Where are your kids hanging out these days? Are they learning the social skills they need to navigate the world in-person AND online? To be a friend? To get a friend? To maintain a friend? And, what do Applied Behavior Analysis, Precision Teaching, Natural Environment Teaching (NET) have to do with any of this? This episode is what you need!

Today I speak with Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT) and Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT), co-founders of The Hangout Spot (https://www.thehangoutspotllc.com/), a behavior analytic social skills development center for children of all ages and abilities. All programs at The Hangout Spot are evidence-based and rooted in the FUNdamentals of science.

Join us and learn what you need to know about social skills, how to teach them, and how they generalize – both in person and in our new digital world!

TRANSCRIPT (not proofread)

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

social skills, children, kids, people, skills, teach, behaviors, aba, social, social interactions, families, rules, important, objectives, component, hear, hangout, teaching, teacher, developing

SPEAKERS

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT), Dana Jonson, Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),

Dana Jonson  00:02

Hello, and welcome to need to know with Dana Jonson. I’m your host, Dana Jonson and I’m here to give you the information you need to know to best advocate for your child. I’m a special education attorney in private practice, a former special education teacher and administrator, a current mom to four children with IPS and I myself have ADHD and dyslexia. So I have approached the world of disability and special education from many angles. And I’ll provide straightforward information about your rights and your schools obligations, information from other professionals on many topics, as well as tips and tricks for working with your school district. My goal is to empower you through your journey. So if there’s anything you want to hear, comment on, join our Facebook group, it’s aptly named need to know with Dana Jonson, or you can email me at Dana at special ed dot life. Okay, let’s get started. Today I’m meeting with Megan and Justine from the hangout spot. And if you can’t tell what that is, it’s a place where kids can hang out. And so Megan and Justine, I want to talk to you about why we need a hangout spot. And I’m going to guess that it has something to do with social skills, baby, right? Okay, good. Because it is usually the the skill that I rely on most when I’m hanging out with people. So I know that you guys are both bcbas. And you both have extensive experience in the public school in the community in kind of all facets of children’s education. So you guys came together and created the hangout spot to address social skills component for many students. And I’m really excited to talk about that, because I think that we forget sometimes how important social skills are. And when I sit in a IEP meeting for a middle schooler, and I’m told that they’re doing everything great. But they don’t have a single person to sit with at lunch. They don’t go to birthday parties. They don’t have playdates to me that education isn’t working. Yeah. Oh, I wanted to bring you guys on to talk about how that works. And I found you guys. Well, I’ve heard you actually now since I first saw you on a webinar, I’ve heard your name like a bazillion times. So it’s funny when you finally see something, you can’t stop seeing it. And I saw a fantastic video that you guys did about teaching kids how to wear masks, which is so critical right now. So I wanted to have you on a talk about why we have this gap, and why we need to specifically focus on social skills for kids education. I think we forget that education is not just academics. But I want to start with you guys telling us how you got here. How did we end up at the hangout spot? And why are you guys going to tell me what I need to know about social skills?

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  02:58

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that introduction, you know, some of the things that you mentioned with regards to seeing and hearing how children are struggling within the educational context and and how, in reality, that means that the education system or the approach isn’t working for that child is par for the course and one of the many reasons why we decided to open up our own clinic. Before I dive into that, just a really brief overview on on who we are. So as you mentioned, we’re board certified behavior analysts, we practice the science of Applied Behavior Analysis, which in short, is just the science of learning and behavior. And we have this I want to say stigma or label associated with ABA, that it’s it’s been pigeon holed into just providing services for the autism community. And the reality is because it’s the science of learning and behavior behavior is something that we all engage in behavior, not just doesn’t just encompass problems, skills, but it also our problem behaviors. It also encompasses adaptive and functional and social skills that we all need to know and be able to perform in order to live meaningful lives by Matt Festina. I love that you just said that because my background, when I first got into teaching, I was at a residential school for children with severe developmental behavior disorders. And we were fighting to say that ABA is not a modality. And what we were in a school I was in was completely ABA. And this is, you know, years ago, so the 90s. And we were still on that know, you know, ABA is not just a modality. It is a scientifically based, you know, way to teach kids with these severe deficits. And now later in my career as an attorney, so many times I sit in an IEP meeting where I’m saying, you know, I think we need an FBA and everyone says, well, they don’t have behaviors. Mm hmm. And like, What I don’t know is that Not ever handing in their homework of behavior. Yeah, is it or is it not? And and looking at, I mean, I just I love that I have that background. I’m not a bcba or anything like that. But that was my introduction. So I could never understand. I’m like, Yeah, but if you’re telling me a child and this just a silly example, but that they have their homework in their backpack, and they arrive at school with it done, and it never makes it to the teacher’s desk, is that something we should investigate? And see if there’s some other reason for it? You know, and I get met with no, no, that’s for behaviors. I hear what you’re saying that people be like, oh, ABA, my kid doesn’t have autism. Right. That’s not what it’s for. That just happens to be one thing that we could do with with ABA that we had to fight for. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing, right? Yeah, absolutely. It really can be applied to any aspect of our lives. In fact, we, we use it to improve our own quality of lives, whether that’s, you know, breaking bad habits, or identifying patterns, and you know, in our routines that really don’t serve us and figuring out why do we keep doing that? And if it’s really causing us pain and grief and anxiety, and how can we change that ABA is a scientific process, it’s the process of identifying something, pinpointing something, figuring out the environmental variables, or the things that are influencing it. And then figuring out how to rearrange those, those situations to help put that behavior or skill on a new trajectory. And one of our biggest frustrations with just how it’s been applied, and social skills delivery, within the context of of school has, first and foremost been the fact that there’s this huge focus on academics and social skills are actually skills that you need in order to survive. So from the very moment that you’re born, you rely on some level of interactions with other human beings in order to communicate your basic wants and needs, you rely on those communications for survival. And yet, in in our education system, we focus 95% on academics and we use social skills as or we provide social skills instruction, as this add on service, as was something else that’s good to have. But it’s not really necessary, right. But at the end of the day, yeah, like I was getting like a throwaway. Like, it’s just Oh, and social skills, absolutely. But at the end of the day, you can be the most brilliant person academically, but if you don’t know how to relate to others, you’re not going to find a job. If you don’t know how to relate to others, you’re not going to have friends. And as human beings, we’re social beings, right? So not being able to develop those relationships can have a huge impact, detrimental impact into into later life outcomes. So one is the idea that social skills isn’t that important, and education that was very, very frustrating with us, but then how it’s been, how it’s been delivered, right? So there’s a couple of really big downfalls to social skills delivery. One of them is this idea that if we just put a child in a group with other kids, they’re going to through osmosis through osmosis, I say that all the time. Right through Moses just absorb all of these skills, and all of a sudden be okay, well, that’s all very nice and good if a child has certain foundational skills in order to be able to access learning from peers. But if a child doesn’t even acknowledge that other people exist, or if a child doesn’t share joint attention doesn’t have any sort of reciprocal conversational skills or, or imaginative play. I mean, the list of foundational skills is really, really expensive, doesn’t have a basic imitative repertoire, which gets developed in the very early ages eight months to two, you know, two years, two to three years is when you’re developing, imitating other people’s behavior, because that’s how people learn. If a child can’t do that, then you’re setting them up for failure, you’re setting them up for engaging in behaviors that they’ve done in the past that may be stigmatizing, isolating by peers, you’re developing that child, or you’re setting up that child to develop a history of repeated social failures. So therefore, the self esteem gets impacted. The other pitfall that we’re seeing that really broke our heart and we knew we had to do something about is this idea of, of rule memorization and just memorizing a specific scenario. That’s all very nice and good. It doesn’t apply to every single situation. And it can also be more socially stigmatizing. Yeah, we’ve seen goals and IPS such as you know, have little Johnny will say hi to every peer upon seeing them well, how often should we say hi to appear and and do we do When we walk into a classroom and the teacher is teaching do we does little Johnny stop the teacher teaching? So you could say hi to every single parent in the class? Well, and that’s such a good point. I mean, I, I have a child who doesn’t understand those nuances,

Dana Jonson  10:13

right? Who if you if you say, okay, when you walk in, you always say hello to the teacher, then when she walks in, she’s going to always say hello to the teacher, whether they are teaching or anything, that’s what’s going to happen. And then there’s going to be complete confusion as to why she’s in trouble. Right? It’s a mixed message, and then to the scripting component, she can tell you what anybody in a photograph is feeling she earned all of those pictures. No, I don’t think there’s a social scenario out there, she has not studied, she can’t tell you about. But standing in the moment, she can identify his person I’m speaking to is actually upset or happy, or am I upset or happy, right. And that’s a really good point. Because that’s what that’s what rule memorization script memorization teaches, right? It teaches very narrow social interactions within a certain context with a certain person, right. And then learning the rules, like you said, kids can recite the rules, they can do them in very controlled environments and scenarios. But then when it comes to to applying it, they can’t do that. And something that we hear very often, which is very, very frustrating. And I think, you know, part of it is just a lack of understanding and education and social skills, because there’s such a small focus on it compared to the focus on academics, right. So people don’t invest that much time and effort into really understanding these complex nuances. Is that, you know, sometimes professionals say, well, Little Johnny knows the rules, he just chooses not to use them. And the scenario that I repeat to people over and over is, okay, well, let’s just set that aside for a minute. And just humor me for a second with with what I’m about to tell you. So if I didn’t know how to swim, and I read a book on swimming, and I could tell you every single rule and semantics that went into sewing, I could even demonstrate how to do it on land. And then you throw me in a pool and I drowned. Could you use that same? That same explanation as to why I was not able to use those skills that I supposedly knew how to use? You couldn’t? It’s it’s ludicrous. Kids learn social skills the same way they learn to read the same way? Do you learn to ride a bike, they need repeated contextual practice opportunities. So it’s really frustrating, and really why we’ve we’ve been so passionate about paving a different path and creating another option for families to set up these experiential based, opportunity based play based and social skills groups and opportunities for instruction. Within a setting that’s stigma free, that’s inclusive, where kids can just be proud to say they go to I mean, there’s so we can, first of all, we can underscore the importance of therapy enough. I mean, that it’s important, it’s vital, right to to every child’s success. But I think as practitioners, we can probably do a better job at not sounding so clinical, I mean, our kids, right, the kids that are requiring these services, oftentimes they can’t access other services, like, you know, soccer or Boy Scouts, or Girl Scouts, because they have a series of behaviors that they engage in that that serve as barriers to being able to access those types of services successfully. So they you know, they can’t go to school and say, Oh, hey, Yo, what did you do this weekend? Oh, I went to soccer. They’re gonna say, Well, I went to see, you know, I went to see my therapist. Yeah, that was fun. Right. Right. I had social skills. I had lunch lunch, right? Yeah, exactly. As opposed to I went to a place like the hangout spot, or I went to a place where I played with, with friends. And we played board games, and we went on a mission. And we did we did all these fun things, not even knowing that kids are learning, right? I mean, that’s what it should be all about making it fun and motivating. The other component there is really, you know, the relevance of social skills, instruction and play instruction to all children. Right. So certainly, there is significant benefit for the autism community and individuals with other special needs. But one of the core beliefs that the hangout spot was founded on is this I dia that that social interactions are important for all of us. And you know, as a, as an adult who’s, you know, gone through my educational career already. There’s still things I can do better when I relate to people and we hold this value that all children stand to benefit from social skills, instruction. It’s It’s important for individuals who are hooked on technology,

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  15:05

individuals learning leadership skills, children who are impacted by bullying in some capacity, whether they’re the victims of bullying, or they are the bully, right? There’s social skills that need to be taught in both scenarios. Typically, developing children growing up without siblings and who just don’t have access to a peer model is habit based, too, right? You get into if you’re not a custom, and we say this to young kids, anyway, we would say, Oh, you have to learn to share, right. And I was, for better or worse, not a parent who ever told my kids they had to share it was okay, well, if you don’t want to share that, then they’re probably not going to share their toy with you. But if we have people coming over, then put away the things you don’t want to share. And and then these things are what you share. And we talked about that, I don’t know if it was right or wrong. If somebody came up to me and said, You must give your pen to the person sitting next to you, because they need a pen, I would probably use some four letter words to you. personally never understood telling a kid you must take that thing that’s important to you and hand it over. Like for me personally, that just didn’t match. But that doesn’t the same way that other parents are telling their kids. So you know that right in, in and of itself can cause confusion for a child, if they’re looking for direction if they don’t already know the right thing to do, or they don’t know that their rules are just for their house, right? Because, you know, that’s another thing we send our children to other people’s houses, and we expect them to understand all of the social rules there. Even though they could be drastically different. You know, if I had a kid over for a playdate, who was saying, but he won’t share with me, that child thinks that I am not helping them with something I am supposed to be helping them with. But that’s a fundamental rule that’s just different in my house, that could just throw them off for the whole day. Right? And we don’t offer another skill that needs to be taught, right? So when we think about social skills, they’re very dynamic. They’re very nuanced. It requires really, really careful thinking and teaching when you when you consider how to provide this instruction. So I look at that scenario, and I say, you know, a lot of people would say, Okay, well, we need to teach the child sharing are the rules of sharing or turn taking or something? I would argue, well, no, we need to teach the child the rules of going to a playdate. Right. And when you go to a playdate, what do you do? You observe the children who live in the home, you observe the other children who are there on the playdate, you look for behaviors, they’re demonstrating and not demonstrating, and you imitate those. And then you listen to what mom is saying to Joey over in the corner, right? And you pick up on some of those things. When mom says Joey, don’t throw the Legos. Oh, I probably shouldn’t throw the Legos either. Right. So it’s so nuanced. And I think we’re quick to identify goals and objectives when we think about social interactions that are really concrete and really straightforward. And those are aren’t the right objectives in most cases, right. It’s really a complex piece. So So how do you approach that when you when you know, it is so complex? Looking at goals and objectives? Yeah, what because you guys are you know, you’re you’re a lot of your professional background is in the public school, so you understand how that works, and how the public schools function and what their obligations are. And so how do you see that translating into goals and objectives? Because I agree with you, I think that some of the social skills, goals and objectives that I see are just funny, you know, even some good, well, written ones are fun. There’s a few things that we really think about. So I’m going to tell you right now, if if you ever have an IEP objective that says when Joey walks into social skills, he greets his peers and 80% of opportunities across three days, cross it out, throw it out, it’s the worst jack of all time. So when we write objectives, we think about a couple things. So first of all, what is going to be socially successful, that is not socially successful if you get on an airplane, because that’s a situation where you see new people and you walk down the aisle and you say, hi, hi, hi, hi, people are gonna think you’re weird. And that’s not going to get you far. Right. So point one is thinking about what’s socially successful. And how we do that is we think about all the scenarios and what you might make a greeting and all the scenarios in which you might not make a greeting. So if I see an objective like or a goal of that nature, right, I think about Okay, how do you really do greetings? Well, if I get on that airplane, I’m actually going to sit down and I’m not going to talk for a little while. And I’m going to look and I’m going to observe my audience and see Mr. Smith sitting next to me and does he look interested? Is he shifting as I gave to me, or is he pretending to read But he’s not actually reading. And that’s probably a cue that I shouldn’t say hi to him. And if I notice signs of interest, then I’m going to say, Oh, hey, you know, did you see the weather today? It’s looks like it’s gonna thunder, I engage in some kind of small talk. And then I evaluate times of interest again. And if he’s not responding to me, then I probably should cut the conversation there. But if he’s showing signs of interest, I might then say, oh, by the way, my name is Megan. And it’s really nice to meet you. That’s the process of making a greeting, right? There’s, there’s so many rules you greet a person once per day, right? You don’t say hi to them every single time you see them passing in the hallway, right, we need to think about all those nuances. And the second thing that I think is, well, two more things here, kid friendly social skills, not adult friendly social skills. So I also see objectives like we’ll just continue telling potty jokes. When you’re five, the way to be cool and popular is by telling potty jokes. So you become you get buy in from your peers. So we need to be careful not to teach adult skills to children, we need to teach kids skills to children. And similarly, it has hotelling. Right?

Dana Jonson  21:10

I want to touch on that though, because I also think that’s something we need to teach the adults. A student was it last year, two years ago, client who the big rage in the middle school were pickup lines? Yeah. Right. Like, are you from Tennessee, because you’re the only 10 I see. Her huge, huge jokes. And I had a client who wanted to make jokes with everybody else who was making the jokes. So he was going up to another boy in the class and saying, Are you from Tennessee, because you’re the only Tennessee. And it was hilarious. And this kid has a great sense of humor. And he’s got good timing, and he’s got delivery. But he didn’t recognize that maybe a seventh grade boy might not want to hear repeated pickup lines from another seventh grade boy, right? And for whatever that reason is, and he wasn’t picking up on the signs that the boy didn’t like it. And then, you know, from the scenario and, you know, you can take your perspective, but from my perspective, I don’t believe this kid was really offended, either. I think he took an opportunity to be offended at this other kid in trouble for no apparent reason. And then what happens is the staff come back and say, Well, he can’t make pickup lines. He’s in seventh grade, seventh graders should not be giving pickup lines to anybody forget another boy of the same sex was not demonstrated any romantic interest and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, so you want him to be the only child in the cafeteria, not making the pickup chokes? Like I’m trying to understand where we draw this line? Because social skills, like you said, are so nuanced. So I love hearing what I’m hearing you say is you guys go back to not the what like, this is the line you deliver, or this is what you say it’s, let’s analyze the situation, and how can you pick up on those cues that you need to identify and go through a process because that whole process, Megan, that you just went through about sitting next to somebody on an airplane, I do all of those things. But it never dawned on me that I’m breaking them down into pieces in my head. And I think it’s not until you the way you just said that made it sound like oh my God, that’s exhausting. Right.

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  23:32

I mean, one goal on a, an IEP should actually be 50 objectives. I mean, the other example, I had a mom once who was so concerned and and to some degree, rightfully so right that when other kids were being mean, we needed to make sure that Joey knew to tell the teacher, right, because there was a concern about bullying and things of that nature, which obviously is a really significant issue. But when when you think about how you deal with that, right? Yes, children need to know how to ask for help. But when you teach children that every single time somebody passes a note in class or isn’t actually decided to go for a little joy walk in the hallway, instead of using the bathroom to tell the teacher Well, you’ve just set that child up for for social disaster, because now you’re the tattletale and, and there needs to be a discrimination process about when do I really tell the teacher and when is it going to be socially disastrous to tell the teacher right and things like that? So kids skills versus adult skills, and the other piece is fluency. So so we do not teach to accuracy, we teach to fluency. And I’ll give you kind of a layman’s example of that. I just could you

Dana Jonson  24:53

say that again? Yeah. So we don’t want

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  24:55

accuracy. We teach them fluency

Dana Jonson  25:01

Yeah, I

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  25:02

mean, so if you think about math, right, and I give you the problem, what’s two plus two? And you sit there and you go, Okay, one, two, okay, that’s two. Now what would how it was two plus two. So okay, two more. One, two. Okay, so I need to do two plus, okay, I’ve got two, so 12344. Okay, you just got 100% accuracy. So if a school team rates that objective as mastered, because you had 100% accuracy, and then you go to the grocery store, and you’re trying to figure out, I don’t know how many apples to buy or something, all the apples are going to be gone, because it took you 20 minutes to figure out what two plus two is, even though you had 100% accuracy. So we consider two plus two to be mastered, when you can go, Hey, what’s two plus two? It’s four. That’s right. And it’s that saying, you know, it’s when you get on a bike for the first time in 10 years, I can’t remember the thing, but you know what I’m talking about, right? And you just know how to ride it. It’s, it’s the same concept. And with social interactions, it’s so much more important because kids move on really quick. And it seems like it’s going to be too much work to interact with you. They’re already on to the next friend. And so that’s where fluency becomes so important in social interactions, it doesn’t matter if you know how to do it the right way. It’s Can you do it quick enough to keep up with your peers? Yeah, absolutely. And to your point, just to add to that, Megan, identifying what that foundational y is behind the behaviors. So going back to that example, of, of the pickup line jokes, right, the team, you said their solution was to teach him not to tell pickup line jokes, when in reality, that wasn’t the problem, right? The problem was, she didn’t know how to read body language and facial expressions, right? And how when someone is showing an interest and when not, and he probably also didn’t have the skills to then even if he didn’t know how to read that to abort that situation and save face, right, for lack of a better term. And so, you know, here we are trying to put a bandaid on a situation when we’re not even addressing what the foundational problem is. And all that does is, in my mind, similar to what happens in education, right? When a child isn’t fluent in a specific skill, and we move on to the next skill anyway, right? And math, that’s the worst thing you can do. Because all of those skills build on each other, right? Well, same thing with social interactions, these skills, these, if you don’t have these foundational skills you can teach you can try to teach these higher level things. They’re not going to matter, they’re going to fall apart, they’re only going to cause more social stigma, more isolation, and addition to the, to the history of social failures, as opposed to be helpful. And I think that’s a much bigger conversation, right? Because I do I think that’s something that needs to be tackled, and an overall how we approach the topic of social skills. Overall, I think that we take the easy way out, it seems like it might be easier, because that’s sort of how we parent is telling kids what to do, right? Sort of generally how we parent, and when they don’t respond by doing exactly what we tell them to do. That’s when we discover a problem, right? You can’t see my air quotes. But they’re there. You know. And so here’s the problem. So we need to teach Johnny that when he you know how to say hi to people, so because he doesn’t do it when it’s appropriate. So we’re going to start by telling him to say hi to everybody. Mm hmm. All the time. And then we create that habit. And then how do you scale back on that habit? And I, I see that a lot. As I said, I have one child who has these kinds of structure, you know, structural issues. And I’ve learned that just that one of the things we’ve taught her to self advocate has taught us this because she finally came was like, I don’t understand, you told me that when this happens, I do x, that’s what I did.

Dana Jonson  29:09

Mm hmm. Oh, you’re right. My favorite example is my nephew, actually. So when my mom hears the show love it. My nephew, like the Christmas table just was telling a story and people weren’t paying attention. And then my mother turned around the grandmother at the table turns and says, what were you saying he was? Well, if you didn’t hear it the first time you don’t get to hear. Nobody thought that was the right response to grandmother. But he might have been the only person in the table who heard him any attorneys like, but that’s what Mrs. So and So says, Now he’s typically developing. He was you know, in fifth grade, and that’s what his teacher said. Yeah, he was told to listen to his teacher. So if his teacher said that that must be an okay thing to say. And this is a typically developing child, right? So imagine if that little component was confusing to him. Yeah. Using that would be to any other kid. Right? Forget social skills issues. Well wait a second, I was told if you don’t hear it the first time, that’s your problem. Those were the words that were said to me. Right. And it’s it’s an overgeneralization issue, right? So that the the scenario we give you about saying hello to everybody, it’s somebody taught me a skill, and I’m going to apply it everywhere all the time, right. And honestly, that’s the product of ineffective teaching and an effective instruction. And one of the scary realities is that when kids come to us, we have to spend a period of time on teaching poor social skills instruction, the other one we always get is zones of regulation. And you’ve taught a child to say that they’re blue, when they’re sad, and all this stuff. Well, when you go off to someone who doesn’t know you that well, and you say, Hey, I’m blue. That’s weird. It’s weird. And it’s not successful, because now people have no idea what you’re saying, unless you’re familiar with the zones of regulation, which is a very small population of professionals, right? That doesn’t help you. And you start applying that skill to all these people who don’t understand it, and that’s not going to be socially successful for you. So that’s like, in children, the names for body parts and private parts is that, you know, especially with kids with disabilities, if you give them weird names, and they end up in the ER, and they say, my basement hurts, yeah, Woody knows what they’re talking about. Right? That’s not as socially successful way to describe your body. Right? Right. We spend a lot of time on teaching those those things, and then re teaching them the right way. So it’s a interesting process for sure. Oh, it is, I think it’s easy to miss that concept of having to go back to the beginning. And look at it’s not about their action was wrong. Their action was result of a whole lot of thinking that went on in their head, like they went through a process and they believed that action was the proper action. And what what we say to try and put this bandaid on it is, well, that whole process you went through, we don’t talk about the process, we just say the action was wrong, but we don’t tell them to change how they got to the action, right? And it’s like showing your work in math. Right? If you get the right answer, but you didn’t show the work, it doesn’t really count most of the time. And at some point in math, the answer isn’t the answer, right? It is the process. At you know, math eventually evolves into a more theoretical thought based thing. And, you know, if you’ve only learned, like you said, the two plus two, and that’s it, you’re not going to get to that next stage, you’re not developing those skills beyond. And that’s what we want to see for kids with social skills. Because you don’t need higher level math skills to get through life. You need higher level social skills. If you don’t want to be kicked out of school, if you don’t want to be fired from a job, you know, all of those components. So now that we’re in this new I hate saying new digital world, because I feel like digital world for a long time. It’s just that somehow we’ve got thrust upon us adults. So we are we’re the ones adapting right now. The kids seem to think it’s totally normal. But, you know, what are you seeing as a change in what those social skills are? Now I know right now, during the covid pandemic, we’re looking at a different level of online digital socialization. But I think that at least I have four kids. So I haven’t seen their social life slowed down a whole lot, even all stuck inside. So I think we’re all trying to do some ketchup, or those skills different that we’re teaching kids those online skills like art, because I know for me, having been in a bazillion zoom meetings now I no longer have sympathy for the person in bed. Talking to me with their bathroom door open. I don’t I’m just like, Look, if you haven’t figured out how to get a clear background by now. For issues. People buy their background on zoom. Clear areas without distracting backgrounds that I can look at. Thank you very much for that problem. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s there’s new social ones. Yeah, there’s another level of judgment now on social that impacting what you’re teaching. Right? So I kind of see it as a spectrum. Right. So at the the least impacted end of the spectrum are children who have grown up with a rulebook for how to play and how to socially interact with other people. And that rule book just went out the window. So just Dina had come up with a really cool example last week or so about hide and seek. So it used to be would run and you’d look for people and we found them. You Up to them. And I found you Well, the new rule of hide and seek is I found you you’re behind the tree, right so that you’re not physically making contact with with other people, you got your personal space bubble. And at the very least impactful end of this COVID situation is just children who need to re learn the new rules of play, that when you see your friend for the first time, after six months, you’re not going to run up to them and give them a hug, you might be able to do a really cool handshake where you do a cool song and dance and you don’t touch each other. And it’s really exciting. But you’re not going to be making physical contact with them, you’re not going to be sharing materials. And we have found some really great strategies to do that it requires teaching. Mm hmm. But there so we did a webinar, it’s available for free on our website, if anyone is interested about how to do play from safe social distance. And so that’s a really great one. But that’s a new skill. Yes, for kids who already had barriers. It’s a particularly challenging skill. And then then you think about these issues that existed before that are now probably exasperated, so exasperated, like cyber bullying and technology addictions, right? Yeah, yes. And then I think at the saddest end of it, we’ve got this situation where children have learned to be afraid of people. And that’s the saddest reality is some some of our learners have have experienced so much fear around this time, that people have gone from being something that you want to be a part of, and some something that you want to interact with to something you should avoid at all costs, because they might make you sick. Right. And it’s a new type of social anxiety that it’s a new challenge. And Christina had mentioned earlier that, you know, we really tried to position the hangout spot as a valuable resource for families, because this is a new way of keep learning to interact with people. And it’s going to require that thoughtful process behind it, because there’s new and different challenges for sure. Well, I think that it’s it definitely new and different challenges, but it’s also our future, right? None of Yes, we are going to get back to some semblance of normal at some point. But this level of distance learning distance communicating, distance working, that’s here to stay that was already on the rise, but I think it was to a limited population. So just think about all the parents now who were told they could never work from home, who’ve been working from home full time for six months, you’re never going to be able to tell those parents, they can’t work from home again. Right? No one’s gonna believe it. My husband, even his, his office was really worried about the infrastructure. And the big joke is that they’ve had not a single glitch. worried that this was going to I mean, they’re very responsible, they closed immediately everybody go home, and but they were very, very worried. And it turned out it worked. So, you know, I think that we are entering a world where this online component is going to be a big portion of our social skills of understanding how to, you know, when you say, dress for the job you want not for the job you have, how does that translate into zoom meetings?

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  38:25

Yeah.

Dana Jonson  38:26

Are you going to promote the person who came to the zoom meeting from bed, even if they had all the right information and had done all of the work and is the best employee you have, they sat there in bed with their covers pulled up and the, and the photo going up their nose and at the ceiling, gonna promote or the person who showed up on time tidy with a clear background, regardless of what they presented to you. Right? Yeah, and I think there’s, you know,

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  38:53

a fear, I’m gonna call it a trauma around the concept of distance learning now, because so many kids had poor experiences with that. But Justine and I are trying to bring hope to families here, distance learning can be successful learning through the screen can be successful. It requires a teaching process to teach children that this is not this is going to be something great and fun and wonderful that I want to be a part of. So I shouldn’t just shut the computer and keep doing that mom has to spend 10 minutes logging me back on to zoom, because I want to be a part of that process. And there’s skills that have to be taught, you know, joint attention with the screen imitating the screen responding to somebody on the screen responding to your name on the screen. So it’s a process and we actually did a Facebook Live on that topic last week, because so many families are hesitant to pursue virtual learning opportunities. That could be the thing that makes a difference for their kid that has been burnt out by distance learning. And so we really want to highlight that with some of the strategies that we’ve used. In our own work here, we’ve had incredible success for some of the most complex kids and families that are on our caseload I kid who wasn’t really talking that much before distance learning who’s now singing the ABC song for the first time. So that’s amazing. There’s really cool opportunities to grow through this modality, I think it’s important for us to remember that this was not distance learning. This was a crisis right? Now. And I think I have, as I said, I have four children with varying, you know, needs. So we’ve experienced almost every kind of education possible. And this wasn’t distance learning. This was Catherine Witcher coined the term crisis schooling, and I loved it, because it’s not homeschooling. And it’s not distance learning. It was everybody in a crisis, trying to figure out what to do next. And particularly for kids with disabilities, trying to get them some kind of support and services. And now, I see what you’re seeing, which is this resistance now that people have had time to figure it out, and put together thoughtful programs, people are resistant, because the crisis component didn’t work well. So now they’re reluctant to try out the thought out planned program, and I get it, I totally get why. But that is a hard barrier that I think not just you guys, but a lot of people are going to have to overcome. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s and like you said, there’s, there’s so much truth to that, right, everybody, parents, kids, practitioners, teachers were all thrust into this, this modality overnight. And and told to figure it out with with no warning whatsoever, and no preparation time whatsoever. I mean, if you’ve got 24 hours, you were quite frankly, lucky. And and it was difficult because for for the kids who had trouble accessing their learning in the physical space, that was exacerbated and, and it really required the parent to become the child’s one to one all day, right. And if a practitioner or teacher or related service provider didn’t understand, didn’t know how to build rapport, how to harness the power of a child’s motivation, prior to distance learning, even when they figured out the technical aspects of being able to perform and provide those services. It was still difficult, right? And and, you know, there, we’ve had parents that we’ve worked with that that opted out of even though their child children really, really needed services over the summer, opted out of providing them because they everybody was just so burnt out. And the alternative of doing nothing was better. Yes, sitting in front of a screen all day, you know, walking your child step by step through every aspect of what they needed to do, while simultaneously somehow I don’t know how people did it, working with your phone attending a meeting, I’ve no idea how people did it. Mm hmm.

Dana Jonson  43:06

Neither do we have any idea how that happened? It’s like a big blur. And at some point, we got two foster children. So I actually have six kids in my house, it is literally the opposite of isolation in my house. It is definitely a learning experience every single day. So for parents who are in that phase, where they’re like, okay, Something’s got to give, we know that this distance component is here for a while, I know at least here in Connecticut, they’ve announced we’ll be back at school full capacity, full buses, which I don’t have any delusions is actually going to happen. But that’s been the announcement. And, you know, but we all know this is we’re going to be on this this level on some way for the next year or so. So what for parents were sitting at home saying, you know, my kid isn’t engaging, or we had a bad experience this way, or my kid just needs to be social. And I think there’s also a misconception that you must be in person to be social. That is a component of being social, and an important one. But it’s not the only way to fill that need. Right? So when you have parents who are saying, I don’t know what to do, my kids aren’t getting what they need. They’re not engaging. They’re losing all these social skills. What are your recommendations? What can parents be doing right now? A couple things. One, you have to find opportunities for safe socialization. Children are social beings. And to not to be void of social interaction for months upon end is not healthy. So if for your family, that means that you’re able to practice play dating from a safe social distance, we do have a free resource available for families on our website that’s all about how to teach those skills, how to teach your kid to play safely, in accordance with CDC guidelines. And so definitely check that out. For families who aren’t ready to take that step yet, right. And that’s a no that’s a perfect valid decision if that’s the decision you make for your family, we encourage you to explore opportunities for and using technology to get that social interaction. We we also have a webinar experience called long distance play dating, which is actually relevant if you just have friends and fireplaces. But you know, it applies to today’s age. And honestly, I don’t know if you guys have seen that app or the house party app where you get to play games, and oh, it’s the best thing ever, but I play it with my friends. That’s how I’m staying connected with my community. And so it’s a it’s a typical thing to do in today’s world. We are offering this summer virtual developmental play groups, virtual social groups, virtual family coaching. So if you need guidance on how to do some of these things, you know, we are happy to help we really want to be a resource to the community, because it’s, it’s challenging, but I think you have to find ways to give access and provide instruction on what’s a new way of interacting with people. And I will have all of your contact information in my show notes. But for for anyone listening, what is the website that they should be going to?

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  46:09

is www dot the hangout spot. llc.com

Dana Jonson  46:15

data. Okay, the hangout spot llc.com. Talk to Christina, I need to talk to Megan, because they’re the only people I can talk to, they’re gonna teach me how to do this the right way? Well, I think the other thing I would say here is inspire hope, not fear. Right. So again, the resounding point we want to make is that we,

Meghan Cave, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT)  46:35

the biggest mistake we can make for our children, in today’s world is to teach them that people are scary, and that people could make you sick, and that people can make you die. And all of the fear that comes with that for being totally blunt, right. And we need to model safe behavior we have to we just that’s the reality of our world. We need to teach children to follow whatever safety guidelines you’ve decided have are appropriate for your family. And we understand that and you want to model those behaviors, but use kid friendly rationales parrot with positive experiences, and be really careful and thoughtful about your presentation of the new rules. Because children absorb everything right. And and it’s really important to inspire hope, not fear so that we don’t create a generation of children that are afraid of people. Yeah, absolutely. And walk you out to your point. And I can walk the walk and don’t talk the talk. So so many times and and it’s funny because I see this and in my own interactions with with I have one daughter, but you know, children are a mirror images of us whether we like it or not. And so sometimes we say things, but we don’t do the things that we say we do the opposite. And then when our child does or says those things, were surprised, we’re like, oh my gosh, where did that come from? That doesn’t sound very good. And then upon a little bit of careful reflection, you’re like, oh, gosh, is that what I sound like? Or is that when I look like so make sure that when we’re when we’re inspiring hope and not fear, we have the actions to back it up and not just the language. Because at the end of the day, our children are going to learn to respond the way we respond and not necessarily the way we talk. So that’s a really important point. I think that’s a good point. self reflection is important. I’ve I’ve had my children mirror back at me my words, and it’s not pretty. And in fights on school grounds, so really not pretty. But it is it’s it’s having to look at yourself and say, you know, how did I contribute to that? Right? And that that, again, is another social skill that some adults aren’t very strong on. Yet great. How did I contribute to that situation? Even if it wasn’t my quote, unquote, here come my air quotes again, faults? Right? navigate that. And I think we as adults, are struggling with that ourselves. And I think that sometimes they hear well, I’m struggling with it, too. So why wouldn’t they struggle with it? But why do they have to struggle with it? You can recognize that we are struggling with something and we can do something to help the children struggle a little less. That should be the ultimate goal, right? Absolutely.

Dana Jonson  49:17

Well, thank you guys so much. I cannot tell you how inspiring This is. Because I love everything that I’m hearing you say especially that piece about going back to what what are those core skills that are social skills, and they’re not how we react? It’s how we process it’s the process we go through to determine what social skills we’re going to access as opposed to when x happens you do why no matter what, right? And it hurt, but it is necessary and I think kids desperately need someplace like the hangout spot that is fun and cool and does all those things teaches them social skills. Do you guys incorporate typically developing peers with your groups, so our program is open to any child for whom there is a need. So the reality of the situation is, as I kind of touched on very briefly is social skills are important for everybody, not just children with disabilities. So we have children who apply to our program who do not have a diagnosis fight require some kind of social support. And we create what we call basket groupings with a common fundamental focus the play on the word fun. So there’s a shared learning theme, right within each group, so that the fundamental focus might be conversation or teamwork or what have you. And everybody within that group has different strengths and weaknesses, but they’re all working on the same shared learning theme, so that everybody has an appropriate peer model. But everybody also has the experience of being an appropriate model. So it’s a very careful thought process that we go through with our matching, we will not put a child into a group until we are confident that we have what represents the best fit group for kids. But yes, the program is open to children with special needs, but also children without special needs as well. And we carefully crafted our our grouping assignments accordingly. Awesome. Well, that’s great. Thank you guys so much for all of this information. And for joining me today. I think this is a huge need in our society. And I know that you guys weren’t planning to launch in the middle of a global pandemic. I think it’s actually opened up a very interesting new area that it kind of forced you into that there’s a need for Yeah, well, we’re happy to be here. And thank you so much for having us and hope this was helpful to the community. So salutely. So if you need just Steena or Megan from the hangout spot, please go to the hangout spot. llc.com. Or you can go to my show notes, and I will have all their contact information there. And thank you guys, thanks so much.

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  52:03

Thank you.

Dana Jonson  52:05

Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast so that you get notifications when new episodes come out. And I want to know what you want to know. So join our Facebook group also named need to know with Dana Jonson, or you can email me, Dana at special ed dot life. But definitely reach out with your comments and questions and I’ll see you next time here on need to know with Dana Jonson have a fabulous day.