Laura Ehlert – Self-Regulation Strategies for Children with ADHD, High-Functioning Autism, Learning Disabilities or Sensory Disorders

Outline

Treatment Approaches using Processing Perspectives

• Improve self-regulation in children through our own paradigm shifts
• Ping + Ping + Ping = Frustration and dysregulation
• De-escalation strategies and precursers to problem-solving
• Behavioral and mindful intervention for dysregulation triggers

Sensory Deficits

• Integration, meaning and perception
• Experience your own dsyregulation to sensory challenges
• Reduce sensory triggers
• Desensitize strategies to reset the “panic switch”
• Manage the environment to reduce sensory overload

Language/Learning Deficits

• Incorporate language processing into our understanding of behavior
• Meaning = perception = reality = response
• Your emotional response to their language challenges
• Recognize, validate and problem-solve common language deficit triggers
• Social Pragmatics insight and behavior

Executive Functioning Deficits

• Impact of processing inconsistencies on daily functioning
• Experience how we might set kids up to fail without realizing it
• Problem-solving strategies to improve organization, working memory and meta-cognitive deficits
• Environments that manage fidgeting, restlessness and inattention and provide positive social-emotional regulation
• Roadblocks created by executive skills deficits

Perspective-Taking and Meaning

• The “Set-up”: Child’s expectation + delayed development = failure
• Develop appropriate expectations: Pitfalls and strengths of developmental models
• Strategies for triggering triggers
• Reinforcing desired behavior using Nurtured Heart Approach

Behavioral Strategies

• Create realistic expectations through better understanding of the child’s process
• Behavior modification and skills coaching: resetting and choices to improve self-regulation
• Environmental structures that regulates
• Empower children to improve self-regulation
• Cognitive restructuring to reduce tantrums and emotional dysregulation

Problem-Solving Strategies

• Reduce stressors
• Improve child’s acceptance and personal responsibility for behavior
• Create realistic expectations
• Learning/teaching flexibility
• Use language to self-regulate

Neuro-Biological Considerations

• Diet/food
• Supplements/vitamins
• Sensitivities/toxins
• Movement and exercise to regulate the brain