Search Result(s)

"whiteboard"

Why the whiteboard works

Posted by — 1 Comment

Yesterday was Field Day. An insane, chaotic, wonderfully fun day. During lunch, when people were yelling and kids were playing and things were busy, I asked one of my kiddos if he needed the bathroom. He didn’t respond. I asked him again. No response. I took out my whiteboard and wrote “bathroom? Yes/No” and handed him the dry erase marker. In less than three seconds he circled “no”, then crossed it out and wrote “ok”. I gave him a thumbs up and pointed to the bathroom. Off he went.

It’s fairly intuitive for me, now, to use the whiteboard to communicate with our kids. And it amazes me each time how well it works. So, let’s share the wisdom.

Imagine you have just been in a car accident. You are shaken up, scared, anxious, you are trying to figure out who to call, what to say, there are policemen and spectators trying to talk to you. You know people are talking but you can’t understand what they’re saying. It sounds like white noise to you.

That ^ is how our kids feel. A lot. Except for them, it takes a lot less for them to get to that point. There are a few factors at play. Sensory processing is one. Many of our kids have sensory processing difficulties, which means that they might feel, see, smell, and hear things more intensely than we do. And it’s harder for them to screen out irrelevant stimuli. Which means that, when we hear a bird chirping we may notice it, but without even thinking about it, we push it to the back of our awareness so we can focus on whatever we are doing: listening, driving, putting our shoes on. But imagine that you are trying to put your shoes on, and you hear a bird chirping, and every bit of your attentions shifts to that noise. You can’t keep putting your shoes on, because your entire being is attending to the chirp.

Next up is language processing. Many of our kids have already established language disorders or difficulties. Which can mean that on a regular basis it takes their brains longer to take in spoken words, interpret them, figure out how to respond, and then respond. So when they are then upset, overwhelmed, distracted? It will take even longer for them to process. Can you think of a time, maybe a time like the car accident example, when you know that someone is talking to you but you just can’t coordinate your brain and your mouth and your body to properly respond?

Think about a computer. If you’re impatient like I am sometimes, you may be tempted to disregard the mouse cursor that shows you “loading” and continue clicking on Google Chrome to get into the internet. Because you think, and you hope, that clicking again will make it load faster. But it does the opposite, right? Rather than speed up the process, it just makes your computer lock up more. It takes even longer to load that original window. And it might result in a shutdown and a necessary reboot. Now take that example to our kids, whose brains work in a similar fashion. You give a direction. They don’t respond so you give it again. They still don’t respond so you give it a third time. You are essentially locking up their systems more. Making it harder, rather than easier for them to process and act. Making it more likely that they will shut down.

Our kids are dealing with magnified sensory experiences, decreased language processing, often attention and emotional regulation difficulties, and inability to screen out irrelevant or unimportant stimuli. The solution? Simplify your language. If you need to give a direction to an already escalated or distracted kiddo, make it simple. Instead of, “you need to put your shoes on because it is time to go and you can’t go barefoot”, try “shoes on.” See how much quicker they respond. You can give the explanation when the task is complete.

Better yet, don’t speak at all. Turn to the whiteboard. If you write “shoes on” and show them those words, you are effectively communicating your direction without adding the additional processing that they otherwise would’ve had to deal with.

If you work with one of our kids and they seemingly are ignoring you, or not following your directions, it can be frustrating. So, try writing down your direction on the white board (“shoes on”). Or show them a picture (a visual of a kid putting his shoes on). And then give them a few seconds. And chances are fairly good that you will see a response.

The kid who won’t sit down even when the teacher keeps telling him to; the kid who looks like he is ignoring the direction to take out his pencil; the kid who is staring out the window constantly during class and ignoring the lesson: these might all be our kids. And in that case, none of them have intent, malice, or belligerence. It’s their systems. It’s their wirings. They can’t change their neurology, but we can change our delivery.

I remind myself on a daily basis: kids are doing the best best they can with what they have. (and we are, too!)

He told me

Posted by — 1 Comment

Joey is amazing. (You can read more about Joey here, here, and here.). He’s amazing all day every day, but tonight, in this moment, here is why he’s currently kicking some serious butt:

—

I wrote out the “Plan” of what we had to accomplish during our session. He read it and asked, “What do you mean ‘think of questions and give answers’?”

“Good question,” I replied. “So, we will read the book for number 1. Then for number 2, we’re going to use the question words and think of questions about the story. Then we’ll have to figure out the answers to the questions.”

He scrunched up his face. “I don’t get it,” he said.

This is so big. Please tell me you get how big this is. Years ago, maybe even months ago, Joey wouldn’t have told me he didn’t get it. And I don’t know why – maybe because his neurons didn’t yet have the association that a direction + a swirly foggy sensation = I’m confused + need to say something to convey that. But he would’ve nodded and smiled, and halfway through I would’ve realized that he had no idea what we were doing. Or seemingly out of nowhere I would’ve seen seemingly random behaviors – all a way of his brain trying to convey the confusion. But today? He knew. He knew and he TOLD me! Self-awareness! Self-advocacy! Communicating! Wait, it gets better.

So I wrote it down for him, just like I did on the whiteboard. I silently wrote:

-Read book
-Think of questions to ask about each page
-Answer questions

He silently followed along. He clarified (he clarified!), “You’ll write the answers to the questions. That’s fair.” And I agreed. And then he looked up at me, again, nodded, and confirmed, “Oh. Okay. I get it now.”

He told me. Again!

And so, I did my try-not-to-get-teary thing and told him how awesome it was that he told me when he was confused, and told me when it made sense in his brain again, and he wasn’t really into the mushy-gushy and was really just ready to read the book, so we moved right on, but really I didn’t move on because I’m still sitting here thinking about how awesome he is.

And how some small things are not small. Some small things are huge. And how the skills are there, and they come, and how they come in their own way, in their own time. And how we need to – always – meet them and their neurology halfway. And how I just feel so blessed and privileged to be the one who gets to witness these incredible successes.

A Social Thinking Lesson

Posted by — 2 Comments

Disclaimer: As per usual, this post is completely unedited. And I’m tired. So it is likely hard to follow and doesn’t make sense. And I realize that I say that all the time but this time it REALLY is a mess. Like, for real. And it’s hard topic and post to write about coherently because it involves so much dialogue and inner thoughts. So, apologies in advance. But, hopefully the content and the ideas behind it come through. 

———————————————-

One (of about a billion) things I LOVE about my job is that we deal with anything and everything. When situations arise, as they do with the kids we work with, we problem solve, and address immediately. And we’re lucky to be able to do that, in an environment that solely focuses on stress management, social competency, and self-awareness, without the academic demands. But more on that another time.

So when it came to my attention that staff members had overheard their pre-teen male (ASD) campers making jokes about rape and sex, we acted quick. That day I spoke to my boss, who is a clinician, who spoke to several other colleagues of ours, she got back to me, and I created a Social Thinking lesson based on another lesson from a colleague to do with the groups. The very next day, conversations were had with all of the participants and I did two groups on that topic. 

I don’t tend to talk about specific things I do with clients/students/campers in therapy or groups, but I felt really proud of this lesson and got a lot of good feedback from parents, staff, and most importantly, the campers themselves. So, I will share. 

I’ve done the lesson so far with two groups. To frame this: Both groups are five or six pre-teen or teenagers, one group is all boys and one group is all girls. All of the campers have social cognitive/competency deficits, and most of them have an Aspergers, ASD, or related diagnosis. 

We began with a discussion about what humor is. That was easy for them. I then took out my whiteboard and drew two columns, “Positive” and “Negative”. I explained that there can be positive and negative effects of humor, based on how it’s used, what the topic is, and who the joke is shared with. I was SO impressed at how quickly they thought of things. “Positive” effects that they thought of included: people will like you; make friends; get out of an awkward situation; avoid dealing with something hard; and “Negative” effects included: people think you’re a bully, people not wanting to be around you, getting in trouble with the law, getting suspended or expelled, getting a bad reputation. This was with pretty much no prompting. They had SO much to say. 

After we had flushed out that discussion, I introduced the idea of “deadly jokes.” The concept being, that there are certain topics that if joked about, almost always can have negative effects with friends, family members, teachers, colleagues, etc. I told them there were at least 7, and challenged them to come up with them. The boys group immediately came up with race/religion/nationality and sexual orientation. The girls instantly talked about disorder/disability, mental health, and sex. Overall, between both groups, our list included:race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, sex, disorder/disability, mental health conditions, coworkers/colleagues/teachers/students, physical looks, violent crimes. Again – this was with almost no prompting. 

During the boys group, one of the guys said, “I know those are jokes that certain people would find offensive. But I would never joke about the topic that the person found offensive.” So we had a big conversation about perspective taking and theory of mind – that you can’t KNOW what a person is dealing with, you can’t KNOW that offends a person unless you know them inside and out – and even then, you can’t be sure. I got some rigidity and push-back, so we went through each category. “Can you ALWAYS know someone’s religion based on looking at them? Can you ALWAYS know someone’s sexual orientation by looking at them?” (by the way – that answer that I got was ‘yes, sometimes’ so we had a conversation about stereotypes and how they are often based in fact but can’t be our sole piece of information). We talked about things you can know by looking at a person and things that might offend them that are “invisible,” that you would never know otherwise. They were very interested in the idea that jokes could ultimately involve the police or authorities, and one of them brought up what would happen if you joked about a bomb at an airport. Another boy responded, “But you’d be joking!” So – another conversation about perspective taking, how a bystander or official wouldn’t KNOW you were joking, and there are protocols they must follow.

And then I brought up rape. Because that’s where this all stemmed from. The interesting thing? When I asked, “What about joking about rape?” they ALL vehemently shook their heads and said, “No no no! You can’t joke about that!!” but when I then follow up with, “Okay. Who knows what rape is?” not a single one of them knew. 

And that’s why we do these lessons. The things our kids say – it’s not that we let them get away with it, or make excuses, but so often they just don’t know. Some of the boys admitted they thought rape and sex were the same thing. Some said they heard of it and knew it was bad but didn’t know what it was. So we talked about it. We talked about why you can’t joke about it. And they all left with an understanding.

The girls group was different. One girl brought up how friends joke with each other about things that others couldn’t joke about – like girls saying to each other, “Omg, you’re such a bitch” can be joking and harmless or harmful depending on the relationship. Another girl referenced “Mean Girls” and how they call each other “sluts.” A third girl said that she would be really upset if anyone made a joke about mental health conditions. And a fourth girl shook her head and said she wouldn’t care about that, but if anyone joked about learning disabilities she would rip their head off. Again, a conversation about differences, how one size does not fit all, how each person is different. The girls role-played what they could do if they overheard jokes like those, if they bothered them, or if they didn’t. We talked about how it’s okay to not laugh at a joke, even if everyone else is.

These are things our kids don’t know. These are things that if they aren’t taught, they won’t learn. And saying to them, “We don’t say that!” or “That’s inappropriate!” isn’t enough – because they don’t know WHY. It’s meaningless and unclear to them. We have to clarify. Even if it’s uncomfortable, even if we want to maintain innocence. We have to. For their sake.