Tuesday, October 25, 2016

10 Ways Singing Makes Better Brains

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston, MS/CCC-SLP



 “Bye-Bye Water
Bye-Bye Water
Bye-Bye Water
So Sad To See You Go

Merrily It Rolls Along,
Rolls Along,
Rolls Along
Merrily It Rolls Along
Down The Drain It Goes”
Lyrics by: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

I wrote this catchy little diddy for my daughters to be part of our bath time routine. Adding songs to routines with young children is a wonderful strategy to help with many areas of development including behavior, language, social-emotional, physical, cognitive, and even self-help skills.

To be clear, I am not a singer. In fact, the sound of my singing voice makes me cringe. However, most of the time, children either do not judge poor singing or are a captive audience and silently suffer through the horrific sounds penetrating their ears and then brain. So please don’t use an out of tune vocal instrument as an excuse to not sing.

To help motivate you to use songs in your routines with your little ones, I have compiled a list of some reasons why it is a great idea:


1. Singing helps with transitions and reduces tantrums:

  • By singing a song near the end of a favorite routine your child will be prepared for the upcoming change and move to the next routine with less fussing. Think about how hard it can be to convince a child to leave the playground to go home for lunch. Singing a "let’s get ready to leave" song can help

2.  Singing encourages the completion of chores:

  • Every preschool teacher knows that the best way to get kids to clean-up toys is to sing the ubiquitous song made famous by that creepy purple dinosaur, Barney and his equally weird friends


3.  Singing supports spontaneous speech:

  • By singing in daily routines children can memorize the words of the songs and then fill-in planned pauses. Some children have trouble initiating expressive speech; this gives them practice forming a word on cue.

4.  Singing naturally builds speech fluency:

  • The smooth connection of words in songs helps children who are learning to speak in phrases, speak with improved clarity when singing is part of their daily life.
  • Some people who stutter find they have less stuttering incidences when singing.
  • The natural highs and lows and pitch changes that are built into songs helps children learn to control variations in their voices for speech that sounds natural and effortless

 5.  Singing can increase engagement and meaningful interactions: 

  • Singing with a partner can increase back and forth interactions and eye contact. Many songs are fun and create an enjoyable moment between child and caregiver.

6.  Singing enhances brain development: Checkout the links below for more information

7.  Singing makes the day more fun:

  • Routines can be, well, routine and therefore sometimes boring. Even laundry and scrubbing floors is made more fun with music. I promise, give it a try. 

8. Singing often combines movements like finger plays or dance steps. Adding motor movements with songs can do so much.


  • Movements can help children initiate speech.
  • Songs can help uncoordinated children become more coordinated. Just like songs help link words together fluidly, they can help chain movements.
  • Songs can help with remembering steps in an activity like hand washing.

9.  Singing may help with academics. Checkout the link


10.  Singing can develop memory skills:

  • Just like mnemonics, songs can help the brain remember just about anything.



There are so many opportunities during a day to embed a song. Choose a routine your child loves and one that is hard for them. Create songs or use a song you already know and make it part of the routine. Pairing a song with an activity is as easy as singing Wheels on the Bus as you paint or draw. When the wheels go round and round, so does the crayon. When the wipers go swish-swish, so does the paintbrush. It’s fun and easy.

Bonus Song


The song I sing when baking or playing with Play-Doh with kids is sung to the tune of Row Your Boat:

“Roll, roll, roll the dough
gently up and down.

When we roll out the dough,
We will never frown.”
Lyrics by: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston


Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Adoption Myth VII: Infertile? Just Relax


By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston


                                     

Every time we left the infertility clinic, I would walk outside and see what seemed like dozens of happily pregnant women. These glowing women were fit and fashionably dressed with their perfect, taut, round bellies leading the way as they went about their day content in knowing they achieved one of the most basic human functions, procreation.

Not being able to make a baby was not a surprise due to the combined health histories of both my husband and myself. Nevertheless, the experience of it was torturous, exhausting, and draining both emotionally and financially. 

“Just try harder and it will happen.” “Just think positively and it will happen.” “Try to adopt and it will happen.” "Just relax and it will happen." Those quotes reflect the well-meaning words often given by loving friends and family who were trying to help support us through our struggles.


Click Here For Infertility Facts

The indisputable truth is that the healthy female body is designed to make babies. So, when my female body could not make a baby the feelings of inadequacy I had could only be truly understood by other women who have suffered through infertility. Unfortunately, most women do not discuss their personal struggles with this issue. I believe the silence is due to feelings of shame combined with the general societal misconception that infertility is just part of life and no big deal.

Deciding to have a baby is no easy decision. Some women find themselves pregnant at inopportune moments while others get pregnant right on schedule according to their life plan. Then there are women, like me, who make the careful decision to start a family only to be stalled over and over and over again.

Infertile women deal with the medical trauma and drama and expense of our condition. We deal with the continual grief and loss with our condition. We become stressed and feel out of control with our condition. We feel intense loneliness and sadness due to our condition. In spite of it all, we have to pull it together month after excruciating month and find a way to be hopeful so we can try again and again and again.

We rely on unfamiliar and sometimes cold medical professionals to guide us. We must trust strangers with our most intimate secrets and situations. We must withstand the medications and medical procedures prescribed. We try to lean on friends and family, but their capacity for support wears thin quickly. Asking and expecting someone to hold your hand through so much grief is hard and most people are not up to the task.

Click Here to Learn How to Talk to Your Infertile Loved Ones

These loving people who are our friends and family want to help us. They want to make our grief subside. They want to help us feel hopeful. Inevitably, they rely on the misconceptions perpetuated by the mainstream media through fluff news articles or made for TV movies. These outlets are flush with anecdotes about the few women who tried to get pregnant for years and as soon as they adopted a baby or prayed or tried non-traditional approaches got knocked-up.



Often times the sentiments delivered by our circle of support make us feel like we are not doing enough or the right thing. We end up feeling more stressed and more alone. We end up feeling that we are the problem not our bodies and our health. We know that those who shower us with these well-meaning but misguided words are not trying to hurt us, they do love us. 

The best thing you can do to help your loved one cope with infertility is to educate yourself on infertility so you can offer real advice when asked. Otherwise, just listen. I hope some of the information I have included is useful. And remember the following truths to the myths.

The Truths to 5 Common Infertility Myths 

  • Trying is fun: Sure it is at first and then it becomes a job that you fail at month after month. Failure is not fun.
  • Adoption leads to pregnancy: I have two beautiful girls that I adopted and I have never been pregnant. 
  • Legs in the air: I have spent hours with my legs in the air and still no baby.
  • Maybe it's him: Even if it is "him" we are still infertile. He is my husband and we are in this together. So, in reality, it is "us."
  • Just relax: Really? 

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Selfies and Self-Esteem: Raising Girls

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston


I caught a glimpse of my teenaged daughter taking yet another picture of herself. Without shame she posed looking at her image on the screen of her smart phone as she turned her head this way and then that way to ensure the most flattering angle and lighting. She did this, as we walked down the street, without shame or embarrassment. She just snapped away oblivious to my judging eyes.

While watching my daughter's self-directed photo shoot, my initial impulse was to mock her and make her feel awkward about what she was doing. Then I had flashback to when I was about her age and recalled my painfully low my self-esteem. I would never in a million years have been able to do what she was doing. Suddenly, I went from wanting to shame her to wanting to be her.




My memory took me back to a moment when I stood in front of the full length mirror in the first floor hallway of my childhood home. As I admired my reflection, I felt pretty.  I was sixteen and before that day I rarely thought of myself as pretty. After a life time of my father’s cruel words and interacting others who preferred sarcasm over compliments, my self-esteem was non-existent. But on that day I allowed myself to feel pretty.

I was home alone and I let the moment of feeling beautiful take over. I started posing in the mirror. I tipped my head in all directions and twirled and turned my body. This was long before the phenomenon of the red carpet poses so I had not been schooled by Ryan, Julianna, and their team of fashion police on the most flattering angles.

Proper Red Carpet Poses


This little posing session went on for several minutes until I was interrupted by a faint knock on the door. The front door was in the sight line of the hallway where I flaunted and flourished before the full length mirror. Startled back to reality, I looked up and was mortified to find my mom’s best friend peering through the front door window with a condescending smile on her face. She had been watching me.

When I answered the door, red faced with humiliation, she asked, “What are you doing?” I feigned ignorance. She continued to give me a patronizing look. I felt so small, vain, and frivolous. My rare moment of feeling pretty turned into something ugly. I reverted from feeling beautiful to feeling shameful and meek.


Over time, that feeling of shame passed and I let myself feel pretty more often. I wish I could have yearned for feelings of self-worth that surpassed the pretentious"pretty"  Why couldn’t I long to feel smart, strong, adventurous, etc…?

Compliments that Transcend "Pretty" and "Skinny"

                  


As a mother, I want my girls to have confidence in themselves completely not just in how they look. But we cannot forget that we live in a world where beauty is valued and judged. To combat the high value we place in looks, I make a conscious effort to compliment my girls on all aspects of their lives and personality. 

I emphasize that they look healthy or fit rather than pretty or skinny. I tell them they are smart and strong rather than pretty and skinny. I tell them are funny and clever rather than pretty and skinny. I tell them they have nice style and look fresh rather than look skinny and pretty. I tell them I like their friends and encourage their interests and hobbies rather than tell them they look pretty and skinny. There are so many more things to focus on aside from looks. We need to make sure that we tell our girls these things, the same things we have been saying to boys all along.

Men Reacting to Compliments Girls Get



Maybe taking selfies is not just an exercise in vanity. Perhaps the act of taking selfies provides opportunities to stop and appreciate the little things in life; to appreciate ourselves and all our accomplishments even the mundane ones. By making time to take a selfie, we are stopping and actually smelling the roses. We are pausing and appreciating all aspects of our lives and in turn celebrating all aspects of ourselves. 

For example, by photographing ourselves with the dinner we just made we say so much. We are sharing with the world that we are proud of all that was required to prepare that meal from the job we work to buy the food to the skill it took to prepare it to the healthy food we chose to feed our body to the people we love who we are sharing that meal. So rather than judge this culture of selfie takers, we should admire the self-esteem it implies and the fact that we are pausing to enjoy life even if it means we are sharing it a bit too much.

Taking a Moment to Enjoy my Family


Tuesday, October 4, 2016

A Ghost Story


By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston


Imagine sitting in a circle in the darkest part of night where the only light comes from the campfire and the flashlight illuminating the face of your camp counselor, causing it to look disfigured and ghostly. You sit mesmerized by the story she is telling you as you unknowingly clutch the hand of the girl beside you whose gaping mouth barely breathes as she is frozen with fear, just like you.



The counselor uses the creepy atmosphere and perfectly placed pauses to expertly retell The Golden Arm. This tale was made famous by Mark Twain nearly 120 years ago in his book How to Tell a Story.     



The Golden Arm was not the only story used to add an element of fear to my childhood. A favorite game which I played with my cousins was “Mary Worth.” This was an equally terrifying myth that involved being visited by a bloody ghost. Once, immediately after completing the required chant of “I believe in Mary Worth” three times, we heard an ominous scratching at the door.

Screaming, we huddled together in a trembling frightened cluster. After much coaxing and daring, the bravest of us eventually opened the door to determine if Bloody Mary herself had left her signature claw marks in the door panels. My cousin slowly pulled the door open with trembling hands as we watched from afar still huddled with our eyes squinched nearly shut. 


As the door slowly swung open we all jumped back in surprise as we saw it right in front of our unbelieving eyes. The cat sat at the door wagging its tail and licking its paw waiting for us to let her in for dinner. The only scratches left behind were the imperceptible ones of the cat’s claws.

Though they were just silly games and folk tales, these childhood experiences with the supernatural opened my mind up to the notion that ghosts exist. They introduced the idea of a spirit world and that some of those spirits dwell beside us,and even make themselves known to us.

Fast forward many years later, I am now an adult and I still believe in ghosts. Many experiences across the course of my life brought me to the realization that ghosts are real. The most personal and tangible of these experiences were the encounters I had with the ghost that resides in my mother’s house.

I am not particularly brave, but for some reason her ghost has never frightened me. He is a scamp. He is a juvenile delinquent performing childish pranks. He is annoying but harmless. I refer to this ghost as “he” because in my mind a girl would never perform such trivial pranks.

Sears Kit Home Similar to Mom's
This ghost, who seems to live in the second floor cubby holes of my Mom’s bungalow, preferred to visit me at night. I have awoken to him tickling or blowing air into my face. I have awoken to mysterious beeping sounds that did not go away after unplugging every single thing in the room. Our latest encounter happened in the morning as I showered. He turned off the hot water in the middle of my shower and somehow made the cold water the temperature of ice. These are aggravating shenanigans, but not particularly scary or impressive.

My first encounter with this ghost was a bit more haunting. I had recently returned home from my three year stint living in California and my mother let me move back into my old room until I got back on my feet and figured out what I was doing with my life. It was my first night home sleeping in my old bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awoken to some strange sensation. I knew I was not alone, but could not figure out who was in the room. I saw no one, nothing.

Previously, I had heard my mother mention some strange happenings in her home like the cat being fed or the steam being wiped away from the bathroom mirror. The most common occurrence was finding the painting of a little boy she had hanging on her dining room wall on the floor, daily. The ghost clearly did not like that painting. Once my mom replaced it with another on the same nail, it never fell.

On my first night home, the presence in my room took the opportunity to get to know me. As I lay in bed on my back fully awake I felt an odd sensation. Much like the child being eaten by the Boa Constrictor in the Shel Silverstein poem, the feeling started in the bottom of my feet and slowly traveled through my body.  It was a warm not painful electric-like current that traveled the length of my body until exiting from the crown of my head. The entire time I lay paralyzed unable to move or speak. It felt like I was being explored internally. It was the oddest experience of my life.




Even more unexplainable was my reaction. Rather than screaming in fear and racing out of the room and then the house filled with terror, I fell asleep. I was not scared in the least. That ghost had no nefarious intentions. It just wanted to know who I was and I, for some odd reason, was fine with it.


I do not expect you to believe me. My own mother did not believe me when I mentioned it to her and she believed the ghost resided in her house. I know it is true and that is all that matters. So during this spookiest of months, remember that we really do reside next to spirits and like Casper the Friendly Ghost, most are just silly pranksters.