Trading Clothes: What to Do with All Those Outgrown Clothes

June 27, 2012Leave a comment

As a mom, I see my child outgrow clothes practically before they are worn. For example, I bought him 2 sets of sandals for summer in mid April (we leave in the heat) and by mid May his feet had grown them by 1.5 sizes.

There are several great options out there for what you can do with kids clothes. Here’s a list of great ways of trading clothes and other options when getting rid of old clothes:

Thrift Store it

There are tons of great thrift stores out there that sponsor different organizations. Think Goodwill and Salvation Army. They can be great for helping the community or a specific cause or both.

Selling Clothes

Selling clothes at garage sales or to a store can be an easy way to get a little extra cash. It does take some work and often times, I have found very minimal pay out, but I have done it to get a specific item or if you already having a garage sale, you might as well.

Hand-me-downs

Growing up as a second child, these were not always my favorite, but when they are shared amongst families, it doesn’t seem so bad. We constantly get clothes from friends, and they are great. We also are happy to hand them out as we always have a surplus and no room to store them.

Trading Clothes

There are some places to trade your kids clothes. Tradello is a new site starting on this premises, and although it is small now, these type of things are community based, so the more people to get involved the more successful they will be.

What are some of the things you do with your child’s old clothes?

Autism and Technology

June 20, 20121 Comment

Can Autism and Technology Work Together to Help Solve on Upward Epidemic

It seems like technology is everywhere so why not for those who need it most. While the iPad is getting more readily assessable even to infants (yes I saw the Fischer-price case), why not for those with other challenges. There is a site just for blogging ideas about what apps would help your children. It is called Hacking Autism (although perhaps there are more similar communities out there) and the point is to share about what your son/daughter needs from technology so that a programmer might now what is best for your child. The idea is a community win-win for parents, children, and programmers.

Here are some of the best ideas I saw, but let me know your favorites:

Time Sequencing: A simple schedule based primarily on graphics. Clear, concise, and uncluttered. It would be great with an optional timer built in.
An app for therapy data. Pen and paper do seem to be a thing of the past.
A sentence building app for non-verbal children. There are already things in place, but they are also sadly out of date.
Life skills sequencing cards. Simple tasks broken down even smaller so that they can easily see next steps while doing the process and work on memorizing it to do it eventually without the visual.
It would be really helpful to have an app that would enhance a persons ability for keeping track of and remembering their own belongings. The app could have a generic list of items (coat, bag, hat, etc) and allow for creation of new items. All the person or caregiver would need to do is open the app, touch the items they have and an automatic reminder could be set.
Create a puzzle interactive game where children have to use a character to move and travel to different environments and settings (school, home, etc.) and solve simple social problems such as get someone to play with you, ask for help or play a game.
I would love to see an app that provides different facial cues and prompts the “player” to identify how they think the person is feeling.

Fun Free Toddler Apps: for iPhones and iPads

June 18, 20121 Comment

As summer is here and vacations are sure to be a worry if you have a little one in tow, here’s a list of fun free toddler apps that will keep your children entertained while challenging them to learn something too.

9 Free Toddler Apps to keep your little one busy learning…

Play Phone

This definitely has some annoying glitches, but we have also gone through phases where it was my sons favorite. He loves the function of personalization.

Giraffe’s Matching Zoo

There is I believe a paid version where you don’t have to deal with the annoying ads, but my child has fully learned to navigate the free version. It has great sounds to go with the cards, so it is more of a multisensory memory experience.

Animal Sounds for Baby

Admittedly this is for the younger child but I sometimes still here my two year old playing with it. There are some other cute baby ones made by Fischer-price.

Little Writer

This is a cute app to develop some pre-writing skills.

My First Wood Puzzles: Dinosaurs

This is super fun for a little boy or a dinosaur loving girl. It incorporates the alphabet with science all while working on fine motor skills.

Jake’s Never Land Pirate School

Nothing keeps m son as busy as an app he can also watch on television. This one is FREE and it has lots of fun inside of it from cruising a ship to playing music.

Counting Ants

This is a cute app that incorporates numbers and foreign languages. It has multiple animals and multiple modes of transportation so there is lots to keep your kids attention.

Preschool Games

This has tons of ways to learn and play. It is full of customizable options. It helps kids expand there vocabulary and learn all about animals.

Hello Crayons

This app is great for the budding artist. It is pretty straight forward for just coloring but it has lots of mediums and colors to choose from to keep your little artist hard at work.

Adaptive Behavior and Behavior Scales: Truly Defining a Child

June 14, 2012June 12, 2012Leave a comment

Adaptive behavior means that the behavior or “anything that an organism does involving action and response to stimulation” (Merriam-Webster, 2006) is adaptive or “modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment” (Merriam-Webster, 2006).

In other words…Adaptive behavior is the ability to adjust to one’s environment in order to prosper. Adaptive behaviors include: communication, self-help skills, socialization, and motor skills. Communication can be broke down into receptive, expressive, and written. It is something that may be quantified in order to place a student in education, define services needed, or determine the future of a child. With so much riding on how a child’s adaptive behavior is perceived, how is it truly determined. There are behavior scales that are normally rated by many people in the child’s life. The more the better it can give a more well rounded picture of the individual, but still problems arise as all people might not have a shared view.

Problems with Defining Adaptive Behavior:

It is hard to define adaptive behavior using words outside of adaptive and behavior
It is hard to specifically test adaptive behavior as it is a very broad picture that occurs in a variety of environments with a variety of different ingredients.
Tests Directly reflect the biases of the individuals filing them out

How to Correctly Asses Adaptive Behavior

Do lots of behavior scales from multiple individuals
If any scale is way off talk about it as a team and if possible get another person in a similar relationship with the child to fill one out. Then check for discrepancies and consistencies
Remember we all act differently in different environments. There is very likely going to be some discrepancies.

Intellectual Disability and Defining Intelligence

June 12, 2012Leave a comment

Intellectual Disability has historical been defined as an IQ under 70, but where does the 70 arrive from. The following addresses issues surrounding the meaning and measurement of intelligence. It identifies issues and proposes solutions.

Defining Intellectual Disability

Intelligence means “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests): mental acuteness” (Merriam-Webster, 2006). This means in order to arrive at any number a persons brain is challenged to remember things, to code things, to build things, and in general to manipulate things. Intelligence comes in a wide range of areas, which leads us directly to some of the problems with defining intelligence.

Intelligence Meaning Issues:

Finding a universal definition. There are so many variations of intelligence. Are the correct one’s being tested?
How to test. Each individual is different. Some are great with the two person environment, yet others might need something else to show their true potential.
Does test accommodate the child’s abilities/disabilities? Some people have a hard time fully expressing any of the great things going on in their mind.
Is the definition reliable enough to be used for children’s placement. Just how accurate of a picture are we getting?

Possible Solutions:

Intelligence should be defined in a more universal manor
Tests should be used as an aide with other information collected on the child
More than one test in each domain using different mediums should used

A Child With Needs

Early child development from a mom and professional.

Month: June 2012