#10minTues - what I've been reading

When I was going through old entries trying to find the "greatest hits" I stumbled across this long entry of all the things I was reading. At the time, I had 2 hours on the subway to read, a huge library to access, and a teaching hospital's resources for journal articles. I was reading A LOT. Not so much anymore, but here are some of the best items from my RSS feed lately as well as other things I've been reading.

Your Therapy Source: Reflective Questions for Motor Learning - great straightforward questions to ask kids to get them thinking about their motor performance. A good application of contemporary motor control theory for the pediatric population.

Delivering and Receiving Healthcare:Having a Disability vs Being a Woman - this is a post by a medical student who uses a wheelchair discussing how he gets more respect than his female colleagues. An interesting take on male privilege. I enjoy reading about this man's journey through medical school challenges.

EmpowerAbility: Hotel Accessibility and Personal Journey with Universal Design - Deb Young is an awesome OT and I loved getting the chance to meet her last year at AOTA. She does a great job showcasing the importance of true universal design and how even when people are following "standards" that they are quite variable in how useful they actually are.

PT Think Tank: Transformation Scrutinization Vision vs Reality - Yes, I lurk on the PT Think Tank. They have an interesting viewpoint on allied health topics and it's good to see the PT POV on some issues. For instance, the PTs have their own Vision and existential questions about the name and role of their profession. OTs have this "navel gazing" of our issues and it was surprising to see that there are similar issues in PT.

Open Up and Let Go: Confessions and Conversational Speech and Words on the Blackboard - Deb is a mother of a child with autism and her perspective is one that I really value. She reflects on how you cannot spend 100% of your life as a "therapy mom" and the great feelings you get when a child achieves a goal.

Thinking Person's Guide to Autism: Costs of Fearing Autism and Labels, Light and Love - TPGA is a group blog, and I would love to see more OT versions of this. The contributors provide great views on autism-related issues. The first post discusses the public health crisis we're facing because parents are so afraid of autism that they refuse to vaccinate their children, and how that affects vulnerable populations. The second is a mother's 18 year journey with her son and how they have had balanced the hard times and the good. A very sweet story.

ABC Therapeutics: A Response to Hinojosa's "The Evidence Based Paradox" - Chris is so on top of life. Runs a business, reads research articles, and gives detailed thoughtful commentary regarding such on his blog. This post provides a look at why we can't use excuses about not having an Evidence Based Practice or continue to use approaches that aren't borne out in the research. very insightful.

Days of Our OT Lives: Surviving Childhood Without Social Skills - True Fact, I love Karen. It's not fair that she has a twin sister already because I think she should be my OT sister. I really enjoyed her sincere and personal take on growing up and can identify with some of those struggles. I remember being a smart kid who couldn't really understand WHY people did the things they did. WHY people didn't follow the rules exactly and want them enforced on others. Confusing indeed. But I am always thankful when people share the experiences that shaped them personally.

Dinner a Love Story: How to Blog My Rules - I'm frequently interested in the meta-analyses that demonstrate other writers' or therapists' principles. Jenny runs a successful blog and book empire and her tips about blogging may be very useful to others. Her rules on quality posts instead of a large quantity and not avoiding writing just because someone else is better rung true for me.

There's a lot of great OT blogs and those that I consider related either as service users or related services, and I hope you will consider following some of them. Using an RSS reader like Google Reader or Atom can make this very simple so you don't actually have to check these sites frequently. (I just linked to the basic "how-to" but the real key to reader efficiency is to add the "subscribe" link on your browser toolbar, then you can access any feed as you browse along) I've also had some actual book-books that I've been reading, listed below.

I'm continuing in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and recently started book 9 (which is actually 10 with the prequel). 7&8 were a little slow, but this is a great fantasy series. If you liked Lord of the Rings, you'll appreciate the depth and delight in this world.

I borrowed Bringing Up Bebe from the library at the recommendation of a service coordinator in the early intervention system. It has some interesting takes on French parenting versus the "typical" American parenting. I just started this, but one thing I want to investigate further is the information on sleep and eating cycles. The author references French children sleeping through the night at 2 months and by 4 months eating just 4x/day all during the day. Obviously the feedings must be larger than what we typically give when feeding 6-8x/day. Given the info I just got from the lactation consultant last week, I want to investigate further on whether this type of schedule could be reasonable given an infant's stomach size.

I also borrowed a book on sleep for an EI client- The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep. Haven't started this one yet. And I'm intermittently reading (in very short spurts) Paul Rieser's Babyhood, which has been funny thus far.

Obviously there's a bit of a baby focus in my current reading but I don't think that should be surprising to anyone. I have a course on Infant Development coming up that I hope will be excellent and I anticipate reviewing those materials as well. This wound up being WAY over 10 minutes, but hopefully has some interesting items for you!