When Social Distancing is “Normal Life”

Selah C. is an eleven-year-old former Mackintosh Academy student who was born with a condition that puts her at higher risk for respiratory illnesses. Recently she shared her tips on social distancing from the point of view of someone who lives with a chronic illness.

What most of us are experiencing for the first time in the COVID-19 pandemic, Selah has lived with her entire life. Her mom Sarah says, “We’ve already learned how to live in quarantine and social isolation except for in the safest situations. It’s not easy, but we’re used to it by now and it’s second nature.”

With Selah’s family’s permission, we are sharing her advice here.

Selah’s Tips on Thriving in Isolation

“Apparently most people don’t live like I do, which is not really a revelation, but to me I can’t imagine what a normal life is, if there even is one.

I’ve been in the hospital a lot. All my life I have been living extremely cautiously, because I know what happens if I make a couple of small mistakes like forgetting to wash my hands or touching a door knob and then scratching my face. Even just a cold can turn into pneumonia for me. I never hang out with anyone even remotely sick, and most times when I’m in the hospital I’m contagious, so I can’t leave my room for days on end.

Thank you, Selah, for sharing your words of wisdom with our community!

For more information and tips on how to help kids with social distancing, please visit these sources:

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/coronavirus-social-distancing.html

https://broomfield.org/3125/Activities-While-Social-Distancing

https://newywithkids.com.au/family-fun-social-distancing-coronavirus/

We will be covering this topic, sharing more student and family perspectives, and highlighting activities and student work as our staff continues to provide hands-on, inquiry-based experiences for our students via MACK FLEX, our flexible learning platform. Follow us on this blog, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to stay tuned.

Want to learn more about our school? Here’s a good place to start.

The post Tips on Social Distancing from an 11 Year Old Expert appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

By Katie Bellon, PhD, Denver Integrative Assessment

Could more free time help your child be more organized in school? Can unstructured play help children do better socially? You might be surprised to find that the answer is yes.

You may have heard “executive functioning” mentioned alongside discussion of traditional academic skills.  The executive functions refer to the brain’s self-regulatory capacities, housed mainly in the pre-frontal cortex.  These critical skills help an individual work in an intentional, directed way toward a future goal; prioritize and manage multiple, competing demands; and appropriately manage their emotional and behavioral reactions.

Damage to the prefrontal cortex can cause severe problems with self-regulation, as in the famous case of railroad worker Phineas Gage who survived a railroad construction accident involving an iron rod that was driven through his left frontal lobe. However, even in healthy adults, executive functioning exists on a continuum. Everyone possesses varying degrees of self-regulatory capacity, even under the best conditions (i.e., as fully developed adults, without a specific learning or developmental disorder that impacts executive functioning, not sleep-deprived, and not under the influence of alcohol or drugs).

But why does it seem like kids are struggling with these skills more than ever before?  While it’s difficult to establish a direct cause, the research has demonstrated the critical role of free (unstructured) play in the development of intrinsic self-regulation.¹  And researchers and parents agree that children in the United States currently enjoy less and less free play time.²

Free or unstructured play refers to children playing without adult direction or interference of any kind.  Given this, if we consider the amount of time a child spends in school, completing homework, on a screen, at church, with a tutor, or participating in sports, enrichment classes, or other extracurricular activities, we can all agree that very little time is left for free play.  Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in on the debate, particularly as some schools are dropping recess altogether in favor of more academic time.³

To understand how unstructured play helps a child to develop self-regulatory skills, think about all that’s involved in play: communicating with other children; negotiating, compromising, and resolving conflicts; creative role-playing and working to stay in character; developing rules or guidelines to play by and revising these rules as needed; remembering, following and policing the rules to maintain fairness and safety; problem-solving when challenges arise; and keeping track over time of new developments or ideas for the next play time.

Children who consistently struggle with these skills experience the natural corrective consequences of exclusion, and are thus highly motivated to learn and improve.  In contrast, when children are involved in structured, adult-directed activities, the specific tasks/activities are chosen for them, the rules and expectations are explicitly communicated, prompts and corrections are provided for off-task behavior, and guidance or support is offered as needed.

Structured activities, like school and sports practice, teach children to respond to cues, an important form of extrinsic (other-directed) regulation.  But when the cues are removed, children who have not developed intrinsic (self-directed) executive skills tend to struggle.  In my testing practice, I have seen bright students with deficits in intrinsic self-regulation follow a predictable trajectory that typically ends with significant challenges in college.

So, with the realities of modern life being what they are, how are we as parents supposed to help our kids develop intrinsic self-regulation?  Below, I’ve offered some ideas to consider, with the hope of starting a conversation in your family.

Elementary-aged children

• Let your child be bored as often as possible, as boredom sparks creativity. Most of your child’s time outside of school should be unstructured, either with friends, siblings, or by themselves, without access to screens.  Provide supervision only when necessary (e.g., for safety).  Seek out summer camps that are less structured and that provide plenty of time and space for children to play freely.
• Children of all ages should have regular (daily) chores to help the family and contribute to the running of a household. If they do a sloppy job, have them do it again.  And again.  And again.  Most kids do better with regular chores that are frequent and predictable, than with less frequent chores that are unpredictably requested.
• Limit the amount of time your child spends completing homework. A good rule of thumb is no more than 10 minutes per grade, per night.
• Let your child experience the consequences of forgetting an assignment, their lunch, or their sports equipment. If forgetting is habitual, regular rituals need to be put into place to support organization (e.g., putting everything needed for school by the door the night before, with a reminder note to grab lunch from the fridge).
• Start teaching money management by giving your child an allowance.

Middle-school-aged children

• All of the above, plus . . .
• Playing will naturally look different at this age, and phones/screens commonly enter the picture. Have conversations with other parents about restricting access to screens while kids are spending time together, to promote healthy relationships and social skills development.
• Minimal supervision should be needed when children this age are playing, and when screens are not accessible. Depending on the safety of the neighborhood, kids should be able to bicycle to a nearby park without parents.
• Teach your child phone/email etiquette. Provide opportunities for them to buy things at the store and interact with service personnel.
• Have a conversation with your child’s teachers about what the expectations are for parental involvement, according to your child’s specific needs. Help your child plan ahead, but do not rescue them.
• Teach your child to advocate for their own needs. Offer your presence and support only.
• Daily chores/responsibilities/expectations continue and are increased appropriately
• Increase allowance and teach them to save or work for more expensive purchases

High-school-aged children

• All of the above, plus . . .
• Your adolescent should be budgeting farther in advance and for larger items. For example, consider giving them a seasonal or annual clothing allowance that they are responsible for managing.
• Summer jobs are essential for this age group. Have your adolescent earn the money to pay for phone bills, gas, and social activities.
• Your adolescent should be able to take a city bus to meet friends downtown. Buses involve planning ahead, using a map, and transferring – Uber/Lyft and parent chauffeuring are not equivalent alternatives.
• Your adolescent should be responsible for making doctors’ appointments and filling out school forms.
• At this point, your adolescent should be managing their own sleep/wake cycle, daily medications, and school/sports responsibilities without your assistance.
• Think seriously about your adolescent’s readiness for college. If you are helping them fill out applications, write essays, or ask teachers for recommendations, these are red flags.

As your child grows and moves through each stage of development, if they are consistently unable to meet the self-regulatory demands of daily life, it’s important to understand the origin of these challenges accurately.  Are the challenges consistent across settings?  Are they struggling despite appropriate support or because of low expectations coupled with frequent rescuing?  If the latter, is the rescuing due to the child’s limitations, or due to parental anxiety?  Following such a decision tree should lead to a direction for evaluation and/or intervention.  Keeping an open mind is important, however, as the main target for intervention may not end up being your child.

Works Cited
¹Barker JE, Semenov AD, Michaelson L, et. al. Less-structured time in children’s daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Frontiers of Psychology. 2014; 5: 593.
²Gray, P. The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents. American Journal of Play. 2011; 3-4: 443.
³American Academy of Pediatrics. The Crucial Role of Recess in School. Pediatrics. 2013; 131-1: 183.

Additional References
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clear-the-schedule-and-let-kids-play/373144/

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/all-work-and-no-play-why-your-kids-are-more-anxious-depressed/246422/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/well/how-to-help-a-teenager-be-college-ready.html

Katie Bellon, PhD

Dr. Katherine Bellon is a clinical psychologist licensed in the state of Colorado. She earned her Bachelor’s in Spanish and pre-medicine studies from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Dr. Bellon then completed her graduate education at Fielding Graduate University in the American Psychological Association (APA) accredited Clinical Psychology Program, and received her doctoral degree in January 2010. She received clinical training at the Community Reach Center, the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan, and The Children’s Hospital.

In 2008-09, Dr. Bellon completed an APA-accredited internship at the Denver Veteran’s Affairs Hospital, where she later worked as a post-doctoral clinical/research psychologist at the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Centers (MIRECC). Dr. Bellon left the VA in 2010 to focus on educational and psychological assessment in the private practice setting before beginning the practice that would become Denver Integrative Assessment in 2012.

Dr. Bellon’s current focus is on psychological assessment for adults and adolescents, and educational testing for children six years old and older, adolescents, and adults.

More on this topic from our blog:

Executive Function Development and Your Children: All is Not Lost (Even if Often it Seems That, Literally, They’ve Lost All Their Things)

The post Free Play for the Win! Supporting Your Child’s Executive Function Development appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

Burrito? What burrito? In his school back pack?

Surely my twelve-year-old son couldn’t be referring to the egg and cheese breakfast burrito I bought him last week. (Yes. Yes, he was.)

Today was one of those days when I felt like everyone in my family needs his own personal assistant. It was the kind of day where it seemed like I simply couldn’t keep up with the amount of missing apparel items, the crumpled assignment sheets (and burritos, apparently) shoved to the bottom of backpacks, the misplaced books, as well as the reminders to brush teeth and apply deodorant.

Would it surprise you to learn that the most predictive factor of academic and professional success is not intelligence? If you are the parent of a gifted child, I’m willing to bet you know that the answer to that question is executive functioning. Executive functioning is how the brain regulates itself: cognitive processes such as attention, inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility, delaying gratification/working toward a long-term goal, planning/organization, and emotion regulation.

I really try not to engage in schadenfreude, but whenever I witness evidence that my family isn’t the only family struggling with executive functioning issues, I do feel, at the very least, a little less alone. And, for those of us whose children have messy backpacks while wearing only one winter boot during a mini-meltdown over the long-term project due tomorrow, there is hope.

According to clinical psychologist and Mackintosh Academy-Littleton parent Katie Bellon, “executive functions mainly involve the prefrontal cortex, which fully develops in most people around 25-years old.” All is not lost—there’s still time to help your children’s executive functioning development!

Katie has years of private practice experience. At an upcoming Parent Education event she will share a research-based perspective on what parenting style works best for promoting executive functioning skills in children, how structure versus a lack of structure can affect the development of executive functioning skills, and, as a bonus, she will share some tips and strategies for parenting gifted kids in the summer. Join us at the Mackintosh Academy-Littleton campus on Wednesday, April 29^th from 6:30-8pm!

The event will be B.Y.O.B. (Bring your own burrito.)

The post Executive Function Development and Your Children: All is Not Lost (Even if Often it Seems That, Literally, They’ve Lost All Their Things) appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

Gifted and creative students can have passionate interests and wild imaginations. Summer is a great time to feed and nourish those interests.

This summer Mackintosh Academy is launching a set of great camps for gifted and creative kids ages 5-14 – offering full roster for children who love to go fast, dive deep, ask big questions, get messy and have a lot of fun with their “tribe.”

Camps range from Camp Invention to Chess Club, Dragons to Druidawn, Sticky Fingers Cooking to Sports & Science Camp.

They will be held on both Mackintosh Boulder and Littleton Campuses.  Both campuses boast beautiful outdoor spaces.  Boulder’s camps will take full advantage of its 23 acre campus  – complete with pond, creek, grove and large outdoor play spaces.

Here is the complete list of Mackintosh Camps for Summer 2015:

• African Safari
• Around the World Art
• Awesome is Everywhere
• Band/Orchestra Camp
• Camp Invention
• Chess Camp (Wiz-Kids)
• Creative Writing
• Dragon Camp
• Drawing
• Druidawn
• Beginning Fencing
• Flute/Woodwinds Camp (Parlando)
• Invention Camp
• Rock Band Camp (Parlando)
• Sports & Science
• Sticky Fingers Cooking
• Wilderness Survival

Register for Boulder Camps

LITTLETON CAMPS

• Sticky Fingers Cooking
• Everything is Awesome
• Lazer Leaders Sport Camps
• Bricks 4 Kidz
• Challenge Island (STEM)
• Mackintosh Summer Art Camp & Summer Olympics (Aug 20, 21, 24)

Littleton Camps Flyer

We’ve also compiled a large list of other great camps for gifted kids that our parents have loved — both in the local Boulder/Denver/Littleton area as well as others nation wide.  These camps have been recommended by our Mackintosh families over the years.

Here’s to a summer filled with interesting adventures and tons of fresh air and fun!

The post Mackintosh Launches Great Summer Camps for Gifted and Creative Kids appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

“How are we supposed to have Make Your Own Grilled Panini night when I’ve FORGOTTEN THE PANINI PRESS?” I grumbled.

“Mom, chill. You always tell me that when there’s nothing you can do about something, you might as well stop worrying and move on,” my middle son responded sagely.

It was one of those rare moments when you realize maybe your kids DO listen and perhaps you ARE doing something right. So of course I laughed, thanked him for being a wise little Yoda, and stopped grumbling about all of the missing items. (At that point I was blissfully ignorant about the fact that my husband hadn’t packed middle child’s ski jacket. #youhadonejob)

Nevertheless, I was left with the feeling I often have: how can I change things so I feel less stressed? Less rushed? When I’m feeling stressed, it tends to trickle down and the next thing I know, the kids are bickering, the dog is barking, and no amount of Calgon is going to help.

Something did help, though. I read an article, Tips for Parents: Attaining Health and Well-being Through Balance, written by renowned psychologist Patty Gatto-Walden. Yes, the same Patty Gatto-Walden who will be at Mackintosh Academy on March 17th at 6:30 pm as a part of Mack’s Parent Education series.

You can find the whole article here, but here are some high points:

• “Recognize that you, as an adult in your family, not only model behavior, you also create a “set point” climate in your family atmosphere. Hence, take care of yourself first!”

• “Attaining balance within one self means recognizing, valuing and living out of your intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual (which includes ethics and morals) and social self.”

• Kids need stable rituals, boundaries, limits. “Family structure provides stability and security, and is advantageous when coupled with an abundance of core foundations—unconditional acceptance and love.”

• “One of the most difficult things we need to learn in life is how to let go and move on. This never-ending process of letting go is much easier to accomplish when we are balanced, and thereby living out of all five domains” (individual, emotional, physical, spiritual, social selves).

• Let your kids be kids and don’t dump all of your problems on them. If they pick up on the fact that you have something going on, make a general statement without fully unloading. “You can respond with a general line without dumping the nuts and bolts out on the table. Let them be young. Let them not deal with all you have on your plate.” Find another adult to be your confidante.

• Recognize and honor the differing personality types in your family. If the extroverts tend to keep things lively, make sure to give the introverts time and space to rejuvenate.

• “Some differences in gifted people can take the form of overexcitabilities or intensities. It is vital that you thoroughly understand and accept your overexcitabilities and your children’s overexcitabilities.”

• Get outside. Spend at least 30 minutes each day enjoying the natural world.

• Make time for one-on-one time with each of your children. “Each relationship deepened and I could offer such love without stress or pressures. It was wonderful and I recommend it.”

Reading Patty Gatto-Walden’s article reaffirmed a lot of the things we’re “doing right” in our family, and it gave us some solid things to try differently.

Most of all, parenting gifted children can be hard, and it is easy to lose sight of the importance of taking care of yourself while caring for your children. But, as Gatto-Walden says: “Integrating this truth is life changing. When the five domains (individual, emotional, physical, spiritual, social selves) work together—each one with the other—they provide a perfect “GPS” system within us.”

The post Put *Your* Oxygen Mask on First: Parenting Gifted Children appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

Elementary school will set the foundation for your child’s education and lifelong learning. How can you give your gifted child a great start?

Join our panel of experts to learn about choosing a right fit school for your child.

Moderated by Dr. Susan Scheibel, Affiliate Faculty at Regis University and former President of the Colorado Association of Gifted and Talented, the panel will include local experts and advocates in gifted education:

• Melinda Ness, Littleton Public Schools Coordinator for Gifted Education and Online Learning
• Natasha Straayer, Douglas County Schools Coordinator for Gifted Education
• Gracie Carr, St. Mary’s Academy Director of Admissions
• Beth Steklac, Mackintosh Academy Director of Admissions

The post Preschool Panel: Finding the Best Fit School for Your Gifted Child appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.