The purpose of transition goals and objectives is to prepare your child for life after high school, whatever that may be for them. So now, all you need to figure out is what life after high school will look like for your child AND what skills your child will need to be there AND how to successfully teach those skills to your child. No pressure.

Luckily, we have people like Muncie Kardos, Ph.D., OTR/L, ATP, to light the way! Muncie founded Kardos Educational Consulting, LLC, which provides families and schools with transition planning, occupational therapy & assistive technology, and educational consulting.

On today’s episode, Muncie tells us what we need to know about transition planning! We discuss assessment, program development, and training. In addition, we discuss what parents can gain from working with their children at home during the COVID closures. Join us!

You can find Muncie at www.munciekardos.com

TRANSCRIPT (not proofread)

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

child, transition, students, skills, kids, parents, people, program, curriculum, college, life, special education, find, thought, home, support, learn, teach, evaluate, connecticut

SPEAKERS

Muncie Kardos, Dana Jonson

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 school’s 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 we’re meeting with Dr. Muncey kardos, who is the founder of cartas educational consulting and Muncie you do transition assessment society, so many other things. And I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself a little bit. But one of the reasons I wanted you on here is because you do fabulous transition assessments and in my professional and personal experience, because I was fortunate enough to have you evaluate one of my own children, I find that you give really great insightful information into what we’re actually looking for, to work on for children. And I think saying transition services gets kind of lost. And we all say, okay, that’s just post High School and sometime around 16, we start talking about it. But what does that really mean? And for some kids, that transition services are the linchpin to their future. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got to cartus educational consulting, and then I’d like to dive into some talk about transition.

Muncie Kardos  01:56

Well, I started out my adult life, believe it or not, as an accountant. Was the the area’s right, put on the road to special education 34 years ago with the birth of our fifth child, Tuesday, young woman with autism. And it was a baptism of fire for me. Anyway, we eventually ended up in our local preschool. And one day, very shortly after the preschool director came up to me and said, you know, we’d like to do an OT evaluation on your daughter, you know, we just signed the papers. And I said, Oh, yes, of course. And then I got home. And I called up another mom in the program. And I said, What’s an OT evaluation? Because you have to remember at that time, we didn’t have Birth to Three services as abondance as we do now. So she said, Oh, oh, sign her up. She said, Chris, that’s her son. Chris loves it. They play in shaving cream, they crawl and tunnels, and when he comes home, he smells really good. I said, Okay, fine. So I signed the papers. And about six weeks later, I met back with the OT to, you know, review her findings. And I was really taken by the things that she spoke about, that I always knew about my child, but didn’t necessarily share with other people, because it wasn’t what other kids were doing. And I figured it just must be the result of for parenting. But that moment, so much of it, you know, really made sense to me. And so I started to look into the field of occupational therapy. And then one day I said to my husband, I said, you know, honey, I want to go back to school and become an occupational therapist. So he said, Okay, and so I did, and at that time, we could be licensed at the bachelors level. So I went to the University of Hartford and completed the program there. And I immediately went to work in public schools. And on my very, very, very first day of my very, very, very first job ever, as an OT, I met this beautiful little girl, and she arrived with an entourage of equipment and people and stuff that I had never seen the likes of outside of a vendor showroom. So I started to think I might be a little bit of trouble here. And about two hours later, her mother came to visit. And she walked up to me and I introduced myself and she looked right straight in my face. And she said, Well, glad they finally got somebody in here with some experience, because I was not 22 years old. Ah, yes. So I went home and this is honest to God’s truth there in the mail was a flyer from the University of New Hampshire offering an advanced Master’s in ot with a concentration in assistive technology. So I said to my husband, honey, I need to go back to school because I have to get this degree I really need it. And he said, Okay, so it was a weekend program. So sadly, once, once a month, I would have to leave my husband and five precious children. And to travel to New Hampshire for the weekend, for the weekend? Yes, it was it. So I managed to milk that out for three years. And all the while I continued to work in public schools, but you know, sometimes I felt like a guest in somebody else’s home, but not necessarily part of the family. So I said to my husband, you know, I need to go back to school, because I need to get a degree in special education. And I said that there’s a doctoral program at the University of Connecticut. And, you know, just to be on the safe side, I already applied and got accepted. And so, finally, you know, it can happen.

05:40

And so, he said, okay, and I went back, and I completed my doctorate in special education. But along the way of all of this, while I was working as an OT, and my daughter was growing up, we had a consultant for her program. And this was way back when we would start transition planning at 14. And one day, the consultant said, in front of the whole team, you know, we need to start thinking about transition planning for her. And we said, Oh, yes, of course. And so I came home, and I hit the internet. And I looked at all the stuff on transition, and I just kept reading it and reading and reading. And I thought, No, this isn’t special education, really, this is what occupational therapists do. So I printed all this stuff out, and I was going to a family wedding out in Las Vegas. And on the plane out there, I read all these things. And I really started to get excited that here was what I thought initially, you know, an area for occupational therapist to become involved for in, in older kids, because we worked so much with with younger kids. And it just happened to coincide with my master’s program, I headed to a thesis, and I did it in, in transition planning. And I actually did an assessment evaluation. Because that became my next goal was, how are you going to evaluate this? And I don’t mean this in any derogatory way. But public school teachers or teachers weren’t taught to evaluate this, you evaluate academics. And there were so many people, then who had never even had a single lecture on transition services, let alone You know, a full course or adult into looking at how do you evaluate it. And so I set out on that path, and that’s how I put together kind of the protocol, the basis for what I do now. And I continue to do when I evaluate students, and, you know, it works seems to work out pretty well. And I, you know, change things as we’ve gone along. And one of the things that, you know, I’m pleased to see, because on transition planning went back to 16. You know, that’s to me,

07:49

that’s an interesting point, because I often talk to parents, and I say, you know, transition planning has to start when your child needs it. Yes, the law says they have to do it by 16. I agree. I wish it was earlier, because I think 16 is a little late to look at it for the first time. I heard Peter Gerhart speak once it I don’t know if you know who he is, maybe everyone does it. But it’s a story that I heard from him because I used to work with a residential population when I was teaching, and very similar to the population he works with now. And he said, You know, these boys who are non verbal and very impaired, are being taught how to use the public bathroom by women, as they’re growing up. And the the social aspects of a female public bathroom is much different than a male bathroom. And most of the teachers are female. And that was just a reality that he was learning. And I immediately I could picture the student in my head. I remember taking them to the airport, and he had to use the bathroom and I let him in. And some guy who’s very nice said to me, I’ll keep an eye on him any man did, he wasn’t creepy or anything. And in but he was nonverbal. He had a book and he was walking up to people at the urinal, trying to ask them questions, and telling them their coat. And you know, this nice guy who was a parent, and he said, I got him. Don’t worry, I’ll get him out. But that really dawned on me. I thought, you know, that’s exactly right. We he was raised with, with people teaching how to use a bathroom, and they were women. And no one was thinking of that. But now he’s almost an adult, and he has to use the public bathroom and he has no idea. So transition planning really starts at the beginning, doesn’t it?

09:27

Yeah, absolutely. So I was pleased to say that, at least in Connecticut, now we are setting it back to 14 for our students who have an ASD designation. Yeah. Which which is, you know, it needs to happen.

09:42

It does. It does. So where did where do you start? When do you come in when parents call you and say we need help figuring out transition? Do you get those calls at a young age? Or do you get those calls when people are in crisis, or is it the whole spectrum?

09:57

Yeah, unfortunately, the majority Have those calls come right around? Well, this time of year, maybe within the last six weeks, and it starts with my child is 18. And going to graduate in June, and I really don’t think we have a transition plan to meet his or her needs. And, you know, I say that’s not too late, hopefully, we can pull a rabbit out of the hat by then. But I really urge parents to, to think about it at a younger and younger age. And we come to I call it the fork in the road, where we really need to think realistically, is this a child for whom traditional post secondary education as we know, it is going to be a likely outcome? Or is this the point where, you know, it’s going to be some kind of continuing education, but really, we need to start to look at what are some other skills that this person is going to need to be able to earn a living support themselves, keep themselves safe, have fun, and to be able to live as independently as possible. And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t look at that at a young enough age, because, you know, the hope is a more traditional academic outcome for a lot of people. You know, in a lot of cases, I have had several cases where, you know, to us as the students get older, and the mean of the parents are thinking or, you know, where’s my student going, going, where’s my ta going to go. And, you know, and the focus is so strongly on college and in post secondary education, and the student is 18. And, you know, evaluate them, and they really don’t have any life skills, they don’t have any, they just haven’t had the history that other kids have had, they haven’t had the experiences. And to now try and impose those experiences on them is, it can be a pretty daunting task for those who are trying to help the individual, the individual, you know, getting, looking at those kinds of things or being placed into those situations. And so my advice, if you’re in that situation is this post secondary education is always going to be there. It’s lifelong. So the woman who got her PhD almost a week before she filed for Medicare, yeah. Not not quite that bad. But that’s always going to be there. But public education is not, it’s going to end when the child turns 21. And if you are in a boat, where your child is not going to be under the domain of DDS funding, then you really should think putting the emphasis heavily on preparing them for a career and for the job market. Yeah, we

13:04

do as a society have this obsession with college, right? It’s, it’s, you have to go to college. And I’m guilty of that, too. Right. I push that on my children, if you can, you should. And I think what we’re learning right now, particularly in this chaotic world, we’re in today, but before COVID started, I think what we’re starting to learn is that that’s not the only successful path for people, you know, and yes, is that if that’s something your child can do, and achieve, sure, that’s great if it’s going to help them moving forward. And so I think that, you know, when I was teaching particularly, I would have sometimes parents who their vision for what their child was going to do after high school, whenever that ended at 18, or graduation or 21, was vastly different than their child’s skill sets, because they just had it in their head that this is, this is the only way my child can be successful. So I have to push for that. You know, and we’re guilty of that, too. But as she says that she sends her child off to a college transition program.

Dana Jonson  14:08

But do you find

14:09

that a struggle where sometimes it’s the families and the schools that maybe aren’t realistically looking at what is next, because that’s what I think was at least part of my issue as a personally as a parent was, what is next and I only know one thing, so in my life, college was the only next thing. So that’s what I’m going off of, I don’t have experience in another domain. So it’s hard for me to envision that on my child. Do you find that with your clients as well? And how do you handle that?

14:41

I get a mix of of everything. Parents who say yes, we want to continue in education until you know he or she is 21 or at which point it really is. makes sense for him to take the diploma and move on and, you know, this is what we want or this is What we feel our child needs to prepare them, and that you know them, sometimes those things that a parent wants is not necessarily what school wants or what school has to offer. And when we look at the 18 to 21 year old population, it’s small. Yeah, and if you’re a small district, and I have had several cases where the transitioning student from grade 12, into the transition program was going to constitute a transition program of one. And, you know, it’s no one’s fault, you know, any anybody’s program on and on either side of the fence here, but you really have to look at what are what’s an appropriate environment, what’s an appropriate next, next placement for an individual. And there are a lot of places that, you know, already have established programs and can offer things that you perhaps cannot offer in a day program, wherever that may be. And so,

16:09

that’s that, because how you determine that, how do you decide what the student needs, because what you said something about when kids go to post secondary, there’s still life skills that they need. And so I know there are situations where the family may not be aware that these life skills need to be addressed. And I’ve been to several conferences over the last two years, where they talk about if your child is not independently waking up, independently taking whatever medication they need, following hygiene program they need and getting themselves out the door independently. Don’t send them to college, we don’t care what their grades are, because they won’t make it. And that there are a lot of kids who are cognitively perfectly capable of college and they can’t do the they can’t get themselves out the door in the morning without the help of somebody. And sometimes that’s just because kids have been so overscheduled that their parents are micromanaging them, and they just simply haven’t had to do it. It’s not about their ability to acquire the skills they just haven’t been taught. And for some kids, it’s just really done getting those skills will be really hard. So where do you how do you figure out what it is that kid needs?

17:19

Well, you know, you have to do this or a really extensive and in depth evaluation comes into play. And from my perspective, evaluating for transition related skills is not really any different than evaluating for academic related skills. If a child is not on a reading level, and is not progressing, you know what their age and grade level, we go and we look at, we administer tests or assessment to find out, you know, where are you now? And then where are your gaps? And what do we need to teach you, we don’t just say, gee, you’re having trouble reading, come on, we’re going to let’s practice the alphabet. You’re having trouble in math, the same thing, okay. G, failing all these math tests, let’s teach him counting. You have to, you have to find out where that person is you have to measure it, and not a measurement, all you have is an opinion. And so we need to to use measures or instruments methods that will measure where a student is, and look essentially, at what’s their knowledge of and level and level of exposure or experience in the transition areas. What are their behavioral characteristics that are going to be predictive of success? In the real world? in the in the employment setting? Certainly, what are their interests and and their concerns as well as the parents? And what can you do for yourself? You know, what are your adaptive skills? Mm hmm. Adaptive skills is the strongest indicator of whether or not you’re going to be successful in any aspect of post secondary life.

Dana Jonson  19:10

And how do you assess adaptive skills? How do you do?

19:13

I mean, there are measures there are standardized assessments of adaptive skills. It’s very important from the way I see it, that we get more than one person to contribute that information. And so having it in my evaluations, I always get information from three sources. And one is the parents. One, of course, is the student. And the other is people at school who know the student well enough to speak to their strengths into their needs. You know, there’s times when I’ll get other sources of information as well. But we need those three sources of information. We have to look all around and that’s why typically, when I do evaluate a student, you know, parents call up and say, Oh, can I make an appointment? You know, where’s your office, my office Now it’s the guest room. And, you know, I have to you have to go on site, you have to see what the person is doing. How did they function, you know, you can want to have your house painted and get recommendations. And people say, Oh, yeah, it’s great painter and you call a painter and says, Yeah, oh, I’m fabulous. And then they come in your house and they make a mess. Okay, we need to find out. Sure. But then you need to actually see. Right,

20:26

right. And I find that sometimes school districts will say, well, we have Transition Program, or we need to start our transition planning. And they have different systems, but none of them are standardized tests. So so a lot of times I see there’s an interview with the student and interview with the parent. And then there’s a determination of, okay, are they going to go to college? Are they going to go to work? And All right, now we’ve made that decision. So now we’re going to work on these skills, because that’s what our transition program does. Or I have a hard time I find with students who are college bound, but me transition services, I find them to be the hardest group for me to get for. Because being college bound, I think it gives an impression are college able not college ready? That’s that’s the phrase I like, I heard that it seems, which is a fishing college program. And they said there for children who are college able not college ready. And I find that to be the hardest group for me to get services for. What do you see with that group? What are some of the main transition needs for kids who are college able, but not college ready? What makes them not college ready? If it’s not the academics,

21:32

right, so they don’t have all of the other skills that you need in order to function in that in that active academic setting? And and, you know, within that domain, or when you look at a college students schedule, yeah, it seems pretty heavy. But you’re in class, two and a half hours a week for one of your, you know, one of your courses, and you’ve got an awful lot of free time on your hand that you never had before, when you’re in, you know, a typical High School. And that free time cans, you know, be very daunting for kids, they can, they can want to overfill it with the, you know, the social immaturity, and the impulsivity, and I want to do everything I want to meet everybody. I want to have a blast. I want to make a whole lot of friends. Yeah. Or, you know, you have the ones who don’t know what to do with their free time. And that that’s a very common component to a lot of kids who have not had that social success is what do I do they have a limited, you may have a limited set of interests. That’s one of the things that I always look at when they evaluate a student is, is what do you do all day? Right? You know, if it’s just video games, sometimes it’s not even video games, well hang around, look at my phone kind of thing. So it can be difficult to fill your time, you know, how do you occupy yourself, I

23:06

have a student who likes to read a lot, one of my students, one of my children, and that’s great. And it would appear to be a good hobby, but it gets in the way of everything else. And so I think there’s this zit. Well, you know, he’s a great reader. That’s all he reads, it’s great. Must be so smart. He reads, but he does that at the exclusion of everything else. So I think that some of those skills can be hidden or the the lack of skill can be hidden, till we actually look at it and and look and see, again, with this focus on college saying, Well, if they are getting good grades, they should be able to go to college, we don’t see the problem. And it’s these daily living skills. It’s these leisure skills. When I worked in a residential population, we used to teach leisure skills to our students so that they could be bored, we would teach them how to be bored. And I’m finding even typically developing students now don’t know how to be bored.

23:57

No. And I mean, this is a if ever, there was a wake up and see what’s going on. It’s right now, in your own home for everybody. We have here in my home, we’ve been playing board games, and we’ve been doing jigsaw puzzles. I mean, these are things I grew up, and we would go away for the summer. And we didn’t have television there. Yeah, we’ve played games and when it was, you know, not good weather to be outside. But so I’ve been hauling out the old games and always had a jigsaw puzzle going and I know that some people either love them or hate them. But they’ve been pretty successful. And okay, I we’re not going to eat on this kitchen table for seven days. I don’t care, we’ll go eat somewhere else because everybody’s around the puzzle, you know, 15 minutes a day at least doing something other than, you know, looking at a phone. Yes. watching some kind of screen. You know, you have to look at how does, how does my kid function all day and I always say if you went away for 20 Ours didn’t come back. No. Would your child be able to fend for themselves?

Dana Jonson  25:05

And and what would that look like?

25:07

Right? It’s not just where they still breathe. And when you go back, I mean,

25:10

I could say one of my students, and one of my students, one of my children, I could say would be able to fend for themselves. But it wouldn’t be pretty.

Dana Jonson  25:20

You know, they’d be alive.

25:21

But the goldfish wouldn’t be. But yeah, so it’s an interesting issue. And I find that children are so over scheduled right now. Because, again, that push to go to college kids have to do so much now. I mean, there’s just this resume, they’re constantly building, which I hope under these circumstances is going to come down a little bit, because you can’t do it right now. Right? You can’t do everything. So I hope we’re all learning that it’s okay to not be on every Council and every team and every play and every everything. And like you said, we can observe our children now and see what they’re actually capable of. Maybe just we need to slow down and see what they can do. But it’s the college clip, right? That’s what we talk about, you send the kid off to college, and now nobody’s micromanaging them, no one’s taking their phone at 10, our two oldest teenagers, our goal, by the time they leave to go with whatever’s next is that they can sleep with their cell phone in their room and not stay up all night. That’s the goal in our house. It’s it’s a little one.

Dana Jonson  26:20

Oh, but someday, I won’t be there to take it away. So they need to learn that they need to sleep,

26:25

you know. So you know, you need to kind of look at what’s your kid’s history, if you’ve got a whole list of Nevers, they’ve never done this. And they’ve never done that. And a look at the amount of support that they’re getting in school. If there’s a you know, a paraprofessional and every class to kind of keep their eye on them, or to support them, how much is a curriculum being modified, versus what kind of accommodations are happening. And because if there’s an excessive amount of support, that is not going to be present in post secondary setting, then they’re not going to make it.

27:02

And, and we’re focusing a lot on college. But I also want to talk about the vocational component, because that’s a really important one too. And I find that I have trouble finding vocational transition programs that are really at a skill level that the child is at, they tend to be like, here’s our vote program. And if you need to learn how to get a job, everybody does this program.

Dana Jonson  27:23

And

27:24

some kids aren’t going to college, but they need to do more than sort paper, or, you know, whatever it is that they do in the Volk room, and that they might have actual skills that could really be used to develop something more, but but we’re not valuing them. So So what is your advice for both programs, I mean, vocational where, you know, you know, the child’s going to go, sometimes it’s in between, sometimes, you know, they’re going to go to work. And sometimes there might be a hybrid, maybe a training program, maybe not, or maybe it’s supported employment, maybe the child is going to have a job shadow with them their whole life. But, you know, to focus on that, that component and make sure we’re honing the right skills, how do we look at that for each child?

28:05

And again, you know, we’re going to come back to what are the tools that you have in your, in your program that can support all of these potential paths. And my mantra is, it doesn’t always make me popular. If you don’t have a curriculum, you don’t have a program. And I add, well, makes sense. What makes a little hairs on the back of my neck stand up is when you say, you know, tell me a little bit about your program, or, you know, the curriculum, or what does the students day look like? You know, what? Well, you know, it’s all individualized. Yes,

Dana Jonson  28:47

I hear a lot.

28:48

If we look back now was 45 plus years, when I DEA first came around students with disabilities for in very often in the smaller classroom down at the end of the hall that used to be the prop room or something and who knew what they were learning in there. And so, you know, thankfully, we’ve evolved so that all right, everybody has to have a curriculum, the off to access the same curriculum to the, to the greatest extent that you can. Well, when we look at the other end of it, the 18 to 21, there are no state standards for education. Right. You know, we do have the, you know, indicators and, you know, kind of checkpoints and different things that we have at each state level. And then we have the national transition organizations that have guidelines and have indicators that we will follow. But if you don’t have a curriculum, then how are you going to teach what you need to teach? You end up with a pile of IPS and a pile of IEP s does not a curriculum MC and certainly not every student is going to need to learn you The same kinds of skills that some students are going to have to learn. But you do the same thing with that, that you do in, in general education, and that you modify it or you adapt it, but you have to have, you have to have a skeleton, you have to have an infrastructure. Otherwise, we’re just everyday we’re going to make up and I just can’t help but wonder, okay, how, what are you highly individualized programs doing right now?

30:29

Well, and it’s funny you say that, because I always my life philosophy was, if you don’t have a plan, you can’t deviate from it. Right? You can always change your plan. But you need to be going someplace, you need to have a plan. And then you can change it if you need to. I find that with, as you said, it’s highly individualized. Well, from what, what’s your What are you starting with? Because if you don’t know what you’re starting with, and what is the purpose of this program, I think that if education could be completely highly individualized for individuals, I wouldn’t have a job. So you know, and that’s how I look at it. So, you know, sometimes they say, Well, how is this transition program able to highly individualized for every child, and no other program can explain that to me, what’s in your curriculum? What, where’s the magic? Right? So parents should be asking what’s, what’s the curriculum,

31:21

and you could go into any school anywhere in this country, I’ve done professional development in probably 25 states, and everyone you can say, all right, what are the fourth graders going to learn in the month of October in science, and I’ll tell you, but if you’re in a transition program, especially if you’re going to be in it for three years, how is what you do and learn in the first year are different from what you do and learn in the second year, and what you do and learn in the third year. And that we’re not just recycling, the same, you know, job placements experiences. I mean, that’s a difficult part of the program is finding job placements and finding opportunities that some places honestly do the absolute best job that they can do, but it’s not always enough. And another thing that comes, you know, but surfaces is okay, you know, your kids, you know, you teacher, you get to know them, you know what works. I mean, just as parents, you know, your own kids, I mean, if you’ve got a house full of kids like I do, yeah, then you know what, it’s a heck of a lot easier to pour that meltdown is to clean it up. And so we automatically, you know, just start compensating for who makes one happy? How am I going to drive from here to the grocery store without them killing each other. All right, you’re in the front seat here in the middle seat here in the backseat, you get the book, you get the puzzle, you get the, you know, this is, and so, you know, we they know how to support the kids, and you go out, and let’s do it, you know, but then I often heard, okay, they do this all year, and what’s great is fabulous, now come summer, and they go into like a program sponsored by bureau rehab services, even with some replacements that they have. And they go out into a different environment with a different person. And it’s like, they’ve never been in a job place before, because they couldn’t generalize. Because they, they haven’t been they don’t have that they’re gonna lean on there that they’ve had, that they get in, in school mouse. So you really need to kind of consider those things and, and as a public school, there’s only so much risk that you can let a kid take, you know, realistically, they’re not going to say, All right, here’s the dollar, go on the corner, get on the bus, and I’ll meet you wherever.

33:49

Well, and it’s funny because one of the things that triggered for us that we recognized that one of our children didn’t have skills we thought they had was we took a family trip, and we were in Europe, and and they wanted crepes all the time. So, you know, the crepe stands are on every corner in Paris. And, and finally I was just like, Here, take the money. And then she came back to me without change. And I said, Well, what and she didn’t understand. So I said, Go back and she got the change and come back. And I said the next time I said, so she said, Can I get a crepe? I said, Yeah, how much do you need? She had no idea she purchased maybe 10 at

Dana Jonson  34:23

this point,

34:24

didn’t know I didn’t know she needed 20 euros or two euros. And then then when we gave it to her, then we started for the rest of the trip. We were trying to kind of gauge this and we realized she can pass any standardized test that has to do with money. But she had no idea how to use it in real life. And it was very eye opening that we didn’t see that so I feel like no matter what level children are on, particularly First of all, we should be checking for all children if they’re ready for their next phase whether they have disabilities or not that being said, particularly children with you know No, I feel like we need to be doing more thorough transitional assessments of them. Because as you said, there are life skills that just don’t come out in your day to day, high school life that will, in whatever your next step is, and, and your IEP is supposed to prepare you for that next step. It’s not supposed to get you through high school, it’s supposed to prepare you for what you’re doing next.

Muncie Kardos  35:24

Absolutely.

35:25

So what do you recommend parents look for? Like, what are things that parents can say, you know, what, I need to start thinking about transition? Or, you know, I need this isn’t right. I always tell parents and like, if something doesn’t feel right, in your gut, it’s probably not right. So look harder and look deeper. But what are some transition things that parents can look for and say, you know, what, I need to be more cautious about that,

35:49

you know, you look at your child’s look at their behavior, look at their impulsivity level, if your child absolutely cannot, like, ever, ever, ever save or hold on to money, especially if they say, you know what, I want to get this such and such a thing. And but they never, they can never hold on to even a little bit to try and work towards something better look at you know, are they doing things that, you know, you’re thinking like, what were you thinking kid, you know, and they’re often more adolescence or post adolescent teenage age, you know, it, you’ve got to look at that impulsivity, because that’s going to be a huge issue, you know, when there’s no supervision, you know, are they? Are they responsible? Can they do things for themselves? Are they, you know, able to, like we said earlier, can like, just get themselves up in the morning and get out the door and go, and can they what happens if that one time, you know that you get home and you’ve lost your keys you can’t get in the house? And one of the things that I do with a number of students, when I’m doing the evaluation is I’ll do a safety assessment with them. And the you know, I asked them these, what would you do kind of questions, and there’s, I get some great answers to but and, and for other kids, I will do standardized tests of problem solving. Because He’s just a kid who can talk the talk, those are the hardest ones to tease out. Yeah. And that’s why I really prefer to go on site and see what the kids do and go out into the community with them. And go to the grocery store, you know, see how they, how they’re handling themselves? And how much can you do independently, and how much is is structured or set up or done for them, you know, right now happens when I the one example that I like to use is what happens, you know, kids going to work goes to work, what’s his lunch, you know, in a certain spot, and then works and goes to get his lunch and you get there and it’s gone. And you walk in the break room and somebody else is eating it? You know, what are those kinds of things? These are the things that happen in real life? Unfortunately, there are always going to be situations where, you know, somebody doesn’t quite follow the rules, and and a lot of our kids survive just by following the rules. Right? And that’s your plan for everything. But it’s looking at how independent is your child? Have they ever had a job before?

Dana Jonson  38:28

Kevin? Okay, right. Can they self advocate?

38:31

Do they know what they need? Yeah,

38:34

do they ask for help? I mean, I’ve seen students who know they need help, but simply won’t ask for it. For whatever reason, maybe it’s a disability related, maybe it’s trauma related. Maybe they’re just shy, but they will not ask for help. And we all need that. I think some students think being independent means doing, asking nobody for help. And I try to explain to both parents and my children that you know, being independent, is knowing where to get help. It’s knowing when to ask,

39:04

knowing what to ask because there are also are no shortage of kids will ask for help without even trying. Mm hmm.

39:11

I’ve said to my house to you know and and and and so we do that we don’t you have to ask three before me, right? Go ask three other people before you ask.

39:21

And we go to the kindergarten class, it was the end of the day, pack up teacher at a hat I was sign on that said Don’t ask me. Boy, then they’d have to go out for a video. And we

39:38

also do we have a little pad of paper on the on the fridge and it says you know, my problem is and then you have to write and and my suggested answers are and they have to come up with three answers and pros and cons before I’ll talk to them. Because I can’t I can’t moderate everything in this house. But I say that like I’ve got some great organized house and I do that every day. I don’t but it’s it’s nice. idea that exists where we live. But I do I love that idea of letting I think there’s a fear of letting kids fail to there’s a fear of letting them fall down. And I think that is prohibiting us from letting them discover their own skills and become more independent.

40:18

And it, it should be done along the way, we can’t get to the end of the academic portion. And now we’re going to look at this. And, you know, there are people who, when we value academics, so much, you know, we can really then neglect not intentionally, but just let go of the other things and those skills don’t get built. And I call it you stop whacking the kid with the academic sledgehammer, it’s probably not going to change a whole lot. And we have to develop that other side. Right? That’s where the strengths are, right? Where your kids strengths are. And for a lot of kids, school is not easy. School is hard. But now you can get out into the adult world, and you can learn and do other things that are fun, and you enjoy and you really like, and, you know, it’s knowing what are what are your child’s strengths? And how can we build upon them, and letting them really show you what they want to build upon. And I liked

41:32

that you said on their interest, too. I love that I had a student who very, very highly impaired, he wanted to be an astronaut. So you know, because why not. But what I loved about the team was he was always going to have supported employment, and probably janitorial. And so they were looking at where could he do that, that might have an affiliation to space? Where could he be that janitorial role? But could he do it in you know, a place that develops planes or rockets or whatever it is that they do or, you know, and so incorporating that interest for this student was knowing there was a connection, even though he had nothing to do with what the business was doing, knowing they had a connection to his interest, really motivated him, and really got out the best of him. And so, you know, it was looking at something that’s it was, it would have been so easy. And some people be like, Oh, isn’t that hilarious? He wants to be an astronaut, that’s never going to happen. But to dismiss completely, that

Dana Jonson  42:31

interest would have been to completely dismiss his motivation.

42:35

Absolutely. We all make our own decisions, you know, as to what we like, I’m, I’m sure that most people have had at least one experience somewhere in their lifetime, where they thought they wanted to do something and they got there. And maybe you don’t necessarily recognize it on the first day, but maybe you do it, this is just not what I thought it was going to be. And and we need to recognize those times also with our with our kids, and it was students during transition programming, and all right, get them out of there. Yes, that’s it’s totally not what you know, they thought it was and it’s not a match. And, you know,

43:17

the background, by the way, are the two puppies, we thought was a good idea to to adopt during the closures. That’s what all that background noises can see. Is there a good idea? You know, when we’re talking about these skills and their interest, I think the interest component is important, including the student and I think that there are connections that we can make between students interests, and what they will ultimately do that I think we miss that opportunity a lot. But I also think we can go the other direction with it and say, Well, you know, they want to be a writer and they can write, so that’s fine. And looking at say, well, being writer, what does that entail? You know? And does it mean you’re sitting at home writing? No, that’s not how you make a living doing it. So. So if somebody is capable of writing and writes a good story, or even a book, that doesn’t mean that they can leave and go into the world and be a writer. So I think it’s also important, sometimes we miss those small pieces where we say the kid has the skills like they were saying earlier, they have the skill to go to college, but we forgot all the social skills components. Right? We didn’t pay attention to that. So you know, to dive in a little deeper. And I think that the direction children take changes over time. I’ve had students Yeah, like where we thought, okay, absolutely this direction, then a year later, they were going in a different direction, and then we finally settled on one, but do you see that as well, that children, you know, go back and forth because I worry when we planned in seventh grade, when I hear this kid is only going to be vocational. Okay. That’s not a bad thing. But do we really know that at the age of 13,

44:57

right. You know, and Again, it’s just giving the child opportunities and seeing how they react to them, and how did they grow and develop and flourish. And, you know, if, if you’re not good at something, or let’s find something else, maybe, you know, we, there’s some things we’re not good at. But we have to get through. I mean, we’ve all taken the course or two that, you know, this, but we do and, okay, that’s not good in my life for now. And recognizing

45:31

that, like, you have to work with people you don’t like, right? You have to get used to that. And, and I hear that, but is that the environment in which we have to teach children to, you know, you know, what I’m saying, like this idea that will they have to push through because they don’t like the staff member, they’re just gonna have to learn it. That’s not real life, but but their learning skills, they’re not in the real world yet. So it’s okay to not make them suffer all the time. We want them to learn the skills, if that meant helps them learn. Okay, but if that engagement doesn’t help them learn, there’s no reason for that?

46:02

No, especially if, you know, we end up with with counterproductive behaviors and reactions that are just not going to benefit anybody. Yeah, yeah. And also to when you start talking a mentioned, we start talking before about not just doing kind of repetitive things, and yeah, and, and that’s where we always have to look at the difference between task and skill. And for students who are in you know, transition programs that are vocational in nature, often their success is judged by their ability to do a task. And most kids can learn to do a task. But a skill is being able to take the components that you need to do that task, and then to do it in any environment, and to be able to get along and to work independently. And you know, to get those those soft skills with it. And I get, you know, concerned when things are just so task focused. And using that as a way to, you know, monitor progress and, and success in tasks that, you know, there’s no shortage of kids who can learn tasks, there’s just like, there’s no shortage of kids who can learn the answers to questions. Right? Not, you’re able to apply it is a different story.

47:25

I like that task versus skills. That’s, that’s so true. So what can parents do right now, parents who are at home, who maybe they need transition planning, and we don’t know when we’re going to go back to schools yet, as we sit here today, we don’t know what that’s going to look like, we don’t know any of that. So what I’m working with my clients, as I say, Well, you know, what we have to work with is what we’re doing right now. This is right now what we know and until they tell us what will be next, this is how we have to work within this environment. So what should parents can you do services and transition skills via zoom or distance learning? Are you able to do that?

48:03

Yes, you can, you know, to some extent, again, it’s always going to depend on the level of need of a child, but there are numerous resources up on on the internet. And I have just posted some on my website for different kinds of transition related activities that can be done at home, looking at YouTube has all kinds of things up there Google, you know, transition on YouTube, and you’ll find that there are videos up there posted of like job shadowing, and different experiences and, and really looking, you know, up to different organizations, the National transition organizations, they’re really working on providing different kinds of activities and links to so many places have, as large grant projects developed a lot of transition materials and curriculums and that are available for people and, you know, this, this is going to be difficult if you don’t have a curriculum, and you don’t have a real plan. But you know, it’s not impossible. And certainly it’s a time for for students to to be able to can focus on the, the more building those more independent skills, because kids now have some more time at home, perhaps parents might have time at home. And so really focus now on those on those independent living skills,

49:31

I think it’s a good time to take note of where their children are. So they’re with you. They if you’re unable to get them to sit by themselves to do work, and that’s something you thought they could do. Instead of looking at it, maybe it’s a disciplinary issue, but if it’s not looking at it is okay, that’s a skill they don’t have. They’re not independent, they’re and taking note of that. I mean, I’ve told all my parents keep a notebook during this time. And if all you write is today was good. Letter today was bad, that’s okay. But But keep notes and, and keep track because all of that information is data and all that data will go towards planning moving forward. And I think we’re in a different forum. Now, as we were talking about before, we’re online, and there’s going to be some component of online learning moving forward. So if this isn’t working for your child, and this is the foreseeable future, we need to address that. And we need to get, you know, whether it’s 80, or whatever it is, they need to help them access their education from this component. Nice.

50:34

This is a great way to see now how how well your your child can perform in this environment, it will give you a good indication of, you know, their ability to be able to perform later on in life. And we certainly want to keep it as an age appropriate level with our expectations. But it can be a real eye opener. Yeah, buddy. Yes, absolutely.

51:00

And I also want to point out before we wrap up is that just because the laws say 14 or 16, is when we start looking at transition. That doesn’t mean you can’t look at it sooner, it means that the school district has to look at it by then. But if you have a child who requires transition training at a younger age that absolutely is appropriate, and is absolutely something you can ask for. And maybe it falls under a different category. But those things like we talked about whether it’s using the public bathroom, or independent leisure skills, or organizing your schedule, and your homework, whatever those pieces are that they need for life. We can start working on that much earlier than 16. You’re not you

51:42

don’t have to wait, no, absolutely not. And it’s never too early to start.

51:49

So if somebody needs to find you, somebody says I’m in Connecticut, I want to talk to Dr. Carlos. I know she’s going to give me a great evaluation and help me transition. I’ve heard wonderful things about her recommendations. Where do they find you?

52:02

Well, you can find me. My website is for Cardoso educational consulting at www dot lincy. Cardoso, that’s MUNEKR ddos.com.

52:17

Great. And I’m going to put that in my show notes. So that anybody who’s listening to this, you can go back to the show notes. And that site will be there with the with some of the resources that we talked about today. And just do

52:29

you know, it’s not just in Connecticut, I’m licensed in Massachusetts, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and New York.

52:40

Okay, so scratch that forget Connecticut, if you any of these places, what an interesting group of states. But I think anybody who has interest in transition issues are going to find a lot of information on your website. And even if you’re not the right person, I’m sure that you can help steer somebody in the right direction.

53:00

So you’d be happy to do that.

53:02

And I really appreciate you joining me today. Thank you. I feel like we’ve covered just about everything. Is there anything else that you think I missed? No, I

53:09

think we pretty much got it all. And I appreciate the opportunity. And I wish everybody listening to this well going forward. Hold on to your sanity. This too shall pass. Yes, absolutely.

53:24

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 you need to know what Dana Jonson or you can email me at Dana at special ed dot life. But definitely reach out with your comments and questions and I’ll see you next time here on me to know with Dana Jonson have a fabulous day