CatchyNameHomeschooling

Strong, non-routine sensory input can interrupt some acute mental health situations like being frozen with stress or existential despair. My kid is supposed to take a medication every day and often that goes smoothly but sometimes expectation and anticipation can build up to make it impossible. So today I took the cat-shaped lunchbox ice pack out of the freezer, carried to my kid and said "Hold this on top of your head while counting down from 10 slowly." My kid did so then took the medicine. I am quite certain that using this trick too often will make it stop working.

  I had a hard time deciding which photo to use at the top of my post about decision paralysis, so I'm making an off-topic post just to use this evocative photo.    Content Notes For This Specific Paragraph : Anatomical Terms, Pet Smells, Pet Digestive Issues, Pet Wounds. Cats have two anal glands that add scent to their poops. The openings are next to and a little lower than the anus. During healthy operation, the poop leaving the cat squeezes some liquid out of the anal glands. Poop that is too skinny or too soft doesn't work as well. My cats have problems with anal glands getting blocked, and the fluid in them getting infected and thick. One of my cats had an anal gland rupture and we're about to have vet visit number three about it.  Based on various things I've read, eating more fiber is likely to change my cats' poop in a way that alleviates their specific health issue. I know that anything on food packaging outside the nutrition label is straight up advertisi...

My kid has decision paralysis 1 . This became apparent around fifth grade with assignments that started like "Pick a country to do a project on!" and my kid would spend a day and a half analyzing and second-guessing and being unable to move on to step two.  Digression: Part of the challenge to parenting a 2e kid is not knowing how long a school sub-task is supposed to take. Asking teachers was surprisingly unhelpful. I assume teachers are trying to be inclusive when they reply "Some kids take longer and that's okay!" or "She can come ask me if she needs ideas!"  When I'm on top of my game I can figure out that if a 15-step assignment is due in a week students are supposed to do three steps a day. But I was rarely on top of my assignment-analyzing game while my kid is panicking, I'm trying to get school to answer emails about how accommodations are implemented so I can do them the same way at home for homework, and I've just found out my kid...

Photo of plants on a shelf by Jonathan Wolf on Unsplash   I've read some excellent essays  and memes comparing the medical and social models of disability. My biases about disabled people and disability slowed down my understanding. I had to come up with analogies to explain it to myself. (I love analogies.) If the tallest person habitually puts things on the highest shelf, you could consider anyone who can't reach those items to be deficient. You could make them responsible for getting outside therapy to teach them to jump to get things down. You could make them responsible for always carrying a stepstool with them. You could complain how much of their teacher's or boss' time is wasted getting things down for them and use that as a reason to segregate them in special classrooms or a special category of jobs that pays less. That's the medical model of disability. Some interventions designed for autistic people go further in that direction. Some ABA and social skills...