New therapist - what to expect?

[Allan-Matlem]

Hi,
good ideas - especially the back rub, learning calming strategies- breathing, mindfulness etc

good attachments , relationship, trust is for every kid - unconditional acceptance . Praise like rewards, consequences, punishments is problematic because with praise you are being judgmental - conditional and contingent on how he performs. Instead of praise ask the kid how he felt when he was successful or why he decided to do xyz and how he thought it impacted on others - the the other kid happy etc

Attachment parenting compliments with the collaborative problem solving approach. According to CPS your child has lagging skills and these manifest in a pile of unsolved problems. I would go to the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach by Dr. Ross Greene | Lives in the Balance site paperwork section and go through the list of ALSUP - assessed lagging skills and make a list of unsolved problems. Lots of problems involve others , so it is best to have the parent /sibling/teacher/ peer etc - the ones party to the problem involved in cps. Skills need to be taught in the context of unsolved problems and unmet concerns.

I highly recommend older brothers, buddy-tutors , mentors, peer mentors etc

At the therapist is not telling that he needs firmer discipline and more consequences

 

[TiredSoul]

Thanks Martie!!

Allan - I am super familiar with the ALSUP and lagging skills. In fact, I sent the school a "Lost at School" care-package and have been trying to educate them on Ross Greene's philosophy. I even printed out the ALSUP forms and had his teacher and Special Education teacher fill them out as well as my husband and I - I gave copies to the new therapist. He hasn't really mentioned it since. These are the ones we have identified he has the most trouble with:

_____Difficulty persisting on challenging or tedious tasks
_____Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of actions (impulsive)
_____Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem
_____Difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words
_____Difficulty understanding what is being said
_____Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally
_____Chronic irritability and/or anxiety significantly impede capacity for problem-solving or heighten frustration
_____Difficulty seeing the “grays”/concrete, literal, black-and-white, thinking
_____Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, novelty
_____Inflexible, inaccurate interpretations/cognitive distortions or biases (e.g., “Everyone’s out to get me,”
“Nobody likes me,” “You always blame me, “It’s not fair,” “I’m stupid”)
_____Difficulty appreciating how his/her behavior is affecting other people
_____Difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person’s perspective or point-of-view
_____Difficulty appreciating how s/he is coming across or being perceived by others

I guess I just don't know where to go from here. The concept makes the most sense to me - identify the lagging skills, identify the unsolved problems, then teach the lagging skills. TEACH the lagging skills. That is where I am not finding help in the books. How to teach these lagging skills we have identified. Is this something we should ask the therapist to work with him on?

I should add, difficult child is very intelligent, score in the high superior range for IQ at age 5 - although it dropped quite a bit when he was re-evaluated last year. He developed his verbal skills early - so I never really thought he didn't understand what we say to him. But maybe?

 

[Allan-Matlem]

Most of the lagging a skills are taught by engaging the kid in the CPS process. Now that we have the lagging skills lenses on , we need our list of unsolved problems - each problem needs to described in lots of detail

Skills can also be taught informally using general discussion and chatting focusing on perspective taking, identifying concerns and perceptions, thinking about mutually satisfying solutions, obstacles to soluttions etc - general chatting about other peoples, animals etc concerns is non-emotive and an easy place to start.

I find RDIconnect - the relationship development intervention approach useful in teaching skills other than actually working on problems

some skills can be taught also directly , but most problems are solved only when the kids concerns are addressed.

in my humble opinion the place to start is the list of unsolved problems - gettting a clear idea of his concerns - not focussing on the behavior

Allan
Parenting is Learning

 

[buddy]

Most of the lagging a skills are taught by engaging the kid in the CPS process. Now that we have the lagging skills lenses on , we need our list of unsolved problems - each problem needs to described in lots of detail

Skills can also be taught informally using general discussion and chatting focusing on perspective taking, identifying concerns and perceptions, thinking about mutually satisfying solutions, obstacles to soluttions etc - general chatting about other peoples, animals etc concerns is non-emotive and an easy place to start.

I find RDIconnect - the relationship development intervention approach useful in teaching skills other than actually working on problems

some skills can be taught also directly , but most problems are solved only when the kids concerns are addressed.

in my humble opinion the place to start is the list of unsolved problems - gettting a clear idea of his concerns - not focussing on the behavior

Allan
Parenting is Learning

I was blessed to have co-workers who loved RDI approach to things and so we were able to include many of the activities in social skills groups and even in our preschool autism classroom activities. I have had several email conversations with them over the years.

I like that they are not so single focused, their activities are very specific based on skill level/need but they are open to other methods to teach skills like academic skills teaching etc.

I love that the goal is focused on developing the intrinsic rewards of social interactions, not necessarily getting an m&m for doing the "right thing" as is done in ABA. That is NOT to say I dont think ABA has it's place. I have seen wonders with it, in terms of a kid learning something pretty quickly that makes their day go much more smoothly and provides them with a break from behaviors that interfere with learning etc. And by doing the "right thing" or appropriate behaviors, they then can learn thru experience that it is rewarding, and hopefully the clinician working fades reinforcement appropriately. Unless you have a very savvy clinician, you can end up with a child/adult only doing things for the reward. They can learn to say "Fine, thanks, how are you?" but it may be that exact statement under a certain situation. They may not have learned the intrinsic communication reward. Now many of our kids wont regardless of the method, but RDI's goal is to give them a chance. The best part of their site, not sure if it is there now...is the message boards with people who have autism and other disabilities that impair them socially, they discuss their journeys and you can hear the social development in their posts.

The issue for my family and many of my friends, talking about things, the collaborative problem solving steps just does not do it. Until my son does a behavior over and over things dont change. But it is true for him recently especially that including him in solvig a problem at least opens the door for him to try things another way.

And it is overwhelming to me that each and every single one of the skill deficits are huge for my son.

 

[Allan-Matlem]

Hi,

Hi,
When we focus on dynamic intelligence - interactions - rather than teaching specific skills like training a dog - there is progress in what ever we do in the process. We are talking about processes not techniques.

The focus must be on thinking, communication and problem solving - that means kids do the talking, we listening directing conversations with dialog questions - talking does not help , because we are doing the talking.

I hope this helps
Parenting is Learning