Limitations of the environment

Do you have enough room in your home to play a board game? Do you have enough space for everyone to sit at a table to play it? Is everyone squashed or is there enough room in between everyone? Do you have enough room inside to play twister if its raining? Did you have enough computers and tables to separately sit each of your kids during home schooling? What was the impact of that? How long was it ok for and then what happened after that? Did it have any impact on other times of the day in terms of how they coped, in terms of how everyone else in the house coped?

Is it safe for your kids to play outside? in the yard, in the street, at neighbours houses, to go to the park by themselves, to walk to the shops by themselves, to ride bikes around the suburb.

Is it safe for your kids to ? what happens when it isn’t safe. What are you then forced to do? Where are you then forced to go? Do you visit the same places again and again simply because they are safe(r)? Do your kids complain all the time but there literally is no other choice? Is that your fault or a limitation of the environment in your local community or city? Is that a town planning issue?

One of the big issues with managing resources is awareness of possibilities of what could be as options. The layers with which we make decisions about things that we think through over differing periods of time. Some times we talk through these outloud with others to get their feedback and some times we keep it to ourselves because we know that we are uncertain and that its a big decision or big risk to take. In the real world through, we make actions to test to see if something will work before committing to it fully. Other things we can see immediately that it will work because of the depth of knowledge and because of all of the things that have been trialled in the past or the accumulative knowledge that has come from our own experience + the experience of others. Approaching things with a ‘work in progress’ approach can enable continued awareness of issues that might continue to occur versus those that we are absolutely certain will be completely managed. Talking through with your Occupational Therapist all of the issues and resources that you have trialled in the past is extremely important. All of the non-verbal or movement steps that reflect decisions that we’ve made over months or years are helpful to break down into more detail.