Phone a Friend

 

With no end in sight of the end of the pandemic we start a small idea- Call a friend if you want to have a fun chat, a serious existential chat, listen to a song, or get Reiki or Crystal healing or just do a three-minute meditation.  All contacts are part of the SCAN family.

Online Kolam Contest for Pongal 2021

As usual we sent out invites to all SCAN families to take part in our online Kolam contest. Here are the entries that enthralled us..

Dhruv and his flower kolam..

SCAN mom Kalpana's mother, Kalaisevi Krishnaswamy, is herself deaf and mute, yet has enormous talents and zest for life..

Sumathi and Prajakta with their effort...

Deepa and Sarvajeet take up pookolam..

Sarvajeet's pookolam..

Valli, Umayal's daughter sends us many kolams...

Valli's kolams..

Vasundhara and Sujith send us this lovely pongal kolam..

And lastly Kavin with his kolam contribution making it an enjoyable online evening for all. 

 

2020- the year when we learnt to ZOOM!

Corona really pinched our support group works very hard, restricting us until October, 2020 to just messages in our telegram group. We helped many new parents who had recently discovered the special needs in their wards.

But in October we got our act together with an online program for Navratri, for which we arranged three interviews of vendors all of whom were part of the Special Needs community. We ran a Fb page and campaign called Mottamadi Thamboolam, for the sale of Golu gifts.

Several special needs vendors made a decent sale, through this endeavor.

Then we had a composite program in which we showcased our children's talents, had a fashion show and an Antakshari all in the same evening. The video is on youtube in the link below-

https://youtu.be/lugb2XO6umg

We ended the four hours program with an Antakshari, which can be viewed here-

https://youtu.be/7hn1_XlxZNg

Then we arranged a program on Diwali in which we showcased a video made by Aparna and her daughter Suvarna on Diwali. Then we presented the new things the mothers did during quarantine time, then a zoom presentation of a dance program from Anubhava School of Meera Krishnamurthy, a Scan Mom, followed by a quiz by another Scan Mom Seetha Vikas,

The whole program can be viewed here-

https://youtu.be/77WkuBnq23E

Then Gopinath Ramakrishnan, FounderTrustee of Scan, did a program on Inclusive Living, a project he has been working on for a year or so. You can view that here-

https://youtu.be/OoWSQZOPDy8

Our last set of programs for 2020 was SCAN Conversations- lead by Suja Shyamsunder, on different topics. A new initiative by Suja, a parent from Chennai with a 13 years old son with autism, steers a conversation about discoveries made during corona time, changes in the children's lives and 'Wow' moments of resplendent joy, with Sonal, Devaki, Chitra, Deepa, Jayanthi, Sumathi and Vimal.

Please view it here-

https://youtu.be/kfoBs1d4Fcs

The second in the series of SCAN Conversations was on  'High Functioning or Low Functioning" with regards to special needs of any type, as a topic. What it means in the context of the children, whether it is useful to define it as such etc. The discussion was between mothers of different disorders such as Fragile- x Syndrome, Sturge Webber Syndrome, Autism and Phelan- Mcdermid Syndrome.

It can be viewed here-

https://youtu.be/wZJM_O9sUJg

Thus ends 2020, Corona put us down, but we raised the ante and got back to business albeit only online!

Partnering with Nayi Disha

Nayi Disha, a Hyderabad based resource centre is in the process of creating a country wide Resource Library, city by city, and we at Scan became partners to help this process. 

Neuroplasticity by Dr Rajarajeshwari

Dr Rajarajeshwari

Mental Health Programs

Ongoing workshops/ interaction sessions at Mitr on Mental well being and regaining sense of peace and direction in life, two Special Moms- Bindu and Beena have been conducting wonderful programs at Mitr.

Bindu Haridas has been doing a program called 'Self Discovery' which is loosely based on Louise Hay's 'Mirror Work' plus Beena's own discoveries in healing.

Beena Prithviraj has been doing 'Open Up' -Conversations in Mental Health, with small groups of people.

Both programs are ongoing.

Workshop By Lalitha Sridhar

Lalitha Sridhar is conducting a series of workshops on sensory related disorders in children. It would be best to check the following blog out on the content of these series- thoroughly documented by Karthikeyan-

whatautismtaughtus.com/2019/08/14/sensory-integration-in-adlactivities-of-daily-living-activities-by-scan/

Lalitha Sridhar, a rehabilitation professional trained from Madras Medical College, who has worked in the field of special needs for three decades, came to Mitr to share a vast knowledge on Sensory Integration (SI) for Activities of Daily Living (ADL).

A few points from her talk:-

• Senses help in performing our ADLs.
• For any development or learning to happen SI has to happen.
• All senses have to work together for complete information.
• There three types of senses-
•  Exterior- such as visual, olfactory, auditory and tactile
• Interior- Receptors in our body that tell us information for eg- are we hungry or full, do we need to go to the toilet, is our bladder full and so on.
• Proprioceptive-information that our joints and muscles give us  and Vestibular- information connected to balance and stability.

Mostly we all do understand what is meant by Exterior and Interior senses, but Proprioceptive and Vestibular are not properly understood.

• Proprioceptive  sense can be further elaborated as-
• Maintaining alignment of body parts- for eg to pick p a fallen object we need or eyes, head, arms and back to work together in alignment. If we cannot control this alignment we cannot pick up the object. This sense is proprioceptive.
•  Control of movement- for eg in picking up this fallen object we need to control how far our arm moves.
• Precision
• State of Alertness.
• In short, Proprioceptive deals with how much control and sense we have of our joints and muscles.

• Vestibular sense can be further elaborated as-
  
• Emotional Security via gravity- feeling like one is floating. Some children jump a lot, perhaps this helps them overcome this 'floating' feeling. 
• Feeling of Unsteadiness.
• Fear of Falling, lack of control.
• Balance and protective reaction.
• Stable Visual fields.
• Understanding space.
• In short Vestibular deals with how we perceive ourselves in space.

Regulating Sensory inputs is a life long activity. If our senses are acting well, and giving us accurate input, we function normally. If we hear something too loud, or find lights too bright or are feeling unstable while standing, or finding that a t shirt we wear is feeling too rough on our skin, all of which are sensory inputs gone out of whack, we will find it hard to do our activities of daily living.

Hence getting accurate sensory information, processed properly thru our body is  a must for normalisation.

Every ADL has three components-

1. Motor
2. Sensory
3. Emotional

Lets take the ADL of eating for example-

-the Motor component would be the ability to move one's hand and take it to the mouth.

- the Sensory component would be the proprioceptive sense of adjusting one's arms in the appropriate angle to reach the food,  the adequate movement of the mouth/jaw muscles to chew the food, and the throat to swallow.

-the emotional component would be the desire to eat the food as a comfort, as a comforting group activity.

Children crave certain textures like crunchy because they enjoy the sensory input given by their jaws to the body, perhaps it makes them feel more grounded, so maybe eating chips is not just a joy for the taste buds but is also giving the child a vestibular stability in space. Some children do not like to touch sticky food items like rice- why is that? they enjoy chewy foods, perhaps these are the reasons. 

So food can give us many clues on what is going on in other senses.

In conclusion it would be safe to say Lalitha Sridhar has a lot more to teach us and share with us and in the  weeks to come, we hope she continues to shed more light on this baffling subject. Obviously so far we have put a lot these things in the category of 'behaviour' or 'stimming' but they all have real reasons why the child acts in a certain way. In order to really help a child progress in learning and development, understanding SI is crucial.