Miracles from Children’s Play, day by day

INVITATION:

Able-differently welcomes you to an important part of our work and art on behalf of your family and child. We hope we have described well enough some difficult concepts without compromising content or uniqueness. The mind and heart uses play experiences to build positive developmental, health and social-emotional outcomes. Although written in standard text at some length, it follows from years of discussion among Able team members and therefore lacks a single author. It stands to be modified and added to as we continue to have ongoing conversations about what goes into children’s emerging competence in functioning well enough with a sense of wellbeing derived from a complete play experience. The program provides the best science and researched evidence-based validation of what clinicians have known implicitly. This knowledge is gained from attachment, exploration and discovery theory utilizing resiliency emotional processing of mastery, self- determination and evoking of internal motivation.

We want this to be helpful and informative in order to serve your child’s and family’s positive mental health needs either promoted before or even during more formal and traditional mental health services. By utilizing these researched positive psychology constructs and applying contemporary scientific methods and measures using the everyday natural environmental activities and opportunities, may evoke innate motivations and emotional potentials. The process may activate break-through adaptive resources of positive emotions, engagement of positive flow states, life purpose, relationships and successful accomplishments. This may make for a complete mentally and physically healthy family, child and community. We welcome you all to participate with us in this ongoing discussion of what works. Your feedback is welcomed at info@able-differently.org

Taping innate resiliency resources:

Children’s resilience theory and practice (Benard, Masten, Egeland, Werner, Smith, Marshall, Garmezy et al)) supports our using this information to serve families and their children by improving ways to cope and manage stress and adversity. From sentinel longitudinal studies following children’s lives over a life time, and who were exposed to such conditions as poverty, violence, family disruption and abuse, alcoholism, mental illness as well as children with developmental disabilities and risks of chronic health conditions, 75% of youth were found to experience life success. Research reveals resiliency is inherent within natural capacities for normal development stimulated and engaged innately by needs, opportunities, and protective resources, which may come from families, schools, and communities. It’s proven many people harbor resilience seeds from evolutionary sources and require nurturing to germinate. Since this interpretation applies to include many people, those with disabilities and typical children, all have thepotential to respond to assets and protective factors to enhance other parts of their development. These applications now become prevention and promotion elements available for universal interventions. The resiliency language used to excitingly describe what’s been found out about overlaps with many fields of inquiry including positive psychology, preventive health, positive youth development, recovery-reclaiming life, multi-intelligences, and wrap-around, and strength based approaches.

We hear and see three similar themes and concepts shared from the resiliency literature; These are caring relations, expectant positive beliefs, and opportunities for meaningful participation and contributions. These elements have been found to lead to satisfying developmental intrinsic motivational needs and drives. These attributes include affection, safety, sense of belonging, shared power and mastery, challenge, stimulation and meaning in life. If many of these experiences are provided, seeds grow to form human adaptation systems which construct internal resources and assets. Which are social competence (empathy and caring) problem solving (insight and imagination) autonomy (self- determination and goal seeking) mastery (power and positive beliefs) and identity (fitting a sense of purpose and future). Since humanistic psychology, and its threads which have sewn the fabric for resiliency, positive psychology as articulated by Martin Seligman has now taken the gauntlet since the late 80’s through hard science. Many co- researchers are beginning to substantiate the field through rigorous methodology. This implicitly rings true for clinicians and mental health consumers. Now we are in the era of integrating traditional views on health care with emotional well-being and collaboration with medical care and mental health. This may suggest a new era for understanding positive health as a unity of social-emotional, biological, and functional ideas and practices.

Nurturing resilient emotions and personal traits:

Resiliency research has been greatly informed by the fast moving Positive Psychology movement (Seligman, Peterson, Csikszentmihalyi, Suldo, Snyder, Fredrickson, Froh and Emmons et al) including the Emotional Intelligence contributions by researchers (Goleman, Mayor, Salovey, Caruso et al). These relatively recent efforts have documented clear ways to build and broaden families and their children’s life satisfaction. Moments of positive feelings and construction of wellbeing impact learning, development and physical and mental health. These researched explanations and emerging practices are forming understandings of the means and processes children under go to achieve their promise of resiliency by creating, recovering and reclaiming their destiny in spite of their adversity from disability, disorder or chronic conditions.

Stories of alternatives and exceptions to children’s conditions and disorders and what’s wrong is supplanted with proactive resources and protective factors to build up what’s right and what works. This makes life worth living to be happy, and find contentment with joy. The psychological viewpoints and practices compliment the medical model with prevention and promotion dimensions. We know now that quality of life is not assured with the absence of pathology and medical conditions. By assuring the presence of subjective attitudes so the child can feel and be heard to have the freedom and agency for personal, meaningful goals, and dreams to be fulfilled. In order for a child to function optimally requires basic needs: a sense of belonging, safety, caring, social competence, self- determination (choices), mastery (motivation) and meaning (purpose). Research notes that it is imperative for the child to feel these weekly, if not daily, through the developmental years. A child’s life is lived in moments of experience. Positive moments aremade up of both positive feelings mixed with some negative experiences (negative emotions can help us survive a critical event and initiate change and give us insight) in ratios greater than 3: 1 and are formed from the past, present, and anticipated future. Positive emotion contributes to personal health and development by expanding and broadening our thought-action patterns like awe, wonder and create opportunities for flexibility, relations, and play while they may also undo negative emotions. Through happiness, joy/ satisfaction may lead one, to resilient coping and upward positive developmental spirals. Positive emotions, although temporary create enduring resources, fun and excitement in play which builds physical abilities, mastery, and social relations.

The miracles of coping with disability brought forth from the every- day experiences making up the natural environment fuel and energize adaptive affects and feelings with emotional wellbeing. Life satisfaction is supported by: engagement through optimal experience (flow), mindfulness, pathways to hope (self -determined goals step by step) and optimism (changing explanatory thinking style and expecting to do well). Other partial mediators researched include thankfulness (daily assessed gratitude)), generosity (three daily kind offerings to others), awareness (three good things each day). By utilizing self- efficacy beliefs as well as a child’ character signature strengths allow the school aged child to enhance and cultivate their character traits. (See appendices, Values in Action Inventory of Character Strengths). These personal processes can be promoted by generative activities and optimal opportunities for children to have some of these “turn around levels of experience” in positive ways. These can be supported by their “turn around” families, schools, peers, communities, and medical homes.

Turn-around levels of experience: invitations into the world of the child:

Social opportunities are required to give coherence to all of the levels of experience below and are required for a transformative experience. In other words, from these rich and compelling opportunities, the brain and mind can change at all ages of development with new cells, pathways and neuronal circuits. Children’s brains require novel, rich and compelling experiences which boost and cultivate traces of positive events associated with healthy caregivers. Social connection, engagement and interaction must be a part of these opportunities where expectancy beliefs prevail with provision of a “play-like” activity in which to participate in and contribute. A sense of belonging is a vital need and assumed to be provided always ( parent and teacher caregivers, coaches, peers, mentors, friends, extended family, siblings, volunteers, tutors, instructors, guides). A more capable and wiser human being supports a safe haven and a secure base to protect, and nurture creating mutuality, sensitivity, responsivity. This interaction strengthens and secures the attachment relationship. This security guarantees the children’s further need to explore and discover their environment with curiosity, wonder and awe. From this imagination and self-agency the child can believe in their destiny and rightful place in the world.

Level 1: experience the day to day and ordinary life events

Memories of the child’s past events, their mindfulness of the present, and their sense of the future carries both positive and negative emotions. Events of the day comprise felt satisfactions and disappointments forming their sense of emotional wellbeing which determine happiness, fulfillment and the pleasant life lived. Daily lived moments punctuate the everyday, rituals and traditions brought forth by children’s transitions connecting the routine, unplanned and unstructured free- play opportunities, with regard to also highlighting the novel and mundane times. How can we make for the children, the ordinary, and more extraordinary? Perhaps by implementing rich and compelling storied experiences and bringing forth for the child from play will enhance focused attention, and ways to notice what’s going on in themselves and the world around them. Mediators may also use interests to elicit pleasure and joy in the experience. We use these measures of assessed life satisfaction and gratitude from the past, and flow states with positive affect as joy and enthusiasm from the present. Together with hope, faith and optimism from the future may also acknowledge feeling good about oneself. The outcome results in the child functioning and having a better life to be remembered and called upon as a strength as the child ages. These emotional qualities and positive mental states can be brought forth through learned strategies and will be discussed later. Everyday event s with cycles and rhythms of the day can be highlighted through journaling (written and pictorial), photography, questioning, and other self -awareness and mind-sight technologies such as relaxation, visualization, graphic and pictorial organizers and age appropriate secular contemplative practices.

Level 2: expanding the natural environment with the ordinary giving birth to the extraordinary

These begin as occasional events with special qualities that are highly socially embedded in the context. These experiences may include clubs, youth organizations, social groups, team sports, and faith based youth activities. These events are more structurally organized with implied, rules and boundaries that help with limit setting behaviors and create social competencies. (We have included individual, solitary recreational, leisure, hobbies and non-competitive sports in this category.) Outcomes are well documented including cognitive, affective including lifestyle benefits as an example satisfying bodily and exercise needs with physical outlets, control of eating and managing one’s weight (BMI) and other sublimation of teen agers hormonal drives and urges. Include lifestyle goals as improving sleep hygiene and exploring a child’s and family social network equally effect positive mental states harnessed by these positive experiences. Building character, personal growth and determining ones fit with his/her environment is exemplified by taking chances and modifying risks, self- control, cooperation and team leadership skills expressing courage, bravery, determination and persistence by incorporating character strengths and helps them live the good life. Flow states (engaging life), mindfulness expressions, written and pictured journaling, sensitivity to social feedback, and emerging empathy, are vital tools for reflective function as well as new ways to construct character. This can be accomplished by using the Values in Action ( (VIA) available through authentic happiness website below are additional resources). Without opportunities to express and narrate these experiences, these events can be empty and solely taken for granted left as a residue memory of token achievement and another trophy on the shelf. We have contracted with our parents to story and query these experiences in order to retrieve the possible benefits of health and social emotional resilient outcomes. We are particularly interested in archiving these stories as part ofthe child’s portfolio. Kids can also consider using expressive arts described next as non- declarative ways to embed these into autobiographic memory and reflect on meaningful experiences which impact health.

Level 3: Creative arts experiences The performing arts, with theater, drama, dance movement, visual arts, music and song, creative writing, poetry, photography, are available to express what we mean sometimes without words in the most profound ways. After children have engaged in level 1 and 2 experiences, we join with them to further process meanings and understandings beyond what they have already expressed. As a result of this process, children’s outcomes include creativity, imagination, utilizing the aesthetic, to work out the pent up emotion and negotiate a state of wellbeing to transform them through the experience. Positive health states can be enhanced in real-time while engaged in activity and the experience can be made richer upon using reflective and mindful practices

Level 4: Transcendent and higher order experiences

Further growth and maturation can be evoked from enhancing, spiritual- religious experiences and nature-adventure experiences as well as inspired by profound grief and loss. As well as experientially derived from meaningful encounters inspired with positive and negative emotional processing arising from the void as in a quantum event (a flash of awareness-an epiphany). The Values in Action, already referenced organizes many self- directed questions contributing character strengths and several virtues from self- feedback. These can then be built upon by providing experiences in the environment which match with the child’s own values and what’s important to him or her. Activities such as service learning, mentoring, and peer helping are available in the school and community (volunteer reading to a child, tutoring, helping in a senior program or nursing home). Nature experiences associated with questing, adventure, talking a walk in the woods or beautifying a shut in neighbor’s garden patch, or green project, or social action are possible mindful examples of reflective practices. Places of worship may be a specific opportunity to match the child’s value set with a volunteering project. Measures of qualities such as thankfulness, kindness, gratitude, forgiveness, hope and faith can be assessed by specific forthcoming self- rated questionnaires on positive psychology (See Questionnaires in appendix A). Additional outcomes from these assessments used as interventions includes: empathy, compassion, and justice. These outcomes can be approached through a coherent and integrative narrative that ends in positive development, improved wellbeing, and physical health.

Access to measuring quality of life in children’s daily experience:

The program was fortunate to obtain several positive psychology measures of emotional wellbeing. Thanks to Shannon Suldo, Ph.D at South Florida University and her graduate program. She made available to the Utah School Psychology organization a series of archived self- rating scales with a scoring template and a procedures manual for teaching these skills to children in school. Contingent on publishing and using this material was obtaining individual permission from the various authors. This was obtained to the extent possible other than for those documents already available on line for public domain. It is Able-differently charity’s hope that by having these available, parent-school psychology collaboration could be formed in order to complement the traditional Response to Intervention (RTI) school practices that include (universal and population based) and special education, (selected for groups and targeted for individuals) evaluations. We would encourage parents and medical homes to consult with the school psychologist to add these important researched tools to complement proactive and preventative quality of life measures and interventions so that the formal testing will have a more complete understanding of the child’s strength and asset profile.

Download the following Child and Youth Quality of Life Scales and Interventions by returning to the original condensed article: Back to shorter version with additional attachments

Self-rating Questionnaires Scoring Template Wellbeing Procedures Manual

Additional Appendices also are available on the original document including bibliography and related links.