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Coping with a family Christmas for an anxious autistic teen


For my son, Tom, thinking about our family Christmas meal is causing him anxiety. Spending time together and creating memories over a shared meal – it’s what many people love about Christmas – but it’s not so easy for an anxious teen with autism. Continue reading Coping with a family Christmas for an anxious autistic teen

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Dyslexia and executive functioning skills

Dyslexia is most commonly understood as a condition that causes difficulties with reading. It is less well known that dyslexia can also impact on organisation and time management skills, which is sometimes referred to as executive functioning. 

What are the signs?

A child with dyslexia who has executive functioning issues may have difficulty:

  • remembering to take to school everything they need for the day 
  • being organised and preparing their kit in advance
  • sticking with an activity and not being distracted
  • understanding what day of the week it is and what different things they need to do each day
  • remembering their routine and prioritising the tasks needed to get ready for school  

What can you do to help?

There’s lots you can do to help a child with these issues. Here’s just a few ideas:

  • Get into a regular routine and stick to it. Children who struggle with time management often feel more secure and less anxious with a familiar routine.
  • Make checklists to break down a task or routine into smaller steps. Visual prompts work better than verbal reminders as they are constant and consistent.
  • Use calendars and planners – colour-coding often works really way to identify regular activities and highlight special events.
  • Encourage development of organisational skills with lots of repetition, reminders and practice. 

How could TomTag help?

  • school girl carrying rucksack with packing checklist attachedTomTag is ideal for all children with dyslexia as the picture symbols we use are easily recognisable and don’t rely on a child’s ability to read for TomTag to be effective. 
  • Make morning and evening routine reminders for tasks that need to be completed and the order they should be done using an I know what to expect – morning and evening minikit or for more varied options try these kits I can do it self care skills or I know what to expect at home
  • Create a school bag packing checklist using the I can do it pack my bag for school kit that will remind them exactly what they need to take to school each day, and bring home again. 
  • Take advantage of TomTag’s colourful tags by colour-coordinating checklist and routine reminder tags with any planners, calendars or charts that you’re also using.  

Useful resources:

  • Back-to-School Self-Talk Prompt Sheet

  • Back-to-School Toolkit

  • Feelings Bundle

  • I Can Do It Pack My Bag For School Kit

  • My School Kit Sticker Pack

  • School Bag Packing Checklist

 

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Feelings thermometer and diary

It’s often the simplest things that have the biggest impact.

A seemingly simple thing that gets forgotten, ignored or left unnoticed can cause a big problem down the line. Simple ideas, simple tools, simple changes might be all that’s needed to solve a problem or do a better job than a complex solution.

A Share how I feel tag, with its thermometer-style colour faces scale, has to be one of the simplest uses for the TomTag system but since introducing it less than nine months ago has become our best selling product.  It can be used in lots of different ways which is perhaps one of the keys to it’s success – we’ve given some ideas in this free download guide.

Having recommended in our guide that using a feelings diary can help to identify patterns of emotions or behaviour and the triggers that could be causing them, we decided to make our own! 

My TomTag Feelings Notebook

Keeping a diary gets you into the habit of noticing and naming how you feel in different situations throughout the day or at times when you feel most anxious or worried.

There’s a scale for rating the strength of your feelings and a guide to help build up a vocabulary to describe your different feelings and emotions.

By making notes about what happened during the day or at key points you can start to build up a picture over time  which helps you to see patterns and identify the common triggers or stressors. Quite often these might be simple things that go unnoticed day to day but are easier to spot once patterns emerge. 

It’s often the simplest things that have the biggest impact.


  • Back-to-School Self-Talk Prompt Sheet

  • cover image feelings notebook extra stickers

    Extra sticker sheets for Feelings Notebook

  • Feelings & Emotions Sticker Pack

  • Feelings Bundle

  • Feelings Tag-O-Meter

  • I Can Do It Manage My Feelings Kit

  • I Can Do It Share How I Feel Mini Kit

  • I Know What To Expect – My Vaccination Mini Kit

  • cover image product feelings notebook

    My TomTag Feelings Notebook

  • Phoebe’s Green Christmas Kit in collaboration with Embracing Arts & Christmas For Kids

  • Phoebe’s Green Christmas Sticker Pack in collaboration with Embracing Arts & Christmas For Kids

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Joining the #SBS family

SBS certificate collection
Clare and Deborah collecting their SBS winners certificate from Theo Paphitis

Orkid Ideas was founded in October 2010, the same month that Theo Paphitis (of Ryman Stationery and Dragons’ Den fame) created his Small Business Sunday #SBS initiative on Twitter.

Each week, Theo chooses his favourite small businesses from the thousands that tweet him on a Sunday evening and rewards them by re-tweeting their tweets to his 500k+ followers the following day.

Monday 26th March 2018 marked the start of Autism Awareness Week. Autism awareness, understanding and acceptance is close to our hearts at Orkid Ideas; it’s the reason we are even here at all and underpins our passion for TomTag and how it can help individuals with autism cope better with daily life. So it was an especially delightful surprise when Theo chose this Monday to pick Orkid Ideas at the top of his weekly list of six businesses to join the amazing #SBS winners family.

Not only does this mean a boost for us as a business but we hope it has also helped to spread a little more autism awareness to a wider audience. 

“It is imperative that you have an idea you really believe in, and you also have to be absolutely determined you can make it work.” – Theo Paphitis

Twitter/OrkidIdeas

TP SBS winning tweet

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SNAPPY – supporting our local special needs community

collecting snappy certificate thumbnail image

Snappy – Special needs activity and play provision for York – has been providing a lifeline to families of children and young people with disabilities for 30 years. Snappy runs Saturday and school holiday play schemes and activities for children and young people up to age 25 who can’t access these kind of opportunities elsewhere and gives parents and carers a much needed and well-earned break as well. 

We love the work that all the Snappy team do so when we heard that they were looking for more local businesses to support them by joining their 100 Club, we couldn’t resist snapping up the opportunity! 

Here’s Deborah collecting our Club 100 member’s certificate from Snappy himself. The team have so many exciting ideas and plans for the future that we know will make such a difference to the lives of the families they support and we’re proud to be joining them on their journey.proud supporters of snappy logo