One big takeaway from many participants this past week during our AT EASE seminar and professional training with the IDS staff of Minnesota was the concept of orbiting. Young children between the ages of 2-11 are better regulated, organized, and more apt to coordinate with their parents when they are defaulting to orbiting their parents/caregivers. The concept of orbiting is that the child is attending to what their important caregivers feel and what they are doing and to that they take steps to coordinate with their caregivers both emotionally and physically. Many caregivers can easily orbit a child and anticipate the childs need for safety and general caregiving. This is a natural and much needed skill for caregivers to have in order to effective provide for an infant. However, children with social learning challenges and disorders struggle to learn WHY to orbit there caregivers and therefore do NOT always send signals to their caregivers to back off so they can build competence in this area of development. Lacking the appropriate signal from the child to back off (children signal their caregivers by trying things on their own, getting upset if someone does things for them, etc) caregivers often keep providing support for children with social learning challenges for extended periods of time. Because of these dynamics it is important for well intended caregivers to consider HOW to provide practical learning experiences to help their children develop the fundamental social desire to learn to orbit their caregivers. An important tool that has helped many families in this endeavor is the Connector. Learn more about the Connector at ConnectorRx
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 20:32:47 +0000