For All
With school starting, it’s an especially useful time to pick up new, environment-enhancing habits so family members are doing the have to’s.
If you want to optimize the chances that the cues that are provided by you get acted upon, choose the time and place—set up the environment—that enables your cues to be acted on immediately.
Aimee Yermish, PsyD, gave an example of what she does on an airplane: She cues herself so that she must remember her carry-on in the overhead compartment when she leaves the plane (something she had a tendency to forget) by putting her shoes in the overhead compartment near them. There is no chance she would walk off the plan without her shoes. With that cue that has to be immediately acted upon, she now never forgets her carry-on!
What “doing” task needs a cue, when and where? What already gets done then and there? How could you use the ‘already-do’ to help with the ‘needs-doing’? Have fun playing with the brainstorming!
For Gifted/2E
Whatever the gifted arena and/or the learning differences, gifted and 2e minds may have a harder time than neuro-typical minds to get the tasks done at all, let alone, when the schedule, the family, society, school wants and needs the tasks to get done.
When we realize these challenges can be solved in, almost, funny ways—like Aimee’s shoes with her carry-on (described in the “For All” section)—brainstorming ideas together can shift the energy out of lack/upset/adversarial-disconnection /avoidance realm. Instead, it can generate anything’s-possible-abundance/excitement/collaborative-connection/let’s-do-this energy. Inviting yourself to try, you might just find yourselves on a new path of life-enhancing possibility. Worth a try or two. Or more.
