Supporting Foster Parents with Sensory Processing Training

So excited for my training in a couple of days. I’m going to be training a room of foster parents in my hometown about sensory processing, and how to help kids fill their cups of development in the areas of tactile, proprioception and vestibular. Some of the characteristics (behaviors) that sensory techniques can assist with at home are wiggly busy kiddos, room roamers, climbers, picky eaters, biters, restless sleepers and tacklers to name a few. A lot of this can easily be supported through providing simple techniques that are easy to implement.

I always appreciated foster parents, because I love family. I come from a family of 10. My mom was a hard-working and tenacious woman, who chose to bring her tenth child home. His name is David, my brother, who happens to have Down syndrome. My mom’s mother was a young woman with 3 young girls when my grandfather died of tuberculosis. That didn’t stop her from bringing babies into her home. My grandmother was the mother of many. Grandma Mary was the woman people brought babies to. Many of these babies were newborns, left alone because their mothers had died during childbirth. They knew Mary would take in babies. My Aunt, Bernice (Bunny), was my aunt but was never officially adopted by grandmother but was definitely Mary’s daughter. She was a strong and gentle heart in my mother’s family.

My Aunt, Bunny, carried one child but lost the baby in a miscarriage. She never carried another baby but later adopted my cousin, Raymond. My aunt, Bunny, loved that I was interested in learning to crochet and craft. She was a sweet teacher! And as the 9th child in a busy family, I so appreciated the special attention! For many years, my aunt Bunny was a volunteer grandmother at her local Head Start program. She proudly wore a jacket displaying the Head Start grandparent program emblem. I find all of this delightful as I too work at my local Head Start, but with a different hat. I feel very connected to the children I have the pleasure of working with! I love being the mother to my two amazing boys, now men! I come from a long line of tiny, spunky, strong and nurturing women, who find the greatest pleasure in life to be surrounded by children! What a marvelous line to come from. It is because of how I was brought up and my 20+ years in Occupational Therapy that makes me feel prepared and eager to meet and do my part to help local foster parents. If you’re a foster parent, I send you all the warmth and positivity in the world; you all are angels to me.