Hey, Live on Purpose family. I'm excited to introduce you to a member of my
family. My lovely wife Vicki will help us understand how to work with
special-needs kids. I'm excited to introduce you guys to Vicki Jenkins and
it's not a coincidence that we have the same last name. She is my lovely wife and
she's an expert in the subject matter for today. Vicki, were talking about how
to work with special-needs kids. For you who are watching this video, Vicki has
some expertise in this. She's a speech-language pathologist.
She has worked on the special education team at the school for what? A couple of
decades. So she's got some experience with this. And Vicki is, were working
with special-needs kids, there's some considerations that we should keep in
mind. What have you found to be important? So, one of the things I would tell
somebody who's working with children with special needs is you need to "adjust
your expectations." Probably, mostly in time length. So, you need to realize that
everything is going to probably take a lot longer to get. So, change your
expectations, be willing to look at progress over a long... A little longer
period of time. So, I've worked with kids from birth to three and three to 22 in
the school systems. And you want to monitor the progress over months.
Sometimes even years. There are some students that I've come back and worked
with and it's been maybe two years and then I can see how much changes happen.
But you've got to change the expectation of how fast or how much that they will...
The child will gain at the time and then just be patient in the progress. You know,
the closer we are to the situation, the harder it is to see those incremental
changes but over time, they build up. So, a parent for example who is with that
child every day is not going to see as much as someone who checks in with them
once a week or a couple of times a year. Professional, for example, on your
team might see more improvement and that perspective I think is helpful because
as we adjust our expectations, we don't expect to see the same kinds of rapid
changes that we might in a neurotypical child for example. Yes. And it's okay to
still expect those changes and to look for them. I think sometimes it helps if
you "journal". Write down what you were seeing and come back every month or so
and write down what you're seeing now and you can then look back and see the
progress. And have some patience about that. Patience in the progress. Right. That
you're seeing. Now one thing I would caution... When you are trying to work with
kids with special needs, you've got to be "ready to expect behaviors" and you know a
lot of times with neurotypical kids you're thinking, "Oh, those behaviors have come up,
my lesson plan has failed or my activity that I planned maybe this trip to the
zoo, completely fail." That is not the case with kids with special needs. To
expect the behavior and don't let that derail you from your progress or from
your goal, your end goal it's just part of the progress or a process with kids
with special needs, so... You're talking about these behaviors that tend to be
disruptive or would normally indicate that things went south. Right. That we
failed in this intervention or this activity. So, we're going to see those
just expect it. Yes. Wonderful. Now, when we have... When you're working with children
with special needs, one of the things you have to realize, as I said before, you're
going to expect behavior now. In doing that, there are going to be power
struggles. And anyone who works with any child knows there's going to be power
struggles. But with children with special needs, it seems like they're even more abundant.
I've got three rules of power struggle. We need to talk about that because that is
really an important thing with children with special needs is to get
control of the power struggle. So, let's talk about your rules for power struggle. Well, rule
number 1 with a power struggle is "avoid them". Yes. Don't get into them if
you don't have to. You have to decide in your own mind, "Am I willing to die on
this hill?" before you go marching up with your flag, right?
So, avoid them if at all possible. Rule number 2, win them. If you can't avoid
them, win them. That's going to be tough. How are you going to do that? Well that's
rule number 3, "you pick the issues". And you have to stay focused on
something that you can control. So, especially with special-needs kids. There
are some things that that you just cannot control. Like, whether they're
going to throw a tantrum for example. Exactly. They might do that. But you might be able
to control where that tantrum occurs. Okay. Or the context around which that
tantrum occurs. Yes. So, door open or door closed or being held on my lap or not.
Right. Those kinds of things you can control. Is that what you're talking
about them with the power struggles? Yeah, and I love the first rule of avoiding
him there. And I think every parent and every teacher, once you've had some
experience with kids with special needs, you'll learn to watch for their
triggers and know what to avoid and it really is worth avoiding.
And I will... I'm here to attest that child with special needs can outlast me in
almost any struggle. So, just avoid them wherever possible and if not, think it
through ahead of time and be creative in how you might be able to control and win
the power struggle. Right, by picking the issues. Right. So, Vicki in connection
with the power struggles and adjusting our expectations, you said something
earlier that I think is really important to acknowledge and that is that the
timeline is a little different for special-needs kids, typically. They're
developmentally delayed is one way that we talk about that sometimes. Meaning,
probably they'll come along but it's going to take a little longer and that
implies some practice. Right. Yeah, one of the most important things in working
with children with special needs and all people with special needs is repetition.
Sometimes it feels... There are things that you do over and over and
over again that you think has got to be getting boring. To me it's getting boring.
But I try to realize Somebody said recently, remember that
repetition is a principle of learning. And with kids with special needs
it's so important. So repetition, repetition, repetition. If you think
you've done it too many times, do it about five or six more times. And probably
getting there. So, the fact that you're getting bored
with this is completely irrelevant. Right. The child needs that repetition and this
is true of children in general. Right. But especially, special-needs children or
developmentally delayed children. We have to magnify that. So I'm glad you made
that point. Repetition. And the biggest changer for me was when I realized that
it is a very important principle of learning. So, to go along with that,
another principle of learning for children is that you want to narrate
what you want to see or what your mind. I call it Narrate-your-mind mapping and
what that means is, as you're working with a child with special needs, you have
to teach the obvious. What you think they would normally just pick up on, they're
not picking up on. So, you say, "Oh, I am looking at that sun. That sun is so big
and a so bright out there. It's going to be warm when I go outside. Huh, I don't think
I'm going to even need my coat today." You kind of narrate your whole thought
process. So, especially, especially in peer interaction or in social settings. You
want to talk about all of the things that you are naturally thinking that
just kind of come in a flash for you. You're going to narrate what you're
thinking and you just are teaching the real obvious. Wow! So, you're giving them a roadmap
for what's going on in their own mind because they may not have the same
level of metacognition or awareness of their own thinking that we would see in a
neurotypical child. So, you want to do a lot of that especially on the social
interactions. So, you teach so obvious. You know, what parents get... are just
completely blown away the fact that you have to maybe teach them that when
someone's mad their eyebrows are going to go together or your chin might go down
or you know little things like that and you can talk about, "Oh I see
in this book and this picture..." I love using pictures and books for
that is that you just talk your mind through everything you can possibly just
think out loud. And so you're teaching the real obvious. So that's an important
principle. I love that we illuminate the obvious. We talked about that on this
channel quite a bit but we do that as parents to as teachers to bring
those things more to an awareness and then there's a higher level of choice.
Vicki, as we were talking about this topic before, you mentioned something
that I thought was best to just save for the last because it's such an
important point, can you share that? We know that we're talking about children
with disabilities. One of the things we need to learn how to do is to focus on
their abilities because there are disabilities. But there are usually more
abilities than we realize. And so, just find all of the ways that you can focus
on the abilities, the way that they are typically developing and the joys that
they bring. Just like any of us, okay? I think we want to hear more what we can
do rather than what we can't do or what we're good at instead of what we're not
so good at. You know, and I think one of the things that is important to realize
is that we are more similar than we are different. That's for sure. All of us. All
of us! Even those with disabilities. We are more similar than we are different.
So, focus on the abilities and you'll find that there is all kinds of
wonderful joy that you can experience together. Some great tips
there from a beautiful lady. Reach out to some of the people in your life who have
helped you with your parenting. Share this video with them.