Sally Donovan's Blog, page 3

Now, Just Need a Table to Recharge Your Device!

Panasonic showcased a prototype solar-powered inductive charging desk in Retail Tech Expo held in Tokyo. This table can recharge their device simply by storing the device on the table. Puff! Like a magic. Solar charging contactless Panasonic table, although it now has outstanding range of products with the device and an inductive system, but there […]

Tips to Reduce Your Fat and Improve Your Stamina for Healthier Life

If you feel that your body shape gets fatter and drive you to be worried on getting attacked by some healthy problems, it is a time for you to do six degree flow then. It is generally known by many or even all people in this world that having healthy condition becomes something that needed to be owned by people. Some of them even consider it as a priceless treasure that has to be kept in perfect condition since it may give them some benefits. Since of that consideration many people are willing to do many ways in order to make their body condition stay in healthy condition.

Although it is commonly seems as something easy to be done, in fact keeping your body condition stay in healthy condition is not a kind of an easy thing to be done. It is believed so since there are many problem that may be faced by you in making your body condition at its top form. Obesity becomes one of the biggest obstacles that are commonly found by those who want to keep their body condition stay healthy. Some people believe that obesity becomes a serious problem that may threaten of your body condition. If you are willing to against so, you can do six degree flow then.

Obesity as we know is a condition when the deposit fat inside of your body is getting increased. This condition will not only make your body shape gets fatter, but, more fat inside of your body is also able to lead some diseases attack you. They are not only ordinary diseases which may able to give light body health problem, but, some serious diseases which may lead you die also able to attack you in obesity condition. Actually you should not be worried on that thing since in the present time, there are many unique methods that you can choose in order to make your body get a balanced body weight and for healthy body condition. And among all of the methods six degree flow is one of the most unique method to choose.

As what has mentioned before, obesity will not only make your appearance looks worse since of more deposit fat that you have, but, being obesity is also able to give worse effect that is lead you be attacked by some diseases. So, in order to be avoided on being obesity, it is important for you to do weight loss program then. In this modern era, there are some methods in losing weight that can be chosen by you. If you are willing to do one of the best methods, six degree flow may become your best choice.

Six degree flow is a kind of best weight loss method that you can do to lose your fat in order to be avoided from obesity problem for healthier feel. This method is known by many people in this world as a great method that may able to burn your fat in easy and efficient way. In addition, this method is also able to make your body feels fitter. It can be so since by doing some exercises of this method, some aspects of your fitness such as endurance and power are able to get increased. So, this method is recommended for those who want to have healthy condition by getting away from more fat and having better fitness.

Six Degree Flow Healthy Program

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Getting fat and over weight can be problem for many people. This is because there are some bad effects that can be caused by those things. Some problems maybe look not dangerous, but in some condition fat and over weight gain can be nightmare for them. Some dangerous effect like Stroke and Cholesterol can be your bonus if get in fat and also over weight condition. Beside it will decrease your appearance if you don’t solve that problem. Actually there are many methods that can you trying to burn your fat and also your weight like Six Degree Flow Program.

Six Degree Flow Program designed by Scott Sonnon has great methods that can you apply anytime. This is because the methods that he made are simple and easy to follow. Scoot itself is a martial art expert, fitness coach, and also well known as wellness speaker. He also named as Top 25 Fitness trainer in the World by Men’s Fitness Magazine 2011. Great teachers that will make you regret if you can’t get his knowledge. The experience that he had made him can make the best burning fat exercise than others. Many costumers feel satisfied with his training method to burn their fat.

Six Degree Flow Program designed with different motion than any other exercises. The motions that concern on the specific part of our body those get in over weight that will make these methods work maximal. Flow motion that burn fat faster any other exercises make you will get less sweat. Even this is less sweat you still get the maximal result. This is because the flow that you practice will work internal. So your fat will get the most effect of every flow motion that you did. This is also supported by many researches that said if flow motion can burn more fat than others.

This motion will make you only need to exploit our body weight. The motion that you made will allow you to concern on balancing, precision, and also motion accuracy. Those things will directly burn your fat and also reduce your weight. This Six Degree Flow Program is also doesn’t need any equipment to practice. You only need your body and fat to get better life. This is because you only exploited your weight itself. This program also better program because it doesn’t need any medicine and drug to make burn your fat.

That is because many of us are consuming some supplements to get better posture and also appearance. This way is only make our kidney work harder and can cause kidney failure problem. You will get Six Degree Flow Program in 26 PDF pages that designed in easy content to make you easier to get the message. Beside you will get 73 videos that will guide you to get the best warm-up and cool-down tutorial. Those things are important aspect that you have to know before do some exercises like flow motion. It aims to avoid you from some injuries while doing exercises.

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A Review of 2014

It sounds to trite to say 2014 has been a year of highs and lows, but nevertheless it’s true.  If I’ve learnt anything it’s the importance of the long view.  In our house the short view is too inconsistent to risk hanging any sense progress or otherwise on, swinging as it does from cautious optimism to eye-popping fear.  So here is my look back at the past twelve months.

Film

Pride was my cinematic highlight of the year.  It is nostalgic, tragic and hopeful and the soundtrack made me want to dance in the aisle (I didn’t).  The streaming of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Richard II into cinemas meant that many who can’t make it to live theatre could watch something of high quality.  It was fantastic and reminded me why I like Shakespeare.

Television

Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, a Swedish drama which depicted the devastation of AIDS on the Swedish gay community in the 1980s, was the most beautiful and touching piece of television of the year.  A close second was A Poet in New York about the final months of the life of Dylan Thomas.  I also enjoyed Grayson Perry’s Who Are You? for its compassionate insight into the lives of others.

DVD

Youngest child and I rather belatedly got into Modern Family this year.  As we’re done with book bag wars we snug up and watch this before bed.  I’ve demolished another series of Parks and Recreation and remain wondrous that UK television has not embraced it as wholeheartedly as it deserves.

Books

I’ve read some shite this year so there’s not much to recommend. I enjoyed rereading Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and The Cider House Rules by John Irving.  My booky highlight was Affinity by Sarah Waters.  I saw her speak at a book festival and her reflections on the process of writing made me feel less like a floundering amateur, so that is a highlight too.

Conferences

Dr Bruce Perry was as funny and encouraging as I’d hoped and made pitching up despite numerous obstacles well worth it.  The Open Nest conference Taking Care was a highpoint for lots of reasons.

Professional

The ‘birth’ of my second paperback child The Unofficial Guide to Adoptive Parenting is a career as well as a 2014 highpoint.  I’m proud of it and happy to see it head off and make it’s way in the world.  Winning a Professional Publishers Award for my Community Care articles was a ridiculous and amazing thing.  And this was the year I stepped out into big conference presenting and training.  They’ve been knee-weakenly terrifying at times but have got me out of the house.  Thanks to Sunderland University, We Are Family and The NW Adoption Consortium for taking a chance.  Final highlight is being involved in the Department for Education Expert Advisory Group for the Adoption Support Fund for the huge amount I’ve learnt, the interesting folk I’ve met and the difference it should make to adoption support (everything crossed).

Personal

I continue to gain enormous support and encouragement from connecting with others through social media which has grown and grown over 2014.  Most of us find ourselves in dark places from time to time and being able to reach out easily and quickly has made a significant and positive difference to me.  Thanks to hat knitter J – that was a touching highlight too.

Taking the children to London to see the poppies, plus an unexpected and fabulous personal tour of Westminster Abbey (thank you!) was a highpoint and the success of the day was a measure of how far we’ve come.  There have been continued glowing embers  of progress in particular a club joined, a meal cooked and some friendships made.

Looking Ahead

If Wolf Hall isn’t heading up the best bits of 2015 I shall be very disappointed.  The book blew me away and I hope the TV series does too.

With a following wind they’ll be a new book from me. I shouldn’t say too much but it’ll be something different.

The diary is starting to fill up with conference and training bookings which look exciting and spine-straightening.

As for family matters, I’m confident we’ll be continuing to move in the right direction, albeit with I’m sure the occasional detour into the woods.

All in all I’ll be trying my best to stay connected in 2015.

I know this season can bring both happiness and hardship to our families.  Whatever it brings you, don’t forget to #takecare and I wish you a happy and fulfilled 2015.

Walking Off Anger

When the strain of keeping my composure, buttoning my mouth and retreating from potentially incendiary situations becomes too much, when I feel razor blades of venom about to spray from my mouth, I grab my phone and my earphones and I walk.

I walk the Anger Walk.

The Anger Walk takes half an hour, less than that if I’m top grade angry.

The Anger Walk is my way of processing the adrenaline which if left to course freely through my veins would bring the house down.  The soundtrack is very important.  The playlist is called ‘ANGRY’.  It starts angry, then gathers rhythm and energy and then attempts to repair and uplift.  Sometimes I’m not done stomping and fuming when I should be uplifting.

This afternoon as the sun was going down, a solitary figure strode along a muddy road, earphones poking out from beneath a woolly hat.  There was out loud singing.  Shouty singing.  Singing with punk attitude.  It was the sound of Vivaldi being murdered in the English countryside.

It was dark when I got home and the house was quiet.

RANTY RANT RANT

I need a new bag.  I need a bag which is big enough for an A4 pad and my A4 sized laptop.  It needs to have a few pockets for train tickets, keys, a tampax and earphones.  It needs to be hands-free.  Not a big ask I thought to myself TWO YEARS AGO when I started looking for one.

I do not need a small glittery clutch bag.  I will never need a small glittery clutch bag because they are completely fucking useless.  No, I need to carry stuff, you know stuff which one needs to earn living with.  I need something like a ……….. man bag, WHICH IS ALL I CAN FIND.  Either that, or a shopper for fuck’s sake.  Is that all you think women do, clutch and shop?

Neither do I want a black shiny nerd bag from the land that taste left behind. Nor do I want a plastic nightmare with gold clasps which looks like something my gran would have used.  And I’d rather not have a wipe clean ‘retro’ bag with cup cakes all over it.  I BLOODY HATE cupcakes.  Cupcakes do not say ‘please take me seriously’.

Will you please, shops, start making bags for REAL WOMEN WITH JOBS AND STUFF.  And while I’m on a roll, you could look at your shoe collections too.  Some of us actually walk in ours.

That’s better.

The Unofficial Guide to Adoptive Parenting

My second book ‘The Unofficial Guide to Adoptive Parenting‘ was published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers this week.  It took twelve years to produce; one year of writing and eleven years of research.

Adoptive parenting of children who have experienced loss and often neglect and abuse as well, is not like normal, average, everyday parenting. It took me a very long time to realise this and then to work out what that meant in real, practical terms.  I’ve been on loads of courses and workshops, I’ve read books and scoured YouTube for advice and much of this has been very good, but tends to be heavy on the ‘why’ and the ‘what not to do’ but a little less forthcoming when it comes to what to try in real life situations.  Most of us are the experts on what not to do and have the self-flagellation sticks of blame to prove it.

What I’ve always been desperate for is positive advice; strategies, ideas, techniques and clues which recognise that the front line of therapeutic parenting is messy, imperfect and mammothly difficult, but ultimately hopeful.

In The Unofficial Guide I’ve gathered together everything which has made sense and been effective, not just in our adoptive family but in those around me as well.  It covers everyday challenges like mealtimes and education and the more difficult stuff like stealing and anger.  It recognises that we don’t all feel super-therapeutic all of the time so there is forgiveness, repair and self care in there too.

Despite how hard adoptive parenting can be and has been for us at times, I remain relentlessly optimistic about the benefits of creating a therapeutic environment around a child who is hurting. It takes a lot of energy and it takes support.  The support around adoptive families is often woeful and confused with blame.  Blame is the opposite of support.

My greatest hope for The Unofficial Guide is that adoptive families find it supportive and authentic.  It’s been conceived of from our domestic frontline in all it’s brilliant and sometimes terrifying beauty; written and drawn and blogged and lived by all four of us.  It’s a bit sweary and raw in places, it’s rude and it’s jagged but it’s our paperback child and we’re very proud of it.

Dr Bruce Perry speaks at the Adoption UK Conference 2014

Frankly I get pissed off with being told that developmental trauma isn’t a real thing.  Yesterday 250 people who live with the everyday realities of trauma in children gathered for the Adoption UK 2014 conference to listen to Dr Bruce Perry speak.  Not once were we told to put more structure in place, or to set up a system of rewards and sanctions, or to lecture more or to just pull ourselves together and grow some back bone.

It became clear to me quite early on that I was sharing my life with two children who see threat everywhere.  They see it in eye contact, tone of voice, they smell it in certain smells, they expect to result from the most benign of circumstances.  There is not a single week, or day, or hour or sometimes minute when I am not reminded that their inner working models are based around threat and the expectation that others are not well-intentioned.  I’m told that there is little scientific evidence for all this.  To that my response is, come and live in my house for a couple of weeks.

Now that’s off my chest, here are a a few of the most relevant things I learnt or was reminded of yesterday:

1.  The brain develops templates based on experience.  If it’s template for ‘person who I live with’ is lack of care/hurt/fear then this is what it will expect of future ‘person who I live with’ (or who teaches me or otherwise tries to care for me or who tells me to do stuff).  This is why I get accused of shouting, being threatening and hating everyone if I ask someone to take the rubbish out or brush their teeth.

2.  Shifting these templates takes consistency, permanency and persistence.  This is why I always feel I am fighting the templates (‘you are SHOUTING at me’/’I’m talking in a normal voice, see how quiet it is’/’STOP SHOUTING’/’I’m not shouting’/’yes you are, I hate you you child abuser’).

3.  The brain at first sees novelty as a threat (‘would you like to watch this programme with me about space?’/’no get lost, I hate you’/’shall I take that as a no then?’/’fuck off’).

4.  Our children are sensitised to threat.  (This is so obvious I can’t understand why it’s not accepted.)

5.  Children respond to stresses by fight, flight or dissociation.  I live with one of each, but both can use either, depending … They dysregulate easily (again, so obvious).

6.  A dysregulated child needs the support of a regulated adult. We have to act as their external regulatory system. A dysregulated adult cannot hope to help regulate a child. Ever.

7.  Self care is the most important part of therapeutic parenting/teaching etc #takingcare

8.  Rhythm calms dysregulated children; music (listening and playing), walking, cycling, bouncing, talking, car journeys.

9. Take a step back from a dysregulated child and lower your voice (reduce the perception of threat).

10.   Reward schemes are constructed with the assumption that children are choosing to be aggressive/figgety/chatty/gobby.  They are not.  They are dysregulated and therefore not operating in the thinking part of their brains.

11.  Children with poor templates around relationships need lots of space around them.  Try standing or sitting parallel to them.  This is why one of my children talks and talks and shares loads every evening that I drive him to his club.  Then he falls asleep (that’s the rhythmic thing about engines).  This could also be why children flip out at school when adults flood in around them at times of stress (again, obvious?).

12.  Children need regular time to dissociate i.e. veg out.  For us this is particularly noticeable after school.  Don’t hit them with ‘how was your day?’, or ‘do you have any homework?’  Give space and time and then go in gently (regulate then connect).

But what does this all this mean practically?  In our family it means playing music at mealtimes, making more time to massage each others shoulders and generally being a bit more mindful of trying to keep regulated, whilst all the while remembering that it’s not possible to get it right all the time.

National Adoption Week – Adopting Siblings

Eleven years ago Mr D and I left our home, just the two of us, and two hours later returned with two children, Jamie and Rose.  Jamie and Rose are birth siblings. National Adoption Week 2014 has the theme of siblings.  It can be a week which polarises adopters, prospective adopters, agencies and local authorities.  Unsupported families living in great difficulty don’t always appreciate the marketing of National Adoption Week (a gloss job?).  Those seeking families for children don’t always appreciate those in difficulty talking openly about their difficulties (pissing on the parade?). In the interests of balance and honesty here are my thoughts about National Adoption Week and about adopting a brother and sister in particular.

1.  Keeping siblings together is thought to be a universally good thing.  Each situation is different.  Some siblings thrive together and some don’t.  The impact upon children of early neglect complicates sibling relationships greatly.  This is under-appreciated by many.

2.  I am still in a state of flux about whether Jamie and Rose should have been placed together.  They needed to maintain contact, but sometimes living together and sharing a family has been very challenging for them.  They’ve only recently become able to be in a room together without the presence of either Mr D or me.

3.  Families with adopted siblings should have support around them which takes account of the complex sibling dynamics of attachment and trauma.

4.  Being an adoptive parent has on occasion brought me to my knees and close to breakdown, but it has also taught me to appreciate small and precious moments.

5.  I would do it all again.

6.  The difficulties we’ve experienced would have been greatly alleviated if the services around us had been better quality and more understanding of our needs.

7.   Our family life is very different to other families around us, but this isn’t always necessarily a negative thing.  (Sometimes it is though.)

8.  Children who have experienced neglect and/or abuse require a different style of parenting from healthily raised children.  Not a bit different.  Very different.  Families need much more help with this than they are given but knowledge and training around therapeutic parenting is improving.

9.  With hindsight I’d be much more savvy.  I would talk to many more agencies and Local Authorities and opt for the one that offers the best long term post adoption support.  This is my number one tip for prospective adopters.

10.  Issues around lack of support aside, I remain convinced that done well (meaning with honesty, humanity and professionalism), adoption can be transformative for children (and their families).  It offers something with other options don’t find easy to achieve, and that’s permanence.

Adopting brothers and/or sisters is not for the faint-hearted.  It will change your life in ways you never imagined possible.  It may bring you to the very edge of what you thought you were capable of and then push you further.  It will cause you to see the world differently from other people, which can be great (‘I’m a much better person for having adopted our children’) but also not so great (‘where have my old friends gone?’).  It may also open up your life to a wealth of new experiences and boundless love and unexpected glorious moments. This is my experience*.

*other experiences are also available