the teacher about this tomorrow.  He needs to be respectful and ask if he can discuss the situation with the teacher and see if there is anything he can do to repair his mistake so he can get the cards back.  We also discussed that it was up to the teacher and if she said no, then he needed to take the consequences with dignity.

Overall, despite thinking he was singing in his room for 20 minutes, I am so proud of our evening and how far we have come.