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Emotional health or emotional well being as a topic has gained ground in the last few decades. Along with physical well-being, experts all around the world advocate emotional well being. All individuals, adults, and children have the right to live a happy and emotionally healthy life. The United Nations under its Convention on the Rights of the Child also mentions the right to life, survival and development, including emotional development. So what is emotional well-being or emotional health? Emotional well-being can be explained as our ability to recognize and understand our emotions and take ..read more

Weighted vests are known to be effective for children with developmental disabilities, sensory processing disorders, ADHD and Autism. Occupational therapists may recommend them after assessing your child’s needs. However, finding the right weighted garment for your child may not be easy, especially in India. Out of the few suppliers and manufacturers of weighted products that we have, a name that has proved to be beneficial for many children is “The Ark: A Radical Klub”. This is an initiative by an enterprising parent, Madhura Tendulkar,  in partnership with Kamal Epari, who has training and e ..read more

What are weighted vests: Weighted vests are also called compression garments. These are tight clothing made heavy by adding weight to the fabric. They are mostly used for children with developmental disabilities like Autism, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or motor difficulties like Cerebral Palsy. Use of weighted vests: There is little research on the weighted garments for children with special needs, and the existing studies show mixed results regarding their effectiveness. However, the benefits are as follows: Weighted vests are believed to h ..read more

Sleep is essential for brain development in young children. It also helps children restore energy spent during the day and brings about physical, mental and emotional stability. Lack of sleep is likely to bring in behavioral problems, irritability, decreased output and fatigue for the whole day. For parents, the child’s inadequate sleep may mean less sleep for them as well, exhaustion and an endless struggle to keep up with the day’s responsibilities. Helping your child sleep may be a challenge for many parents. There could be numerous reasons for your child not sleeping well. If you are findi ..read more

Bob Books are a series of books to teach reading skills to children. If you are teaching your child to read through phonics, then these books could be useful. Bob Books were written by Bobby Maslen and were first published in 1976. Since then these books have been used by millions of children around the globe Bob Books are arranged in stages. There is a set of 8-12 books for each stage.  The first set of books focusses on pre-reading skills. If your child can identify alphabets, then you could move on to the ‘Beginning readers’ stage. These books introduce each reading concept systematically a ..read more

 What is Multisensory approach to teaching? Learning takes place through our senses. Information that comes in through our sense organs is processed by our brain. Majority of the learning takes place through our eyes and ears and that is how teaching is largely done in schools through sight and sound. However, our sense of touch and ‘Proprioception’ or ‘kinesthesia’ is also important modalities of learning. Kinesthesia is the awareness of the position and movement of our body parts. Children may use one modality dominantly while learning or they may use a combination. Activities which use mor ..read more

Phonics refers to the relationship between alphabets and their sounds or phonemes. When we say the word ‘bat’ the sound /buh/ is the phoneme. Phonics are the building blocks of reading. With a good phonological knowledge base, children are able to decode unfamiliar words easily. Teaching phonics at home strengthens the child’s decoding skills and builds confidence. Children learn to read by these alphabet-phonemes during their regular academic instruction in school. For some children though, there has to be an explicit training in phonics. Children who can benefit from intense phonic teaching ..read more

Dear parents, I will be writing about how to teach phonics at home in my next post. Before that please watch this video by Michelle Connolly from the UK, who is a  parent and a qualified teacher. Michelle shows some effective ways of teaching phonics or alphabet sounds to children at home. The same technique can be used to teach individual sounds and then blend these sounds together to form a word. Parents can easily use this method using flashcards and plastic alphabets. The post Featured Video: How to teach phonics at home (by Michelle Connolly) appeared first on Living a Special Life ..read more

Dyslexia is a type of learning disability that affects reading, spelling and writing skills. 15% of the western world population has Dyslexia. In India, it is as high as 8-10%. Though statistics differ across countries, the fact remains that Dyslexia is the most common type of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) among school going children. In the developing countries, awareness is gradually increasing, with educators getting informed about the signs of Dyslexia. Though many schools are getting equipped to identify children with reading difficulties, it is crucial that parents too, need to be a ..read more