John does pretty well in group band and group choir performances, even under heavy sensory load.

Opening cocky, then froze. Ms. Melanie coming to re-direct him. There is less structure in a solo performance, and he may have blanked out the previous performers. Working memory is something we continue to build.

Which explains a lot about his motivation, mindfulness, self-regulation and personal choices.

Social-emotional learning (SEL).

Much harder for him to concentrate and care when (boring) daily solo practice at home calls his name.

Pressure is on for his third public piano recital.

He was blowing it off, and my words were going nowhere.

But having a talk with Ms. Melanie about the rapidly-approaching day helped a great deal.

Is he absorbing her words of semi-tough love?

He at least chose to really try with the fingering.

And Yankee Doodle sounded a lot more like Yankee Doodle.

Does he understand the consequences of a poor public performance?

In a group, easier to self-regulate because of peer-modeling and more structure.

Epilogue:

He survived the public recital, doing better in the pre-rehearsal on stage

than he did when the pressure was one.

Funny thing: he opened with cockiness, not shyness.

That surprised me.

And then he sort-of froze.

John doesn’t usually freeze or display cockiness

when he is following neuro-typical peers into the battle of performance.

Because he has a first-class re-direct available:

“Do what the other kids do.”

Listening better to teacher Ms. Melanie. He knows recital is coming.

He and I talk about “matching the other kids”.

We continue to work on his mindfulness of

time,

money,

what he needs to do,

and

Building “spider fingers” neural pathways.

when.

His mindfulness of his peer models

is stronger than his inner compass.

So, we have a lot to keep working on!

And we shall.

Peace be with us, and maybe this helps in your house,

Gayle

A few rehearsals were at our Friday afternoon hangout, in the parking lot.

The school said “talent show tryouts”.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Like when the school said “Mixed Choir, for all students”.

Not just the vocally-gifted.

Oh, opportunity!  Can he earn it?

Mom was instigator who invited a wide group of kids, both neurally-diverse and neurally-typical.

Asked teachers for their (great!) ideas, found the music, got the props, and

maneuvered rehearsal opportunities during our Fridays-after-school play times.

The kids who wanted to participate were co-directors.

“Kid-centered” learning.

The school-appropriate props were both actual taekwondo performance “weapons” and toys.

The sound files and karaoke lyrics were from both YouTube and iTunes.

John carried the suitcase of props into school the day of the audition.

His job to get them to the right place at the right time.

Mom faded her prompts and disappeared.

The co-directors did their jobs.

When the 90-second audition was over, within the gym full of his peers and teachers,

John turned to the audience, grinned hugely and said, “I did it!”

We are lucky the learning community of kids and the culture of the school are very welcoming.

And yet we help every day to grow that “welcome” to all.

The kids felt the full range of motivations, ranging from “let’s try”, “we did it”, “we didn’t make the 2nd round”, and hopefully, “let’s start practicing for next year”.

What more could you ask for from inclusion?

The opportunity for children to try, to band together, to fail and to try again.

How else does anyone learn?

Hope this helps in your world.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

Want a low-cost, vital and urgent Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) intervention YOU can do with your kids?

Chores.

You have to do your chores anyway, right?

What we have to do on our list can become a valuable teaching moment to our kids.

It’s not sexy or glamorous.  It’s drudgery and boring.

But vital for their tomorrows.

Responsibility.  Ownership.

And if we frame it wisely, we can direct toward intrinsic motivation.

(Extrinsic motivation (bribery, fear, threats) isn’t the goal.)

Social example:  John has a kid-directed ensemble audition for the school Talent Show coming, with a group of friends.

We (my son and I) will drop off the props, and my role as adult instigator will be over.

Off he goes, and back he comes. Errands into the depths of a large store.

John will write note in his calendar to get to the school office after choir for those props.

And we will have rehearsed beforehand.  (“modeling”)

What matters most is that he made the effort at the opportunity.

John gets a lot of opportunity (my job, for the present time).

Soon enough, creating those opportunities will be his job.

I always hope he is enriched in some way at each opportunity.

Like when we shop, and I send him off on errands into the bowels of the store (photo).

Like the times I send John out into the neighborhood to walk the dog (photo).

But don’t do it like this:

It was Christmas Day morning.

I didn’t know he had already practiced with big brother a circular route home.

I was waiting for a boomerang return, the same way he went out.

John came home with the dog via a loop, and I never saw him.

Eventually, I freaked out.

First time I have ever called 911.

Getting Spike in and out of the vet.

The constables were on it, very diligent.  Amazing for Christmas Day morning.

Mom (still in her pajamas running through the neighborhood) deserved the constable home visit with gentle chastisement.

Other examples:  How about school prep:  Lunchbox and backpack?

Returning shopping carts and learning parking lot risks?

We have practiced behavior expectations and exit etiquette.

Being responsible for holding on to personal stuff.

Ownership:  Sometimes, when we are doing our school morning routine,

John’s focus will drift away, mesmerized by something “shiny”.

Or he will stim (for him, a monotone hum), off-task.

Today, I found myself saying,

“When you are done stimming, we can go”

This I have also said while driving (so then I pull over until…..)

He gets to help. Always.

Hopefully we are also learning time urgency,

because he thinks he will be missing out on something valuable

or he just hates to stand still, or his brain runs off on the wrong neural pathways

and we have to re-focus.

“When you are ready…..”

We may not realize it, but we are helping our kids build neural pathways for their futures.

We can’t rescue them in the long-term.

I might rescue for today, but that only feeds my agenda of guilt and fear.

I want to feed his agenda of independence, resilience and self-esteem.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

The first time I sent John off into the neighborhood with the dog, Mom assumed the return route.

Spike is headed for his makeover. Mom is a chicken to cut his fingernails.

Shy joiner, not asking permission, boy style

Does your child lag in expressive language?

That doesn’t need to stall their social skills!

You can help them learn to read the social signals that are everywhere.

Body language is 80% of communication.

Body language doesn’t even use words!

Which is good, as John doesn’t have mastery of expressive language.

He has learned how to move, try and try again!

Because we practice this over and over.

Recently, he was at a school event, in a loud kid place, holding his lunch tray of pizza.

He slid into a chair at a table for two (photo).

Someone else was already there.

The boy in the center needed helpers. John jumped in without prompts or words.

He just did it, without words or asking permission.

At another time, recently at taekwondo, someone needed help.

Some kids grabbed a kick pad and jumped in.

John was one of those kids (photo).

Last weekend, he was at a birthday party at a loud kid place.

He saw a round booth with kids starting to collect.

He gave me a quick look, I nodded my head, and he left where we were sitting.

He wordlessly wormed himself into that table of other kids.

This has happened before, where kids were sitting together playing electronics.

I used to encourage him to move in, and now he doesn’t need my suggestions.

Here’s a link to trying again with Jack’s family.

So, start today.

Look for small ways, and begin your child’s building those social neural pathways.

May this help in your world.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

It was hiding on the couch

You know that stalling is a actual choice, right?

So when John wasted time this morning instead doing what he knows to do (The List),

he was choosing his own intervention the hard way.

Time Management: Crisis Mode.

Because time awareness is an intervention.

(And we often talk about decisions in a very primal way:  “Hard Way or Easy Way”.)

He wanted desperately to carry his drumstick bag to school on the bus.

He puts a lot of his identity in matching the other kids.

But we ran out of time this morning.

Unless he wanted to miss the bus.

He would rather die than miss the bus.

It has really helped that he has seen other kids almost miss the bus,

and that has become a deep neural pathway.

So this morning, ultimately, John chose to control a deep neural impulse

and inch a bit toward more sensory integration.

He couldn’t find his beloved drumstick bag to carry on the bus.

And carrying just his percussion binder now isn’t good enough.

The bag trumps the binder.

Swallowing vitamins are part of the daily routine

So he searched wildly and loudly at the last minute.

(For the record, we practice nightly getting everything ready for the next day.

It is a habit that has served Mom well.)

He couldn’t find the drumstick bag.

It was on the sofa.

Mom didn’t rescue him.

So he had to choose the bus or the bag.

Once out the door, he had to face the consequences of an earlier choice he had made:

“You decided to take your vitamins while we walked”

instead of with breakfast.

Which of course would have been easier.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him twirl around in a little hissy fit.

Mom just kept walking silently toward the bus (a non-verbal, minimal prompt).

In a few seconds, he decided to start walking toward the bus stop.

Tears in his eyes.

We talked about how time goes too fast when he yells.

We talked about how surely we will find the bag in the house.

And how we will try again and do better next time.

So, back to the vitamins, a question he hears daily is “Now or in the car?” or

“Now or walking to the bus?

He does not like swallowing vitamins (and he takes a pile of them for methylation support and healing).

And if he stalls in the car, I pull over and just wait.

Oh, he hates that.

So, he is time aware at times.

If he stalls while we are walking to the bus, we just stop.

We use this same location decision of “here or there?” for our Neuhaus Scientific Spelling and other academics.

In fact, this option gets offered to John constantly, to encourage him toward good choices.

So, to let your children feel empowered, let them choose.

But make all the options something you can live with.

As a bonus: Fun times with your children will occur as they practice making choices.

For example, last night driving home from taekwondo,

he leaned his seat way back, almost flat.

“I want to be more comfortable”, he said.

First time in his life those words have come out.

So, keep stretching your kids, and use the power of their own decisions.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

“Exit 87A!”

John was getting into this co-pilot job.

Usually I don’t let him have electronics in the car.

I want him looking out the window, talking to me.

Being “mindful” as a kid.

But, let’s look at the Garmin or other phone-based GPS (Waze, Google Maps) navigation as something to learn.

There is clock sense, direction (left, right, north, south, east & west), distances in miles, street names, speed limits, and developing “earth sense” to master.

When we have other kids in the car, they show him all the menu options, turning features on and off.

Some features are voice-activated, and that is a whole new playground.

There are look-up menus for names of places.

He gets to practice spelling and typing.

When he looks for a place and finds it, he gets excited.

And when our destination wasn’t in the database, we found a place next door, and used that to navigate our way.

Once we arrived, we walked over to the other storefront, and had a little teachable moment on the power of substitutions.

So, now John is in charge of driving shot-gun, and giving me driving directions.

He has been elated with the fun-ness of it.

In the light of day, or the dark of night.

He always has had a great sense of where he was (in the car), and this reinforces that problem-solving.

Let’s just not tell him that he is learning.

I hope this helps at your house with all your young drivers-to-be.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

My son wants to match his neuro-typical peers, and (even better), he knows it.

This includes “showing off” his growing independence.

He is now walking home from the bus stop by himself.

This aerial map shows his trek home.

We have been building this by backward chaining.

Initially, I practically hid in the bushes, around each corner, watching for safety, working backward toward home.

Eventually, he made it past each checkpoint.

And he can lock and unlock the door.

So far, he hasn’t chosen yet to keep the key all day.

(He gives it to me for keeping.)

We have also been practicing the “boomerang effect” out in public.

At a recent neighborhood concert in the park,

when he was on his own to play, even running off in the dark to the playground.

(We had practiced meeting up.)

And during the concert, he cycled back about every 20 minutes, to confirm I was still at the same spot.

At an outdoor-music-venue restaurant recently, he disappeared for a while.

He found me, some minutes later.

Also, as he continues to build his independence, he has strong ideas of how he wants to look to other kids.

So he makes purposeful decisions daily to carry his percussion binder and drum sticks on the bus.

So he matches the band kids who haul their musical instruments each day.

All this involves accepting risks and practicing for mastery.

All worth it.

May this help in your world.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

We had collected a full jar of coins for an offering.

And I had spilled it inside the car more than once, so it was time to get rid of it.

I handed it to John as he was hopping out of the car at our place of worship.

Ready to make his trek across the parking lot, all by himself as he has done for months now.

We had practiced saying in the car, “This is for the missionaries.”

(“Missionaries” is apparently not an easy word to say for some.)

Halfway to the church, he looked back at me (something he no longer does).

Lifted the canister, pointed at it, and nodded his head.

A combination of “I got this, Mom” and “Right, Mom?”

I gave him a nod back, and he was gone.

It all worked OK.

You see, he wanted to look back for joint attention, validation & confirmation.

These components of communication are what we seek with our kids.

It isn’t so much what they accomplish when we hover them.

But rather, it’s that they can think for themselves, take the risks, and transfer to their next encounter with life.

And in our world, it’s always the little things, the quick look of ever-brighter eyes.

Giving themselves permission to fail, to test, to try, to try again.

I hope this helps in your home.

Peace be with us,

Gayle

I know it’s not a big deal to most families.

But to some of us, having our kids make a purchase without us is a big step forward.

We have been practicing for many days, with friends around us.

We have used cash, and John has tried to cajole me into helping him.

I walked away, pretending not to care.

A little rough with the communication exchange at the counter.

Nonetheless, eventual success.

But not elegant.

The next time, we were at a restaurant where John is well known.

Mr. Greg (red shirt) knows all the kids in our neuro-typical social group.

He is always patient in helping each child order.

You can see John getting advice on how to use his debit card.

Isn’t it awesome when kids teach their peers?

So, hope this helps in your world.

Practice constantly.

Make and keep relationships in your village—-so very valuable.

Especially if your child is intrinsically motivated by neuro-typical peers.

You can see the joint attention in the conversation over chicken.

Learning: Academic & Social-Emotional that goes into long-term memory,

and builds self-esteem!

Peace be with us,

Gayle

First, John figured out how to accept the neuro-typical bus.

That took watching, planning and practice.

And now he is riding the big-kid bus to and from intermediate school each day.

Next, we are stretching that independence so he can walk to and from the bus stop.

We are backward chaining by my parking further and further from the bus.

Both in the morning and in the afternoon.

(His preferred bus stop with lots of peers is further away. 

We also have had a Hurricane Harvey interruption to work through.)

So, the plan is that he gets to approach his peers as he wishes, walking away from the car.

He quite easily walks away from me without a backward glance.

He is learning that social/emotional IQ of how to approach and blend in.

Sometimes the kids re-arrange themselves to scoot closer to him.

(And that is a joy to see.)

And he has figured out how to get off the bus at school, with whatever re-directs he gets from peers and school officials.

We did grease the skids on this process over the summer.

Now we are working on the homeward journey:  from the bus stop all the way to the house, out of sight.

So we start one block away.

He gets off the bus, and walks to the car.

The next day, two blocks away.

Both in the morning and in the afternoon.

Eventually, he will be able to make the treks without seeing me for reassurance.

And he will be gaining continual growth in navigation, independence and self-esteem.

(I suggested to him a different bus stop, closer to home.

He adamantly rejected that idea.

He knows exactly which bus stop he wants, because of the social connections he has made.)

I hope this gives you some courage to try with your kids.

Risks are worth it, with proper training and practice.

Consider backward chaining.

Peace be with us,

Gayle