Have you ever wondered why your child sooths with a pacifier, bites his/her nails, or has difficulty paying attention in school? These and many others, are all questions that can be answered by attending our free workshop called How Does Your Engine Run?...
Have you ever wondered why your child sooths with a pacifier, bites his/her nails, or has difficulty paying attention in school? These and many others, are all questions that can be answered by attending our free workshop called How Does Your Engine Run? The Alert Program, (Williams & Shellenberger, 1996). This is a program created by occupational therapists, Mary Sue Williams and Sherry Shellenberger, which actually provides insight into all behaviors, empowers children and their families, and provides positive, easy, and efficient strategies to manage unwanted or maladaptive behaviors.
This program is designed to help parents and all that interact with your child to use a sensory integrative approach to impact your child’s activity level. Sensory integration is the ability to take in information from the environment and the body, register it, and respond appropriately to it. Every day we all seek out sensory input “get us through the day.” For example, almost all adults use an alarm clock. This device is set to provide an alerting, and let’s face it, annoying auditory sensory stimulus to quickly elevate our activity level to start our day. Our body registers that there is a sound and then our brain tells our body, “It’s the alarm clock, wake up,” and you respond by turning off the alarm and getting out of bed.
What the How Does Your Engine Run? Alert Program is designed to address, is how to impact your child’s level of activity if it is not where you would like for it to be. The beauty of this program is that it uses child friendly words (“High Engine,” Low Engine,” and “Just Right”) that anyone can assimilate to and easy strategies that can be used nearly anywhere (home, school, daycare, church, etc.). The ultimate goal is for the child to be able to monitor his/her own “engine” levels without adult support using the sensory integrative strategies provided to them. Many children achieve this objective and others continue to require external help. Regardless, How Does Your Engine Run? is another tool for you to access out of your parenting tool box.
Please come to our workshops. We have them the first Tuesday of each month at our clinic at 6:15pm. In addition, we will be at Harry's Farmers Market on October 10th at 10am, and the Forsyth County YMCA on November 19th at 10:30am. We are happy to provide workshops at schools, places of worship, and daycares as well. Please contact us if you are interested in attending a workshop or if you would like for us to provide one.
The Kidz Therapy Networks Inc. clinic is located at 5975 Parkway North Boulevard, Suite 300B, Cumming, Georgia 30040. Our phone number is (770) 205-5551, fax is (770) 205-5518, e-mail is kidztherapy@bellsouth.net, and our website is kidztherapyinc.com.
