Author Description

My PANS/PANDAS Flare Journal was designed to: 1) Help the child learn to identify, label and track their symptoms 2) Use reading and circling, writing or drawing to communicate about what happened to them or triggered them 3) Redirect their negative feelings and thought patterns into positive ones by answering interesting personal mindful questions about their self 4) Allow them to learn how to cope with big feelings by taking time to calm down via journaling, working on behavioral self-regulation 5) Provide a tangible space where the teacher and the family can read symptoms and experiences from the child's point of view and reflect on them together as adults, creating new behavioral strategies or classroom management strategies that would help the child function with less flares. 6) Give the teacher some space for their own written communication with caregivers (in the back of the journal), with included note taking prompts for teachers to use 7) Serve as a physical record keeping mechanism for anything that may occur in the the classroom, especially if needed for IEPs or 504s. 8) Includes sensory material activity support for the child if they need additional ways to calm down post-journaling but before returning to class.