17 minute read
sk the xpert
How to Build Flexible Play Skills
Allowing children with special needs to use creativity while developing their imagination
By Carly SeiBald
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Play is important for healthy brain development and it is through play that children from a very early age engage and interact in the world around them. However, not all play is created equal and for children with special needs, play can be a daily challenge at home and at school. It is important for parents of special needs children to understand that like language and motor skills, play skills in all children should progress and reach developmental milestones. And, just like the common challenges with language and motor skill development, children with special needs often have delays in their play skills. Parents and educators should be aware of play development and support the skill in children who struggle. Play can be
14 NewYorkFamily.com | March 2020 challenging for children with special needs in a variety of ways. Some children lack the language skills necessary for complex play, or some lack the intrinsic interest in exploring toys and play materials. Many children with special needs have difficulty joining in and playing with others, while others have a hard time losing games. Some children prefer structured play or play that follows rules with clear expectations, while others prefer pretend and imaginative play. Regardless of the kind of play a special needs child enjoys
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and gravitates towards, it is important that they be able to show flexibility during play. A lack of flexibility is known as rigidity (in play or otherwise), and can hinder a child’s ability to reap all the social, cognitive and developmental benefits of play.
Let’s face it, being flexible is necessary for everyone. We all need the ability to react and adjust to the world around us, and practicing through play is a great place to start.
Examples of rigid play commonly exhibited by children with special needs: • Always wanting to play with materials in the same way • Excessively repetition ofroutines within play oftentimes paired with a set verbal script (e.g., building an elevator and announcing every floor that it stops on). • Using scripts from TV or videos (instead of using original ideas or language) • Frustration when others try and join in and change the game or not wanting their ideas to be interrupted • Sticking to game rules unconditionally, and becoming upset if changes occur • Always wanting to select the same color or game pieces • Difficulty losing • Excessive use ofsound effects instead of language. • Abandoning play when it does not go their way • Difficulty choosing new play materials or activities
Imagine the scenario: two children are playing with blocks and characters on the rug during free play at pre-school. One child, child A, attempts to share their play idea: “Let’s take the 6 train to a special park that has a huge water slide and ice cream trucks that you don’t need money for. And after icecream, you can ride a pony to this special part ofthe park that has a jumping castle!”. Child A narrates their play, using blocks as the subway car and characters who will visit the park. The second child who has special needs, Child B, listens to these ideas, and maybe even says “Okay!”, but when it’s time to start playing, instead ofnarrating the journey to the park, they get stuck on acting out the train ride. They move the block subway car slowly, possibly while laying their body down sideways on the rug, and making exaggerated acceleration and deceleration noises. The only language used is a script with an uncanny resemblance to the audio loop on a real train, announcing the next stop and to mind the closing doors. Child A waits for Child B to join in the pretend park fun, but Child B stays with the subway script. Accelerating, decelerating and
16 NewYorkFamily.com | March 2020 announcing the next stop. And the next. And the next. While both children are enjoying themselves, Child A has invited another friend to join in and share in the fun ofthe imaginary park, while Child B continues to play alone. You might notice, Child B is not upset that they end up playing alone, but rather, seems most comfortable in the safety and predictability of the repetitive and familiar routine. At first glance, Child B’s play may go unnoticed by teachers or staff. They’re not causing a problem, not yelling or fighting with other children. But the true concern is that Child B, who has special needs, is not accessing play to its full potential. They’ve missed a chance to play more fully with a friend, to use their imagination and creativity to evolve their ideas, and sadly, they seem content to do what’s most familiar and predictable, unwilling to take any risks during play.
Why is it important for a child to have flexible play skills? Flexible play translates to flexible language use, increased flexibility in social interactions and enhancing a child’s resilience when things don’t go as planned. Let’s face it, being flexible is necessary for everyone; kids, adults, neurotypical people or those struggling with developmental delays. Sometimes your ideas are shut down, sometimes your plans go awry, and sometimes you can’t predict what your friend or partner will do or say. We all need the ability to react and adjust to the world around us, and practicing through play is a great place to start.
How can parents encourage flexible play? Helping your special needs child increase their flexibility during play will depend highly on their level of rigidity and their tolerance for disruption. It’s important to take it slowly, and always work to keep play fun and motivating. If a child is likely to become very upset by changes in their play agenda, start by introducing some very small ideas that can be seen as expanding instead ofchanging. This can simply mean that your character will join theirs on at the airport, or that instead ofjust building a familiar
apartment building, you also build the garage that attaches to it. Try not to change or limit what they’re doing, but rather add your own ideas and model how the play can evolve into something more. Use language such as “I love your idea! It’d be cool ifwe could add this too!”. Remember, play can never be wrong, but it can always be expanded.
If your child can tolerate more redirection in play, you can attempt to facilitate more concrete change like suggesting different ideas for building or working to motivate them to play with different toys or selecting a different color game piece during a favorite board game. If your child is unwilling to give up their preferred toy, think about adding a different toy into the mix so they’re encouraged to use both toys in a new, original way. This may require explicit modeling (e.g., you show them how magnatiles and dinosaurs can go together by building a dinosaur museum). If they love toy vehicles, try using a school bus that people and animals can ride on instead of a closed car that cannot accommodate passengers. This will help allow for more play ideas such as taking the bus to school, to a special destination, and creating a dialogue between the riders as opposed to just using the bus as the main object ofplay.
Toys & Materials that help facilitate flexible play Choosing open-ended pretend toys that can be used in a variety of ways will allow parents to model and explore lots of different play schemes with the same toys. Play food, building materials, dress-up accessories, playdoh and vehicles which can accommodate characters or animals allow for the most language use and options for ideas. If a child is stuck on playing with toys that appear only usable in a single way (e.g., train sets), think about adding creative challenges such as a pretend rainstorm which floods the track.
While working to increase your child’s flexible play skills, remember to be flexible yourself. Model a variety of language and scenarios, and above all, make sure you’re having fun and being spontaneous. That is, after all, what play is all about!
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marCh Theme: Springing into Social Media
By Mia salas A s the weather warms up, the flowers start to bloom, and the spring cleaning begins, it’s a great time to reflect on the ways that we connect with each other. Spring into social media with our March Pick, a novel that imagines a celebrity
18 NewYorkFamily.com | March 2020 obsessed, internet-crazed, social mediadominated world of the future, yet amidst the present.
Followers Megan Angelo When a budding novelist meets a wannabe A-lister, the two women plan to launch
Discover New Stories with Us!
Welcome to New York Family’s Parent’s Book Club! Each month, we feature a different Monthly Pick novel, all of which have several copies available in the New York Public Library. We encourage you to start your own book club with friends, loved ones, and neighbors, using our Monthly Pick as your book of the month. Host meetings to discuss the novel with our discussion questions, and enrich your perspective of the book with our author interview on NewYorkFamily. com. We hope to connect NYC families and encourage more “me time” for parents.
themselves into the high-profile lives they dream about.
Thirty-five years later, in a world where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, another woman dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. Angelo reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we’ll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.
Megan Angelo’s writing has appeared in publications like the New York Times (where she helped launch city comedy coverage),
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Glamour (where she was a contributing editor and wrote a column on women and television) and Elle (where she has written about everything from Lauren Conrad’s Instagram to NRA TV). She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and three kids. Followers is her first novel. Learn more: meganangelo.com
To read our interview with Megan Angelo, visit NewYorkFamily.com! Angelo shares her thinking behind the title, Followers: “I think this speaks to the best thing the title does: just isolates the word, reminds us to think about it all on its own and decide what it means to us. The book was originally called Cursive, and it was in a Catapult seminar with Rufi Thorpe that I floated the title Followers and everyone was like — yeah, that’s it. My favorite thing about the word is that we don’t think anything of wearing that label now — I’m a follower of so many people and things on social media — but when we were kids, it was a buzzword for all the things you shouldn’t be.”
We hope you enjoyed reading and discussing Followers. Get ready for April’s Monthly Pick, which Netflix is turning into a feature film!
Discussion Questions You read the book, now we have the discussion questions here to guide your book club meeting! We hope that these questions will spark thoughtprovoking, intellectual, and even controversial discussions about the novel.
1. What role does social media play in your life?
2. Followers imagines a futuristic world in which social media and the Internet have taken over. What are the benefits of a technology-driven world, and what do you have to give up in order to participate?
3. How does social media impact relationships, and how do you see this playing out in the novel?
4. Who was your favorite character and why?
5. What do you think the title, Followers, refers to? Followers on a social media account or followers of the social media wave and celebrityobsessed culture in general?
6. Take a look at the cover. How does the cover art relate to the story?
7. “Orla couldn’t stop staring; she was beautiful. She was real.” (185): What does it mean to be “real”? Why does Orla admire this girl?
8. How would you describe Orla and Floss’ relationship? Do you think they are friends?
9. Reread from the bottom of page 95 through 96. How did you process this idea of parents being able to customize their child? What did you make of the studies that show that kids need to have “potential flaws”? What is considered a flaw, according to Marlow and Ellis?
10. Consider the structure of the novel. Why do you think Angelo chose to switch back and forth between the present and future, changing character perspectives? How might the story have been different if it was told solely in the present or future?
11. Share a passage or line from the text that stood out to you. What impact did it have on you, and what does it reveal about the story?
12. “How dare the world move on and leave her to live out this ending alone?” (223): Orla describes the feeling of being disconnected from social media, email and TV. Are we so consumed by social media that if we were to delete our accounts, we’d feel a sense of isolation? Can we feel connected to others, to the world, without the Internet?
13. The present day story takes place in Manhattan, as well as part of the future story. Why do you think Angelo chose NYC as the setting?
14. Followers raises many questions about privacy. Can privacy exist in our digital world?
15. “At the end of the day, she’s a woman. She’s not going to abandon her children” (294): How did you feel when you read this line? Why does Ellis assume that all women want children? Do you agree with Honey, who says “eggs are hardly children” (294), or Ellis in this argument?
16. Think about some of the celebrities and influencers that you follow on social media. Why are you interested in their lives? Why are Marlow’s followers fascinated by her life?
17. Reread the two quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche and Kylie Jenner that Angelo includes before the prologue. Why do you think Angelo chose these quotes? How do they relate to the story?
18. How does Followers use humor to get at certain themes about friendship, privacy, women’s empowerment, social media, ambition, obsession and love? Share a moment where you laughed while you were reading.
19. What did you make of the ending of the novel?
20. How did Followers change, confirm or challenge your previous beliefs, ideas and perspectives?
REACH. GROW. ACHIEVE. Awaken your child’s potential through dance
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Click, Clack, Moo Saturday, March 28 at 11AM
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