Is there a clear distinction between learning and masking? Why is learning of social skills masking in ND but not in NT? Afterall it is nature and nurture in everybody.
Isn't neuroaffirming taking too far? Teaching children that take can make their decisions does sound nice. But then they are young children, neurotypical or neurodivergent, and there are rules that they need to follow, so that we all can grow up safely and be a kind and responsible human being. They can make their own decisions, but it should be within a certain boundary. I agree about social story as an expectation guide, but it also let them know how their behaviors might affect theselves and others and what alternatives they could do, which is also one of the key message of the story, instead of emphasizing they can make their own decisions. Your modified version of the social story example is mainly about writing it from the child's perspecitve and providing a range of choice of behavior. I agreed with the "might feel, could feel this way" writing style as it could better describe their true feelings But you mentioned about the story isn't meant for behavioral compliance and I can see that statements of desired behavior are found throughout the story, although not written in a command form. Can you elaborate more on this?
Hi there! This is Melanie from Jessie's team. Jessie and Chris have a live show on getting to the root of a behavior instead of just trying to punish or reward it. But essentially, our goal should be to focus on preventing the behavior from occurring. Instead of asking "how can we get a child to sit still and not disrupt the classroom?" and writing a social story on how it's important to sit still and how their moving around the classroom affects others. We should trying to determine why the child is struggling to sit still. Are their sensory needs being met? Is there something in the environment that is dysregulating? are the lights too bright? are they sitting by the pencil sharpener and the noise is overwhelming? etc. Once we understand why the behavior is occurring, then we can work on ways to make modifications. And that point, the story is written to give them the tools they need to prevent the behavior from occurring by letting them know the ways they can meet their sensory & emotional regulation needs. I think reframing this is very important. Instead of giving a command "you must sit still", we should be trying to find ways they can meet their sensory needs while in the classroom such as using fidgets, sensory breaks, etc.
I would love to make my own social stories for my child to help him know what to expect, he really hates uncertainty. But often they do come off as condescending when I see other people write them. Or they have too many details for a preschooler or sometimes too few details. I like the idea of using Chat GPT as my starter and then I can edit it as needed. Love that as a tool! And Blippi is the man, of course, we use a lot of his videos 😂
How do I model as a teacher when I don’t have my own aac? Also, Would it be helpful to get an app and put it on the smart board and use it to supplement my regular classroom instruction?
This is part of the reason I dislike being an RBT so much. I love all your videos because you’re always pointing out the unhelpful goals we create and how we can run them better. I wish I had the freedom to run my sessions like this rather than my supervisor telling me I’m not placing enough demands. Like do you hear yourself? We’re focusing on improving communication and us forcing it by removing their preferred items and making them too upset to even communicate what they want definitely does not make them want to engage with us! Sorry for the rant but I just love how you conduct your sessions and focus on the individual
When I was in 5th grade, I carried my Pikachu around all the time. My speech teacher would let Pikachu have a seat next to me and he'd play whatever board/card game we were playing that day. She even had those card holders that Super Duper made
Wow, 2 million in revenue netting zero :(. I really don't know how folks accept insurance and remain profitable. Do you need extra/different insurance for your gym equipment?
Thanks for the tour of both spaces! I am excited to see how everything turns out! I have a 2 room clinic space but someday would like to move into a bigger space and to hire additional people! Best of luck!
How does one even get the PDD-NOS diagnosis after the 2013 DSM-5? I think my 2e PDAer keeps getting missed for ASD1 because he probably would’ve gotten PDD-NOS under the DSM4 if he had been born before the DSM5 release in 2013.
Oh yes! am glad you are saying it out loud, " Play is fun, play should be fun and the function of play is to have fun." Ordered your book, looking forward to a neuro affirming read and I hope you open your academy for a variety of professionals.
This makes so much sense. I can understand why ABA was really making my unregulated child so much worse. We weren’t ever dealing with the “why..” My child has way too much power to do anything he doesn’t believe in.
How do you get a school to understand masking? My sons school thinks that my son doesn't mask but he is always doing what is expected at school but then explosive at home
we see this a lot! It's a much longer conversation getting them to recognize the affects that masking at school is having at home. Chris talks about this in another episode called "The Problem With Social Skills Training for Autistic Kids" ru-vid.comGNyri89PCmY?si=hMeEolTAziLl_ndO
As a mom of two kids on the spectrum, I have definitely seen that. There are good therapists, but as a whole Aba has not worked for our family, we are currently on a break and the fact that my kids would be happy going to Therapy but also we are thrilled to have a break really gave me a different outlook
I found that although the movement away from ABA in South Africa is very prominent, the techniques still creep in although it is not labelled as such. From personal experience having my son in schools and seeing various therapists, only one worked on building a solid relationship with him and then we saw progress. He exhibits avoidant behaviour when he's not happy, and the more he avoids the more he is forced to do something. It seems that the visible goals are more important than the process of getting there in a gentle manner. You nailed it on the head when you said therapists are doing what they were trained to do and not focussing on the child in front of them. Thank you for this post, I really enjoyed listening to it.
@@SpeechDudeJessieGinsburg problem is that communication breakdown happens when a neurodivergent chats with a neurotypical child when the NT kids says look at that (with eyes looking to the point of interest) and the ND child does not understand what is happening (which I believe also happens in the communication between ND kids). So by respecting neurodivergence, does that mean we should not teach BOTH ND and NT kids to change the way they communicate (i.e. ND to maintain eye contact / NT to communicate more literally) -> meaning the breakdown still exists
@@SpeechDudeJessieGinsburg what I believe we should develop is an mutual understanding, and also a language to help both ND and NT people to interact with each other. But then this comes to the point of the so called masking. Why can't we treat it as something like a second langauge (again for both NT and ND) to interact successfully? Why is teaching these so called social skills (again to both NT and ND, though in some societies it's mostly only on ND) masking? and according to what you talked about perspective taking training, I whole-heartedly support such practice. However, this kind of approach might be considered by other neuroaffirming therapists as "social skill training". Do you have any comments on this?
@@SpeechDudeJessieGinsburg and then you mentioned about teaching Autistic children about lableing emotions becuase that have difficulties in such awareness, which does invovle eye contact. I have been going through the neuroaffirming approach for quite some time but have been puzzled on the contradictory claims on this issue. On one hand people say it's neurodivergent brain and then claims that ASD does not have a problem with ToM, but then here we are talking about how to understand others' emotion again. Plainly paying attention to all the social cues, from the masking perspective, could be exhausing and damaging already. To be truely neuroaffirming, shouldn't we respect that ASD children are more rational in their communication and we can all just communicate more literally to aid their understanding? But then I really can't buy in into such practice. Sorry for all the questions, but I truely wanted to learn more what the neuroaffirming approach should look like. Thank you so much in advance.
@@NivWong there is very interesting research on this called the double empathy problem. but yes, we should be teaching neurotypical people about neurodivergent communication styles. And there will likely be a breakdown in some areas because they are different styles of communicating. But the responsibility should not solely on the neurodivergent individual to make sure they are not being misunderstood.
Watched the whole thing, lots of good points to think about! Do you have the bullets you went over in list form by any chance? Thanks again for providing resources.
Thank you for this! Lots of great ideas to try. Any recommendations for kids struggling to transition out of the house? My son (7) recently started resisting all things outside our home saying he "likes being home more than anywhere else". even for things he enjoys. He wants to learn piano but doesn't want to go to the piano lessons. He loves his Occupational Therapist but doesn't want to go to OT. Being at a place is not a problem (mostly) but getting there / leaving the house to get there is.
My son is like this. For him I think it's that he doesn't want to stop what he's doing at home (where he's comfortable) to do something else. Even though he enjoys the next activity as well, he has a hard time with executive functioning and seeing past the here and now. We use a lot of Jessie's tips like giving him a transition object like his iPad for when it's time to get in the car. That really helps because he doesn't get his tablet all day long so he appreciates having it during those moments. We also use a visual schedule so he knows it's coming and we also try and keep our routine pretty consistent so he understands that these appointments happen every week.
My theory for what makes some transitions difficult (for my kid) is that they have a hard time independently imagining the upcoming event. I try to name a person they like or an activity they enjoy at the place we are transitioning to. I will ask a question to help them imagine the next location in a positive way. Ex. Do you think Ms. Anna (a favorite teacher) will be wearing a hat today? Or, I wonder if you will choose a craft or a game first when we get there. This helps them shift from their connection to the current moment, but to identify a positive emotion with the thing we are transitioning to.
Great advice. My son is 5, he is autistic and non-speaking and we use Proloquo2Go. Choices of RU-vid videos are very motivating for him as he loves to repetitively watch certain educational videos. So I have a folder for choices of video and then an interactive folder for each video (with shapes, colours, phrases from it etc). He also uses it for choices of places to go & food/drinks. These choices are what got him interested in his AAC to begin with. He picked it up very quickly and it’s amazing to actually know what he wants and to see the satisfaction he gets from being able to communicate his needs to us 🖤
Hi. Thank you so much for this information. My son is a gestalt language processor and I’m keen to introduce AAC to him. It seems very difficult to access specialist support in this area in the UK, so in wondered what apps you might recommend to purchase for an iPad or android device that we could set up ourselves?
