100 Ways to Do Hard Things: How to Alter, Adapt, & Accommodate Tricky Tasks
When a self-care task isn’t working for a child or family, it can feel like the only options are push harder or give up. But there is a whole middle ground of adapting, altering, and accommodating that gets treated like it’s a lesser solution when it isn’t. Learn a practical framework of categories you can change (position, tool, timing, people, sensory components, and more), work through the fear-based thinking that gets in the way of trying something different, and walk away with concrete ideas you can use today.
Kelsie Mick Olds, MOT OTR/LEnrollment Options
Professional Track
Provides a certificate of completion for 1.5 continuing education contact hours. Designed for social workers, educators, and early childhood educators looking to earn CE credit for professional development.
This course provides 0.15 General CEUs or 1.5 Contact Hours
Personal Track
Designed for parents, caregivers, and educators looking to deepen their knowledge and understanding and learn practical strategies for supporting neurodivergent children.
Professional Track
- Big Talks Little Talks video course
- PDF Companion Notes
- Learning outcome assessment
- Certificate of completion for 0.75 General CEUs
Personal Track
- Big Talks Little Talks video course
- PDF Companion Notes
Meet Your Instructor
Kelsie Mick Olds, MOT OTR/L
Mick is an occupational therapist working both on- and offline to share knowledge widely about the ways that children grow, develop, and learn. Mick is passionate about play as the core meaningful occupation that underlies childhood, and about equipping adults with the education and practical tools they need to defend children’s right to play.
Mick has a Master of Occupational Therapy degree from the University of Oklahoma and has worked primarily in schools, as well as consulting with teachers, therapists, and parents to advocate on children’s behalf. Mick blogs as The OccuPLAYtional Therapist.
About This Course
When the Usual Way Stops Working
Every family and every care team eventually runs into a self-care task that just isn't working. Toothbrushing becomes a daily battle. Bath time ends in tears. Getting dressed in the morning takes an hour and leaves everyone wrung out by the time they get out the door.
When this happens, it can feel like there are only two options: push harder and hope the child eventually gets used to it, or give up and accept that this is just how it is. Both options leave everyone feeling defeated.
There is a whole middle ground that often gets overlooked, and that is the space of adapting the task itself. Changing the position, the tool, the timing, the sensory experience, the person helping, or any number of other components so the task actually fits the child doing it.
Why Adapting Gets Treated Like a Lesser Solution
Adapting a task often gets treated like caving in. Like the child should really be able to do it the standard way, and accepting something different means accepting failure. That framing shows up in a lot of adult voices, sometimes including our own, and it gets in the way of solutions that would actually work.
Adapting isn't a last resort. It's one of several legitimate approaches that carry equal weight, and in many cases, it's the one that actually lets a child keep growing, keep building skills, and keep feeling like a capable person in their own life.
This course gives you a structured framework for generating adaptations, along with honest counter-statements for the fear-based thinking that can stop you from trying something different in the first place.
Big Talks, Little Talks
Understanding How Kids Think, Feel, and Behave — One Talk at a Time
100 Ways to Do Hard Things: How to Alter, Adapt, & Accommodate Tricky Tasks is one of eight modules in Big Talks, Little Talks, a video course series by Kelsie Mick Olds covering key topics in neurodiversity and child development. Modules can be purchased individually or as a complete bundle.
Every module in the series includes two videos:
The professional development component. Kelsie walks through the topic in depth, giving you the knowledge and language to understand what's happening and how to respond. Big Talks run approximately one hour and qualify for continuing education credit.
A kid-friendly video that gives children accessible language to understand what's going on in their own bodies and brains. You can show it directly to a child, break it into shorter chunks across multiple sessions, or watch it yourself to pick up language you can use in your own conversations.
Who Is This Course For?
This course is designed for therapists, parents, caregivers, educators, early childhood educators, and anyone who supports a child through daily self-care tasks that have turned into a source of stress, conflict, or burnout.
Whether you are in the middle of a specific impasse and need ideas today, or you want a framework you can return to any time a task stops working, this course gives you a practical, flexible toolkit and the mindset shift to use it.
Course Details
Select a track to view what's included.
Course Modules
Big Talk: K100 Ways to Do Hard Things: How to Alter, Adapt, & Accommodate Tricky Tasks
1:21:57This Big Talk offers a practical framework for adapting self-care tasks that are not currently working for a child or family. Presenter Kelsie Olds, OTR/L, situates adaptation within the broader field of occupational therapy, explaining why altering, adapting, and accommodating a task carries equal weight to other OT approaches, not lesser.
The video walks through a framework of categories of change, including position, location, tool, length, and time, people, routine, sensory components, and play, and applies each category in depth to real self-care tasks. Kelsie also addresses the voice of fear that can prevent caregivers from trying something different, and offers grounded counter-statements to the most common fear-based beliefs that get in the way of problem-solving.
Little Talk: Easy for You, Hard for Me
20:46This Little Talk introduces kids to the idea of adapting: changing how something is done so it works better for the person doing it. Kelsie uses everyday examples like morning routines and toothbrushing to show that there is no single right way to do most things, and walks through categories kids can use to generate their own ideas, including changing the location, position, tool, timing, people, or how fun something is.
The talk closes with honest encouragement for kids who hit a wall where no adaptation works — including how to find an adult who will actually believe them, and how to give themselves grace when their body or brain says it just can’t today.
What's Included
Course Content
Registration Information
To register, select your preferred course option on this page and complete your purchase. Access to all course materials is granted immediately upon completion of payment. If you require accommodations or have special needs requests, please contact us at ce@thinksensory.com. Groups of 6 or more can inquire about group rates at the same address.
Course Modules
Big Talk: K100 Ways to Do Hard Things: How to Alter, Adapt, & Accommodate Tricky Tasks
1:21:57This Big Talk offers a practical framework for adapting self-care tasks that are not currently working for a child or family. Presenter Kelsie Olds, OTR/L, situates adaptation within the broader field of occupational therapy, explaining why altering, adapting, and accommodating a task carries equal weight to other OT approaches, not lesser.
The video walks through a framework of categories of change, including position, location, tool, length, and time, people, routine, sensory components, and play, and applies each category in depth to real self-care tasks. Kelsie also addresses the voice of fear that can prevent caregivers from trying something different, and offers grounded counter-statements to the most common fear-based beliefs that get in the way of problem-solving.
Little Talk: Easy for You, Hard for Me
20:46This Little Talk introduces kids to the idea of adapting: changing how something is done so it works better for the person doing it. Kelsie uses everyday examples like morning routines and toothbrushing to show that there is no single right way to do most things, and walks through categories kids can use to generate their own ideas, including changing the location, position, tool, timing, people, or how fun something is.
The talk closes with honest encouragement for kids who hit a wall where no adaptation works — including how to find an adult who will actually believe them, and how to give themselves grace when their body or brain says it just can’t today.
What's Included
Course Content
Registration Information
To register, select your preferred course option on this page and complete your purchase. Access to all course materials is granted immediately upon completion of payment. If you require accommodations or have special needs requests, please contact us at ce@thinksensory.com. Groups of 6 or more can inquire about group rates at the same address.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:
- Identify the categories of change available when adapting a self-care task.
- Describe how fear-based thinking can interfere with a caregiver’s willingness to adapt, and identify accurate counter-statements to common fear-based beliefs.
- Describe how the adaptation framework can be used to generate possible modifications across a range of self-care tasks.
Continuing Education Details
Video lecture with slide presentation, optional companion notes document.
To receive 0.15 CEUs (1.5 contact hours) for this activity, you must complete all of the following:
- View all required video content in its entirety.
- Pass the post-activity learning outcome assessment with a score of 80% or higher.
- Complete the post-activity evaluation.
Partial credit is not available. You must complete all requirements listed above to receive CEUs and a certificate of completion.
If you do not achieve a passing score of 80% on the learning outcome assessment, you may retake the assessment. There is no limit on retake attempts.
Mick was paid for their contributions to Goal Writing for Autistic Students. Mick receives commission for the sales of Big Talks Little Talks. Mick is the author of a book, “Your Child’s Point of View: Understanding the Reasons Kids Do Unreasonable Things” and receives royalties for its’ sale. Mick is the owner of The OccuPLAYtional Therapist and receives speaking fees.
Mick is Autistic and has friends and family members who are Autistic.
Think Sensory will issue a full refund to a learner who requests cancellation within 10 calendar days of purchase, provided the learner has not accessed any course content. Once any course content has been accessed, no refund will be issued, regardless of how much of the activity has been completed. Due to the digital nature of CEU-eligible PD activities, Think Sensory does not offer partial refunds after content has been accessed.
If Think Sensory cancels or removes a course from the platform, affected learners will be notified in advance and provided with an appropriate remedy. For full details, see our Terms of Service.
To request a cancellation, email ce@thinksensory.com.