Nobody builds lego like my youngest son. And nobody is as creative around gaming as my oldest.
Everyone has things that they are naturally very gifted at. And we all have things that we struggle with. It is no different whether you have Austim or ADD or whether you are one of us (the neuro-typicals!!)
What if I told you that our brains create maps of those skills. Every time he gets a lego set, there is a way that he unpacks and sorts it. He gets it all ready to put together, reads the instructions page by page, being careful not to miss a single step. This kid has been able to assemble 1000 piece lego kits since he was about seven years old! He always follows the same process and it always leads to success.
It is kind of like setting out an agenda of how we are going to get from A to B. Now when we practice them over and over, our neurons set up "super highways" where those connections happen faster and faster and become really strong. That makes sense right? Whatever we practice gets laid down as a strong successful brain pattern. Well the same thing happens with things we are not so good at. But these are the connections that we don't want to anchor to because they become blockages. Limiting beliefs about what we can and can't do. Negative anchors.
My oldest son has attention deficit, but you would never know it to watch him manipulate a gaming system. ( The other day he told me he figured out how to record what he was playing and he made a you tube video to teach other kids how to play. His video has some 30,000 hits! I was really happy when my blog hit 600!! I am starting to feel like an underachiever! LOL! ) He is really gifted when it comes to that stuff and very creative.
Asperger's and ADD kids have real difficulties in areas of executive function. They have trouble with organization and often with linking tasks to reach an outcome. Not true when you are dealing with their special interest area, but very true if you are trying to get them to do almost anything else that requires organization to achieve an outcome.
Now what if I told you that we can use the science of NLP ( neurolinguistic programming) to create an overlay of these successful skill patterns. Imagine it as a clear plastic page with the skills mapped out in black marker. Then through guided visualization, we could take the pattern from that overlay, and transfer it onto skill sets we struggle with to help our brains create another successful map. Would that surprise you? Doesn't sound that difficult does it. Professional athletes use visualizations, so do top executives. Why not our kids?
Here is a good example of what I mean. Let's use the situation of a young girl who competes in horseback riding. She is very successful in this arena of her life but cannot seem to write exams. It is possible to ask her enough questions about what she does to get ready to ride, what does she picture, what does she hear in her head, what does she say to herself. There will be a strategy that she uses that gets her in the head space for success. Once we know what she feels, pictures, hears and says to herself we can create a similar pattern for her around writing tests. The we walk her through a visualization where we compare for her the pattern between writing a test and competing on her horse. We can successfully link them and she will find she no longer has any issues writing tests.
NLP teaches us to follow a trail we are already good at walking and just change the markers. Think about the foundation we can build for our children when we start to look at the things they are already good at, and focus on using a tool that will help them use those very templates to establish new skills. This may sound a bit out there but I think the applications for teaching the skills for success are incredibly important. One of the biggest things we struggle with whether Asperger's, ADD, or not, in adolescence is self esteem. Anything that we can do to help our kids in this area is critical and definitely worth a shot.
I will keep you posted on our successes!
In love and light,
Kathryn
Everyone has things that they are naturally very gifted at. And we all have things that we struggle with. It is no different whether you have Austim or ADD or whether you are one of us (the neuro-typicals!!)
What if I told you that our brains create maps of those skills. Every time he gets a lego set, there is a way that he unpacks and sorts it. He gets it all ready to put together, reads the instructions page by page, being careful not to miss a single step. This kid has been able to assemble 1000 piece lego kits since he was about seven years old! He always follows the same process and it always leads to success.
It is kind of like setting out an agenda of how we are going to get from A to B. Now when we practice them over and over, our neurons set up "super highways" where those connections happen faster and faster and become really strong. That makes sense right? Whatever we practice gets laid down as a strong successful brain pattern. Well the same thing happens with things we are not so good at. But these are the connections that we don't want to anchor to because they become blockages. Limiting beliefs about what we can and can't do. Negative anchors.
My oldest son has attention deficit, but you would never know it to watch him manipulate a gaming system. ( The other day he told me he figured out how to record what he was playing and he made a you tube video to teach other kids how to play. His video has some 30,000 hits! I was really happy when my blog hit 600!! I am starting to feel like an underachiever! LOL! ) He is really gifted when it comes to that stuff and very creative.
Asperger's and ADD kids have real difficulties in areas of executive function. They have trouble with organization and often with linking tasks to reach an outcome. Not true when you are dealing with their special interest area, but very true if you are trying to get them to do almost anything else that requires organization to achieve an outcome.
Now what if I told you that we can use the science of NLP ( neurolinguistic programming) to create an overlay of these successful skill patterns. Imagine it as a clear plastic page with the skills mapped out in black marker. Then through guided visualization, we could take the pattern from that overlay, and transfer it onto skill sets we struggle with to help our brains create another successful map. Would that surprise you? Doesn't sound that difficult does it. Professional athletes use visualizations, so do top executives. Why not our kids?
Here is a good example of what I mean. Let's use the situation of a young girl who competes in horseback riding. She is very successful in this arena of her life but cannot seem to write exams. It is possible to ask her enough questions about what she does to get ready to ride, what does she picture, what does she hear in her head, what does she say to herself. There will be a strategy that she uses that gets her in the head space for success. Once we know what she feels, pictures, hears and says to herself we can create a similar pattern for her around writing tests. The we walk her through a visualization where we compare for her the pattern between writing a test and competing on her horse. We can successfully link them and she will find she no longer has any issues writing tests.
NLP teaches us to follow a trail we are already good at walking and just change the markers. Think about the foundation we can build for our children when we start to look at the things they are already good at, and focus on using a tool that will help them use those very templates to establish new skills. This may sound a bit out there but I think the applications for teaching the skills for success are incredibly important. One of the biggest things we struggle with whether Asperger's, ADD, or not, in adolescence is self esteem. Anything that we can do to help our kids in this area is critical and definitely worth a shot.
I will keep you posted on our successes!
In love and light,
Kathryn
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