School Time 9/30 - Behavior

Yes for school time. I held up the plastic board with two pictures, a happy child and a sad child. Pretty quickly I realized we had a problem because Becca was very fascinated by the picture of the happy child, she wouldn't stop looking at it and it was making it hard for her to answer questions. First we talked a little bit about how some of the things we do make people happy and some make them sad.

Then I would hold up a picture of a child doing something, and ask if when a person does that thing it makes others feel happy or sad. The pictures were of things like a child sharing ice cream, a child falling asleep in class, a child yelling at their mother, a child running in front of a car. etc.

This was probably Becca's least-successful communication session, she wouldn't pick hardly any of the time whether the reaction was happy or sad. Either she would look back and forth between the two pictures over and over, or she would stare at the happy child and then look away. She was also pretty unhappy.

I realized after a little while that none of the pictures really applied to Becca in that they were things Becca could do. We stopped at that point and I explained it was important for her to understand that kids do good things and bad things, and that can make people happy or sad. Sometimes people do mean things or nice things to Becca and that makes her feel happy or sad. She still wasn't very attentive.

Then I started talking about things Becca could do that would make people happy or sad. Right away she perked up and smiled and paid better attention. I talked about how she can reach out and put her arm on people or hold their hand, and how that makes them feel so happy. Or that she can look in their eyes when the come visit and that makes them feel special. She looked much more attentive for that part, and stopped looking away as much. I still used the board to point out things she does that make people feel happy or sad, just pointing to them, but I didn't ask anymore questions because I thought she was probably done with questions for the day.