For many of you school has started and you have discovered that there are not enough minutes let alone hours in the day.

As you try to fit more and more into your day there are two primary things you need to do to maximize your time and produce successful outcomes. You need to prioritize and schedule.

Look at everything you need to do, should do and want to do and prioritize those things. Then look at how much time each takes and determine if each of those things warrant the time dedicated to them. As an example, we have families driving for 30 minutes to an hour each way for some form of “therapy” or “treatment” or “lesson” or “whatever” that when viewed in perspective absolutely doesn’t warrant the time investment. On the other side of the coin, evaluate how important something like processing is to your child and realize how many of those one or two minute high-priority sessions are missed because of these other time investments. Look at the time required and prioritize.

Once you have established your priorities, sit down and put together your daily schedule. Prioritize and enter the things at the top of your list first, then work your way down. If you can’t fit in the lower priority items, it probably is not a great loss.

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, September 2019 ©NACD

The post Where Did the Time Go? appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

What is the purpose of your program? Many of you approach your program as if the goal were to check off a lot of boxes. That’s not the goal. The goal is to produce change. It’s easy to lose track of where we are going and to get lost in the process. As you are looking at your one thing, think about goals. Think about those important things that we are trying to change or develop and focus and work with intention.

Intention is working with a targeted mental focus for the purpose of producing a specific future change.

One of the most glaring things I see when reviewing program videos are folks obviously working without intention, which results in very slow progress. I wouldn’t want to count all the processing videos I have watched that made me want to scream. As most of you know, developing processing skills is rather foundational and really important. You should also know that even an incremental change in processing results in wonderful things, like better understanding, increased language, increase in global maturity, improved behavior, and better cognition-global change! Understanding this importance, many families justly prioritize their processing activities; but what I often see are parents doing the activities without a lot of intensity, which means they are doing it without intention. I often have to pay very close attention to the videos to determine if the child is getting the sequences right or wrong because watching the feedback from the parent or helper, there wasn’t much difference in the response, whether the sequence was done correctly or not. Without quality feedback and reinforcement your child isn’t even going to know what the goal is and certainly is not going to be working with intention.

To digress a tad, on my last trip to our Cincinnati chapter, where I work out of a hotel that sits on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, just across from the city of Cincinnati, I renewed my perspective on intention and intensity. Often on these trips I take a little walk along the river after I have my dinner and before I go back to my room to address more emails. Looking across the river I can see both the Cincinnati football and baseball stadiums. The Ohio River is a big river, and although the stadiums sit close to the river’s edge, they are still quite a way away. During the baseball season the Cincinnati Reds play, and during the football season the Cincinnati Bengals play. If I happen to be out in the evening and a game is being played, there is absolutely no question if someone gets a hit or a homerun or a team scores a touchdown. On this last trip, I was walking and looking out at the stadium when a touchdown was scored by the Bengals. The roar of the crowd from where I was across the river was almost deafening, and then the sky lit up with fireworks. The intention is to win the game, and it is understood that to win the game you need to get hits or advance the ball on the football field. The fans react with intensity to each of these events. There is no question of the intention of the players or the fans. It is also not surprising that teams in cities with good fans who help generate intensity and keep the players focused on the intention do well.

The goal of working on processing is to raise the processing level, preferably quickly. Watching these videos, it becomes blatantly obvious that more often than not the intention is to complete the activity and check off the box. I’m sure as the parent pushes themselves and their child through the activity, they think that they just need to do this another few hundred or thousand times and their child will move forward and ultimately, they probably will. But if we address not only processing activities, but also everything we do with our kids with intention, we can meet our goals faster, and generally much, much faster.

As an example of how we can create intention, I will at times do processing activities with criteria. What this means is that rather than doing a processing activity for a specific duration, such as a minute or two, we do the activity with a target. For example, if we are just starting to get auditory digit spans of five, working with criteria we will let the child know that the goal of the session is to get a five. As soon as they get a five, we have a party and the session ends. Their intention is no longer just to cooperate, to try or pretend that they are trying; it is to get a five! And our intention is no longer to check off a box, it is to get a five. It can be amazing to see how much faster we can move forward when the intention is clearly defined, and the child is receiving good feedback.

One of keys to focus and intention is data and attention to detail. If you are working on teaching your child to identify pictures, read words, recognize numbers, or complete a math process, you can only work with intention if you know where you are and where you are going. For example, if you are trying to develop your child’s sight word vocabulary you need to know what they know. Perhaps you have shown them 50 new words over a month or so. How many do they know? If I were flashing them the words, I would periodically stop on a word and ask them what it was or start a review session by testing a few words. I would mentally keep track of how many of the words they know, about what percentage they know, and even what types of words. Armed with some data we can do a number of things. If you provide your coach and evaluator with the data, they can make recommendations to do everything from change frequencies and durations, to how many new words are being introduced, to what kinds of words to introduce, or even to putting it away for a while. If the data is simply that we have checked off x number of boxes over these weeks, that doesn’t really help us reach our goal. The intention of every session should be to succeed, to teach your child to read more words; and to do that within each session, you need to be gathering data and work with intention.

Intention is every bit as important for every other aspect of program, whether we are teaching a child to walk properly, to track better, or to love looking at pictures. With absolutely every activity we do, we need to be mindful of what we are trying to achieve; and we need to be observant and constantly adjusting, modifying, and gathering data. Our intention is to produce new function, new abilities and to change your child’s life one piece, one step at a time.

I find intention to be a fascinating neurological phenomenon. You can consciously start doing something with intention, but then your brain appears to learn to apply it without conscious effort. As an example, through the years I have had children read short non-fiction articles as part of their program, primarily to improve reading comprehension. Generally, it would appear to the parent who was working with the child during the day that the child was engaged, and since we were working to develop reading comprehension, that they were actually reading to learn. I would on occasion have the parents do an experiment. The experiment was quite simple: at dinner after everyone had sat at the table, but before anyone was allowed to start eating, I would have the child’s father ask them what the story they had read earlier was about. Many parents were shocked when they discovered that their child couldn’t even remember the subject, let alone any of the content. A common answer from children to the question, “What did you learn at school today?” is “Nothing.” If the family repeated this for a few days, the child would start remembering more and more about the story; and if the parents randomly asked the dinner question, the child would usually maintain their new intention, which was not just to read the story, listen to the story, and answer specific questions immediately after reading the story, but to learn and try to retain the information. After the first couple of days I’m sure the child, when they sat down to do their story, was not consciously thinking, “I need to remember this because Dad is going to ask me about it at dinner.” The child’s brain had changed and was applying greater intensity to recalling the information on an ongoing basis. Your brain adapts and changes and even generalizes intention. Very cool!

One Final Note on Intention

Parents generally work with a child with better intention than anyone who is paid. As a parent there are a lot of things you could do with your day rather than work with your child. You don’t do it because you’re getting paid; and actually, many of you could be out doing things for pay if you weren’t home working with your child. You do what you do because your intention is to help your child. Even for you it can be tough keeping your focus and working each activity with the needed intention.

If you are having people help with program implementation or even sending your child to school or therapy, the issue of intention becomes significantly greater. If working with a child or children is a job, often the job is defined as implementing specific methods as best you can. Not a bad objective, but it’s not the right objective. The intention should be to produce results—good results and fast results. One of the frustrations I face every day of my life is educators, therapists, and even physicians applying the same methodologies day after day and week after week and year after year, in spite of that fact that they haven’t worked or haven’t worked well or worked fast enough. It is easy for people to get stuck in the rut of “this is what we do and how we do it and so be it,” regardless of the results or lack of.

Sorry for the little digression—back to program helpers. It is more difficult for people getting paid to help with program to achieve and maintain the proper intention than it is even for parents. As parents and bosses and supervisors, part of your job is to train your helpers well, clearly define the intention, quiz them on the data, and tie their efforts to achievement of the intended results, not checking off boxes. You might find it interesting to note that historically volunteers do a better job maintaining intention than people who are paid, and often the more people are paid, the poorer job they do of program implementation and working with intention. Obviously there are exceptions, but if you are not getting paid or if the pay is minimal, it is more likely that the primary goal it to help the child.

On occasions where we have had siblings help with program, we encourage good intention not by paying the kids or even rewarding them for their time, but for results. It has been fun watching how fast things can change if we do something like, “When Johnny can do two 5s in row, we are all going to go out for dinner and to a movie.” Everyone’s intention is tied to their successfully hitting the target.

Fifty years ago, when I started doing this work, I heard comments such as, “You must be a very patient person,” or, “You need a lot of patience to work with handicapped children.”

I’m not a patient person. To the contrary, I’m quite impatient, which is why I am constantly creating and looking for better ways to do everything. My intention is, and your intention needs to be, to be impatient, to work with intention, and to make it right, make it better, and to improve your child’s life. With our joint focus and intention and, yes, some impatience, we can do it.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 1, 2019 ©NACD

The post Intention: Let’s Do This Smarter, Improving Results appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

After all these decades and tens of thousands of kids and families, there are a few basic things that stand out that often have great impact on how well our families and children do. A reality is that you can only accomplish a lot if you are to some degree organized and have an ongoing vision of where you are going and your priorities.

I know better than to try to make dramatic changes in your lives, so I would like to suggest one thing that I believe can have a very significant impact on how we all do.

What I am suggesting is that you discipline yourself and create a specific time between Friday and Sunday evening to do a very simple thing. This thing should only take less than ten minutes, but it can really change your outcomes, your children’s futures, and perhaps even your dispositions.

What I am suggesting is simply to sit down, perhaps after dinner on Friday evening, and review your children, your program, and your life and pick a specific thing that is going to be the One Thing* that you are going to prioritize in the coming week, and then set a goal related to it. Here are some examples of categories, possible “One Things,” and related goals:

Mom & Dad & The House

I need just a little time to take care of me.

Goal: I will get my husband to commit to watching the kids on Wednesday so I can go to a yoga class.

Mom and Dad need some time.

Goal: We need to get a babysitter on Friday night so we can have a date.

The house is a disaster and I can’t focus on getting the program done.

Goal: I will dedicate time after breakfast each day this week, even if it means I don’t get the entire program done, to get the house organized.

Kids & Program

Johnny has been close to an auditory 5 for the past month.

Goal: I’m going to make this the priority, hit this hard with intensity, and get him there this week.

I haven’t made my flashcards.

Goal: I will figure out how to take pictures with the iPad and will take enough pictures to last me for two months and send them to Costco to be printed.

We need a piece of equipment made.

Goal: I will find someone to do this for me and get it done.

Mary is ready and needs to be toilet trained.

Goal: We are going to focus on this (if necessary, to the exclusion of everything else) and get it done this week.

This is a very simple process, but if you do it, I can virtually guarantee that your lives and outcomes will improve.

I want to suggest a couple other associated things. One is the concept of don’t break the chain. There is an attached form below that you can download to use to record and keep track of your One Thing and your goals. Try to do this every week, and once you get started, think about establishing this as a new habit that can serve you for life. Do it every week and don’t miss a week. Try to build a long chain of establishing your One Thing and your focus for the week.

One last thing–start each day by making your bed, and as soon as your children are capable, have them start each day by making their beds. If you want to find out how you can change the world by making your bed, read my article and watch the video here.

[space size=”30px”]

[btn text=”Download the One Thing & My Goal Form” link=”https://www.nacd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/NACD-Goal-Checklist.pdf” tcolor=”#ffffff” bcolor=”#dd9933″ bordercolor=”#dd9933″ thovercolor=”#dd9933″ bhovercolor=”#ffffff” borderhovercolor=”#dd9933″ border=”2px” size=”large” font=”h1-family” icon=”kt-icon-document”]

[space size=”30px”]

* To learn more read “The One Thing – The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results” by Gary Keller

[space size=”30px”]

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 31 No. 6, 2018 ©NACD

The post Simple Plan to Improve Program Outcomes appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

How long is a day? How long is a minute? How long does it take to make a bed, take out the trash, make a sandwich, or eat a meal? I’m sure you can all answer the first two questions, or at least you think you can; and I suppose that you could give a fair guess as to how long it takes you to do many common tasks. But I would bet that you would be off in these estimates by a fairly substantial percentage. Let’s try to understand a day and look at these pieces a bit more closely so we can start thinking about time in perhaps a different and more productive way.

But there are some of you who do not think of your day in these three or four chunks, but rather in smaller increments. Recall the old saying, “If you need something done give it to a busy person.” We might want to tweak that a bit and say, “If want something done, give it to a productive busy person.” I suspect that most of you feel you are really busy, but productive? Why do these productive, busy people get it done? I propose it’s because they look at and think about their day and time in smaller pieces and perhaps even schedule those pieces.

Back in the eighties when I was working like a young nutcase trying to help kids and change the world, I was productive from generally around 6 a.m. until 2 or 3 a.m.. My day was so scheduled that you could have asked me at any given moment what time it was, and I would have been able to answer accurately within a few seconds. I often got through those long days with mini power naps, and I could fall asleep within a couple of seconds and wake up typically one or two seconds before my scheduled wake up time. I really had a good handle on time. Part of what helped me fine tune time was doing live radio and TV shows.

Back then I did a lot of radio and TV, which really helped develop my time perspective. How long is a minute? Sixty seconds. And how long is sixty seconds? When doing live radio or TV, I learned very quickly that the programs start on a specific second, commercials happen at specific seconds, and the show ends on a specific second. When I did these shows I would have a clock with a very prominent second hand to watch and/or someone off to the side, making all kinds of motions, gestures, and facial contortions trying to keep me apprised of the time and on target. To make it challenging, the host would inevitably throw a question at me to end a segment. When I first started doing these shows I would be nervously watching the clock, and when asked a question with less than a minute left, I would look at the host and quickly answer the question, then look up at the clock. More often than not, there would still be something like 45 seconds left. Wow—a minute is a long time. I felt like I could have recited the Gettysburg Address in that time. (Which I, in fact, just timed and can do in a minute—who would have thought?) So one minute is a long time, and there are 1,440 of them in a day. Now I am not proposing that you run your day with a second hand; but I suspect we can do better than morning, afternoon, and evening, or worse yet “tomorrow.”

As an exercise spend a little bit—a very little bit—of time and make a list of common jobs and tasks that you do on a very regular basis and estimate how long each job takes. How long does it take to make a bed, empty a dishwasher, prepare sandwiches, take out the trash, etc.? Write down your estimations. Then over the next couple of days, time how long these tasks actually take and compare them to your estimations. You may be surprised. You may find that you actually spend a lot more time thinking about finding time for things than it would have taken to have just done them in the first place. Armed with this new insight, make yourself a chart of a day, breaking the day down into 15-minute pieces. If we allow eight hours for sleep, that leaves you with 64 of these 15-minute huge chunks of time. Now with your chart in hand and your new time perspective, start filling in your chart for your next day. Start by chunking things into 15-minute groups, putting those things that absolutely have to be done, like meals or whatever, into the appropriate time slot. After you fit in all of the absolutely-must-be-done items, then add in the really-really-need-to-do items. Good. Now you have probably filled in eight or ten of your 15-minute blocks. That only leaves about 56 empty blocks. Okay, so let’s move into the really-need-to-do items, followed by the like-to-do items, and the items you meant to do the day before but didn’t get around to. Do you have space for the things you meant to do but didn’t do last month? Still have some empty spaces? How about scheduling in a nap, time to read, or a workout? Wow—could you actually have some free time? For many of you, this will be an enlightening experience. For some others you may have actually discovered that 64 blocks are not enough. If that is what you learned, then you too have learned something very important. You can’t do it all. In order to get your child’s program done, you need to get help, you need to delegate, you need to evaluate the importance and results of the various things you are doing, you need to prioritize. Is your plate is too full? Talk to your coach, and let’s modify what you are doing. (Do you really need to spend time traveling across town for the questionable whatever?) But for most of you the good news is that it is possible to create enough time in your day to do what needs to be done.

Get ready—your life is about to change!

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 24 No. 3, 2011 ©NACD

The post It’s About Time appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.