20. Emotional Development with Guest Emily Davis

In this episode, we discuss cerebral palsy and emotional development. Emily’s son has hemiplegic cerebral palsy. From that condition, he has minor physical limitations and he has had to wear braces on his legs and have surgery on his achilles tendon. However, his disability mainly manifests in feeling big emotions and having difficulty managing those emotions. Her son is aware when his emotions become big, but he still struggles to manage his emotions in the moment. No matter the emotion, he tends to experience them in a very big way.

Communication is a must between Emily and her fiance in order to know how to assist in managing her son’s emotions on a daily basis. These large emotions affect Emily and her family by worrying that her other children are not obtaining the attention they need and the family is less able to engage in activities the family wants to do because there is so much navigation of her son’s emotions. Unfortunately, bullying has been a problem for her son in school, and due to his big emotions, he has been more susceptible to following what the bullies ask of him.

As a family, in order to manage the intensity of the emotions, the family talks about emotions frequently, they talk about how what we think influences what we get in life, they use crystals to help them sit with their emotions, and they use a “calm down” rock to use as an anchor point to focus their energy. They go on a walk and find an object and put their emotions in it and bury the object. They also have family meetings on a weekly basis and are all very open with their emotions. For her son specifically, when he is experiencing big emotions, he goes outside and plays. He also does Tae Kwon Do and soccer.

Emily has found that connecting with intuition has greatly helped her son, by using his emotions to guide him to do things (what is his gut telling him to do, how does the emotion feel in his body). They set goals for themselves during the new moon, and during the full moon they talk about things that they want to let go of that month. Emily makes sure that she always lets her children talk about their emotions and their experiences, to ensure that their experiences are not minimized. Emily always shows her emotions to her children to ensure that they see that emotions are normal and that it is healthy to express emotions. Instead of grounding their children, when her children act poorly, they are required to fill out a packet of questions that require them to reflect on their behavior and what they could have done differently, and it is up to the children how long they are “on restriction.”

Emily Davis:
Perceptionists Anonymous:

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Show Music:
Lion Roar: Lion Roar by Iwan Gabovitch under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org)

Hosted by: Jessica Temple and Lewis Temple


Copyright 2020 Jessica and Lewis Temple

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