Unlocking the Social Potential in Autism

By Karina Poirier, Doctor of Psychology, Board Certified Behavior Analyst

Copyright © 2014 by Social Cognition Publications

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ISBN 978-0-692-02331-0

First edition published March 2014

Unlocking the Social Potential

In Autism

Karina Poirier, Psy.D, BCBA-D

Copyright © 2014 Social Cognition Publications

This book is dedicated to all children with autism.

Foreword

My son Adam was diagnosed with autism in the winter of 2006, at the ripe age of six. Of course I knew there was something a little different about him even before he was six year old. He loved cars as a little boy, as a lot of little boys do. But instead of rolling them on the floor and making “beep beep” sounds and other car noises, Adam would quietly line them up from one end of the room to the other, forming one long line of cars on the living room floor. Being a new mother, I thought this was a sure sign that he was a genius! I was concerned, however, when, at the age of four, Adam was still not speaking the way other four year olds do. When my friends with children the same age as Adam would bombard me with stories of the cute and clever things their children were saying, the feeling of uneasiness grew even stronger in the pit of my stomach.

My husband and I had Adam tested by a district speech pathologist who attributed Adam’s lack of speech to being raised in a bilingual family. We were assured that he was “a quirky kid” and that we had nothing to worry about. After two more wasted years, we had Adam tested by a psychologist who gave us the dreaded news that Adam was autistic.

The horrible guilt I felt that so much time had been wasted, spurred me into action. Adam was enrolled in speech therapy, occupational therapy, social skills classes, and anything and everything else I could find that might help him. By this time, my younger daughter, Claire, was starting to exhibit symptoms similar to Adam’s. My husband and I decided to enroll Claire in all of the classes.

In our journey towards recovery, we came across many therapists, psychologists, doctors, and other professionals. We realize now that they were not all created equal.

There were some professionals—luckily only a few—whose involvement in our children’s lives was clearly just another mediocre job to them. However, we owe an immense amount of gratitude to many others for the loving and kind ways in which they contributed to our children’s progress. Dr. Poirier, whom the children affectionately call ’Dr. Karina,’ singularly stands out in a long line of people we have met along the way. She is the person to whom we are most grateful.

We met Dr. Poirier almost three years ago when my husband and I took our daughter Claire to her to help with Claire’s extreme social difficulties. Claire hardly had any friends at school; she was extremely shy around her peers. By that time, we had tried everything—even going so far as to drive almost 100 miles at a time for treatment. We enrolled Claire in multiple social classes and social groups, but all to no effect. We had to wait about a month for a spot to open up in Dr. Poirier’s schedule, but when she finally had an available time to schedule Claire for treatment, we took it immediately. Claire made incredible progress under Dr. Poirier’s treatment plan. Claire has since graduated from Dr. Poirier’s sessions and is currently thriving in the 6th grade. She has several close friends and she frequently gets invited to play dates; and she shares stories with my husband and me about how much fun she is having at school.

Adam started seeing Dr. Poirier as well. Adam’s issues are broader and more complex than Claire’s. With Dr. Poirier’s guidance and expertise, Adam too is growing, maturing, and bridging the gap that has for long distinguished him from typical kids his age.

Adam continues to work with Dr. Poirier, and he has made remarkable progress in the two years he has been seeing her. He is learning about socially acceptable behavior, perspective taking, how to maintain conversations, how to regulate his emotions, how to be a good friend, and how to make and keep friends. Adam is currently an A student in the 7th grade, and he has several good friends at school. It is almost as if a fog has been lifted from Adam.

What makes Dr. Poirier different is that she sees each child as a whole person. In the past, I often felt that the professionals who interacted with Adam saw him only in the scope of one developmental area. The speech therapist, for instance, saw Adam only in the context of his language development, while the occupational therapist saw Adam only in the context of his motor and sensory development without concerning herself too much about his lack of social skills or lack of language, and so forth. Dr. Poirier works with the child to advance all developmental areas, such as the child’s language, emotional growth, cognitive skills, and social skills as a whole. She has a true passion for helping children and their families struggling with autism and other disabilities.

I am honored that Dr. Poirier asked me to write the foreword to her book. While I feel completely unworthy, and though my words could never do justice to emphasize the value of her work, the fact that Dr. Poirier asked me, the parent of one of her patients, to write this foreword shows the nature of her character. Certainly there are countless professionals in the field who would have loved to write the foreword for this book, but it is the mother’s view, the family’s perspective, that means the most to Dr. Poirier.

I am so excited that Dr. Poirier’s book will be available to children and families who, due to distance, finance, or other circumstances, may never have the opportunity to work with her one- on-one. They will now be able to benefit from the same treatment and therapies she uses with the children who she works with every day in her clinical practice. I applaud Dr. Poirier and the staff of her pediatric developmental clinic in Irvine, California, for the incredible work they do every day for the children and families struggling and living with autism, ADHD, and other learning differences.

Michelle Jones

Parent of a 6th and 7th grader

Section 1

Autism Demystified

Chapter 1

Autism Defined

Autism as we now know it was defined in 1943 by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner. In a study of 11 children, Kanner outlined its basic features, pointing out that most autistic children displayed neither the mental retardation nor the emotional problems common to children with other behavioral issues. Later work by Kanner and others confirmed that autism represents a unique set of behaviors requiring special attention and treatment.

Clinical diagnosis of autism became more common after 1994, with the publication of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. DSM-IV classifies autism as a group of symptoms affecting each patient in different ways, while 2013’s DSM-V refines the diagnosis. This has made it easier to recognize as autistic those who, in the past, might have been misdiagnosed.

We now know that autism arises mostly from biological errors in the formation and development of the brain. As of DSM-V, researchers have redefined several former disorders, including Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS or PDD), as aspects of a single Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Rett’s Disorder and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, once included in the autism spectrum, are now considered separate disorders.

ASD mostly affects two types of behavior: social interaction/communication, and habits. Language development delays, formerly considered a defining feature of autism, no longer apply. DSM-V also redefines ASD as a lifelong disorder beginning in childhood that cannot be cured (though it can certainly be treated successfully). In general, ASD is characterized by poor or missing social and communications skills, often accompanied by a relatively small number of repetitive behaviors. A child with moderate to severe ASD might become so fascinated by the wood grain in a tabletop that he ignores everything else, or may rock back and forth for hours at a time.

What was formerly called Asperger’s Syndrome represents the milder end of the ASD spectrum. Mental and language development are usually normal, but behavior can become odd and repetitive. Those formerly diagnosed with Autistic Disorder and PDD are more deeply affected; communication may be difficult, and some patients may have unusual behaviors and interests.

However we define ASD, the fact remains that each patient faces a unique set of challenges, and therefore requires a unique treatment plan.

Chapter 2

The Causes of Autism

The jury is still out on exactly what causes autism, but recent research has provided some valuable clues about its origins and effective treatment.

Despite a growing popular belief that autism is triggered by environmental causes, such as the preservatives used in childhood vaccines, researchers are confident that genetic factors play a much greater role. As I mentioned in the introduction, autism is a developmental disorder, meaning that it begins in the womb and progresses from there, sometimes not showing up until the child reaches a certain level of physical development.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything wrong with either parent’s genes. Sometimes things simply go wrong during conception or fetal development. For example, we know that ASD can occur when one or more genes copy themselves incorrectly. Even tiny changes can cause physical or connectivity errors in the structure of the brain. Physical errors may include defects in specific regions or in the brain cells themselves. With connectivity errors, the brain may seem perfectly formed, but something at a deep level interferes with the way the child thinks, remembers, or learns. Developmental errors can also damage a child’s sense of self-awareness and their understanding of the way the world works. Either way, the brain doesn’t function as smoothly as it should.

We don’t yet know whether we can ever completely cure autism, much less reverse existing damage. The new DSM-V diagnosis guidelines are not encouraging. However, if caught early enough, it may be possible to limit the damage caused by ASD. Both testing and an awareness of family history can sometimes lead to early diagnosis and intervention that results in more typical behavior patterns in the affected child. So far, doctors and researchers have concentrated their efforts on improving social and communication skills, which most parents view as the most important areas of intervention.

Some researchers label ASD as a “dimensional disorder” instead. If they’re right, autism can’t easily be pigeonholed, because it represents the far end of a spectrum of developmental problems that shade imperceptibly from one to the next. This may partially explain why autism can range from relatively mild to profound, depending on the child. Needless to say, this makes autism more difficult than ever to diagnose and treat, since there are no hard-and-fast rules to follow.

You already know that autism is a complex problem with no easy solutions, but you may not yet realize just how complicated it can be. In the next few chapters, we’ll cover the theories outlined here in greater detail.

Chapter 3

Biological Theories of Autism

Curiously, many autistic children have heads that are large for their age. This overgrowth usually becomes noticeable between ages 1 and 2. Despite the larger brain size that results, something seems to interfere with the normal function of an autistic child’s brain cells (neurons) and their ability to connect with each other. It may be that the neurons stay wide open to outside stimulation for much longer than they should. In most developing human brains, neurons stop accepting new connections early on in a process known as pruning. When pruning doesn’t occur, a neuron may become so flooded with information that it can’t operate properly.

Autism may also occur when the nerve bundle that connects the two halves of the brain, the corpus callosum (CC), shrinks or just doesn’t develop properly in the first place. The CC transfers information from one side of the brain to the other. You may already know that the two halves or hemispheres of the brain handle different types of input and thought processes, and that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. If the CC can’t do its job right, it’s harder for a person to learn to handle procedures, to be physically coordinated, to use both hands together, and to quickly shift attention from one thing to another.

This supports the idea that ASD is a connectivity disorder. The undersized CC literally doesn’t connect the two halves of the brain the way it should. But some researchers think that the smaller CC seen in some autism patients may not be the cause of autism, but just another symptom. That is, something we don’t yet understand may cause both a smaller corpus callosum and autistic behavior.

The part of the brain at the back of the skull is called the cerebellum. Among other things, it helps coordinate and control muscular activity. Some autistic patients show either visible or microscopic signs of damage to the cerebellum, which may account for the muscular control problems displayed in most ASD patients. In cases of surgical, infectious, and accidental damage to the cerebellum, some patients have lost executive function (the mental system that manages brain processes associated with thought), language skills, the understanding of how objects relate to each other in space, and control of emotions and behavior. Researchers are quick to point out that while the causes of these effects are not the same as those for autism, the results are similar.

In other words, in people who have suffered from physical damage to their cerebellums, the causes of autism-like behavior are definitely environmental. However, in autistic children the brain is already damaged at birth, usually as a result of genetic flaws and developmental errors in the womb.

There is a very small possibility that cerebellum-related autism might result from a child being cut off from social stimuli while very young. However, this very rarely occurs, as the infant would have to be almost completely isolated for it to become a factor.

Chapter 4

Cognitive Theories of Autism

In the last chapter, we took a look at the possibility that defects in the cerebellum (the back of the brain) can cause autism. This suggests a way forward for exploring cognitive theories about ASD: that is, theories that focus on how the brain works. Possibly the most important of these is the Theory of Mind (ToM).

Child development experts believe ToM usually develops in children between the ages of 3 and 4. This is when children start to realize that other people have their own beliefs and desires. They use this new understanding to help them interpret everyone else’s behavior. Psychologists use ToM to measure social intelligence (how well children get along with and understand others), and believe that ToM is also related to the ability to use language and communicate. It seems that anything interfering with the development of ToM can cause autism or similar disorders.

While ToM is the primary cognitive theory used to explain ASD, many researchers believe Executive Function (EF) also plays an important part. EF organizes high-level thought processes, such as working memory, multi-step tasks, planning, initiation, mental flexibility, and inhibition. When EF doesn’t work as it should, the affected person can easily become confused or overwhelmed. As a result, a person with autism may have trouble engaging in some behaviors that we usually view as basic, such as dressing, joking with other people, doing things in a specific order, or deciding whether or not to do something at all. That may be why once certain behaviors are mastered, often after a lot of hard work, the person continues to find it difficult to learn and accept new things. The person may even reject familiar tasks that are completed out of order.

Think of the television character Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, who insists, “I’m not crazy. My mother had me tested.” He’s a genius, but he’s a classic mild autism case, who has to do things the same way every day. He only eats certain foods on specific days of the week. When someone cooks him French toast for breakfast on an egg day, he remarks on how delicious it smells...and then dumps it in the trash because he has to eat eggs that day. Once he decides on a specific source for a certain type of food, he has to have his food from there from then on—to the point that when his favorite Chinese food restaurant goes out of business, his best friend buys all the remaining food cartons from the restaurant so that he can transfer food from a new restaurant into those cartons, just so that Sheldon won’t know the difference. Like real-life people with autism, Sheldon has a strong preference for sameness, rituals, and repetition.

We’re not entirely sure at this point how autism impacts specific executive functions, or vice versa. That said, both EF and ToM offer promising explanations for autistic behavior and brings us closer to understanding children with autism and the way their minds work.

Now that we’ve narrowed the field, in the next few chapters we’ll take a closer look at both ToM and EF. This will allow us new insights into the way the two mechanisms work in children with ASD—as well as a deeper understanding of the gaps in the research that need to be filled before we can develop a theory of autism that’s even closer to the real truth.

Chapter 5

Autism and Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind (ToM) is one of the top two cognitive theories that attempt to describe the way autism works, along with Executive Function (EF), which we’ll discuss in more detail in the next chapter. ToM involves a person’s ability to understand the mental states of others. Children with autism apparently have poorly developed or damaged ToM abilities. Basically, they have trouble reading the social cues that most of us recognize automatically.

This was first noticed in play behavior, because many children with ASD have trouble pretending. This doesn’t mean that they don’t have imagination; it means that their play is less spur-of- the-moment than that of most children. It’s also harder for them to shift quickly from one type of play to another, which partly explains why their play tends to be more repetitive. You might say they get stuck in a groove and can’t get out of it. This comes from their inability to accurately recognize and interpret the reactions and behavior of their playmates.

To some extent, children with ASD may also lack fully developed empathy skills—the ability to put themselves in another person’s shoes and understand how they would feel and react to ordinary circumstances. This can make it hard for them to interact with others—even with their own family members and close friends. So it’s possible that some children with ASD just can’t recognize when others have the same feelings that they do.

Furthermore, most of us have an intuitive, almost built-in knowledge of what happens or should happen in real-life events, like holidays and birthday parties for example. These event schemata, or internalized scripts, provide foundations for both social development and ToM. Children with ASD may lack the ability to create their own event schema scripts, due to “holes” in their ToM development, and may not even understand the need for them. Event schemata issues seem to vary in intensity among children with autism. Some can learn event schemata on their own, to some extent, while children with more profound autism may lack the ability altogether. It’s critical for caregivers to keep this in mind.

In general, children with autism tend to hit roadblocks when trying to understand and describe the mental states of others. This suggests that they lack the skills to predict what other people will do in most situations. This may affect their ability to communicate effectively, because the child with autism and the other participant in the conversation are approaching the conversation from different levels of understanding. Research has shown that children with autism rarely mention mental states in mother-child dialogues, and are also less likely to pay attention to the same things at the same time as those talking with them, as opposed to the behavior of children with Down Syndrome, for example.

Like individuals with ASD, deaf and blind children often fail ToM tests early in life, but these problems tend to diminish as they get older, even when such children are developmentally delayed. This suggests that acquiring ToM requires plenty of social interaction and the development of proficient language skills.

A comparison of how mothers of ToM-normal children and mothers of children diagnosed with ASD tell their children stories produced rather interesting results. Mothers of ToM-normal children tend to describe the characters’ thoughts and false beliefs as they tell the stories. Mothers of children with ASD are more likely to discuss how the characters feel rather than think, suggesting that children with ASD are focused more on feelings than on mental states. This would naturally cause children with ASD to have trouble with social cognition, the thought processes that social interaction is based on.

Chapter 6

Autism and Executive Functions

We’ve already seen how theory of mind (ToM) impacts children with autism. But because ToM issues don’t explain all autistic behavior, let’s take a closer look at the other branch of cognitive theory, Executive Function (EF, a.k.a. executive dysfunction theory).

The brain’s EF system manages certain types of thought processes and translates them into action. Studies show that EF does play a role in the developmental and symptom outcomes of children with ASD, though we don’t yet understand exactly how, and there’s still some argument about what specifically counts as an executive function. Most researchers agree that “executive” skills include planning, working memory (including learning how to do things in the right order), learning new rules for behavior (especially what is suitable and what isn’t), choosing the right action for a specific situation, and selecting which set of sensory information to pay attention to.

That last skill is akin to learning to focus on one voice in a bright, loud room with hundreds of talking people in it. If you can’t do that easily, confusion will ensue, and you may miss certain cues you definitely need for understanding what’s going on.

Clearly, such EF deficits can limit a child’s ability to engage in social behavior suitable for her age. For example, most children with ASD can learn what we expect of them, at least to some extent. But it’s obvious that ASD often damages a child’s ability to select an appropriate response for a specific situation. It can also affect a child’s ability to control and handle multiple processes at once. In other words, doing more than a few things at a time becomes difficult and confusing for children with ASD. This may be another reason why they reject change: it helps them limit the number of things they have to deal with all at once.

Keeping these things in mind, you also have to realize that the question of whether or not EF deficits directly cause autism has still not been answered to our complete satisfaction. This topic continues to be hotly debated in scientific circles. Some researchers cite EF deficits as a root cause of autism; it is the result of early failures in the working memory system handled by the front of the brain (i.e., the frontal lobes), which also handles social thought. Some experts think that EF actually controls the development of ToM.

If ToM fails, many ASD symptoms arise, damaging social thought processes and other things related to them. For example, autistic babies apparently don’t automatically learn to imitate the behavior of other people, so they can’t easily understand intentionality, the deliberate decision to take certain actions. The inability to process mental states that comes from ToM deficits just makes things worse. Not only do they not understand intentionality in themselves, but they also don’t understand it in anyone else.

We know that limited mental flexibility, a poor understanding of how things relate to each other in three-dimensional space, as well as an inability to plan (all caused by EF deficits) are closely associated with the social, cognitive, and organizational problems faced by school-aged children with autism. This is not to say that they can’t understand or learn any of these things, but their brains simply can’t handle as many of them at once as children who do not have autism. In fact, children with autism do as well as their typical peers when performing simple EF tasks with just two or three planning sequences. But somehow, at an early age in children with autism, the mechanism that controls more complex behavior is damaged, which makes it hard for them to plan what we consider to be rational actions, especially in advance.

The problem is not that children with ASD can’t learn organized behavior. They can—in small doses. Again, it boils down to dealing with too much at once. They can learn and retain (remember) minor tasks, but have more difficulty as the amount and complexity of the information grows. This forces them to repeat actions and information already learned in order to retain them; hence, the repetitive, “stereotyped” behavior people with ASD are best known for.

This EF failure makes it harder for them to recognize some types of visual information, such as complex shapes. It may also help to explain the failure to respond properly to many social situations. Most of us do this reflexively, but children with ASD apparently have to consciously choose the correct response from a number of learned options, all of which may be confusing to them.

Language development in children with autism has always been an important issue, since language contributes so much to social development. Children with autism who have language deficits tend to have the most problems with grammar and figurative language. These include idioms, metaphors, and similes, which explain things in terms of other things, create comparisons, and draw verbal pictures (for example, “pretty as a picture,” “sharp as a tack,” or “you are what you eat”).

Recent research suggests that language deficits may not be directly related to autism, since many children with autism can learn language as well as any other child. However, because of EF deficits, they can’t use language for self-regulation (self-control) the way other children can. They may not say the right things at the right times, and when they’re unsuccessful with this, they may become reluctant to speak at all.

Some researchers believe that EF deficits may not be a root cause of ASD at all. In fact, there’s existing evidence suggesting the exact opposite. It may be that having autism causes at least some EF failures. On the other hand, some research shows that EF deficits definitely affect the development of autism symptoms. As you can see, the matter is far from settled, because the data are hard to understand and sometimes do seem contradictory. The truth may be very complicated, with autism and executive function so intertwined that it’s impossible to tell which causes what, and how each affects the other.
Studies of EF within the families of children with autism indicate that EF deficits may be inherited. We know (especially from twin studies) that ASD is about 90% inheritable. Parents of children with ASD score lower on tests of generativity, which is the tendency to nurture and care for people besides oneself and family. Fathers of children with ASD are often weak in set shifting, the ability to break away from an unimportant set of activities (like watching TV) to an important or relevant one (like taking care of a child). Siblings of children with ASD are slightly hampered in both generativity and ideational fluency, the ability to organize ideas in a logical way.

The question of how and how much EF is associated with autism, and whether it causes autism at all, is up in the air. There’s too much conflicting evidence to be sure. One thing we’re certain about is that EF abilities in a child with autism are crippled when we place too many demands on her at any one time. To a certain point she can handle EF tasks just fine, but beyond that point, she becomes overwhelmed and starts behaving inappropriately.

Chapter 7

Autism and Informational Processing Theories

Most of us have no problem processing information in batches as we receive it; we automatically piece together related information. But some researchers suspect that children with autism don’t. Although they receive sight, sound, taste, hearing, and touch data quite well, they may process it one piece at a time rather than in groups. This is the basis of weak coherence theory. To put it another way, for children with autism, the different types of information don’t cohere (stick together) the way they should.

We still aren’t sure whether information processing (IP) deficits are related to cognitive deficits, especially ToM issues. They might have two separate origins, and some studies do indicate this. In the late 1980s, some researchers began to wonder if existing theories about the causes of ASD were too simple—that ASD might be caused by breakdowns in more than one mental “domain.” What if ToM and EF didn’t explain it all? So those researchers started creating new tests for detecting autism— tests that measured levels of attention, sensory perception (how we perceive our environments), motor (movement) skills, simple and complex language, simple and complex memory, reasoning, and visuospatial skills (the understanding of how objects relate to each other in three-dimensional space).

After careful analysis, the researchers developed the complex information processing model, which is useful for explaining the differences between autism, mental retardation, and certain learning disabilities. The CIP model defines autism on the basis of deficits in idea formation, complex memory, complex language, and skilled motor abilities. CIP supporters argue that while all of the above can occur in autistic people, they usually have normal attention, sensory perception, simple memory, simple language, rule-learning, and visuospatial skills.

The CIP model disproves that simple deficits are the causes of autism, even when present. People with ASD can pay attention, learn, remember, and process information—but only up to a certain point. Their problems all come from their inability to handle complex information. When a task gets too hard or has too many steps, or when there is not enough time to execute the task, they fail and go back to doing only the things they understand clearly. This explanation agrees with some aspects of EF theory, especially in terms of organization.

The researchers also found that autistic children have more sensory perceptual IP problems than autistic adults. This suggests that sensory perception gets better with age as the cortex, the outer layer of the brain, matures.

None of the theories explaining autism as the result of deficits in brain function, whether based on ToM, EF, or IP, has been accepted by everyone. But the results of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) studies, using a type of computer-aided brain scan, do support the CIP model.

Chapter 8

The Connection: Autism, ToM and EF

In previous chapters, we’ve seen how Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF) can each affect autism. We’ve also speculated that ToM and EF may be related, especially in the areas of mental flexibility, self-control, and working memory. In fact, autism research indicates that there’s a very strong link between ToM and EF, and that deficits in both work together to cause autism...or at least to make it worse.

Those of us with a working ToM use what researchers call false belief tasks to manage our daily lives. You probably realize that other people believe things about the world that are different from your own beliefs, based on their experiences. This makes their belief a false belief, at least to you. Sometimes it really is a false belief, based on things you know that they don’t. Sometimes it’s a matter of opinion. Either way, when you realize this you can step into their shoes and empathize with them.

Here’s a simple example of a false belief situation, and how children with autism often respond to it. Let’s say Jill puts a dollar in the top drawer of her desk and then leaves the room. You hide and watch to see what happens. While Jill is gone, Jack comes into the room, moves the dollar from the top drawer to the bottom drawer, and then leaves. When Jill comes back to look for her dollar, where will she look for it first?

Most children older than three or four realize that Jill will look for the dollar in the top drawer of her desk first, because that’s where she left it. She doesn’t know Jack moved it. But if you lack a Theory of Mind, you’ll expect Jill to look in the bottom drawer first, because you know that’s where it really is. You think that because you know where the dollar is, everyone must know. Autistic children almost always fall into the last group. They haven’t figured out that people can sometimes believe things that aren’t true.

One explanation of the apparent connection between ToM and EF is that ToM uses false belief tasks to guide EF. So when a child lacks ToM, EF fails because it can’t draw on a solid understanding of false belief. Other researchers believe that ToM and EF normally cooperate in such a way that one can’t work correctly if the other doesn’t. For example, inhibitory control (basically self-control over inappropriate behavior) is considered an executive function. But research suggests that before a child can develop inhibitory control, she has to develop ToM. On the other hand, some researchers believe a child must develop inhibitory control first, as a foundation for developing her ToM.

Since ToM and EF seem to depend on each other somehow, we have to evaluate them both when assessing autistic children. One research study tested the relationship between ToM, EF, and central coherence, the ability to see “the big picture” of a certain situation, in 37 non-autistic children on two occasions three years apart. The level of EF and central coherence skills clearly predicted ToM test performance, though there was no evidence of any link between EF and central coherence. Apparently, both EF and central coherence act separately to help ToM develop. In any case, the study supports the idea that helping children with autism develop their EF can reduce their autistic symptoms, promoting normal ToM development.

Other researchers tested ToM, EF, and central coherence in 60 young people, using the same tests whether a child was diagnosed as autistic or not. They predicted that all three factors would be critical in understanding the ways in which autistic children behave, and their conclusions support that prediction. Their findings also support the idea that autism really does occur along a “continuum,” or spectrum (this is one reason the DSM-V recently redefined autism as Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD). In fact, they theorize that mild autistic behavioral traits can be found in many people in the general population, not just in those diagnosed with ASD, and that those traits may have the same underlying causes as ASD.

The research discussed here supports the idea that ToM, EF, and central coherence all constantly interact with each other during the development of ToM, and that failures in any or all can contribute to the development of autism and autistic behavior. So while EF, ToM, and central coherence (as separate ideas) help us better understand the causes and symptoms of autism, none of them completely explains all the issues and symptoms of autism. It seems that a complete explanation needs to include all three at the very least.

As a test of this idea, 42 people with ASD were classified using a social communication questionnaire. They were split into three groups: Autism (10 people), PDD-NOS (14 people) and Few Autistic Traits (18 people). (At the time of the study, PDD-NOS was still recognized as a separate disorder in the autism spectrum. This is no longer the case.) Those in the Autism group did poorly on tests of mental flexibility, which was explained as showing a strong relationship between EF and ToM. These experimenters defined autistic behavior as the result of an inability to empathize with other people because of a poorly developed ToM, an idea we’re already familiar with. In order to correct the problem, they concluded, it’s necessary to correct certain EF deficits.

This agrees with slightly earlier research, in which groups of autistic and non-autistic children were compared with each other. ToM as well as specific EF tasks involving planning, set shifting, and inhibition were assessed, and a significant link was found between all EF tasks and ToM in the autism group. In the non-autism group, ToM was linked only with complex planning. Again, it seems that EF deficits interfere with ToM development rather than the other way around.

In another experiment, the researchers split a group of autistic children into three smaller groups. One group received targeted ToM training for 25 minutes a day, for 5-10 days; a second group received targeted EF training for the same length of time; and the third group received no training at all. The children in the ToM and EF training groups did much better at ToM tasks after the training, but no one improved at EF tasks, even in the EF training group. Not surprisingly, the untrained control group didn’t improve at any type of tasks.

This research suggests some interesting implications for understanding the role of ToM and EF in children with autism. The children provided with EF training showed notable improvements in ToM tasks, so EF must play an important role in the development of ToM. Even when EF skills don’t improve with EF training, ToM skills do. Training the children in set shifting (rapidly shifting attention from one set of activities to another) may have helped the most, because it gave the children a better feel of how other people might perceive a particular situation.

Having said all that, there are still some cases where autism hasn’t been linked to either EF or ToM at all. In one study, EF and ToM performance were assessed in three adult groups: one group diagnosed with ASD who had a history of criminal behavior; one group with ASD and no history of criminal behavior; and a control group with no history of criminal behavior or ASD. Adults with ASD and criminal history showed no differences from anyone else in their ability to handle EF or ToM tasks.

These results may force us to rethink our conclusions about how autism develops, at least according to the researchers who published the study. The data they report indicate that deficits in EF and ToM may not have a long-term effect on the development of autism after all. In fact, many people diagnosed with ASD also have other conditions that might help us better understand how ASD really originates and develops. For example, psychopathy (antisocial mental illness), may sometimes play a role in the development of autism, because it leads to some of the same types of disruptive behavior seen in ASD.

These findings and their underlying theories do not fit the majority of other research findings, which support the idea that EF and ToM do play a role in the development of autism. This is not to say that they’re necessarily wrong; some groups of individuals may in fact develop autism for reasons that have nothing to do with EF and ToM at all. There could be more than one pathway to autism—an important possibility we must seriously consider. Some autistic people just don’t respond to the traditional treatments that focus on the improvement of EF and ToM skills, and this idea may very well illustrate why.

Chapter 9

Autism Prognosis

Don’t give up hope if your child has been diagnosed with autism. While ASD is a lifelong disorder that cannot be cured, it can be overcome to some extent. It won’t be easy or fast, but early, consistent therapy provided by qualified professionals can result in improvements in cognitive, language, social, and adaptive skills—all the big ASD deficits.

Research shows that the best treatments are based on behavioral methodology. These methods deal directly with the behaviors arising from ASD symptoms, and may help by limiting repetitive behavior and other actions that keep an autistic child from paying full attention to everything happening around him or her. Behavioral intervention can also make it easier for autistic children to learn, because it organizes and stabilizes their world. This makes social situations more predictable, lowering the confusion that can trigger repetitive behavior.

While ASD is no longer considered curable, positive outcomes are certainly possible. An “optimal outcome” results when the child begins learning and applying life skills at or near normal in most areas. For adults treated for autism as children, optimal outcome is based on criteria like the ability to live independently, to working full-time, to marrying, and to making friends. An ASD patient may never fully recover, given the new DSM-V diagnostic criteria, but we do know that all the core symptoms of autism, especially language deficits, improve by adulthood for those who receive early intervention therapy and later educational support. In cases where ASD children do show improvement, self-care, communication, and educational achievement all improve throughout childhood. Interestingly, the higher the child’s IQ, the greater the gains.

While improvement cannot be guaranteed, certain factors make it more likely—especially the early development of communication and language ability. Effective play skills and expressive language are positive signs in young children, while in older children; the ability to communicate without words (say, through body language and expression) is a good sign, especially if it helps the child connect socially with his or her peers. Also, the younger treatment begins the better. Autistic children under the age of two when treatment begins do much better than children first treated at age four.

Even after successful treatment, high-functioning children may be socially awkward, have slightly obsessive interests, or have trouble paying attention. Some high-functioning ASD patients also have a few language deficits, resulting in story-telling difficulties and an inability to understand certain mental-state verbs—like “to guess,” “to think,” or “to know.” These problems may be completely overcome if, as young children, they experience intense behavioral therapy.

All in all, it’s clear that children with ASD can greatly benefit from early behavioral intervention.

Chapter 10

Social Deficits in Autism

As outlined in the previous chapters, we now understand that children with autism have a poorer grasp of the Theory of Mind (ToM) than most children. Why do children with autism have such difficulty with ToM and social cognition tasks? One reason may be that ToM is strongly linked to verbal ability. Some high functioning children with autism (those with good verbal ability) do eventually grasp ToM, though much later in childhood than most children—and only after having developed a much higher degree of verbal ability. Another contributing factor may involve complex information processing. As we’ve seen, children with autism often handle simple tasks as well as anyone, but they have trouble with complex tasks that require multiple steps.

Children with autism score as well as or better than typical children in attention, sensory perception, simple memory, simple language and visuospatial abilities. But children with ASD tend to focus on the details, missing “the big picture.” Another theory for their poor performance on such tasks is deficits in executive functioning (EF). EF rests on what we call higher-order cognitive functions—like organization, working memory, goal setting, and inhibitory control.

Of course, EF is itself strongly correlated with verbal ability. It’s also a complex cognitive ability. One study found that EF in four- year-olds predicted ToM at age five, but the reverse wasn’t as strongly correlated—ToM at age four had a weaker relationship with EF at age five. This suggests that EF competence gives us the skills we need to develop ToM. The poor performance on false belief tasks (like the Sally-Ann test) of the child with autism may be due to EF deficits.

If we accept that children with autism have difficulty with ToM and EF, then the question is, can these skills be learned? First, we must consider how ToM develops in typical children. Are there individual differences, and if so, what accounts for these differences? As it happens, typical children do develop ToM in different ways and at different speeds. One variable is the quantity and quality of conversation between mother and child regarding mental state, beliefs, and emotions. It seems that the more the mother talks to her child about these things, the better the child is at false belief tasks.

Maternal mind-mindedness—that is, the mother’s sensitivity to the child’s and to her own mental states (emotions and beliefs) as expressed through conversation—is also a strong predictor of future ToM performance. However, it may be that this is just one aspect of the overall attunement (harmony) between mother and child.

The presence of siblings may also make a difference; the more the merrier, as it were. Having brothers and sisters seems to accelerate the development of ToM. This makes sense, because it stands to reason that any child with siblings will spend a lot of her time dealing with them one-on-one. Therefore, children with autism benefit from sibling relationships.

But once parents have a child with autism, they may rethink how many children they’ll have. Children with ASD tend to require a lot of their parents’ resources—e.g., time, money, and emotional investment—and therefore may have fewer siblings to negotiate with. Mothers may be less likely to talk to a child with ASD about mental processes, feeling the child won’t understand—a self-fulfilling prophesy. There also may be less reinforcement from the child for such behavior. Most developing children make eye contact, smile, laugh, and in general give more reinforcing cues— that is, encouragement for the mother to continue talking to the child about mental processes. Regardless of whether they understand the talk about mental states or not, children with ASD are less likely to provide reinforcement cues.

The resulting trio of impairments—of language, imagination, and socialization—may block the child’s access to stimulating conversations about abstract concepts. Recordings of conversations in families who have a child with autism tend to bear this out.

What other evidence supports the theory that ToM can be developed? Well, we have the evidence that ToM is acquired through social and linguistic ability, and these skills can definitely be taught. We also know that high functioning children with autism can eventually grasp ToM, but later than most children (usually around age 11 or 12). Profoundly deaf children born to hearing families are also delayed in their acquisition of ToM, probably due to the lack of exposure to conversations about mental states. Deaf children born to deaf parents, or with relatives fluent in sign language, develop ToM at a normal rate. This is powerful evidence that ToM rests on social experience and language.

The pioneering researcher Lev Vygotsky claimed that social understanding comes from dialogue—both with others and with oneself. He saw children’s tendency to talk to themselves (private speech) as the way they internalized social exchanges and thus developed social cognition. He also believed social understanding was much more likely to blossom under expert guidance rather than in isolation. Conversations about mental states help children internalize concepts of self vs. others. These conversations tend to be lacking for people with ASD.

According to dialogic theory, children with autism have trouble performing false belief tasks because they don’t have enough language in their repertoire to adequately self-dialogue (another term for talking to yourself). As a matter of fact, high functioning people with ASD report far less inner speech than normal adults. Dr. Temple Grandin, a well-known writer/researcher who is herself on the autism spectrum, refers to autism as “thinking in pictures” rather than in words. This lack of internal speech, Vygotsky asserts, leads to a poor grasp of ToM.

If we accept the hypothesis that theory of mind isn’t something we’re born with (or at least, not entirely) but instead rests on the building blocks of language and social interaction, how is it possible to develop these skills in children with autism? Ultimately, the development of ToM in autism requires intervention in four areas: language development, emotional development, executive function, and social knowledge.

Section 2

The Pillars of Social Cognition

Chapter 11

Social and Emotional Development

Social and emotional development is an important aspect of overall childhood development, providing the basic skills that help us foster the relationships we need to succeed in life. Moreover, strong emotional and social skills can protect us from both stress and illness.

In spite of the importance of these skills, modern society often gets in the way of their development. In 2003 alone, U.S. Child Protective Services agencies received over 2.9 million reports of potential abuse and neglect. Only just under one-third were verified. The true figures are probably much higher, since many episodes of abuse and neglect aren’t reported. High divorce rates and the growing number of families living at or below the poverty level also threaten social and emotional development in young children.

The best way to limit these risks is to better understand the key elements of social and emotional development, the factors that contribute to its success or failure, and their importance to children during their school years.

Aspects of Social and Emotional Development

Most aspects of social and emotional development fall into five categories:

1. Sense of self: the child must gain an understanding of who she is and what sets her apart from those around her.

2. Social skills: socially accepted behaviors, including the ability to maintain eye contact, smile, and speak confidently.

3. Self-regulation: the child’s ability to adjust to new situations, to be aware of her own feelings, and to control the expression of emotions.

4. A sense of responsibility for oneself and others. Examples include following rules, respecting others, and demonstrating independence when completing tasks.

5. Prosocial behavior such as sharing, respecting the rights of others, showing empathy, and successfully solving problems.

Developmental specialists use other markers along with these five categories. For example, they often observe not just the child, but also her interaction with her parents. Affection and involvement are important areas of development, and well-child doctors may assess how the child responds to her parent’s nurturing touch, how comfortable she is with physical affection, her ability to maintain eye contact and mirror the parent’s actions, and her ability to control her emotions. The last is a key element of behavior management, which includes elements of the child’s ability to accept parental control and authority as well as the parent’s ability to provide structure and limits. This method of assessing social and emotional skills highlights the parent’s role in fostering the child’s development.

The Mother’s Role in Social and Emotional Development

Usually a child’s first and greatest interaction is with her mother, and the bond created (or not created) through such interactions can affect development. This is the main idea behind attachment theory. It’s through this bond that children learn to construct a sense of self apart from the caregiver. And the child’s behavior arises in part from her understanding of her relationship with her caregiver. When the parent-child relationship is faulty and the mother’s sensitivity to the child’s needs is poor, the child will have difficulty with social engagement and development.

Maternal depression, psychological absence, and developmental disorders can all contribute to “broken” relationships that can negatively impact social and emotional development.

The Role of Symbols and Gestures in Social and Emotional Development

Children interact with their mothers in many ways, including through the use of symbols and gestures. These are especially important for children below three, who haven’t yet learned to use language well. Things like pointing and head nodding can be their major means of communication.

Symbols (or more accurately, symbolic behaviors) are mental tools we use to derive meaning from the world around us. Children express these behaviors through words, even when they can’t fully use their words to show understanding. Research suggests that using words and gestures predicts a child’s ability to interact with other people (including her parents) later on. The child’s vocabulary, rather than the total number of words spoken, is what best matches with social engagement ability. The bigger the child’s vocabulary, the better she is at communicating. Pointing is also associated with social and emotional development. These findings suggest that children with early deficits in language or motor skills can experience delays in social and emotional development.

The Importance of Social and Emotional Development

Healthy social and emotional development also helps children succeed in school. When students feel competent, independent, and happy, they’re more likely to do well. Students with social and emotional problems, on the other hand, may have trouble developing healthy peer relationships with kids their own age, not to mention behaviors that make it easier to learn. One study, which looked at the academic achievement of children who are seriously emotionally disturbed (SED), supports this idea. Students who are SED have trouble in school and also have difficulties with self-control, self-esteem, and self-awareness. They’re often aggressive and don’t use age-appropriate social skills.

Students who are SED received lower grades than peers with any other disability and earned high school diplomas less often than everyone else. Their dropout rate was also twice as high. While these results show a link between SED and poor school performance, this doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other. Other factors can cause poor school performance.

Another study tried to better understand the impact of social and emotional development on academic success. The students involved weren’t SED, but they did struggle in school. Researchers tested how well an attempt to improve social-emotional well-being affected student performance in reading. The program promoted confidence, persistence, organization, and resilience through the use of teacher modeling, role-playing, and games, puppets, and songs.

When compared to a control group that didn’t receive the intervention, the students in the study showed clear improvements in social and emotional development. This was seen in their improved scores over the control group in assessments measuring positive self-, other-, and work-orientation and social skills. But the program did not improve overall reading scores. However, when the researchers divided the groups into low and high reading levels, they saw significant improvements for students in the low reading level group, showing that social and emotional improvements do correlate with gains in reading achievement for poor readers.

In addition to affecting school success, social and emotional development may also be tied to future psychological pathologies—essentially, mental health issues. One long-term study of 56 four-year-olds enrolled in daycare investigated whether preschoolers with social and emotional developmental problems would show depression at age eight, and if so, whether differences existed between boys and girls.

Results showed that unusual behaviors and social problems at age four did correlate with depression at age eight. Furthermore, rule-breaking behaviors like lying or cursing correlated with depression in girls—but not boys. The researchers concluded that children at risk for social isolation, or disapproval from teachers and peers due to bad behavior, are at greater risk for depression.

Clearly, healthy social and emotional development is vital to a child’s well-being. Children who develop typically in this area seem to do better in school and suffer less often from depression as they grow older. Unfortunately, factors outside a child’s control can harm her development.

While acquiring social and emotional skills is almost instinctive for typically developing people, individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulty in doing so as a function of their disorder. As a result, children with ASD often have difficulty in relating to others. They don’t know how to recognize and interpret facial expressions, body posture, and gestures; they don’t have the proper cultural knowledge to be able to respond appropriately to a situation; and they don’t know what is required of them in order to engage in a conversation. While typically developing children acquire social skills in a natural context through their interactions with peers and adults, children with ASD generally don’t. Comprehensive social skills instruction emphasizing both nonverbal and verbal communication in relevant contexts is recommended in order for these children to achieve the societal norms of social interaction.

Our behavior directly influences our social acceptance, so it makes sense that children would be attracted to socially competent children. These are ideal friends—cooperative, empathetic, and delightful to talk and play with. They possess the social skills needed to engage in positive interactions with their peers.

Recent research has found a number of links between peer acceptance and social abilities like nonverbal awareness, social meaning, social reasoning, and self-regulation. Nonverbal awareness involves figuring out other people’s emotions by looking at facial expression, tone of voice, and body language. Social meaning consists of interpreting emotions via Theory of Mind, the social meaning of language (pragmatic language), and your emotional response to others (empathy). Pragmatic language skill, which you need for normal social functioning, is the ability to understand social language and share other people’s experiences.

Socially competent behavior requires that several cognitive, behavioral, and emotional processes operate smoothly together. In a social setting or situation, a child must have the ability to (a) gather and organize information about the social environment, including the people and events involved; (b) interpret this information; (c) regulate her behavior by controlling her impulsive responses, and (d) decide how to respond to the situation.

This seemingly natural, automatic process is actually quite complicated for children with autism. The mastery of these social skills moves children toward overall social acceptance and well-being. Even if a child lacks one or more, she can attain them through social-cognitive and behavioral interventions that teach these skills.

Chapter 12

Cognitive Development

Cognitive development occurs alongside social and emotional development, and it too is an important part of the human growth process. This kind of development includes a number of features, including Executive Function (EF) and problem solving. Other aspects, like pretend play, may seem less important at first glance. The simple act of playing has certainly a huge impact on a child’s cognitive development.

Executive Function

EF includes things like working memory, attention, task switching, and self-control that help you perform tasks across a variety of situations. These tasks include manipulating information, paying attention to important tasks, ignoring unimportant information, and controlling impulsive behavior. Children start developing these skills during infancy, and continue doing so into adolescence.

Typically, EF arises during a child’s first year of life, and may appear even at five months. Evidence for this includes the object permanence test, in which babies recognize that an object removed from their line of vision hasn’t disappeared forever, but can be found by looking for it. Children who have yet to develop a sense of object permanence won’t look for the object, while those who have will try to find it by looking behind things or in other locations.

Another test that shows evidence of EF in infants is the detour test. Infants are invited to take an object placed behind a transparent screen, which requires them to “detour” or reach around the screen to get it. This ability typically develops in children 7-12 months old.

The development of EF continues into the preschool and school years. Preschoolers (age 3-5 years) improve in attention and mental coordination. They start developing inhibitory control and learn to resist impulsive behaviors, like grabbing a toy from another child or pushing another child down. Children above 6-7 years show improvement in their ability to shift attention between tasks, while those 11-12 years old develop the ability to search and organize working memory. However, the ability to switch attention quickly and accurately doesn’t fully develop until later.

During the school years, aspects of EF, including working memory and response inhibition, play a key role in school success. Research shows that attendance in a pre-Kindergarten program is associated with improved word decoding and working memory skills among Kindergarteners. This might happen because parents practice more with their pre-K children just before they start Kindergarten, or it may be due in part to their academic experiences. Response inhibition seems to develop faster during the preschool years than in Kindergarten, which may be due to greater development of the orbitofrontal region of the brain (which is associated with this function) from ages 3-4.

As a child’s brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, so does their EF. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of teens’ brains suggest that the amount of gray matter in the brain decreases, and the amount of white matter increases. This is significant because white matter is associated with better communication speed between the frontal cortex and other parts of the brain, allowing better information sharing. Children above the age of 17 show improvements in selective attention, working memory, and problem-solving abilities.

A number of environmental factors may affect this process as children and their EF skills mature. Parent-child interactions may have a positive effect on EF development. Scaffolding, which offers children opportunities to be successful at solving problems, and mind-mindedness, in which parents provide children with verbal tools to control their own behavior, also positively affect EF skills development.

The most important element of scaffolding is the actual timing of comments during the problem-solving process. This helps children practice their attention-switching skills. For example, if a parent and child are working together on a jigsaw puzzle and the child is trying to figure out which piece fits in an opening, the parent can provide comments to help her recognize that the piece needs to have a different shape. However, this works better if the parent gives the child a little time to think about the problem before trying to direct her attention to another piece.

Some factors hurt EF development: for example, a disorganized and unpredictable family life from 2-4 years; brain injury; or exposure to a mother who suffers from depression.

EF itself impacts other aspects of cognitive development. As we’ve already seen, research suggests that EF and Theory of Mind (ToM), which help us to understand what others may be thinking and feeling, may be closely linked in children with autism. This might explain why some of these children have difficulty in understanding why others don’t share their interest in certain subjects. They may simply be unable to understand that other people have different thoughts and beliefs than they do.

Problem Solving Skills

Problem solving skills also start to develop during infancy. Even children as young as six months can plan their behavior. In one research study, six-month-old infants were shown two objects, one that could be gripped by one hand and another that required both hands. Each object also made a unique sound when gripped. Researchers darkened the room and presented one of the two objects to the infant along with its sound. The infants were able to correctly choose whether the object required one or two hands, which researchers believed might be based on their memory of a mental image of the object.

In another example, infants presented with a moving object knew where their hands needed to be in order to grasp the object at a future time as it moved. While inconclusive, these two studies suggest that infants may be able to develop mental images, an important aspect of problem solving.

Children 18-24 months old can often put together a series of actions to achieve a goal, another chief aspect of problem solving. Building a tall tower with blocks may seem as though it’s just play, but toddlers have to apply different skills to accomplish it. First, they have to have a plan; they pick up blocks one after the other so they can be stacked according to some arrangement. They also need adequate motor skills to perform the task so that the blocks don’t fall. Assessing the speed at which the children grasp and stack the blocks shows they reach peak speed about a quarter of the way through the sequence for each block.

This is consistent with the actions of a person performing a task that requires great precision. You work more quickly setting up the task, and then slow down to achieve precise placement. The ability to modify motor speed, in conjunction with the different aspects of the task, suggests early problem-solving abilities.

Problem solving continues to develop throughout childhood. Three-year-olds can imagine the locations of objects in other rooms and demonstrate deductive reasoning.

The development of effective problem-solving skills early in life is an important part of development. Poor problem-solving skills are associated with greater impulsivity and decreased prosocial (good) behaviors. In addition, the failure to develop such skills early in life may correlate with violence, substance abuse, and depression later on. Children with excellent problem-solving skills tend to develop a greater sense of empathy towards others, experience less frustration, and develop more social relationships.

Complex Play

Complex play also contributes to problem-solving abilities. It helps children develop the skill of divergent thinking, in which you generate many ideas related to a topic. This type of thinking is associated with creativity. Pretend play makes divergent thinking easier, since children have to use their imaginations to invent play scenarios. They must also be able to symbolically represent objects and actions, aspects of mental development that are enhanced by planning with their peers, negotiating, problem solving, and setting goals. Research indicates that children who play with tangible objects (e.g., toys, materials, props) are able to invent more uses for them than children who don’t play with them.

Like social and emotional development, cognition develops over the course of many years, and can be helped or hindered by a variety of factors. EF, which lets children plan and control their own behaviors, is influenced by physical developments that occur in the brain, by parent-child interactions, and by the home environment. These skills, which include working memory and planning, are essential elements of development. Along with pretend play and the development of problem-solving abilities, EF skills encourage growth and independence in young children.

Chapter 13

Play Skills

Walk into any preschool or Kindergarten classroom and you’ll find plenty of toys and playthings, including dress-up costumes, blocks, puzzles, crayons, markers, and modeling clay. To some, these items may seem like a waste of time for children who are supposed to start reading before they turn five. But playing is essential to a child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development.

Play and Theory of Mind

As you may recall, Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to understand another person’s mental states and predict their behavior. We recognize three categories of mental states. Volitional mental states refer to the desire for something to happen, while perceptual mental states involve using the senses to detect information. Epistemic mental states are those related to thinking, knowing, or believing.

The ability to successfully take part in pretend play depends largely on a child’s ToM development. In fact, ToM helps children separate reality from fantasy in pretend play. The child who pretends that a box is actually a boat floating on the ocean has to be able to separate the idea of what the box is really for (storage) and its pretend representation as a boat. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to use her imagination to pretend that one object represents another, and might become confused about the box’s true nature. Kids must also understand that not everything that happens during pretend play can be applied to real life. They especially have to be able to tell the difference between real and pretend emotions.

Children who score higher on ToM tend to have richer and more active fantasy lives, and create imaginary playmates more often than children with lower scores. Also, children who are better at false belief tasks tend to take part in more pretend play. False belief tasks assess a child’s ability to realize that other people’s understanding of reality may differ from her own. Suppose a child is presented with a scenario in which a mother bakes cookies for her daughter and then puts them in the cookie jar while the daughter watches. The daughter then leaves the room to answer the phone, and while she’s gone, her two brothers come into the kitchen and eat all the cookies.

When asked where the daughter will go to look for some cookies when she comes back, a child with a better-developed ToM will say that she’ll look in the cookie jar, since that’s where she saw them last. A child lacking ToM will say that the girl should ask her brothers, because this child knows the truth and isn’t capable of perceiving the situation from any viewpoint other than her own. This ability to understand another person’s emotional state or thoughts well enough to predict behavior is an important component of playing in a pretend environment.

Play and Cognitive Development

Play is an important element of creativity, which is made up of a variety of cognitive and affective (mood-related) skills. Divergent thinking and insight are two key skills associated with creativity, and are often impacted by the act of playing. Divergent thinking refers to the ability to come up with several possible solutions to a problem. This type of thought is independent of intelligence, but involves several important skills, such as free association, scanning, and thinking in a smooth, fluid way. Play helps develop divergent thinking by encouraging symbolism, where toys and playthings stand in for other objects, and through the act of role-playing. The more detailed and involved the level of fantasy and imagination, the greater will be the development of divergent thinking.

Insight plays a central role in problem solving. In essence, it’s another aspect of the ability to look at a problem from all sides, and then think about more than one possible solution. Children allowed to play with objects before using them are more likely to successfully solve a problem than those who just look at the objects first. However, this effect seems to be partly controlled by age and task complexity, since children of 6-7 years benefit the most from prior interaction with objects.

Play and Social-Emotional Development

Emotional competence, an important aspect of emotional development, is a child’s ability to control her emotions during social interaction, in combination with an ability to identify emotional expressions and their causes in both herself and others. This is important for developing healthy relationships, and pretend play gives children the perfect chance to practice these skills. When using symbolism, children often have to change their representations to take a playmate’s desires into account. When playing together, children often discuss and negotiate rules, another important part of social development. Plus, pretend play is closely associated with emotional regulation, especially in girls. This may simply be because girls engage in pretend play more often than boys do.

That being said, pretend play isn’t the only type of play that encourages emotional and social development. Physical play, such as wrestling or “rough-and-tumble play,” gives children the chance to consider different viewpoints, to learn how to control their own emotions, and to tell the difference between real emotions and play ones.

For example, a father who playfully wrestles with his son may demonstrate pretend aggression. The son, who may be overpowered by the father, must learn to control his frustration, and must also learn that his father’s aggression or angry facial expressions exist only within the context of the play situation. Research suggests that the ability to distinguish between real and play emotions is associated with emotional competence.

Play helps children develop the skills of divergent thinking and insight, which are associated with creativity, as they use their imaginations to invent play scenarios. They must also be able to symbolically represent objects and actions, aspects of cognitive development further enhanced by planning, negotiating, problem solving, and goal setting. Research also suggests that children who play with objects (e.g., toys, materials, household items, etc.) are able to find more representational uses for them than children who don’t utilize objects during play sessions. Finally, even rough, aggressive pretend play helps a child develop by learning to control her emotions and distinguish real emotions from fake ones.

Chapter 14

Narrative Skills

Narrative skills include the ability to retell a story or express a series of thoughts. This ability depends mostly on a Theory of Mind (ToM), a developmental factor that children with autism may lack or otherwise have trouble with. Parents and educators can significantly impact a child’s narrative skills by supporting ToM development, and by assisting story retelling through the use of visual or verbal prompts.

Narrative Skills and Theory of Mind

ToM is important not only to pretend play, but also to the development of narrative skills, especially conversations between mothers and children. These conversations might include book reading or storytelling. Even conversations that may not directly involve the child, but that occur between other individuals in the child’s hearing, can aid in the development of narrative skills. Research suggests that rich and varied conversations that address mental and mood-related (affective) states tend to enhance a child’s ToM.

When “reading” wordless storybooks to children, mothers with typical children tend to spend more time talking about the thought processes and mental states of the characters than the mothers of children with autism do. Research shows that typically developing children, whose mothers clarify the characters’ cognitive states, such as by outright revealing their invisible thoughts, perform better on false belief tasks than typically developing children whose mothers only briefly mention such things.

In contrast, children with autism do better on ToM tests (including false belief tests) when their mothers address affective, rather than cognitive, aspects of the characters and story. This research suggests that typically developing children benefit more from talking about what the characters are thinking, while children with autism benefit more from narratives focusing on their mood states.

Narrative Skills and Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Development

Social, emotional, and cognitive development depend largely on language abilities. Good storytellers tend to be well-liked by their peers. Children with speech problems, on the other hand, often have a hard time communicating and may run into delays in social development. From a cognitive standpoint, language impairment related to narrative skills can predict difficulties in later school years. The ability to retell a story while looking at the pictures correlates strongly with school success, even more so than syntax (language structure) and semantic (word knowledge) skills do. Story retelling is also a stronger predictor of the need for help in future grades than memory or vocabulary.

Children with autism may have difficulty with their narrative skills, which relate to cognitive and social difficulties. After all, autism is mostly defined by deficits in social development, which often arise from language delays and communication issues. Children with ASD have trouble communicating their intentions, recognizing the intentions of other people, and taking part in conversations. Because of this, their narratives are noticeably different from those of typically developing children.

Children with ASD often have difficulty retelling a story as a meaningful series of events, due to problems with organizational skills (a cognitive ability). In addition, while many children with ASD can accurately describe the content of a story, they have trouble understanding which aspects are most important. Both issues may be related to cognitive development. Children with ASD often have problems processing certain concepts and understanding why people do certain things, though their verbal short-term memory usually isn’t affected.

Developing and Assessing Narrative Skills

Practicing story recall is a good way to help children develop narrative skills. In one study, researchers began by reading a story to the students and presenting them with pictures that illustrated the elements of the story in the order in which they occurred. The researchers also showed students cards that represented the different aspects of the story, like characters and setting, as the reader encountered those aspects. After reading the story, the researcher asked the students to choose one aspect of the story to retell by selecting a card and discussing the element identified on the card.

Next, the students played a game in which they retold the story using only the pictures or story element cards. Finally, in an attempt to generate a narrative without visual cues, the researcher prompted the students to tell a story about something similar that they had personally experienced. The results showed that the students made notable gains in the narrative retelling of stories.

The assessment of narrative skills is just as important as their development, because the effectiveness of a strategy can’t be measured without first assessing its impact on the target behavior. We can classify assessment strategies as comprehension or production. With regards to comprehension, the adult working with the child can ask questions to determine the child’s understanding of a story, ask her to act out a part of a story, or ask her to retell the story and then immediately ask comprehension questions.

The most common way of assessing narrative skills is to ask the child to retell the story or create one of her own. She may be asked to tell a story about a picture, complete a story after being given a prompt, or to create a story about an imaginary event. Research suggests that retelling a story may be a more accurate means of assessing narrative skills than creating a new story, as the existing story tends to be longer and contain more grammar elements.

The ability to tell good stories is an important skill in children, and one closely related to cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of development. For children with autism, however, this skill may be slow to develop. They may benefit from intentional descriptions of the mood-related parts of a story and its characters, rather than a discussion of the characters’ thoughts. Additionally, since children with ASD have difficulty in deciding which components of a story are most significant, they may benefit from visual cues to help them identify key story elements. Regardless of whether a child has autism or is a typically developing child, narrative skills are essential in helping the child develop cognitively, emotionally, and socially.

Chapter 15

Private Speech

As we’ve seen, there’s a complicated developmental relationship between language, thought, and behavior. So it’s not too surprising that while learning a new task, a child may use overt private speech—talking out loud to herself—to support and guide the activity; that private speech leading to internal thought, which then leads to the actual behavior required to complete the task.

Very young children tend to talk out loud to themselves, especially when playing games. Whether or not to allow this private speech in the classroom (or at least how much to do so) has been a hotly debated issue for years. Some teachers allow it, while some demand that children not speak aloud to themselves. Some teachers are afraid that private speech (also called self-speech) might lead to behavioral problems, especially for children who have already exhibited behavioral problems. But there’s some indication that self-speech assists in the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) and other developmental domains as well. For example, pioneering research reveals that verbal instructions—either from the child herself or from an adult—can help a child gain better control of her motor behavior (movement and coordination). As the child gets older, the positive effect of self-speech increases.

Other researchers have looked more closely at the differences between Kindergarteners and first graders, and how they use overt private speech as opposed to covert private speech (just moving their lips while thinking) to help control their movements and coordination. It turns out that the lip moving becomes less important as a child gets older. The meaning of the words they speak is more important. Researchers have also found that self-speech while performing a task definitely improves the performance of that task. Interestingly, if the child tells herself how to handle the task first, and then remains quiet while doing it, she doesn’t perform as well.

Self-speech also influences self-control. When children are taught to use certain verbal strategies (ways of talking to themselves, or repeating certain phrases), they’re better able to control their behavior. Specific cues on when to speak also help. When children are told to say things that make less sense in relation to a task at hand, when instructions are vague, or when they receive no instructions at all, their ability to delay and control their impulses worsens. Researchers have found that typically developing children often use private speech to control impulsive behavior. If that’s so, then it makes sense to suspect that impulsive children don’t use private speech as much to control their behavior.

Overall, the relationship between children’s private speech and task performance depends on the task, the child’s behavioral history, and the setting. But it does seem to be a natural way for children to help themselves learn and remember the sequencing of particular tasks, and also to solve some types of problems. We also know that it helps children to retain a sense of control when they can talk to themselves about the task as they are performing it, and it’s better for the private speech to be spontaneous rather than scripted. In general, then, private speech is more helpful than harmful. Encouraging private speech does tend to increase performance, while discouraging it may damage performance.

Eventually, a child no longer needs to talk to herself out loud to control her behavior; her private speech will have been internalized.

Suppose a child is learning how to ride a bike. First, someone (usually an adult) shows her how. When she succeeds in following the guidelines and decides to go alone, the child may start with a checklist of the things she needs to do before she goes on her bike ride. This is known as verbal rehearsal. She may even encourage herself as she rides, saying positive messages to her- self, like “Go faster!” or “You can do it!”

With practice, the overt private speech disappears and the transition from thought to action seems almost effortless. When the child has mastered bike riding, this checklist goes unsaid, having become second nature. So it’s clear that the content of a child’s private speech directly affects her behavior. Through self-speech, she observes, thinks, and then chooses the appropriate action. This can be very helpful, even more so for some kids than others. Children who have problems with hyperactivity and impulsiveness may not be able to think before they act. They lack the ability to stop, look, and listen before choosing a course of action.

Section 3

Teaching and Learning Approach

Chapter 16

Teaching and Learning Approach:

A Social, Behavioral, and Cognitive Framework

Recent research indicates that certain social skills and interactions learned in early childhood lay the groundwork for human cognizance, which basically boils down to how we learn and think. Social skill competency is also the key to developing positive relationships. When social skills break down, they can cause emotional distress, social isolation, and poor self-esteem—damage that can last a lifetime.

The theories that most researchers use to explain all this assume that social interactions promote cognitive growth in the brain. This is not actual physical growth. Remember, cognition involves building a mental framework for understanding how the world works; combining thoughts, experiences, and sensory input. If a child doesn’t play enough with other children, spend enough time with family, and meet enough people while she’s still very young, she may not have enough raw materials to build that framework with.

Based on what we know about children with autism, this idea seems reasonable. Therefore, creating an environment where we can improve these children’s social skills can be useful when dealing with their cognitive and behavioral deficits, which can definitely help them function effectively in society.

The teaching and learning methods advocated in this book encompass widely accepted learning and teaching theories, including Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), Social Development Theory, and Cognitive Behavior Modification (CBM). Through the application of these theories, a framework for characterizing the development of social understanding in children with autism can be established.

The Applied Behavioral Analysis approach is used to modify a child’s behavior and preserve motivation. This method increases positive behaviors, while diminishing negative behaviors. The key to helping a child modify behavior is to realize the context in which the behavior occurs (the environment) and to provide alternative behaviors that result in more functional outcomes. A chief ABA principle is that behaviors are learned. Whether they are appropriate or inappropriate, behaviors do not appear spontaneously. The whole idea of learned behaviors is not restricted to people with autism; it applies to everyone. Any behavior that receives reinforcement—that is, some kind of payoff—remains within a person’s repertoire. For example, if you were praised for your drawing ability when you were young, you most likely still enjoy drawing today. You have certain positive feelings about taking a pencil in hand and creating something you will be proud of. Because you gain satisfaction from your work and praise from others, drawing is an activity you continue to enjoy.

The Social Development Theory emphasizes the importance of social interaction in the development of cognition. Piaget, a Swiss developmental psychologist, asserted that the development of a child’s cognitive abilities occurs in the form of structural changes in the mind and brain as a child explores his environment. In Piaget’s model, a child learns chiefly through observation, trial and error, and operant conditioning (a reward reinforces an action). To Piaget, similarities between human beings arise because all individuals interpret reality with the same equipment—the human brain. While Piaget’s theory is reasonable, his view of the learning process does not apply to those who have limitations of perception, such as children with autism. These children lack the ability to interact with their environment, a starting point in Piaget’s theories.

A Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, developed a different perspective about the teaching and learning processes. He believed that the learner was not well served in exploring the environment alone. In Vygotsky’s view, experienced guides are needed to help the child reach her ultimate potential. Vygotsky implied that “higher mental functions evolve [within the child] through social interactions with more knowledgeable individuals; they are gradually internalized as the child becomes more proficient and needs less shoring and other support from the adult.” The key concept here is that all cognitive processes are rooted in social interaction. Memory, thought organization, problem-solving, goal-setting, self-monitoring, and strategic thinking cannot take place in the absence of social interaction.

In their book, Scaffolding Children’s Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education, Laura E. Berk and Adam Winsler emphasize Vygotsky’s belief that thinking is limited by the individual mind of a person. He believed that the “mind extends beyond skin” and is joined with other minds, thus implying that cognition is a social experience, and as such, is the basis for understanding and interpreting the world. It was also Vygotsky’s belief that language plays a crucial role in how the mind forms, because language is the manner in which people make connections with one another.

Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) is the gap between what a learner can do when working alone and the competency that can be achieved with help from an adult or other, more accomplished peer. In Vygotsky’s words, ZPD is “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers.”

Vygotsky recommended that parents and educators provide children with experiences that lie within the ZPD—meaning that the experiences are neither too easy nor too difficult for the learner. In the zone, the child attains achievable learning goals with the help of a sensitive adult. The sensitive adult and the child construct a kind of psychological mind meld in which cognition occurs and learning is internalized.

While Vygotsky did not keep children with autism in mind while developing his theories, his work provides the perfect foundation for understanding how to advance social cognition in autism. Vygotsky’s theories enable cognitive modification. Vygotsky provided a pathway for educators to reach and modify cognitively deficient minds.

Vygotsky believed strongly that dialogs between children and other people (especially those who are competent and articulate) help children to master all meaningful tasks; thereby resulting in higher intellectual functioning. The child is taught the cognitive processing skills necessary to accurately identify her emotional state, to effectively communicate her feelings, and to behave in an adaptive and purposeful manner.

Cognitive Behavioral Modification uses self-instruction as a way to control and mediate the child’s behavior. The CBM has a strong influence on the child’s generalization and maintenance of skills when it includes a variety of everyday activities. CBM principles are also related to Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Growth, which emphasizes that higher mental functions such as problem-solving, organization, planning, recall, social reflection, and self-regulation exist and are internalized. Researchers have learned that complex cognitive skills can be taught through two steps: a combination of observational learning and cognitive modeling, and self-instructional rehearsal. It is suggested that learning principles are taught through a child’s own experiences, which an educator can draw from, and the child can rehearse in order to learn to create her own learning rules. By teaching an impulsive child how to engage in self-learning, and by helping to develop her personal way of applying the skills, we can teach the child to understand precisely what she is required to do in order to successfully complete a task. The child also learns how to effectively control her mind and body in order to complete a task; how to rehearse problem-solving strategies; how to cope with frustration and failure; and how to reward herself for successfully completing a task.

In order to implement the most effective, comprehensive intervention, we must approach teaching from a developmental standpoint. Teaching discrete skills in isolation will not promote generalization of the skills across all environments. When we gear our approach toward a developmental perspective, our focus is on improving the functioning of the whole child, rather than improving functioning in specific domains. With all-inclusive development in mind, we teach a wide spectrum of skills that are interconnected, and likely to be generalized beyond any one single environment.

Chapter 17

A Developmental Intervention

The ultimate goal of parents, educators, and professionals who interact with children with autism is to unlock their potential to become self-reliant, fully integrated, contributing members of society. We have the power to unlock this potential by implementing an effectively structured intervention—that which takes the development of the whole child into account. It is critical that social interaction is included in the intervention in order for any learning or improvement to occur, as social interaction plays a significant role in the development of cognition. The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone. Therefore, higher cognitive functions develop as a direct result of actual relationships between individuals. The following paragraphs briefly explain the teaching elements for promoting the improvement of a child’s overall developmental functioning, centered on social cognition.

Teaching Language and Communication

Language lets you comment on any aspect of your experience, and think about the past and the future, as well as things that may be far away or imaginary. It has numerous subsystems having to do with sound, grammar, meaning, vocabulary, and knowing the right way to say something at the right time in order to accomplish a specific purpose.

Communication is a complex system that involves not just knowing language, but also being able to use it the right way. For example, the statement, “I had a great time. We should do this again sometime!” shows that the speaker has linguistic competence, because she can put together a complete statement. But it would be highly inappropriate to say this visiting someone who is a patient at the hospital. At times like these, we also see the importance of communicative competence. In other words, you have to know what to say and when to say it.

Language plays a critical role in a child’s ability to communicate, learn, and form friendships. Although language mastery is not necessarily required for communication in essence—that is, children are able to communicate their needs and wants through nonverbal means, such as gestures, facial expressions, and other body language clues—language is necessary for accurately labeling and describing objects, events, people, emotions, thoughts, and ideas.

Although the scope of this book does not include in-depth discussion about language and cognition, it is crucial to understand that effective intervention should include goals that address language and cognitive deficits.

Teaching Feelings and Emotions

Properly expressing emotions is an important way of communicating anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear, interest, dislike, and shame. For children, emotional expression has a huge influence upon their interaction with adults, as well as upon learning and development. Children with autism lack the innate ability to recognize other people’s feelings based on nonverbal clues, such as facial expression and body language.

This decoding process is an important part of building appropriate social interactions with peers. Also, the ability to identify others’ emotions allows us to relate others’ experiences with our own experiences, which ultimately leads to the development of more comprehensive perspective and empathy skills.

Teaching Organization, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

The ability to memorize and recall is a highly valued cognitive process. It’s also a basic requirement for children to fully integrate into society. Memory can be thought of as a warehouse, where knowledge, past experiences, and feelings are stored. All these contribute to behavior and development. Children learn to store and retrieve information so that they can recall names and classify systems, skills, rules, concepts, and events. Concept development takes place as children learn to group certain memories together according to common characteristics.

Problem-solving skills involve stating a problem, thinking of a possible solution, implementing that solution, and monitoring the outcome. Problems can consist of situations, puzzling objects, or social interactions. The child’s development advances as she tests ideas and builds mental frameworks in which she will add more memories throughout her life.

Teaching Play Skills

Symbolic play includes the reproduction, reconstruction, and/or acting out of real-life situations on behalf of the child. For example, this occurs when children pretend to be teachers or police officers during dramatic play. Play makes it easier to understand situations that aren’t available to the child at a given moment.

Symbolic play is thought to be goal-oriented behavior, meaning a plan or sequence of events can be carried out to achieve a particular goal. Complexity of play and complexity of thoughts develop at the same time. The use of inner language develops as children think through problems associated with play, and this is reflected by children’s use of social language during cooperative play.

Teaching Social Competence

The way a child behaves directly influences her social acceptance by her peers. It makes sense that children would be attracted to other children who are socially competent. These children make ideal friends; they are cooperative, empathetic, and fun to talk to and play with. They possess the social skills necessary for positive interactions with their peers. These skills are exactly what make socially competent children likable by other children. Children who have deficient or “broken” social skills find it challenging to make and keep friends.

Engaging in socially competent behavior requires a number of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional processes to work together. In a social setting or situation, a child must have the ability to (a) gather and organize information about the social environment, including people and events; (b) interpret this information accurately and make some logical meaning out of it; (c) self-regulate her behavior by controlling impulsive responses to it; and (d) decide how to respond appropriately to the situation. This process is inherently automatic for typical children, but incredibly complicated for children with autism.

Teaching Self-Regulation and Control

Self-regulation is your ability to organize and control your emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and responses as you pursue a goal. As we currently understand it, self-regulation consists of three “domains” of related skills: cognitive self-regulation, emotional self-regulation, and behavioral self-regulation.

Cognitive self-regulation is better known as executive function, or EF. This includes flexible goal-directed behavior, planning, organization, and working memory. Children with well-developed EF skills can control repetitive and impulsive behavior, and can also communicate effectively to achieve their goals.

Emotional self-regulation can be controlled internally (by the child) or externally (by authority figures). It involves monitoring, thinking about, and changing emotions to fit social expectations. Children use emotional self-regulation during play as they display their emotions, and also to manage those emotions during stressful situations. Children who have achieved emotional self-regulation can keep their emotional responses within a socially acceptable range.

Behavioral self-regulation refers to the ability to control your own actions for your own benefit or advantage. It includes factors like movement and speed, self-restraint, delayed gratification, decisions to do or not to do something, and a willingness to do what other people want. Most children develop these abilities as their motor skills improve and they’re able to perform more complex actions.

Section 4

Featuring the

Poirier Developmental Curriculum

Chapter 18

Language Skills

Semantics

Bird: Features

T: (Point to the bird.) This is a bird. What is it?

C: A bird.

T: The bird is an animal. What class is a bird in?

C: Animals.

T: (Point to the beak.) The bird has a beak. What is this called?

C: A beak.

T: That’s right. (Point to the feet.) The bird has two feet. Say that.

C: The bird has two feet.

T: (Point to the tail.) The bird has a tail. Say that.

C: The bird has a tail.

T: (Point to the wings.) The bird has two wings. Say that.

C: The bird has two wings.

T: (Point to the feathers.) The bird has feathers. What does it have?

C: Feathers.

T: Now I’ll mention the body parts and you point to each one? Here I go. Feet…Beak…Wings…Tail…Feathers (Watch for the child to point to each part.)

C: (Child points to each part: Feet…Beak…Wings…Tail…Feathers.)

T: This time, I’ll point to the parts of the bird, and you say the names of each body part while I point, okay? Ready? Here I go. (Point to each body part and listen for child’s response.)

C: (Child says the name of each body part as you point.)

Bird: Location

T: Very good. You know the parts of a bird. A bird can be a pet. Say that.

C: A bird can be a pet.

T: A pet bird lives in a cage. Where does a pet bird live?

C: In a cage.

T: That’s right. A pet bird lives in a cage and eats birdseed. What does a pet bird eat?

C: Birdseed.

T: Very good. A wild bird does not live in a cage. A wild bird lives in a nest. Where does a wild bird live?

C: In a nest.

T: Right. Wild birds build nests in tree branches. Where do birds build their nests?

C: In tree branches.

T: A mommy bird lays eggs in the nest. What does a mommy bird do?

C: Lays eggs in the nest.

T: Yes. Baby birds are born when they hatch from the eggs in the nest. How are baby birds born?

C: They hatch from eggs.

T: Very good. A bird uses its wings to fly. A bird can fly high in the sky. What does a bird do?

C: Flies high in the sky.

Bird: Function

T: Yes. A bird flaps its wings to fly. When the bird is up high, it looks down on the ground for food. A bird looks for worms and insects to eat. What does a bird eat?

C: Worms and insects.

T: You got it. The bird pecks at the worms and insects with its beak. What does the bird use to peck at the worms and insects?

C: Its beak.

T: A bird uses its feet to climb, run, swim, and hunt. Tell me some things birds can do with their feet.

C: Climb, run, swim, and hunt.

T: Excellent job. You have learned many things about birds.

Chapter 19

Cognitive Skills

Compare & Contrast

Bird & Airplane: Similarities

T: Let’s talk about a bird and an airplane. We can tell how they are the same. (Point to the bird) What’s this?

C: A bird.

T: Yes, it’s a bird. (Point to the airplane) And what’s this?

C: Airplane.

T: Very good. It’s an airplane. Now let’s tell how the (point to the bird) bird and the (point to the airplane) airplane are the same. (point to the bird’s wings) A bird has wings. Say that.

C: A bird has wings.

T: (Point to the airplane’s wings) An airplane has wings. Say that.

C: An airplane has wings.

T: Very good. (Point to both pairs of wings) They both have wings. Say that.

C: They both have wings.

T: Right. They both have wings. So tell me one way a bird and an airplane are the same.

C: They both have wings.

T: Excellent job! A bird and an airplane are the same because they both have wings. Let’s talk about another way a bird and an airplane are the same. (Point to the bird’s tail) A bird has a tail. Say that.

C: A bird has a tail.

T: Good. A bird has a tail. (Point to the airplane’s tail) An airplane has a tail. Say that.

C: An airplane has a tail.

T: Yes. (Point to both tails) They both have tails. Say that.

C: They both have tails.

T: Very good. They both have tails. So tell me how the bird and the airplane are the same.

C: They both have tails.

T: You’re right. A bird and an airplane are the same because they both have tails. So far we’ve learned two ways in which a bird and an airplane are the same. Do you remember the first one we talked about; the one about the wings?

C: They both have wings.

T: You remembered! Great job! How about the second one we learned; the one about the tails?

C: They both have tails.

T: Awesome! Now let’s learn one more way a bird and an airplane are the same. (Point to the flying bird) A bird can fly. Say that.

C: A bird can fly.

T: Very good. A bird can fly. (Point to the flying airplane) An airplane can fly. Say that.

C: An airplane can fly.

T: Excellent. They both fly. So tell me how the bird and the airplane are the same.

C: They both fly.

T: Yes, a bird and an airplane are the same because they both fly. Do you remember the three ways in which a bird and an airplane are the same? Tell me the first one you learned. (Hold up one finger)

C: They both have wings.

T: Yes, a bird and an airplane are the same because they both have wings. Tell me the second one you learned. (Hold up two fingers)

C: They both have tails.

T: Excellent. A bird and an airplane are the same because they both have tails. What’s the third one you learned? (Hold up three fingers)

C: They both fly.

T: Great job! A bird and an airplane are the same because they both fly. Wow, you remembered all three ways about how a bird and an airplane are the same! Good for you!

Bird & Airplane: Differences

T: Let’s talk about a bird and an airplane. We can now say they are different. (Point to the bird) What’s this?

C: A bird.

T: Yes, it’s a bird. (Point to the airplane) And what’s this?

C: Airplane.

But

T: Very good. It’s an airplane. Now let’s tell how the (point to the bird) bird and the (point to the airplane) airplane are different. (point to the bird, and then point to the dog and monkey) A bird is an animal. Say that.

C: A bird is an animal.

T: (Point to the airplane, and then point to the motorcycle and ship) An airplane is a vehicle. Say that.

C: An airplane is a vehicle.

T: Very good. (Point to each picture, and the word “but” as you say the following sentence) A bird is an animal, but an airplane is a vehicle. Let’s say that together. (Repeat the sentence with the child until the child is able to say all the words)

But

T: Excellent job! A bird and an airplane are different because a bird is an animal, and an airplane is a vehicle. Let’s talk about another way a bird and an airplane are different. (Point to the bird, and then point to the illustration of the bird’s beak) A bird has a beak. Say that.

C: A bird has a beak.

T: Good. A bird has a beak. (Point to the airplane, and then point to the illustration of the airplane’s nose) An airplane has a nose. Say that.

C: An airplane has a nose.

T: Yes. (Point to each picture, and the word “but” as you say the following sentence) A bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose. Let’s say that together. (Repeat the sentence with the child until the child is able to say all the words)

C: A bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose.

T: Very good. So tell me one way a bird and an airplane are different.

C: A bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose.

T: You’re right. A bird and an airplane are different because a bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose. So far we’ve learned two ways in which a bird and an airplane are different. Do you remember the first one we talked about; the one that compared an animal and a vehicle?

C: A bird is an animal, but an airplane is a vehicle.

T: You remembered! Great job! How about the second one we learned; the one that compared a beak and a nose?

C: A bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose.

But

T: Awesome! Now let’s learn one more way a bird and an airplane are different. (Point to the bird, and then point to the illustration of the bird’s feet) A bird has feet. Say that.

C: A bird has feet.

T: Very good. A bird has feet. (Point to the airplane, and then point to the illustration of the airplane’s wheels) An airplane has wheels. Say that.

C: An airplane has wheels.

T: Excellent. (Point to each picture, and the word “but” as you say the following sentence) A bird has feet, but an airplane has wheels. Let’s say that together. (Repeat the sentence with the child until the child is able to say all the words)

C: A bird has feet, but an airplane has wheels.

T: Very good. So tell me how the bird and the airplane are different.

C: A bird has feet, but an airplane has wheels.

T: Great job! Do you remember the three ways in which a bird and an airplane are different? Tell me the first one you learned. (Hold up one finger)

C: A bird is an animal, but an airplane is a vehicle.

T: Yes, a bird and an airplane are different because a bird is an animal, and an airplane is a vehicle. Tell me the second one you learned. (Hold up two fingers)

C: A bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose.

T: Excellent. A bird and an airplane are different because a bird has a beak, but an airplane has a nose. What’s the third one you learned? (Hold up three fingers)

C: A bird has feet, but an airplane has wheels.

T: Yes, a bird and an airplane are different because a bird has feet, but an airplane has wheels. Wow, you remembered all three ways about how a bird and a plane are different! Good for you!

Chapter 20

Play Skills

Doctor

Play Skills: Labeling

Teach the child the labels for the hospital. If some of the labels are too difficult for the child, you can make shorter names for the items. Point to a picture/figurine/prop and clearly state its label for the child. Ask the child to repeat the label back to you. After naming each person/object, have the child receptively identify each person/object label by pointing to each person/object that you name. After the child is able to receptively label all people/objects associated with the theme, have the child demonstrate expressive mastery by naming the people/objects you point to.

The following is a sample list of people/object labels for the doctor theme:

Doctor

Nurse

Stethoscope (scope)

Blood pressure cuff (cuff; pump)

Ear scope

Thermometer

Needle

Band-Aid

Hospital bed (bed)

Blanket

Scalpel

Clipboard

Waiting room (chairs)

Front desk

Medicine

Sample Interaction

T: (Point to the doctor.) This is the doctor. Who is this?

C: A doctor.

T: Right. (Point to the patient.) This is the patient. Who is this?

C: A patient.

T: Yes. (Point to the stethoscope.) The doctor uses a stethoscope. What is this called?

C: A stethoscope.

T: Now I’ll say the names of these people and objects, and you point to each one, okay? Here I go. Doctor…Patient…Stethoscope. (Watch for the child to point to each person/object.)

C: (Child points to each person/object: Doctor…Patient…Stethoscope.)

T: This time, I’ll point to each person/ object, and you say the name of each, okay? Ready? Here I go. (Point to each person/ object. Then listen for the child’s response.)

C: (Child names each object as you point.)

T: Well done!

Play Skills: Teaching Roles

Teach the child the different roles of the people associated with the play theme. Work on teaching one role at a time (e.g., what the person’s responsibilities are). Name the individuals associated with the play theme. State each individual’s responsibilities and have the child repeat your statements. After the child has been introduced to the responsibilities of each character, have the child receptively identify the character roles by pointing to the appropriate character when you state the character’s responsibilities. When the child is able to receptively identify the character roles, have the child expressively state the character roles to you while you point to each character.

The following is a sample list of roles associated with the doctor theme:

Doctor

Does examination (e.g., check heart, etc.)

Give medicine

Give shots

Provide comfort to patients in distress

Give medical advice

Perform surgery

Nurse

Greet patient

Weigh patient

Take blood pressure

Give chart to doctor

Provide comfort to patients in distress

Patient

Waits to see doctor

Explains symptoms/feelings to doctor

Sample Interaction

T: (Point to the patient.) The patient waits to see the doctor. What does the patient do?

C: Waits to see the doctor.

T: Right. (Point to the patient again.) The patient explains how he feels to the doctor. What does the patient tell the doctor about?

C: How he feels.

T: Yes. (Point to the doctor.) The doctor checks the patient. Say that.

C: The doctor checks the patient.

T: The doctor gives medicine to the patient. What does the doctor do?

C: Gives medicine to the patient.

T: Now I’ll say what each person does, and you point to the right person, okay? Here I go. Touch the person who waits to see the doctor... Touch the person who checks the patient…Touch the person who explains what’s wrong to the doctor…Touch the person who gives medicine to the patient. (Watch for the child to point to each person.)

C: (Child points to each person: Patient…Doctor…Patient…Doctor.)

T: This time, I’ll point to each person, and you tell me what each person does, okay? Ready? Here I go. (Point to each person. Then listen for the child’s response.)

C: (Child states each character’s role as you point.)

Play Skills: Imitating Actions

Take a few of the props at a time and demonstrate the actions for each. Work on having the child imitate the actions with the props. If the child has difficulty imitating the actions, apply hand-over-hand prompts to help the child engage in the action.

The following is a sample list of actions performed by each character, and the appropriate use of props associated with the doctor theme:

Use stethoscope to check heart

Look in ears with ear scope

Check temperature

Check blood pressure

Give patient a shot

Put Band-Aid on

Give medicine

Cut with scalpel

Sample Interaction

The following is a sample interaction instructing the child to use a blood pressure cuff:

T: The doctor puts the blood pressure cuff onto the patient’s arm. I’m going to put this cuff around your arm just as a doctor does. (Demonstrate wrapping the cuff around the child’s arm.) Then the doctor squeezes the pump a few times. (Demonstrate squeezing the pump on the blood pressure cuff.) Now you try it on my arm.

C: (The child wraps the cuff incorrectly.)

T: You’re having some trouble wrapping the cuff. Let me help you wrap it around this stuffed animal, and then you can try wrapping it around me again. (Take the child’s hands in yours and help him to manipulate the cuff to wrap around the stuffed animal.) Now try to wrap it around my arm again.

C: (The child successfully wraps the cuff around your arm.)

T: Now squeeze the pump a few times to make the dial move around.

C: (The child pumps the blood pressure cuff correctly.)

T: You did it! You know how to check a patient’s blood pressure with the blood pressure cuff.

Play Skils: Assume Roles

Select a role to have the child practice assuming the characteristics, mannerisms, and language associated with that role. Encourage the child to remain in character for the duration of the interaction. After the child has mastered one character role, have the child practice another character role, until the child has mastered the characteristics, mannerisms, and language associated with all the characters involved in the play theme.

Here are some examples of characteristics, mannerisms, and language associated with the characters of the doctor theme:

Doctor

Eye contact with patient

Asking about the patient’s symptoms

Touching patient’s neck, stomach, etc.

Nurse

Calling patient to examination room

Asking patient about symptoms

Weighing patient, checking height

Recording data onto chart

Telling patient the doctor will arrive shortly

Patient

Describing ailments to nurse and doctor

Coughing

Touching painful areas of body

Asking if a shot will hurt

Sample Interaction

The following is a sample interaction that demonstrates teaching a child the characteristics, mannerisms, and language associated with the role of doctor:

T: A doctor’s job is to find out what is wrong with the patient. You’re going to be the doctor, so you have to talk to the patient and ask questions to find out what’s wrong. A doctor might say to a patient, “How do you feel?” I’ll pretend to be the patient. Look in my eyes and ask me how I feel.

C: How do you feel?

T: I feel really yucky, Doctor. Ask me, “Where does it hurt?”

C: Where does it hurt?

T: You’re doing very well. You asked me how I felt and where I hurt. It hurts right here in my throat (Touch your throat.) Ask me, “How long has that hurt?”

C: (Child faces away from you.)

T: You’re the doctor examining the patient; you need to look at the patient, doctor. Go ahead and ask me, “How long has that hurt?”

C: (Child faces you.) How long has that hurt?

T: Thanks for looking at me with caring eyes, doctor. My throat’s been hurting for two days.

Play Skills: Possible Scenarios

Introduce scenarios typically associated with the play theme to the child. Allow the child to become familiar with one scenario before introducing another scenario. Introduce the scenarios in logical order of sequence to increase the likelihood of retention. Present the child with a colored tile or a picture that represents each scene. Make a sentence that describes the scene and point to the corresponding tile or picture. Have the child repeat the sentence. Present another tile/image to introduce the next scene in the sequence and have the child repeat your sentence again. Go back to the first tile/picture and review all scenes before each new scene is introduced. The goal here is to help the child know all the scenes associated with the play theme, so that the child is able to list all the scenes in logical order by first referring to tiles/pictures as visual prompts, and subsequently without the use of any prompts at all.

The following are sample scenes associated with a doctor play theme.

Patient calls to make an appointment.

Patient drives to doctor’s office, signs in at the desk, and waits in waiting room to see doctor.

Nurse weighs patient, checks height, checks blood pressure, and writes down all data on clipboard for doctor.

Nurse gives doctor patient’s file.

Doctor asks patient what the problem seems to be.

Doctor asks other follow-up questions.

Doctor examines patient’s health (e.g., heart beat, temperature, ears, throat, etc.).

Doctor examines patient’s concern (e.g., if patient has a tummy ache, doctor will check).

Doctor gives medical advice to patient (e.g., need to get a shot, write prescription, give pills, etc.).

Patient thanks doctor and leaves the doctor’s office.

Sample Interaction

The following is a sample interaction that demonstrates how to introduce the first few scenes associated with the doctor theme:

T: When the patient feels sick, he has to call the doctor’s office and make an appointment. Say that. “Call and make an appointment.” (Set down a tile and point to it as you say the sentence.)

C: Call and make an appointment.

T: Very good. Let’s say it one more time. (Point to the tile again.) First, call and make an appointment. Say it.

C: Call and make an appointment.

T: Good. (Set down a different colored tile and point to it.) Next, go to the doctor’s office. Say that.

C: Go to the doctor’s office.

T: Okay. I’ll say it again. (Point to the second tile again.) Go to the doctor’s office. You say it.

C: Go to the doctor’s office.

T: Let’s remember what’s happening so far. (Point to the first tile.) Call and make an appointment. (Point to the second tile.) Go to the doctor’s office. Say it with me. (Point to the first tile.) Call and make an appointment.

C: Call and make an appointment.

T: (Point to the second tile.) Go to the doctor’s office.

C: Go to the doctor’s office.

T: Very good. Here’s the next part. (Set down a third tile of a different color.) Sign in at the desk. Say that.

C: Sign in at the desk.

Play Skills: Targeted Language Objectives

Be sure to include categories, pronouns, and asking/answering questions while interacting with the child. These concepts enrich the child’s learning experience by modeling and applying language concepts that people incorporate in daily communication.

The following are sample language concepts to incorporate while engaging in the doctor play theme:

Categories: tools (doctor tools), places (doctor’s office), people (nurse, doctor, patient)

Pronouns: I, you/your (“I am going to check your ears.” “I will give you a shot.”)

Answering and Asking questions: what, when, where, why, how (e.g., “What did you have to eat?” “What are you going to do?” “When did that happen?” “When will I feel better?” “Where does it hurt?” “Why do I need a shot?” “How long has it hurt?”)

Play Skills: Role Play (Social Interaction)

Emphasize social interaction to encourage natural and functional language by incorporating the following:

- Use language appropriate for the child. Promote understanding by asking both receptive and expressive questions (show me, tell me)

- Make predictions (what might happen next?)

- Engage in social interaction (ask the child to discuss own experience when applicable)

- Role-play when the child is able to label materials, actions, and roles

- Recall the experience (ask the child to describe the experience) – this can be done via recording or in writing.

Sample Interaction

The following is a sample interaction that illustrates how all the above tasks are applied to engage a child in a role play activity rich in language.

T: I want to show you how to play “doctor.” I’ll be the doctor first, and you can be the patient. The doctor is the person who helps make people feel better. Who’s the doctor?

C: A person who helps make people feel better.

T: Yes. And the patient is a person who is feeling sick. Who’s the patient?

C: A person who is feeling sick.

T: Great! So do you remember what the sick person has to do first?

C: Call and make an appointment.

T: Yes. Very good. You’re the patient, so go ahead and call the doctor’s office and make an appointment. Pick up that play phone over there and show me how you call the doctor’s office.

C: (The child picks up the phone and pushes on the numbers.) Ring Ring.

T: Doctor’s office, how may I help you? (Whisper “I need to make an appointment” to the child.)

C: I need to make an appointment.

T: Okay, the doctor is available at 2 p.m. What is your name?

C: (The child says his name.)

T: Great, _____. Your appointment is today at 2 p.m. See you then.

C: Bye bye.

T: Good job! You called the doctor’s office and made your appointment! What did you just do?

C: Called the doctor’s office and made an appointment.

T: (Pretend to tap on your wristwatch.) It’s almost time for your appointment. What do you have to do now?

C: Go to the doctor’s office.

T: That’s right. I’ll be the nurse at the doctor’s office. You’re still the patient, okay? Sign your name in at the desk.

C: (Child pretends to sign on a clipboard.)

T: (Call the child’s name loudly.) Come and follow me. I’ll check your height and weight…

Play Skills: Data Collection

GOALS

Key

(I) Independent

(P) Prompted

Chapter 21

Narrative Skills

Narrative Ability

Basic Skills

Story Telling

Prerequisite

The child is able to describe presented pictorial scenes in complete sentences.

Purpose

In this lesson, the child will learn the basic elements of a story and create an original narrative that includes all the story components.

Objectives

The child will engage in the systematic process of constructing an original narrative based on the presented pictorial scenes.

The child will include all basic story elements, such as characters, setting, characters’ actions, elicited emotions, dialogue, problem, solution, and causal relationships in the narrative.

Procedure

(1) Introduce the lesson by telling the child that you will be creating a story based on pictures. Explain that you will create one piece of the story at a time, learning about the specific information that must be included in each piece. When all the pieces are put together, the story will be complete because it will have a beginning, middle, and an end.

(2) Explain that a story must begin with background information. The background information is what happened to start the action; it gives meaning to the story because it’s the problem that starts the story. The background information should include the setting—the time and place where the story takes place. Present the first pictorial scene to the child. Have the child describe the scene and identify the background information.

The following statements are an example of background information:

- It is a sunny Saturday morning.

- The boy is in his bedroom.

- He is looking out the window.

- He looks at a tree in his backyard and has an idea.

- He wants to build a tree house.

If the child does not provide relevant information, guide the child in the right direction by asking questions that will retrieve the specific information. The following prompting questions are an example:

- What time of day do you think it is?

- What is the weather like?

- Look at what’s inside the boy’s thought bubble. What do you think the boy wants to do?

- How did the boy get his idea?

Guide the child to identify the problem in the story. For example:

- The boy does not know how to build a tree house.

- The boy cannot build the tree house by himself.

- The boy needs help to build the tree house.

(3) Explain that every story has characters. The characters are the people involved in the story that do the actions. People who listen to the story will want to know who the characters are and what they’re like. Guide the child to identify the characters in the story. Characters can include the boy and his father. Encourage the child to name the characters. For example, the boy in the story might be named Daniel. Guide the child to describe the characters by telling something about them. You can describe the character’s age, appearance, and personality traits. Again, prompt the child by asking questions that will elicit relevant information. Consider the following examples of prompting questions:

- How old do you think the boy is? Does he appear older or younger than you?

- Can you tell me something about how the boy looks, or maybe what he’s wearing?

- What do you think Daniel is like? Let’s talk about some things he likes to do.

- What kind of a person is Daniel? Can we tell some things about him that will help us get to know him better?

The following sentences are examples of a character description:

- Daniel is an 8 year old boy.

- He always wears his favorite blue hat.

- Daniel loves to draw, ride his bike, and climb trees.

- He is kind, funny, and creative.

(4) Explain that the problem in the story must be resolved. This creates the plot in which events occur in logical order. Also, the story must provide the reasons for actions, events, or emotions. These reasons demonstrate the causal relationships between the events in the story. For example:

- Daniel cannot build the tree house on his own because he does not know how to build it. He must ask his father for help.

- Daniel will need his father’s help because building a tree house. The lifting of heavy materials and the use of tools can be dangerous without adult supervision.

If the child is not able to draw any correlations between events, guide the child to recognize causal relationships by asking a “why” question, such as “Why do you think Daniel can’t build the tree house by himself?” or “Why should Daniel’s father help Daniel to use the tools?”

(5) Explain that when people create stories, they say what the characters are thinking about and what the characters are planning to do. Show the child the second scene and guide the child to identify what the boy must do in order to build a tree house. For example:

- Daniel will draw a picture of how he wants the tree house to look.

- Daniel will ask his father to help him build a tree house.

- Daniel and his father must gather all the materials they will need for building the tree house.

(6) Explain that when people create stories, they tell how things happen over time. They tell about what happens first, then next, and next, and they use words like “then,” “after,” and “finally” in order to tell what happens in the correct order. Present the child with the subsequent picture scenes and guide the child to describe the characters’ actions and the events that occurred in logical order. Incorporate the characters’ feelings in some sentences, and explain to the child that telling about the characters’ feelings helps people to understand the characters better. Consider the following sentences as an example:

Picture 3: When his father agreed to help Daniel build the tree house, Daniel was so excited. He could not wait to begin. Daniel and his father went to the lumber store to buy wood for the tree house.

Picture 4: After taking home the wood, Daniel and his father went to their garage to get the tools they would need for building the tree house. Daniel put a hammer, nails, a saw, and some of the wood into a wagon.

Picture 5: Daniel pulled the wagon into his backyard while his father carried a tall ladder. Then, Daniel’s father carried the rest of the wood to the backyard.

Picture 6: Daniel’s father used the saw to cut the wood into smaller pieces. The saw was sharp, and Daniel’s father was worried that Daniel might get hurt, so he did not want Daniel to use the saw.

(7) Explain that when people create stories, they usually tell what the characters say to each other. Talking words between characters is called “dialogue,” and including dialogue makes the story more interesting to listen to because it tells exactly what the characters are thinking and feeling through their own words. Guide the child to insert dialogue sentences within the events.

One example of where dialogue can be inserted is in Picture 7, where Daniel’s father might be telling Daniel, “I’m going to climb up and build the floor of the tree house. After I build the floor, you can climb up here with me.” Daniel’s father carried a hammer as he climbed the ladder. Daniel handed his father a piece of wood to nail to the tree.

Proceed with the events in logical order. Continue to present the pictures and guide the child to create sentences that narrate a story. The following sentences are examples of subsequent scenes.

Picture 7 continued: Daniel continued to hand pieces of wood to his father. His father nailed down each board with the hammer to make the floor of the tree house. After his father had finished building the floor of the tree house, Daniel climbed up the ladder and stood on the tree house floor. “The floor is finished,” Daniel announced. “Now we’re going to build the walls,” explained Daniel’s father.

Picture 8: Daniel and his father carried the rest of the wood up the ladder and set it down on the tree house floor. Daniel’s father showed Daniel how to nail the boards together to make the walls. “This is fun!” shouted Daniel, as he hammered the nails into the wood. After Daniel and his father finished building the tree house walls, it was time to build the roof. “I’m going to have to climb up very high in order to build the roof, Daniel. I’ll do it myself because it’s dangerous,” said Daniel’s father. “Okay,” said Daniel. “I’m tired anyway. I will sit on the grass and rest.” Daniel’s father continued to work until he finished building the roof.

Picture 9: When Daniel’s father built the roof, the tree house was almost finished. “Let’s paint the tree house, so that it looks just like your drawing,” Daniel’s father said. Daniel got a bucket of yellow paint and two paintbrushes from the garage and carried them back to the tree house. Daniel and his father painted the walls and the roof of the tree house together. “Wow!” shouted Daniel. “The tree house looks awesome!” Daniel’s father said, “I’m so happy you like it, Daniel. You worked really hard today.” Daniel said, “Thanks for helping me build the tree house, Dad.”

(8) Explain that the story must include some kind of ending, so that the story can come to a close. Guide the child to create an ending that tells how the characters feel at the end of the story. The following sentences are an example of how to end this story.

Picture 10: Daniel wanted to invite some of his friends over to play in his new tree house. He called some of his friends on the telephone and asked them to come over. When Daniel’s friends arrived at his house, Daniel was so excited to show off his new tree house. “Come on, guys!” he shouted. “Climb up and go inside!” Daniel and his friends went inside the tree house and played a board game. Daniel loved his new tree house.

Have the child retell the story. Allow the use of the pictures. The child should include all story events in correct order without omitting any story elements (characters, setting, characters’ actions, elicited emotions, dialogue, problem, solution, and causal relationships). Encourage the child to include as many details from the story as possible. After the child retells the story, identify any relevant information the child did not include. If the child excluded a significant amount of relevant information during his/her story retelling, give the child another opportunity to retell the story.

Application

Have the child present his/her original narrative to another child or another adult. Allow the use of the pictures.

Narrative Ability

Advanced Skills

Story Telling

Purpose

In this lesson, the child will explore a variety of concepts within a presented story, compare and relate the story to his or her own personal experiences, and construct an original narrative that incorporates concepts parallel to those from the presented story.

Objectives

The child will be able to identify and describe social skills social situations from the presented story (e.g., listening, sharing, cooperation, etc.).

The child will provide a personal example from his/her own experience with the discussed concept (e.g., situation when he/she cooperated with a peer or an adult).

The child will be able to engage in the systematic process of constructing an original personal narrative that relates the child’s personal experiences with the discussed concepts from the presented narrative. The original narrative will include all basic story elements (characters, setting, events in logical sequence, conflict, and resolution).

Procedure

(1) Introduce the lesson by telling the child that you will be reading a story and comparing the story to the child’s experiences. Read the following story aloud and present the child with the accompanying illustration.

Daniel sprang out of bed this morning feeling very excited. Today was the day he and his father had planned to build a tree house!

After changing into jeans and a T-shirt, Daniel was ready to begin building. He walked into his backyard and saw that his father had already organized the planks of wood and tools they would be using.

“Here,” Daniel’s father said. “Take this hammer up into the tree, and nail down the first plank of wood where the floor is going to be.”

Daniel carefully climbed to the top of the tree. He sat on a thick, sturdy branch and used the hammer to nail a plank to the thick branch.

“Great job!” Daniel’s father shouted. “We’ll have to make the floor first, so that we have something to stand on while we build the rest of the tree house.”

Daniel and his father worked on the tree house all day, taking short breaks to sip some lemonade and cool off. By six o’clock in the evening, the tree house was finished.

Exhausted, Daniel sat in the grass, admiring the final product of their hard work while his father cooked hot dogs on the grill. When the hot dogs were ready, Daniel and his father climbed into the tree house to eat their dinner and watch the sun set.

(2) Discuss relevant concepts from the story with the child. The following concepts are suggested:

Emotion (Identify Daniel’s emotion; discuss what elicited the emotion)

Discuss cooperation (Could Daniel have built the tree house by himself? Why did his dad have to help?)

Discuss planning (How did Daniel ask permission to build a tree house? Where did they decide to build the tree house? How did they prepare to build the tree house? What materials and tools did they need?)

Discuss the procedure (Who did what? What did they have to do first, next, etc.? How did they get the materials to the building location?)

Discuss safety (How did they stay safe while building the tree house?)

Discuss potential problems (What were some problems that they might have encountered? How were those problems resolved?)

(3) Have the child retell the story to include all story events in correct order. Encourage the child to include as many details from the story as possible. After the child retells the story, identify any relevant information the child did not include. If the child excluded a significant amount of relevant information during his/her story retelling, give the child another opportunity to retell the story.

(4) Help the child relate to the story by identifying a situation in which he/she personally experienced the concepts discussed earlier (parallel emotion, cooperation, building/making something, etc.). Identify all the similarities between the presented story and the child’s experience.

(5) Guide the child through the process of constructing an original narrative about his/her experience that includes the previously discussed concepts from the presented story. Use a graphic organizer to write down the story elements (characters, setting, characters’ actions, elicited emotions, dialogue, conflict, and resolution). Use index cards to write down the story events—be sure to include all story elements when writing the events. Place the index cards in order, so that the story sequence has a beginning, middle, and ending.

Assess

Have the child present his/her original narrative to you. Allow the use of the index cards.

Sample Narrative - Basic

Last week I made a spaceship.

I drew a picture of it first.

Then I got some things to build with. I got a box, some stickers,straws, and construction paper.

My mom helped me cut windows in the box. I used safety scissors to cut shapes out of the construction paper. I put stickers on the box.

I couldn’t glue the straws to the box. They kept falling off, so I had to use tape instead.

I painted the spaceship, and then it was all done.

My mom said my spaceship looked cool. I told her I was going to pretend to be an astronaut and fly to the moon. I went into my spaceship, and my mom did a countdown. I played with my spaceship all day. I was so happy and excited that I had my own spaceship.

Sample Narrative - Advanced

Last week, I read a book about astronauts and got the idea to build a spaceship. My mom thought it was a great idea. I was so excited to build my spaceship and pretend to be an astronaut flying to the moon.

My mom helped me collect some things from around my house to use for the spaceship. We collected a big box, paper towel tubes,bottle caps, and buttons. We sat in the family room to plan out how we would build the spaceship.

First, I drew a picture of how I wanted the spaceship to look. I wanted the rocket ship to have windows, but it wasn’t safe for me to cut them out myself. My mom cut holes in the box for me with a sharp blade.

Chapter 22

Feeling Matters

Feeling Matters

Happy: Early Learner

Introduction

Social skills affect a child’s ability to develop lasting friendships and achieve academic success. A child who is socially adept can respond to others’ emotions appropriately, maintain conversation,and resolve conflicts fairly and respectfully—invaluable skills for leading a well-adjusted, productive life. The social emotional skills addressed in this lesson develop the very basic skill of identifying others’ emotions based on verbal and nonverbal clues.

Objective

The child will recognize and interpret verbal and nonverbal clues within a presented social situation in order to figure out how the character in the situation feels.

Materials

Collect and present the child with pictures depicting a variety of facial expressions from the internet, magazines and children’s literature.

Create cut-outs of facial body parts (eyes, nose, eyebrows; mouth) depicting various facial expressions (mouth frowning,clenched mouth, eyebrows down, eyes wide open, teary eyes, nose wrinkled, etc.). Prepare a template in the shape of a head.

Play-Doh

Lesson

Define what it means to feel happy (you are happy when everything is good; you’re having fun; and nothing is wrong).

Demonstrate a happy facial expression. Explain that people always smile when they’re happy, but different people may smile in different ways. Some people may smile with their teeth showing, while others smile with their mouth closed.Some people may have an open mouth smile while they’re laughing.

Present a photo of a happy facial expression. Point out the facial features for a happy emotion (eye’s are small, eyebrows might be slightly raised, cheeks are up, mouth is smiling).

Explain that some people show happiness by saying things out loud, such as “Cool!” “Awesome!” etc.

Guide the child to build a happy facial expression using the template and the facial body parts cut-outs.

Read the concept story and engage in story discussion.

Apply the concept to personal experiences to bridge the child’s learning from the lesson to real life situations.

Review the concept one more time by summarizing the information for the child. Ask the child to explain the concept back to you.

Encourage the child to model the facial expression and describe the verbal and nonverbal clues for the emotion.

Concept Story and Discussion

Read the concept story to the child, and engage in dialogue to solidify the child’s understanding of verbal and nonverbal clues associated with the situation in the story.

Bobby and his mother are feeding ducks at the park. While watching the ducks eat the tiny pieces of bread that he throws into the pond, Bobby begins to feel hungry. An ice cream truck pulls up to the park, and Bobby hears the music coming from the truck. Bobby asks his mother if he can have an ice cream cone.

Bobby and his mother walk to the ice cream truck to get an ice cream cone. He gets two scoops of his favorite flavors.

“Thanks for the ice cream, Mom!” Bobby says.

“You’re welcome!” said Bobby’s mother.

Point to the illustration, and ask questions to guide the child to identify the facial and body clues for Bobby’s feeling. For example:

How do you think Bobby feels? How can we tell by looking at his face? (His eyebrows are up, his mouth is smiling).

How can we tell Bobby is happy by looking at his body? (He’s facing his mother and looking at her.)

What did Bobby say that gives us a clue that he’s feeling happy? (He said, “Thanks for the ice cream, Mom!”)

What made Bobby feel happy? (He got an ice cream cone.)

Have the child duplicate Bobby’s happy facial expression by carving it into a ball of Play-Doh.

Real Life Examples

Ask questions that assist the child in recognizing angry situations that have occurred in real life to members of the immediate and extended family. This will allow the child to make connections between the content and the child’s personal experiences.

What makes you feel happy?

Tell about a time you’ve seen your parent look happy.

Do you remember that day (name) was happy about (situation)?

How did we know he/she was happy? What did his/her face look like?

Feeling Matters

Happy: Advanced Learner

Purpose

A happy feeling is a something we can all enjoy. Let’s talk about what it means to feel happy; and what our faces and bodies do when we’re happy, and name some situations that can cause us to feel happy.

Facial Expression and Body Language

We feel happy when we like what is happening. We’re having fun,and that makes us smile. Feeling happy is a good feeling; it doesn’t bother our bodies.

You can tell when a person is happy by looking at his face. His mouth will be smiling, his cheeks will be up, and his eyes will be small. We may even jump up and down when we’re feeling happy.

Story Illustration

Chandler was celebrating his tenth birthday at a restaurant with his family. After the family finished their meals, the waiter brought out an ice cream sundae just for Chandler. Everyone sang and cheered as Chandler blew out the candle on the sundae and made a birthday wish. Chandler was happy to get a special ice cream treat for his birthday.

Story Discussion

Why was Chandler happy?

Chandler was happy because he really liked what was happening to him. It was his birthday, and he was happy to be celebrating his birthday with his family. He was also happy about getting an ice cream sundae and hearing everyone sing “Happy Birthday” to him.

How did Chandler show his happy feeling?

Chandler showed his happy feeling with a big smile.

Personal Examples and Application

When I feel happy, I smile. I felt happy when I went to the candy store with my mom. I smiled wide as I looked around at all the candies I could choose from. I enjoyed picking out the candies I wanted, and I couldn’t wait to go home and eat them. It felt good to be happy; I had fun, and nothing was wrong.

How about you? Tell me something that makes you happy. How do you show others that you’re happy?

Feeling Matters

Angry

Purpose

Everybody gets angry sometimes. It’s okay to feel angry, but it’s not okay to behave inappropriately because we are angry. Let’s talk about what anger means, what our faces and bodies do when we’re getting angry, and some situations that can cause us to feel angry.

Facial Expression and Body Language

We get a strong angry feeling when someone or something causes us to be in a lot of pain or trouble. Feeling angry bothers our body;angry feelings can sometimes even make us feel sick.

You can tell when a person is angry by looking at his face and body, and also by listening to his voice. When we feel angry, our eyebrows squeeze together and go down. Our mouth can be tight or open, or we might even clench our jaw and grind our teeth. Sometimes we cross our arms or make fists with our hands when we’re angry. We might even squeeze our face with our hands or stomp our feet. Some people are very quiet when they’re angry, while others might raise their voices or scream. Angry feelings can be expressed in many different ways.

Story Illustration

Logan was sitting at a dining table and eating a cookie. As his older sister walked by, she grabbed the cookie out of his hand and popped it into her mouth.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” shouted Logan. He could not believe his sister snatched the cookie from him and ate it.

Story Discussion

What made Logan so angry?

Logan was angry with his sister for grabbing the cookie out of his hand and eating it.

How did Logan show his angry feeling?

He showed his angry feeling by shouting at his sister. We can also see the anger in his face. His eyebrows are down, and his mouth is tight. Logan’s cheeks are also a little red.

Logan had a right to feel angry because all feelings are appropriate, but did he behave appropriately?

No. Of course it was okay for Logan to have felt angry, but it was not okay for him to behave inappropriately. He shouldn’t have shouted at his sister.

Personal Examples and Application

I feel angry if someone grabs something from my hands. I don’t like it when people don’t ask me politely for something. When something is grabbed from my hands, I usually shout, “Hey!” My eyebrows go down, and my cheeks turn red. I clench my jaw and make fists with my hands.

How about you? Tell me something that makes you angry. How do your face and body show others that you’re angry?

Feeling Matters

Disappointed

Purpose

Sometimes, things don’t happen the way we expect them to. We might feel disappointed about things that don’t work out the way we want them to. Let’s talk about what it means to feel disappointed; and what our faces and bodies do when we’re disappointed, and name some situations that can cause us to feel disappointed.

Facial Expression and Body Language

We feel disappointed when we do not get what we want, or when something does not happen the way we had expected it to.If something we had hoped for or wished for does not happen, it makes us feel disappointed.

You can tell when a person is disappointed because she will be frowning; her eyebrows will be up and squished together; and she will be looking down. Sometimes people cry when they’re feeling disappointed.

Story Illustration

Jackson is at the mall with his father. In the middle of the mall,Jackson sees a vending machine filled with candy. He looks at the variety of candies in the machine and notices that the machine has his favorite candy in it—strawberry Gummy Blasts!

Jackson pulls on his father’s arm. “Can I please buy a candy?” he asks. His father nods and hands him a dollar.

Jackson pushes the dollar into the snack machine. Then he pushes the button for the strawberry Gummy Blasts. The bag of candy falls through a tube and lands in a slot at the bottom of the machine, where Jackson picks it up.

He tears open the candy wrapper and pours the candy into his hand so fast that he didn’t notice the machine dispensed the wrong candy. The picture on the machine showed strawberry-flavored gummy blasts, not the apple-flavored gummy blasts that are in the palm of Jackson’s hand. Jackson doesn’t like apple-flavored candies. He frowns in disappointment and throws the bag of apple Gummy Blasts away.

Story Discussion

Jackson feels disappointed because he had hoped to get strawberry-flavored Gummy Blasts, but he didn’t get what he wanted. He got apple-flavored Gummy Blasts instead of the strawberry-flavored Gummy Blasts he had expected.

We can see that Jackson is disappointed because he is frowning while he looks at the green, apple-flavored Gummy Blasts in his hand. Jackson’s eyebrows are also raised and squeezed together.

Personal Examples and Application

I felt disappointed when I got to the front of the line to ride my favorite roller coaster and the ride attendant announced that the ride broke down. I was expecting to ride the ride, but it broke down, so I didn’t get to ride it. I frowned and looked down at the ground while I exited the line.

How about you? Tell me about a time when you felt disappointed. How did your face and body show that you were disappointed?

Feeling Matters

Frustrated

Purpose

Have you ever been unable to do something no matter how hard you’ve tried? Let’s talk about what it means to feel frustrated; and what our faces and bodies do when we’re frustrated, and name some situations that can cause us to feel frustrated.

Facial Expression and Body Language

We feel frustrated when we’re having a hard time to do something, if something disappoints or puzzles us, or if we really don’t like the way things are happening but can’t change them. We can also feel frustrated with other people if we don’t like something that another person is saying or doing.

A frustrated feeling is a kind of angry feeling, so we look angry when we’re feeling frustrated. Our faces and bodies do many of the same things that we do when they’re angry. We might put our eyebrows down, tighten our mouth, or shout. We might stomp our feet, make fists, or cross our arms. Our faces might get red and warm, and we may feel our heart beating faster.

Story Illustration

Alyssa wanted to make cookies for her family. She rolled out a big sheet of cookie dough and used cookie cutters to cut out shapes. She placed the cookie shapes in the oven and waited for them to bake. When the cookies were ready, Alyssa took them out of the oven and used a spatula to carefully remove the cookies from the pan. Unfortunately, as she set the cookies down on a plate to serve them, they crumbled to pieces. Alyssa was frustrated because she spent so much time and effort making the cookies only to have them break before serving them.

Story Discussion

What was Alyssa frustrated about?

Alyssa felt frustrated because she had tried so hard to make cookies to serve to her family, but all the cookies crumbled to pieces. She wanted the cookies to come out perfectly, but they broke apart on the plate. She was frustrated that no matter how much effort she put into making the cookies, they were still ruined.

How can we tell that Alyssa feels frustrated?

We can tell that Alyssa feels frustrated because her eyebrows are down; she’s clenching her teeth; and she’s pounding her fist on the counter.

Personal Examples and Application

I remember feeling frustrated when I was trying to learn how to surf. No matter how much I tried to stand up on the surfboard, I always lost my balance and fell off. After two hours of trying and not riding even one wave successfully, I splashed my fist in the water and screamed. My eyebrows were down, and my mouth and eyes were wide open. I was so frustrated with myself that I gave up for the rest of the day.

How about you? Tell me about a time when you felt frustrated. What frustrated you? How did your face and body show that you felt frustrated?

Feeling Matters

Kind

Purpose

If you have been friendly to another person, you have shown your kindness. Let’s talk about what it means to feel kind; what our faces and bodies do when we’re feeling kind, and name some examples of situations in which we can show our kindness.

Facial Expression and Body Language

When we feel kind, we want to say or do something nice or helpful for others. We feel kind when we’re saying and doing friendly things.

Saying and doing nice things feels good—that’s why people usually smile when they’re feeling kind. If we’re saying something kind to someone else, we look at their eyes while we’re talking, so the person will know that we really mean what we’re saying.

Story Illustration

Jason was leaving the department store when he saw a woman walking toward the exit with several shopping bags in her hands.It seemed the woman was going to have trouble opening the door.Jason felt like doing something nice for the woman; he chose to be kind by holding the door open for her.

Story Discussion

What did Jason do that was kind?

Jason opened the door for a woman who was carrying shopping bags in her hands.

Why do you think Jason wanted to be kind to the woman?

When Jason saw the woman carrying lots of shopping bags, he knew she would have a hard time opening the door by herself.Jason wanted to help the woman.

Explain how Jason must have felt after he helped the woman.

It made Jason feel good inside to do something kind for the woman, even though the woman was a stranger. He also knew that his kindness made the woman feel good, too.

How can we tell from the picture that Jason is being kind?

Jason is smiling at the woman as he holds the door open for her. He’s looking at her eyes and swinging his arm through the doorway, to gesture that she can pass through.

Personal Examples and Application

When I saw my friend strike out at bat during his baseball game,I gave him a kind compliment. I told my friend that even though he didn’t hit the ball, he had a great swing, and that he would hit a home run someday with a swing that perfect. I felt kind when I said the friendly words to my friend. I looked at his eyes and patted his back while I talked to him. I also smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.

How about you? Tell me about a time you felt kind. What did you say or do that was kind? How did your face and body show your kind feeling?

Feeling Matters

Lonely

Purpose

We may want to be alone sometimes, but there may also be times when we want to spend time with others. Let’s talk about what it means to feel lonely; and what our faces and bodies do when we’re feeling lonely, and name some examples of situations that may cause us to feel lonely.

Facial Expression and Body Language

When we’re by ourselves and we want to be with others, we’re feeling lonely. Sometimes we might like being alone, but other times, we want to be with friends or family. We might get lonely when we miss somebody who is away, or when we are by ourselves and would rather be with people.

Lonely feelings bother our bodies. A lonely feeling is an unhappy feeling about being alone—that’s why people usually frown or cry when they feel lonely. We might even look down at the ground when we feel lonely.

Story Illustration

As he sat at the dinner table, Gary noticed that he was eating much slower than everyone else in his family. The rest of his family finished eating after twenty minutes, and Gary was left alone at the table to finish his dinner. Gary felt lonely because nobody was sitting with him while he ate.

Story Discussion

What made Gary feel lonely?

When everyone in Gary’s family finished eating their dinner and left the table, Gary was left alone to finish his dinner. He didn’t want to eat by himself; he wished that his family didn’t leave the table until everyone was finished.

How can we tell that Gary feels lonely?

Gary is sitting by himself, and he’s frowning and looking down at his plate.

Personal Examples and Application

I felt lonely when my cousin went home after having stayed at my house for a few days during her spring break vacation. I was used to having her in my house all day—from morning until night. We spent every minute together, and we had so much fun. When she had to go back to her house, I knew I would really miss her. I was lonely because she wasn’t there to talk to me or play with me. I remember sitting at the table at dinner time and wishing she was sitting in the chair next to me. I frowned and sighed deeply, wondering when I’d see her next. I looked down at my plate and stared at my food—I wasn’t very hungry. I was really lonely.

How about you? Tell me about a time you felt lonely. What was happening that made you feel lonely? How did your face and body show that you felt lonely?

Feeling Matters: Data Collection

Key

(I) Independent

(P) Prompted

(M) Labels verbal, nonverbal clues and emotion

Chapter 23

Friendship Skills

Friendship Skills

Social Etiquette

Purpose

Manners show people that we know how to behave appropriately no matter where we are or who we’re with. Let’s talk about what manners are; and why it’s important to use manners, and name some examples of how to show good manners wherever we go.

Concept Definition

Manners are appropriate and correct ways to behave. We can show good manners with polite words and actions. When we use our manners, we behave well, and people think we’re nice. It shows others that we care about the way we behave and that we want to be polite. We should try and use our manners wherever we go, no matter who we’re with.

Concept Expression

Some great manners words to use are “please” and “thank you.” We use “please” when we’re asking for permission, asking for an object, or asking someone to do something for us. We say “thank you” when someone gives us something, or when someone does something nice for us, and we respond with “you’re welcome” when someone thanks us.

It’s important to think about how our words and actions affect other people. We should always say “excuse me” or “I’m sorry” if we do something that bothers people. We should always greet people the first time we see them. We should compliment others when we see people doing a great job. We can also use kind words when we say no to someone (“no, thank you”).

We can show manners with our behavior, such as sitting and eating appropriately during mealtimes, looking at people who are speaking to us, and sharing with others.

Story Illustration

Lenny is sitting in a café, waiting for his lunch to be delivered to his table. A few moments later, a waitress holding a tray arrives at Lenny’s table.

“Excuse me. I’m going to reach in front of you to put this down,”said the waitress as she sets down a cup of soup and a sandwich in front of Lenny. She also refills his glass of ice water.

“Thank you so much!” Lenny says to the waitress.

“You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure,” the waitress says to Lenny.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asks.

“Actually yes,” says Lenny. “May I please have some crackers for my soup?”

“Absolutely! I’ll be right back,” says the waitress.

Story Discussion

What are the ways in which the waitress showed her manners in the story?

The waitress in the story worked hard to make sure Lenny had everything he needs for his lunch. She brought his food and said “excuse me” when she had to reach in front of him. She didn’t want to bother him, so she used polite words to warn him of what she was about to do. The waitress also used polite words (“you’re welcome” and “my pleasure”) after Lenny thanked her.

What are the ways in which Lenny showed his manners in the story?

Lenny used polite words to thank the waitress for her excellent service. Lenny had great manners when he asked the waitress for some crackers. He said, “May I” and “please.”

Why did Lenny and the waitress use manners?

Lenny and the waitress chose to use manners because using manners shows politeness and respect. They know how to behave appropriately when they are outside of their homes and interacting with other people.

Personal Examples and Application

I always say please when I am asking for permission. I can say, “May I please have the last cookie?” or “Can you please hand me the gluestick?” I know that if I use polite words, people will probably give me permission or help me if I need it. When others give me something or do nice things for me, I always thank them so they know how much I appreciate their kindness. If I get thanked for being helpful, Ialways say, “You’re welcome.”

When I’m going to do something that I know might bother people,I say “excuse me” first. For example, when I have to reach in front of somebody to get something, I excuse myself. I also excuse myself when I sneeze or cough loudly. I always make sure to apologize to someone if I cause an accident. I can say “I’m sorry” to show the person that I didn’t mean to hurt him or her, and that I didn’t want to cause a problem.

Has someone ever told you that you were being polite? What did you say or do that was polite? Give some examples of how you can show good manners while you’re watching a movie. Tell about how you show good manners in your classroom.

Friendship Skills

Sharing

Purpose

Sharing is a kind behavior we can adopt with our friends and family to make the time that we spend with others pleasant and fun. Let’s talk about what sharing is; and why it’s important to share with our friends, and name some examples of how to share.

Concept Definition

Sharing is a friendly behavior that we can do with other people. It shows that we want to be kind and generous, and that we want others to enjoy something that we enjoy. Sharing makes others happy, and we also feel happy and proud when we share. Sharing can also be a great way to solve problems. We can share toys and other objects. We can also share what we know by talking about something we have lots of information about. We can share our time with others by being helpful. We can also share by taking turns with an object or an activity.

Concept Expression

When we share, we can divide something by keeping a part of it for ourselves and giving the other part to someone else. For example,Play-doh can be shared by dividing. We can also share by using or enjoying something together with others. For example, we can share a board game or a basketball with others. We can even share our time with others. Helping someone, teaching someone something, or telling someone a story are all ways to share our time. Sharing is kind; people really like it when others share. It feels good to make others happy by offering to share with them, and it feels just as good when others offer to share something with us.

You may not always want to share something of yours with someone else. Although sharing is kind and friendly, it’s okay to decide not to share something once in a while. You might have something very special to you that you don’t want anybody else to touch or have. For example, if your grandfather gave you a new bike for your birthday and you don’t want anyone else to ride it, you can choose not to share it. It is okay to choose not to share something special to you or something delicate, but it is important to be polite when you tell someone that you don’t want to share an item. We must also remember that if we always choose not to share things with others, others may choose not to share things with us.

Story Illustration

Selma and Anika went trick-or-treating on Halloween night. They went from door to door, collecting candy for two hours before returning to Selma’s house. The two girls dumped their bags of candy onto the kitchen table to see what they had collected.

Anika was disappointed; her pile of candy was much smaller than Selma’s. Selma had also had many of Anika’s favorite chocolates in her pile.

Selma scanned the two piles of candy. She noticed that her pile is much larger than Anika’s. She didn’t want her friend to be upset She thought that if she gave twenty pieces of candy to Anika, the two of them would have an even amount of candy.

Selma said, “I can share some of my candy with you, Anika.”

“Really? That would be awesome! You have lots of candies that I really like!” Anika shouted.

Story Discussion

What made Selma want to share with Anika?

Selma noticed that her pile of candy was much larger than Anika’s pile. She also noticed that Anika looked disappointed.Selma thought that if she shared some of her candy with Anika,Anika wouldn’t be upset anymore. Selma was being a nice friend by offering to share some of her candy with Anika.

In what way did Selma share with Anika?

Selma decided to share by dividing; she would give some of what she had to Anika.

How did Anika respond when Selma said that she would share her candy with Anika?

It made Anika very happy that Selma had decided to share her candy.

Personal Examples and Application

When we offer to share something with others, we can use inviting words. We can invite someone to participate in a game, or we can invite people to use an object together. We can also ask others if they would like some of what we have. We can offer to share what we know about a topic by giving someone information about it that they might need or want to know, or we can share our time by offering to help someone to do something, such as putting blocks back where they belong. People really appreciate others who offer to share in many ways.

Tell about some situations where you’ve shared objects, your time,or your knowledge. What language did you use when offering to share?

Tell about something you would not like to share. How can you tell a person in a nice way that you don’t want to share the object? Tell about a time when someone refused to share something with you?How did it make you feel?

Friendship Skills

Caring

Purpose

Caring is a kind way to show others that they are important and special to us. Let’s talk about what caring means; and why it’s important to show care for our friends, and name some examples of how to show our friends that we care about them.

Concept Definition

When we care about someone or something, we give our attention to the person, object, or activity because it is important to us. When we care about a person, we treat the person kindly and make sure the person has what he or she needs. We want to make the person feel happy because we care about him or her.

Concept Expression

Caring about others is what friendships are all about. When we care for our friends, we show them with our words and our actions that we care for them. We say and do friendly things to demonstrate our feelings about the person. When we care about an object, we handle it carefully; we use it appropriately; and we put it away where it belongs. When we care about a specific activity, we spend lots of time doing the activity because we like it.

Caring about someone or something is a strong feeling that is wonderful to show others. Being a caring person makes us good friends because being caring shows others that we pay a lot of attention to people and things that are important to us. It feels good to know when someone cares for us; it makes us feel special and appreciated.

Story Illustration

Kiana volunteers at her local daycare center after school. While organizing some papers in one of the classrooms, she heard a faint cry coming from a little girl sitting in the doll corner. “What’s wrong?” Kiana asked, after rushing to the little girl. She crouched down to look the little girl in the eye.

“I broke my doll,” the girl replied, wiping a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. She held up her doll for Kiana to see. One arm had broken off from the doll’s body.

Kiana gently took the doll from the little girl’s hand. She examined the doll and noticed that she could easily pop its arm back into place.

“I can definitely fix this for you. Watch,” said Kiana. She slid the doll’s arm back into its socket. “There! Here’s your doll back, sweetheart.”

Story Discussion

Why did Kiana help the little girl?

Kiana is a caring person. She saw the little girl cry and really wanted to help the little girl.

How do Kiana’s actions and words show that she cares for the little girl?

We can tell Kiana is caring by the way she responded to the little girl who was crying. Kiana crouched down to be close to the little girl, and she looked into the girl’s eyes and asked the girl what was wrong. Kiana listened to the girl as she described the problem with her doll. Kiana fixed the doll’s arm for the little girl.

How do you think the little girl felt about what Kiana did?

The little girl probably felt special and important when Kiana took the time to find out what was wrong. She was probably very happy that Kiana was able to fix the doll.

Personal Examples and Application

We can show people that we care for them when we say and do nice things for them and make sure that they have everything they need. For example, if your friend has stayed home from school because he or she is sick, you can visit him or her. You can tell your friend that he or she was missed at school, and that you hope he or she will feel better soon. You can bring your friend a coloring book and his or her missed school assignments, so that he or she can catch up on homework and also have some fun coloring even though he or she is feeling sick. You can even get your friend a glass of water or an extra blanket if he or she needs them.

If you care about an object, you can take good care of it and treat it with respect. For example, if you have a new puppy, you can care for it by feeding it, playing with it, and washing it.

If you care about an activity, you spend lots of your time doing the activity. For example, if you care about playing the piano, you spend lots of time playing the piano. You practice playing until you can play many songs well. You can show others how much you care about playing the piano by performing a concert for them.

Tell about someone or something you care about. What do you say or do to show that you care? How has someone showed you that he or she cares for you?

Friendship Skills

Respect

Purpose

If we want others to treat us well, we have to treat others well. That’s what showing respect is all about. Let’s talk about what respect means; and why it’s important to show respect for our friends; and name some examples of how to show respect to ourselves, our friends, our things, and the environment.

Concept Definition

When we treat others in a kind, friendly way, we’re showing respect. We show respect with the way we talk and behave. When a person shows respect, we say that the person is being respectful. We can be respectful to others, to ourselves, to objects, and to the environment.

Concept Expression

We can be respectful to others by greeting them when we see them,having a conversation with them, inviting them to join in an activity, or helping them to do something. We’re respectful when we are patient while waiting for a turn, when we use a friendly talking voice, and when we listen to people who are speaking. We can also show respect to others by being on time and using our manners. We should always treat people with respect, so that people will treat us with respect. It’s important to be respectful to everyone because we can make many friends when we’re respectful.

We can also show ourselves respect by taking care of our bodies.We are respectful to ourselves when we keep our bodies clean and safe. We can also show ourselves respect by saying nice things in our heads about who we are or what we’re doing. It is difficult to respect others if we do not first respect ourselves.

We should be respectful of our environment because we share it with plants and animals, too. When we put trash into a trash can,rather than leaving it on the ground, we’re being respectful of the environment. If we don’t throw our trash away properly, animals might eat it and become very sick. We should also leave plants or animals where we find them, so that we don’t disturb them from growing and living. It’s always more respectful to use our eyes to explore plants or animals we find, rather than picking them up and removing them from where they live.

Story Illustration

This evening, Dave decides to bring his dog to the park to play fetch with a frisbee.

Before the sun sets, Dave puts his dog on a leash and walks to the park. When Dave and his dog arrive at the park, Dave takes his dog off the leash and throws the frisbee as hard as he can into the field.His dog chases after the frisbee and picks it up with its mouth before returning to Dave. When Dave reaches down to pick up the frisbee, he is startled by a voice behind him.

“Your dog must be on a leash.”

Dave spins around to see a police officer standing behind him. The officer points to a sign nearby.

“It’s against the rules to have your dog off its leash at this park,” she says.

“I’m sorry, officer. I didn’t see the sign,” Dave says while clipping the leash onto his dog’s collar.

“It’s alright. Thanks for putting your dog back on the leash,” says the police officer.

Dave feels a little frustrated that he can’t play frisbee with his dog at the park if he has to keep holding its leash. He wants to play frisbee with his dog, but he doesn’t want to disobey the police officer. Dave walks home with his dog. He will take his dog into the backyard to play frisbee without having to hold the leash.

Story Discussion

How did Dave show respect for the police officer?

Dave showed respect to the police officer by listening to what she said and following the rule. Even though Dave wanted to play with his dog off the leash at the park, he respected that the police officer was doing her job by enforcing the park rules.

Why does a police officer deserve respect?

A police officer is an authority figure. An authority figure is someone who is in charge of people. We must respect authority figures and follow their directions. The police officer’s job is to make sure that people in the city are following rules, so that everyone stays safe. It was respectful of Dave to do what the police officer said.

How does it make someone feel when we respect them?

When we show respect to others, it makes people feel listened to and appreciated. It also makes people realize that we are kind,and we are rule-followers. The police officer was pleased that Dave listened to her and followed the rule.

Personal Examples and Application

I respect my friends by talking to them kindly and pay attention to them when they’re talking to me. I look at their faces while we’re having a conversation, and I make comments and ask questions to show them I’m really listening. I remember to use my manners and try my best to be helpful to everyone.

I show myself respect by saying positive things about me inside my head. Even when I am frustrated about not doing something well the first time, I don’t say hurtful things to myself. I tell myself that I can do the task if I try my very best. I also respect myself by taking good care of my body. I brush my hair and my teeth, and I take showers to keep my body clean and fresh.

I respect my belongings and others’ belongings by handling them appropriately. I hold things carefully and use them the way they’re supposed to be used, so that the objects don’t break I always ask permission before using something that isn’t mine, and I always return the object back to the person exactly the way it looked before I borrowed it.

I respect the environment I’m in, no matter where I am. I know that I am not the only person in the environment; I don’t want to destroy anything in the environment or affect the plants and animals that live in it in a bad way. That’s why I’m careful not to do anything that would hurt the environment. I always throw my trash into a trash can, and I don’t pick up any plants or animals I find. I use my eyes to look closely at animals on the beach, rather than picking them up and taking them home.

Share about how you show respect for the people in your family.

Give one example of something respectful you could say to yourself after losing a game.

Explain how you show respect for your toys.

Tell about a time when you did something that was respectful to the environment.

Friendship Skills

Accident

Purpose

When an accident happens, it’s easy to lose control of your feelings and say or do something that might not be friendly. We can learn how to deal with an accident appropriately, so that everyone involved in the accident has a chance to understand what happened. Let’s talk about what an accident is; how accidents make us and others feel; and how to deal with accidents in a respectful way.

Concept Definition

An accident is something that happens without anyone expecting it or wishing for it. It is usually something that is bad that nobody planned for or wanted. When an accident happens to us, it can make us feel hurt, sad, or even angry. When you are caught in the middle of an accident, your strong feelings might make it easy to forget that someone else’s actions were not intentional. That means that the person did not want to hurt you or make you angry.

Concept Expression

An accident is caused by a person’s actions. The person behaved in a way that caused others to become hurt or angry. Accidents cause interruptions in what others are doing. After an accident happens,the person who caused the accident usually feels regretful about the way his or her actions have affected others. The person who caused the accident can accept responsibility for his or her behavior by apologizing to anyone who was involved in the accident. Apologizing gives the person who caused the accident a chance to show care to the other people involved, and that he or she did not mean for the accident to happen. Apologizing also allows the person who caused the accident to explain exactly what happened. This prevents others from assuming that the person who caused the accident wanted to hurt others on purpose.

Story Illustration

It’s a beautiful day outside, and Rudy is riding his bicycle in front of his house. As he rides on the sidewalk, he sees someone riding on a skateboard up ahead. He steers his bicycle to the right of the sidewalk to make room for the person to pass by. As the person gets closer, Rudy can see that it is a girl riding a skateboard towards him and not looking in front of her.

“Watch out!” Rudy shouts, trying to stop his bike. The girl on the skateboard has headphones on, so she does not hear Rudy’s warning. She finally turns her head to notice Rudy, but before either one of them can stop, they crash into each other.

When Rudy is able to stand up, he pulls the girl to her feet. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” replies the girl, picking up her skateboard. “Are you?”

Rudy nods. He is angry at the girl for not paying attention to where she was going. If she had been looking in front of her, they would never have crashed.

“I’m sorry for running into you,” the girl apologizes. “I should have been paying more attention.”

Rudy appreciates the girl’s apology. “Thanks,” he says. “Just be careful next time. We both could have gotten hurt.”

Story Discussion

What caused the accident?

Rudy got into an accident that was caused by another person. The girl in the story was not paying attention while riding her skateboard toward Rudy. The girl did not mean to cause an accident; she did not want anyone to be hurt.

What did Rudy and the girl do right after the accident happened?

They made sure that both of them weren’t seriously hurt, and then they figured out what happened.

How did Rudy react after the accident happened?

Rudy was angry that the girl caused the accident because she wasn’t paying attention, but he was still kind to the girl by helping her up and asking if she was okay.

How did the girl react after the accident?

She apologized to Rudy and admitted what she did to cause the accident. She was able to recognize what she had done to cause the accident, and then she apologized to Rudy, so that he would know that she had not tried to hurt him on purpose.

Personal Examples and Application

If we assume that a person who caused an accident is being mean and trying to hurt us or make us angry even when we’re not quite sure how the accident happened, we will be more likely to respond to the person with mean behavior. We must try and get as much information we can about what happened before we decide that someone has hurt us on purpose. Even though we might be upset about the situation, we should always accept someone’s apology. When someone apologizes to us, the person is being caring and trying his or her best to explain that the situation was accidental.

Although we try to be careful with our words and behavior, it is likely that at some point we will cause an accident which hurts others’ feelings or bodies. When we are able to assume responsibility for our actions, we stop others from assuming that we did what we did on purpose. We must apologize to whomever we hurt in order to show care, and to also to describe what happened and make sure that others understand that we did not purposely cause the accident. When we apologize immediately and respectfully, it makes others less likely to assume that we are trying to be mean or hurtful toward them.

I once caused an accident when I was playing catch with a friend of mine on the playground. I threw the ball too far, and my friend wasn’t able to jump high enough to catch it. The ball ended up hitting someone who was walking by. I ran over to the person right away and asked if she was okay. She was mad because she thought I tried to hit her with the ball on purpose. I explained that I threw the ball too far, and that I didn’t mean to hit her. I apologized for causing the accident, and I offered to get her some ice to put on her arm where the ball hit her. She wasn’t upset with me anymore because she accepted my apology and understood that I wasn’t trying to be mean to her.

Tell about a time when you were involved in an accident. What happened? How did it make you feel? What did the person who caused the accident do after it happened?

What should you do if you cause an accident? After an accident, how can your behavior affect how a person thinks or feels about what happened?

Friendship Skills

Compliment

Purpose

If we notice something that a person has done well, we can compliment the person to show that we have recognized what he or she has done. We can also say something nice about the way a person looks. Let’s talk about what a compliment is, learn some examples of compliments that we can give to others, and learn how to accept a compliment politely.

Concept Definition

When someone says something kind to us about how we look or something we’ve done well, it makes us feel special. We like to hear kind comments about ourselves because it shows that others have noticed something unique about us. A kind comment about how a person looks or something a person has done is called a compliment.

Concept Expression

We can receive compliments by saying “thank you” to the person who made them. We should always say “thank you” when someone says something kind to us.

We can also give compliments to others when we notice something unique about someone, or if someone is being friendly, helpful, or doing a great job at something. Remember, it feels great to receive a compliment, so when we give them, we know we will be making someone happy. Good friends compliment one another a lot.

A compliment can also be a great way to begin a conversation with someone. Compliments allow people to continue talking about a specific topic. They might lead people to asking questions, sharing about an experience, or even inviting others to join an activity.

Story Illustration

Mindy and Lionel spent the afternoon at the swimming pool. They splashed and swam and took turns jumping into the pool. Mindy had been taking swimming and diving lessons, and she wanted to demonstrate a dive that she had learned. Lionel watched as Mindy dived gracefully into the water, hardly making a splash.

Lionel was impressed by how good Mindy’s dive was. It must have taken a lot of practice for her to learn how to dive so well. He wanted to give Mindy a compliment.

“Your dive was amazing! You barely splashed at all!” said Lionel.

“Thanks for the compliment! I have been practicing that dive every day for a week now,” replied Mindy.

Story Discussion

Why did Lionel want to compliment Mindy?

Lionel was so impressed by Mindy’s dive; he thought it was amazing. He knew that Mindy must have practiced a lot to be able to dive so well, and he wanted to say something very kind to Mindy to show her that he recognized her talent.

What kind of compliment did Lionel give to Mindy?

Lionel gave Mindy a compliment after she did a fantastic dive into the pool. He told Mindy that her dive was amazing and that she barely splashed at all.

How did the compliment make Mindy feel?

Mindy probably felt proud of her dive. She probably also appreciated that Lionel noticed how good her dive was.

How did Mindy receive the compliment?

Mindy politely received the compliment by saying, “Thanks for the compliment.”

Personal Examples and Application

When we compliment others about how they look, we might notice something different or unique about the person and say something kind about it. For example, when I notice that someone I know has gotten a new hair cut, I say to the person, “You got a new haircut! It looks great on you!” The person always smiles and thanks me because he or she is happy that I noticed the hair cut.

When we compliment someone about something that the person has done well, we should name the specific achievement so that the person can see that we’ve noticed exactly what he or she did. For example, when I hear my friend playing a song on his guitar, I say to him, “I loved your song! You must have practiced playing it a lot because it sounds really good!”

When we want to begin a conversation with someone, we can give the person a compliment about what he or she is doing. For example, if I see someone drawing a picture, I can say to the person, “Your picture is really cool; you’re a great artist! Do you know how to draw a dinosaur?” My compliment is a great way to begin talking with the person about drawing, and eventually about other topics also. Giving others a compliment can be a great way to start a friendship!

Friendship Skills

Equality

Purpose

Playing with our friends will not be fun if the people who are playing do not play fairly. Let’s talk about what fairness is, and why it’s important to be fair, and name some examples of how to show fairness.

Concept Definition

When a situation is good for everyone who is involved, we call the situation fair. Fairness means that everyone has an equal chance to participate in an activity or use a toy or material. When using toys or materials that belong to a school, camp, organization, etc., you are just as entitled to play with or use the toys/materials as other children are. Sharing, trading, and taking turns can make playing with friends more fun because these behaviors are fair and do not cause problems. When a situation is fair, everyone involved is happy.

Unfair situations, on the other hand, cause many problems. When a situation is unfair, it often leads to hurt, frustration, and angry feelings. Sometimes, we might want to do something so badly that it feels unfair when we are not able to get our way, even if the situation isn’t unfair at all. This often happens when we can’t have what we want right away. The situation feels unfair because we have to wait before we can have what we want.

Concept Expression

We can behave fairly everywhere we go. Every place that we go has rules. We can show people that we know how to be fair by following rules. We can also show fairness by allowing others to use materials that belong to everyone. If we keep materials for ourselves, other people will not have the chance to use the materials when they need them, and that’s not fair.

It is also fair to invite others to participate in play or in an activity. It is always fair to include someone in what you are doing, rather than to leave the person out.

Story Illustration

Lamar and Kenny were at the arcade. Their pockets were full of quarters, and they were playing game after game, trying to collect enough tickets to win the grand prize. For the past ten minutes,Lamar had been spending his quarters at the motorcycle race game.Kenny watched Lamar and waited patiently for a chance to play the motorcycle game.

Lamar’s third race on the motorcycle game ended. He was about to put another quarter into the machine to play for the fourth time when he remembered that Kenny had been waiting several minutes for a turn.

Story Discussion

How is Lamar’s behavior unfair?

Lamar has played the motorcycle game three times in a row. Kenny has waited for ten minutes for a turn to play the motorcycle game. Lamar is not behaving fairly because he has not given Kenny a chance to play the game. The game does not belong to Lamar; it belongs to the arcade, so everyone who goes to the arcade has equal right to play the game.

How does Lamar’s behavior make Kenny feel?

Kenny probably feels frustrated that he has waited so long for a turn and still has not got the chance to play the game.

What can Lamar do to be fair?

It would be fair for Lamar to take turns with Kenny, so that both of them can have a chance to play the game. Both boys will be happy if they have equal opportunity to play.

Personal Examples and Application

When we follow rules in the different places we go, we’re showing people around us that we are fair. For example, when we follow the rule to wait in line for the cashier at the grocery store, we’re being fair because we’re waiting for our turn. It wouldn’t be fair to budge to the front of the line because other people have been waiting in line to pay for their grocery.

We can show fairness by allowing other people to use materials or play with toys that everyone is entitled to use. For example, if you are using scissors in your classroom and one of your classmates asks to use the scissors, it would not be fair to keep the scissors to yourself. The scissors belong to the classroom and all the students have the right to use them. You should be fair and give the person the scissors when you’re finished using them.

Including others in a game or activity is a great way to demonstrate fairness. People feel happy to be included when they are invited to participate. It makes people feel upset when they are excluded from participating. For example, you can invite friends to play soccer with you. It’s fair when everyone gets a chance to play. It’s also fair when everyone plays by the rules throughout the game.

Have you ever been treated unfairly, or have you ever seen someone else being treated unfairly? Explain what happened. Why was the situation unfair?

Tell about something you have done that was fair. What did you do to show fairness? How did it make you feel? How did other people respond to what you did?

Friendship Skills

Joining In

Purpose

If we want to play with others, we have to join in politely. Let’s talk about why it’s important to be polite when joining in, name some examples of how to join in politely, and learn what to do if we aren’t given permission to join in.

Concept Definition

It can be fun to do an activity alone, but sometimes, playing with others is more fun. We may see another child or a group of children doing something fun, and we might want to join in. In order to join in an activity that is already happening, we have to either be invited by someone participating in the activity, or we have to ask permission to join in. If we try to join in a group without being invited or asking permission, we might make the children in the group angry. Some activities or games have rules about turn-taking or the number of people allowed to participate at the same time, and we have to be respectful of these rules when we’re thinking about joining in. When we’re going to ask permission to join in an activity, we should wait until a pause in the game or activity where it would be appropriate to interrupt. Ask politely with a kind voice and a friendly face.

Concept Expression

Although we would love to be accepted into a group or an activity, we cannot always expect others to be welcoming of us. There will be times when people will not invite us to participate, or people might say “no” when we ask to join in. If we’ve been rejected by a person or a group, we may feel disappointed, but should remember that there are other people to play with and other activities to do. We can walk away and find someone else to play with or something else to do.

If we’re participating in an activity or game and someone else asks to join in, think about whether or not the activity or game could continue with another person joining in. If it’s possible, or if it’s more fun, then allow the person to join in.

It will make the person feel very happy to be able to join in. If we really don’t want someone to join in an activity with us, we can say “no” in a polite way. Our words should always be respectful and kind to others, even if we’re trying to tell people that they can’t participate in what we’re doing.

Story Illustration

Frank’s class has just been dismissed for recess. Instead of playing on the playground like usual, Frank decides to walk to the grass field and see if there are any games he can join. Frank sees children playing tag, kickball, and soccer. He walks up to the boys who are playing kickball.

“Can I play kickball with you guys?” Frank asks. He feels nervous that the boys won’t let him join in.

“Sure!” says one of the boys. “You can be on my team!”

Frank smiles. He’s glad to join the game. Frank walks to the back of the kicking line.

Story Discussion

What game did Frank want to join?

Frank wanted to join a kickball game that was happening on the grass field.

Why didn’t Frank walk onto the field and join the game without asking for permission?

He knew that interrupting the game and trying to play without having permission would make the boys angry.

What did Frank do to join the game respectfully?

Frank walked up to the boys who were playing and asked permission to join the game.

How did Frank feel about asking for permission to join?

He was nervous that the boys might not want him to join, but he felt relieved and happy when they allowed him to participate.

Personal Examples and Application

When I want to ask someone if I can join in an activity, I try to find the person who is in charge of the game or activity, or I look for a person participating in the activity who might be able to answer me. I would walk toward the person, wait for a pause, and ask very politely if I can join in. I would smile at the person and use a friendly voice. For example, if I see some kids playing soccer, and I want to join in, I might ask someone on the field if the teams have an even number of players. If the person says “no,” then I know that one team has more players than the other. I can ask the person if it would be alright if I played for the team with fewer players. Chances are that the person will agree, since joining the game will probably make the game fairer. If the person says that the teams are even and I can’t join in, I would just say, “Okay, no problem!” and find something else to do. I might be a little disappointed, but I want to be respectful of the players, so I’d just leave and find someone else to play with.

If I am busy playing by myself and someone asks me to join in, I can choose whether or not I want the person to participate, and I can respond in a polite way. I can give the person a reason for why I want to participate in the activity alone. For example, if I’m doing a puzzle and someone comes along and asks me if he can help me finish it, I can respond in a respectful way. I can say, “Thanks for offering, but I really want to finish this puzzle by myself. I want to see how long it takes me to do it.”Tell about a time when you were invited to participate in an activity. How did it make you feel?

Is it alright to say no to someone who asks to join in a game you’re playing? Explain.

Have you ever been rejected when you’ve asked to join in an activity? How did it make you feel? What did you do afterward?

Give an example of:

A polite way to ask someone permission to join in

A polite way to invite someone to join in an activity

A polite way to say “no” to someone who asks to join in

Friendship Skills

Assertiveness

Purpose

There are times when we want to say something serious. We may want to stand up for ourselves or for someone else. We have to be assertive if we want others to listen to something serious we’re saying. Let’s talk about what it means to be assertive, and why it’s important to be assertive, and learn how to be assertive in a respectful way.

Concept Definition

When we are saying something important and we want people to pay attention to us, we have to speak assertively. When we speak assertively, we use a strong voice to give the message that we really mean what we’re saying. Being assertive shows others that we are serious about something.

Concept Expression

We can be assertive when we’re telling someone to stop doing something that is bothering us. We can also be assertive when we’re telling someone about our feelings, what we want, or what we need. We usually show assertiveness when we are standing up for something we feel very strongly about. We can speak assertively without shouting or being rude. We simply say exactly how we feel in a strong voice, so that others will know that we are serious. When we speak assertively, we stand up straight, so that our body shows confidence. We face the person we’re talking to, and we look directly into the person’s eyes.

Story Illustration

Matthew is raking leaves in his backyard. As he rakes the last of the leaves into a big pile, his little sister, Mandy runs and jumps into the pile. The leaves fly up and scatter all over the yard.

Matthew’s sister giggles as she rolls around in the leaves.

Matthew is angry that his sister has ruined all his hard work. He walks toward Mandy and speaks in a strong voice. “Mandy,” he says to his little sister, “please don’t jump in the leaves. I’ve been working very hard to rake them into a pile, and now they’re scattered all over the yard again.”

“Sorry. I thought it would be fun to roll around in the leaves,” Mandy said.

“I’m glad you had fun, Mandy, but now all the leaves have to be raked into a pile again. Can you please help me?” asks Matthew.

“Okay, I’ll help you,” Mandy replied.

Matthew smiles as he helps his sister to her feet. They work together to rake the leaves back into a big pile.

Story Discussion

What did Mandy do that bothered Matthew?

When Mandy jumped into the pile of leaves and rolled around, it scattered the leaves all over the backyard. Matthew had worked hard to rake all the leaves into the pile, so he was angry that his sister had ruined the pile.

How did Matthew assertively tell Mandy to stop?

Matthew was assertive when he asked his sister not to jump into the leaves anymore. He used a strong voice so that she would know he was serious. He also asked her to help him rake the leaves back into a pile.

How did Mandy respond to Matthew’s assertiveness?

Because Matthew was assertive and not rude or mean, he was able to send the message to his sister that he was not happy with what she had done. He talked to Mandy in a polite way, and it helped her to realize that she had scattered all the leaves Matthew had worked hard to rake into a pile. Mandy apologized to Matthew and agreed to help him rake the leaves into a pile again.

Personal Examples and Application

I was assertive when I saw a group of children laughing at a boy on the tetherball court. The boy had hit the ball, and the ball swung around the pole and hit the boy in the face. The children who were watching the game began to laugh at the boy. I asked the boy if he was alright, and he said yes, but I knew he was embarrassed about what happened. I thought it was rude and mean that the other children were laughing at someone who was hurt. I turned toward the children who were laughing and stood tall. I told them in a serious, strong voice that it was not appropriate or kind to laugh at someone who had gotten hurt. I said that instead of laughing at him, they should have checked to make sure he was okay before offering to help him in some way. When I spoke assertively, the children realized that I meant every word I said. The children apologized to the boy for laughing, and one of the children went to the office to get the boy an ice pack.

Think of two situations where it would be important for you to be assertive.

Explain the difference between speaking assertively and being rude.

Friendship Skills

Sense of Self

Purpose

In order for us to make friends, we should be aware of all the characteristics people might like about us—the characteristics that would make us a good friend to others. Our self-image is an important part of what makes others want to be friends with us. Let’s talk about what self-image means, and why it’s important to be aware of our self-image, and list some characteristics about us that other people would want in a friend.

Concept Definition

Self-image is how important and special we think we are, and how we feel about what we can do. Self-image is important because if we can describe ourselves to others, we can make friends who are similar to us, who we can get along with well.

Concept Expression

In order for us to make friends, we should be able to describe ourselves to others. We think about whom we are and what we’re like—these things are called personality traits. Here are some examples of personality traits: polite, kind, helpful, funny, and creative. We should also be aware of things we like and what we’re good at; we should try to understand what makes us cool, and also what makes us good friends to others.

When thinking about your self-image, consider these facts about yourself:

Your age

Your grade

Your school

Your hobbies

Your personality traits

Your strengths (things you can do well)

Story Illustration

Danika and her brother, Kevin walked to the park to play. Danika brought along her bucket of sidewalk chalk. When Danika and her brother arrived at the park, Danika decided to draw some pictures on the ground with her sidewalk chalk, and Kevin ran to the swings. As Danika started to draw an orange butterfly, a girl walked up to her and began to watch.

“I like your drawing,” said the girl. “You’re really good!”

“Thanks,” said Danika, smiling at the girl. “I have lots of chalk. I draw a lot, so I’m pretty good at it. Would you like to draw something?”

“No thanks, I’m not very good at drawing,” replied the girl.

“I can teach you how to draw a bird,” Danika insisted. “It’s really easy.” Danika handed the girl a piece of chalk and demonstrated how to draw a bird.

The two girls continued to draw on the ground, and eventually,they introduced themselves. Danika discovered that the girl’s name was Emma. Emma had shared that although she wasn’t as good at drawing pictures as Danika was, she was very good at crossing the monkey bars.

The two girls spent the afternoon at the park drawing pictures,climbing on the monkey bars, swinging, and getting to know each other. Danika described herself as a kind, creative person who loved cats and drawing. Emma described herself as a funny, caring person who loved to play board games and read books. The girls also found out that they both loved to dance, and that they went to the same dance studio.

Story Discussion

What made Emma want to talk to Danika?

Emma watched Danika draw with sidewalk chalk at the park. Emma thought that the butterfly Danika drew was really good, so she decided to compliment Danika.

How did the two girls learn about each other?

The girls began to talk after Emma complimented Danika. During their conversation, they shared information about themselves and discovered that they had many things in common.

What kinds of things did the girls tell each other about themselves?

They named characteristics about themselves that were cool and interesting. They described themselves by telling each other about what they like to do, what they were good at, and what some of their personality traits were. They shared information about themselves that could make them become friends.

Personal Examples and Application

When you’re trying to make a new friend, you have to describe yourself during a conversation with the person. You have to think about what would make someone want to be friends with you and tell the person some of those things. For example, if I’m at the park and I happen to meet someone new, I’d tell the person a few things about myself so that the person can get to know me better. I’d tell the person my name, my age, the neighborhood or city I live in, some sports I like to play, some books I like to read, some activities I like to do, and some things I’m very good at.

Can you tell me about yourself? Let’s pretend we just met. We can tell each other some things about ourselves, so that we can get to know each other.

Chapter 24

Social Language Skills

Social Language Skills

Greeting

Story

Stewart is playing with a bouncy ball in his backyard when the ball flies over the fence, into his neighbor’s backyard. He walks to his neighbor’s front door and rings the doorbell to ask to have his ball back.

A moment later, an elderly woman opens the front door to see Stewart standing on her porch. “Hello,” the woman says.

Comprehension Questions

Who was playing with a bouncy ball?

Where was Stewart playing?

What happened to the ball?

Why did Stewart go to his neighbor’s house?

When did the elderly woman open the front door?

How did the woman know that Stewart was at her door?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Stewart say to greet the neighbor? How should he ask her to get his ball back?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a greeting, an apology statement, and a polite request.

Hi, Mrs. Smith.

Sorry to bother you, but I accidentally threw my ball into your yard. Can you please get my ball?

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of the elderly woman, and have the child provide the dialogue for Stewart.

Application

Explain why it is polite to greet others when you are greeted.

Social Language Skills

Appreciation

Story

Lenny is sitting in a café, waiting for his lunch to be served. A few moments later, a waitress holding a tray arrives at Lenny’s table. She sets down a cup of soup and a sandwich in front of him. She also refills his glass of ice water.

Comprehension Questions

Who was having lunch?

Where did Lenny have lunch?

What did Lenny order for lunch?

Why did Lenny have to wait a little while for his lunch?

When did the waitress come to Lenny’s table?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Lenny say to the waitress?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a statement of gratitude.

Thank you. Everything looks delicious!

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of the waitress, and have the child provide the dialogue for Lenny. Extend the role play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation.

Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

Why is it important to thank people who do something nice for you? What are some other situations where saying “thank you” is appropriate?

Social Language Skills

Request

Story

Xavier was walking towards the lunch tables with his lunch tray when he noticed that he forgot to get a fork. He walked back to the lunch line to get a fork. A few cafeteria servers were preparing food behind the lunch counter. Xavier waited patiently to be noticed by one of the servers. A server looked at Xavier and smiled.

Xavier asked the server for a fork.

Comprehension Questions

What did Xavier forget?

Where did Xavier go to get a fork?

Who did Xavier have to ask to get a fork?

Why did Xavier need a fork?

When did Xavier notice that he did not have a fork?

How did Xavier know when it was an appropriate time to ask the server for a fork?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

How should Xavier ask the cafeteria worker for a fork?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a greeting and a polite request.

Hello again!

I forgot to get a fork for my salad. May I please have one?

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of the cafeteria server, and have the child provide the dialogue for Xavier.Extend the role-play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

How do you politely ask for something you need or want? What manners words should you use?

Social Language Skills

Caring

Story

Kiana volunteers at her local daycare center after school. While organizing some papers in one of the classrooms, she heard a faint cry coming from a little girl sitting in the doll corner.

“What’s wrong?” Kiana asked, after rushing to the little girl. She crouched down to look the little girl in the eye.

“I broke my doll,” the girl replied, wiping a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. She held up her doll for Kiana to see. One arm had broken off from the doll’s body.Kiana gently took the doll from the little girl’s hand. She examined the doll and noticed that she could easily pop its arm back into place.

Comprehension Questions

Who volunteered at a local daycare center?

When did Kiana hear the girl crying?

Why was the little girl crying?

Where was the little girl sitting?

What happened to the girl’s doll?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What words can Kiana say to show that she cares about what happened to the little girl?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a caring, empathetic statement.

I can tell you really love this doll, and you’re upset that the arm broke off.

Don’t worry; I think it can be fixed. Let me try to put the arm back on.

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of the little girl, and have the child provide the dialogue for Kiana. Extend the role play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

What should Kiana do to demonstrate care for the little girl? What are some examples of things we can do for our friends and family members every day to show that we care about them?

Social Language Skills

Sharing

Story

Selma and Anika went trick-or-treating on Halloween night. They went from door to door, collecting candy for two hours before returning to Selma’s house. The two girls dumped their bags of candy onto the kitchen table to see what they had collected.

Anika was disappointed that her pile of candy was much smaller than Selma’s. Selma’s pile also had many of Anika’s favorite chocolates in it.

Selma scanned the two piles of candy. She noticed that her pile was much larger than Anika’s. She thought that if she gave a big handful of her candy to Anika, the two of them would have an equal amount of candy, and Anika would not be upset.

Comprehension Questions

Who went trick-or-treating?

When did the girls go trick-or-treating?

What did the girls collect in their trick-or-treat bags?

Where did the girls dump out their candy?

Why was Anika disappointed?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Selma say to Anika to suggest sharing?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct an offering statement.

You look upset about your pile of candy. You can have some of my candy to put in your pile, if you want. Would you like some?

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of Anika, and have the child provide the dialogue for Selma. Extend the role play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

Explain how offering to share can solve a problem. How do people feel when you share with them?

Social Language Skills

Compliment

Story

Curtis wanted to meet some of his friends at the skate park to show off his new skateboard. After strapping on his helmet, he rode to the skate park. When he arrived at the skate park, his friends crowded around him to see his new skateboard.

“That’s an awesome skateboard!” one of Curtis’ friends said.

Comprehension Questions

Who is the main character in this story?

Where did Curtis go?

Why did Curtis go to the skate park?

How did Curtis get to the skate park?

What did Curtis do before riding his skateboard to the skate park?

Who crowded around Curtiwhen he arrived at the skate park?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Curtis say to the friend who complimented him on his skateboard?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a statement in response to a compliment.

Thank you! If you want, you guys could try it out!

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of Curtis’ friend, and have the child provide the dialogue for Curtis. Extend the role play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

Explain why it is inappropriate to boast about things to others and why it is appropriate to share good things that happen to us.

Social Language Skills

Invitation

Story

Brianna has two tickets to a concert tonight. She plans to take her friend, Theresa to the concert, but Theresa has caught the flu and cannot go. Brianna decides to ask her friend, Jacob if he can go to the concert with her.

Brianna calls Jacob on the phone, but he does not answer the call. She decides to leave him a voice message to tell him about the concert.

Comprehension Questions

Who is the main character in this story?

Where does Brianna plan on going tonight?

Who did Brianna plan on taking to the concert?

Why can’t Theresa go to the concert with Brianna?

Who does Brianna ask to go to the concert instead of Theresa?

What happens when Brianna called Jacob on the phone?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Brianna say in her voice message to Jacob about the concert?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a brief greeting, and an invitation that includes all the pertinent information.

Hi, Jacob! This is Brianna.

I know this is short notice, but I have two tickets to a concert tonight. Theresa was going to come but she got sick. Do you want to come with me?

If you want to come, please give me a call as soon as you get this message. Bye!

Role play the voice message with the child. Assume the role of Jacob’s recorded phone message, and have the child provide the dialogue for Brianna. Extend the role play further by engaging in a typical message exchange for the situation. Assume that Jacob calls Brianna back. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

What information should you include when leaving a voice message for someone?

Social Language Skills

Rejection

Story

Angela and her mother went to their favorite ice cream shop after school. They ordered chocolate sundaes and sat down while they waited to be served. The waitress rushed over to the table where Angela and her mother were sitting.“I forgot to ask—would you like cherries on top of your sundaes?” asked the waitress.

Angela’s mother nodded her head; she wanted a cherry on her sundae. Angela did not want a cherry on her sundae; she does not like cherries.

Comprehension Questions

Who are the three people in the story?

Where did Angela’s mother take Angela?

When did Angela and her mother go to the ice cream shop?

Why did the waitress rush back to the table where Angela and her mother were sitting?

What did the waitress offer to put on the sundaes?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Angela say to the waitress?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct a polite refusal statement.

No, thank you. I don’t care for cherries.

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of the waitress, and have the child provide the dialogue for Angela. Extend the role play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

How do you politely tell someone you don’t want something or like something? Why isn’t it appropriate to answer with only “no?”

Social Language Skills

Regret

Story

Cody went into the kitchen to do the dishes. He saw a piece of cake on the kitchen table. He thought that someone forgot to clear the table. Cody tossed the cake into the trash and washed the plate. Just as Cody finished washing the plate, his sister walked into the kitchen.

“Where is my piece of cake?” she asked. “I wasn’t finished eating it yet; I just left to use the restroom.”

Cody was sorry for accidentally throwing away her slice of cake.

Comprehension Questions

Who was doing chores?

Why did Cody throw away his sister’s piece of cake?

When did Cody’s sister walk into the kitchen?

Where was Cody’s sister before she walked into the kitchen and talked to Cody?

What was Cody doing when his sister walked into the kitchen?

How did Cody feel about accidentally throwing away his sister’s piece of cake?

Recall

Ask the child to retell the story, including all the important details in the correct sequence.

Social Language

What should Cody say to his sister?

Suggested Dialogue

Guide the child to construct an apology statement that includes an explanation.

I actually threw away your cake. I’m really sorry.

I saw the plate on the table, and nobody was around here, so I assumed that someone ate cake and didn’t clean up afterwards. I guess I should have asked you or Mom, or waited to see if anyone came back into the kitchen before cleaning the plate off the table.

Role play the dialogue with the child. Assume the role of the sister, and have the child provide the dialogue for Cody. Extend the role play further by engaging in typical dialogue for the situation. Continue to improvise dialogue for your character while encouraging the child to remain in character and respond with appropriate dialogue.

Application

Why is it important to apologize for your behavior? What message does it give others? How does it make others feel when we apologize?

Chapter 25

Problem Solving Skills

Problem Solving Skills

Frustrated

Prerequisite skills for the lesson: The child must be able to label emotions based on facial expressions and other non-verbal clues, consider all aspects of a situation (identify the events that occurred before, during, and after an incident), and establish direct cause and effect correlations between events and emotions.

The following sample interaction demonstrates how a rich and engaging learning experience can occur through intentional and meaningful mediation. Before you introduce the emotion activity, make certain that the child is prepared to participate, and ready to pay close attention to both you and the material. Explain the reason for the activity in simple terms to the child, and emphasize that you will be working together throughout the activity. First, you will read the corresponding story to the child and present the illustration. This sample interaction between a teacher and child investigates the frustrated emotions associated with an art project gone wrong.

T: Teacher/Therapist

C: Child

T: Take a look at this picture. (Point to Jason.) Jason is the name of the boy standing in front of the easel. We’re going to read a story that tells what happened to Jason, and then we’re going to talk about his feelings. Before we read the story, let’s make a few predictions. What do you think happened to Jason?

C: I think he made a mistake on his painting.

T: You could be right. (Point to the painting.) The paper on the easel has a big drip on it. Look at Jason. (Point to Jason’s face.) How do you think Jason is feeling?

C: He’s probably really mad.

T: You predicted (guessed) that Jason is feeling angry about making a mistake on his painting?

C: Yes.

T: Okay, let’s hear Jason’s story and see if your predictions are correct.

(Read Jason’s story to the child.)

Story

Jason’s art teacher placed a bowl of fruit on a table in the center of the classroom and asked each student to paint the fruit on a clean sheet of white paper. After Jason finished sketching the bowl of fruit in pencil, he was ready to use paint to add color to the picture. He taped the paper to an easel and dipped his paintbrush into a can of green paint.

As Jason lifted the paintbrush, the paint dripped onto the paper and began to trickle down. He did not realize that he had too much paint on his paintbrush. Suddenly, a mess of green drops were splotched onto the picture where an orange and a bunch of bananas were supposed to be! Jason knew that if he tried to wipe the paint off the paper, the paint would only smear and make an even bigger mess. Jason clenched his teeth and pulled at his hair in frustration.

Story Discussion

T: So were your predictions about what happened to Jason correct?

C: Yes. He dripped paint on his paper and it messed up the picture.

T: Right. Jason had too much paint on his brush, and it dripped onto the picture. What happened before Jason’s picture got ruined?

C: Jason drew the fruit.

T: You’re right. He was preparing to paint. He drew his picture and got all the paint colors he needed for painting the picture. How do you think he felt about painting his picture?

C: He was probably happy or excited.

T: Probably. It seemed as if he knew exactly what to do. I’ll bet he was excited to put some paint on his paper and color the picture in. You predicted that Jason felt mad about ruining his picture. Was that prediction correct?

C: Yes. Jason was really mad about his picture being wrecked.

T: The story said that Jason felt very frustrated. A frustrated feeling happens when a person tries very hard to do something, but he just can’t do it. Even though Jason tried hard to prepare his picture by drawing the fruit and then gathering the colors he would use, he wasn’t able to paint his picture the way he wanted to. Look at Jason’s face and body. (Point to Jason.) Can you describe the clues that Jason’s face and body give us that help us figure out that he’s frustrated?

C: His eyebrows are down and he’s pulling at his hair.

T: That’s right. The story also told us that he clenched his teeth. Clenching teeth means that you squeeze your jaw closed really tight. If you look at the picture, you can see what that looks like. (Point to Jason’s mouth. Also model how your mouth looks when you clench your teeth.) Clench your teeth.

C: (Child clenches his teeth.)

T: That’s what many people do when they’re frustrated. Some people might even shout or growl. Have you ever seen anyone get frustrated at school?

C: I remember that Steve got frustrated when his block tower fell over. He closed his eyes really tight and made a roaring sound.

T: That definitely sounds like a frustrated feeling. What caused Steve to become frustrated?

C: He tried hard to build his tower tall, but the blocks fell over, and he had to start all over again.

T: So when Steve realized that he would have to start all over again, he felt frustrated because his tower didn’t work out like he wanted it to.

C: Yes.

T: Okay. That’s very similar to Jason’s frustrated feeling. When he planned out his picture, he didn’t think that it would be ruined. So when the paint dripped onto the picture and ruined it, he realized that he would have to start over again, leading him to feel frustrated. Feeling frustrated isn’t a good feeling, but it’s a feeling everyone experiences from time to time. Can you think of a time when you were frustrated about something?

C: I was frustrated when I was learning to ride my two-wheel bike and I kept falling off.

Solutions

Jason could get a new sheet of paper and re-sketch the bowl of fruit.

Jason could yell angrily and tear the paper off the easel.

Jason could ask his teacher for a new sketch so that he still has time to paint.

Social Interaction

Encourage a dialogue about personal experiences.

Can you think of a time when you were frustrated? Why were you frustrated? How did you handle being frustrated?

Problem Solving Skills

Lonely

T: Teacher/Therapist

C: Child

T: Look at the picture. (Point to the picture.) Someone is sitting alone at a table, and groups of children are sitting together at other tables. Can you tell where these people are?

C: They are in a school cafeteria.

T: Yes, they are. Can you tell who these people are?

C: That’s Amy (pointing to the girl sitting alone at a table) and those are the other students in the cafeteria (pointing to the children).

T: That’s right. Amy is sitting by herself at a table. (Point to the students who are sitting at other tables.) These children are sitting together and eating their lunches. How can you tell that they’re friends with one another?

C: They are looking at each other and talking while they eat lunch.

T: You’re right. See how they are making gestures with their hands to describe whatever they’re talking about. They look at each other and pay attention to each other. Now look at Amy. Does she have any friends sitting with her at her table?

C: No. She’s all by herself.

T: Yes, she is alone. Do you think she wants to be alone?

C: No.

T: How can you tell?

C: She’s looking down at her food.

T: Yes, she’s looking down at her food, and she’s not eating. She has her hand under her chin, too. How do you think she feels about being alone?

C: She doesn’t like it. She looks sad.

T: She does look sad, doesn’t she? I’ll bet she also feels lonely. We get a lonely feeling when we’d rather be with other people than be alone.

C: Yeah, she’s feeling lonely, too.

T: Okay, so she is feeling sad and lonely at the same time. Do you think that the other students know that Amy is lonely?

C: No. They aren’t looking at her.

T: I think you’re right. See how they’re chatting with each other at the other tables. They do not notice that Amy is alone. They do not notice that she’s feeling sad and lonely.

Story

Amy walked into the bustling cafeteria. Students crowded around the counter, chatting as they waited for their food. More children sat at tables together and talked while they ate their lunches.

Amy made her way to a table in the corner and opened the lunch that her mother had made for her. She pulled out a turkey sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water, the same foods she had every day. While the rest of the tables in the cafeteria were surrounded by students, the chairs around Amy’s table remained empty as she quietly ate her lunch.

Story Discussion

T: Now that we know what is happening and how Amy is feeling, let’s think of some ways to solve this problem.

C: I know one way. Amy can go to another table and sit with some kids.

T: That’s one solution. Do you have any other ideas?

C: She can invite some people from another table to sit with her.

T: Okay. She can go to another table or invite people from another table to sit with her. Any other solutions you can think of?

C: She can invite people who haven’t found a seat yet to sit at her table.

T: You have lots of solution ideas; great job! You said that Amy can sit with kids at another table, or she can invite kids from another table to come sit at her table, or she can invite kids who have not yet found a seat to sit with her. She could also just stay at her table and finish eating her lunch by herself.

C: No, she can’t do that. She’ll still be sad and lonely.

T: Even though you think it’s not a good idea, you should always try to think of all the things that you could do in the situation. After you have a list of possible solutions, then you think about what would happen if you tried each one. Let’s talk about what might happen if Amy stayed at her table and finished eating alone?

C: She would still be sad and lonely because she would be eating by herself.

T: Right. She wouldn’t be doing anything to be with other kids, so she would continue to feel lonely. What about if Amy went to sit with kids at another table? What might happen then?

C: It could work. Amy would be with other kids, so she wouldn’t be lonely.

T: Maybe. She might enjoy spending her lunch time with kids at another table. What do you think might happen if Amy invited kids from another table to come and sit with her at her table?

C: Then she wouldn’t have to leave her table, and she could be with other kids.

T: That solution could work, but it’s possible that the kids might not want to leave the table where they are sitting, which could make Amy sad. What do you think might happen if Amy invited children who had not found a seat yet to sit at her table?

C: The kids would join her, and she would feel happy to have some kids sitting with her.

T: Definitely. The kids would be happy to be offered a seat, and Amy wouldn’t feel lonely anymore. So which solution do you think is the best one? Which one do you think Amy should choose?

C: The best solution is for Amy to invite children who have not found a seat yet to her table.

T: I think you made a good choice. That solution is fair for both Amy and the children who haven’t found a seat yet. What if Amy invited the children to sit at her table, but they didn’t want to? What if they preferred to sit at a different table with some other kids?

C: Then Amy could go to another table and sit with some other kids.

T: Right. If a solution that you try doesn’t work, think back to the other solutions you thought of and choose another solution to try. Let’s review how we solved this problem one more time. We described Amy’s feelings; we told what the problem is; we came up with a list of ideas for solving the problem; we predicted the consequences of each solution; and we chose the best solution. We also talked about what Amy should do if she tried the solution, but it didn’t work for her.

SOLUTIONS

Amy could wave at another student and invite the student to come and sit with her.

Amy could decide to leave her table and sit with a group of children from her class.

Amy could finish eating her lunch by herself.

Social Interaction

Encourage a dialogue about personal experiences.

Can you think of a time when you were lonely? Why were you lonely? How did you handle being lonely?

Chapter 26

Conflict Resolution Skills

Conflict Resolution Skills

Poking

Prerequisite skills for the conflict resolution lesson: They must have been previously introduced to the problem-solving process. The following sample interaction demonstrates how a conflict can be transformed into a rich and engaging learning experience through intentional and meaningful mediation. Before you introduce the conflict resolution activity, make certain that the child is prepared to participate, and ready to pay close attention to both you and the material. Explain the reason for the activity in simple terms to the child, and emphasize that you will be working together throughout the activity. First, read the corresponding story to the child and present the illustration. Then begin the conflict resolution mediation interaction. This sample interaction between a teacher and child involves reacting appropriately to being antagonized by another child.

T: Teacher/Therapist

C: Child

T: Look at the picture. (Point to the picture.) Someone is sitting in a chair, and a group of children are sitting on the floor. Can you tell who these people are?

C: That’s the teacher (pointing to the woman) and those are the students (pointing to the children).

T: Yes, the teacher is reading a story to the children. (Point to the students who are attending to the teacher.) These children are looking at the teacher. How can you tell that they’re paying attention?

C: They are looking at the teacher.

T: You’re right. See how they are facing the teacher and keeping their hands and feet quiet. They’re being great listeners. They must like the story.

C: That’s Julie and Jared (pointing to the girl in the green shirt and the boy in the red shirt). They’re not listening.

T: How can you tell?

C: They’re not looking at the teacher; they’re facing each other. Jared is touching Julie’s back.

T: You noticed that Jared isn’t keeping his hands quiet. He’s poking Julie with his finger. How do you think Julie feels about getting poked in the back?

C: She doesn’t like it. She looks mad.

T: She does look mad, doesn’t she? Her eyebrows are down and her eyes are squeezed tight. I’ll bet that poke really hurts her back.

C: Yeah, she’s feeling hurt, too.

T: Okay, so she is feeling hurt and angry at the same time. What about Jared? How do you think he feels?

C: He thinks it’s funny. He’s happy about pretending to be the dragon in the story.

T: I think you’re right. See how he’s smiling a bit while he pokes her. He must think it’s a funny joke to claw at Julie’s back like a dragon. He probably didn’t think about how that would make her feel. What about the other students? How do you think they’re feeling about what’s going on.

C: The other students are probably annoyed.

T: They’re distracted by what’s happening. It’s hard to pay attention to a story if people around you are moving and making noise. Now that we know how everyone feels, let’s think of some ways to solve this problem.

C: I know one way. Julie can ignore him.

T: That’s one solution idea. Do you have any other ideas?

C: She can tell on him.

T: Okay. She can ignore him or tell the teacher. Any other solutions you can think of?

C: She can move away from him.

T: You have lots of solution ideas; great job! You said that Julie can just ignore Jared, or she can tell the teacher about what he is doing, or she can sit somewhere else. She could also push Jared away from her or poke him back.

C: No, that’s not nice. You can’t do that.

T: Even though you think it’s not a good idea, you should always try to think of all the things that you could do to solve the problem. After you have a list of possible solutions, you think about what would happen if you tried each one. Let’s talk about what might happen if Julie pushed Jared or poked him back?

C: She would get in trouble because you’re not allowed to push or hit people.

T: Right. It’s not okay to hit someone back when you’re angry. That’s not going to solve the problem because Jared might hit Julie again. The other students would be scared to see Julie and Jared fighting; the story would be interrupted; and the teacher would feel disappointed in both Julie and Jared. They would both be sent to the principal’s office and get in big trouble. What about if Julie ignored Jared? What might happen then?

C: It might work. Jared might stop poking her.

T: Maybe. He might stop poking her, or he might poke her again and again until she pays attention to him. You shouldn’t ignore a person who is hurting your body. What do you think might happen if Julie raised her hand and told the teacher about what Jared did?

C: The teacher would tell Jared to stop, and Julie wouldn’t be hurt anymore.

T: That solution could work, but then the story time would still be interrupted because Julie had to involve the teacher. We can keep that solution as a “maybe.” What do you think might happen if Julie moved away from Jared and sat somewhere else?

C: Jared wouldn’t be able to poke her anymore, and she would feel happy about that.

T: Definitely. And the other students wouldn’t be disrupted because Julie would be solving the problem without involving the teacher. So which solution do you think is the best one? Which one do you think Julie should choose?

C: The best solution is for Julie to move away from Jared.

T: I think you made a good choice. That solution is fair for both Julie and the other students in the class. It allows Julie to solve the problem on her own. What if Julie did move away from Jared, but it didn’t work? What if Jared also moved to be closer to her and poked her in the back again?

C: Then Julie could tell the teacher.

T: Right. If a solution that you try doesn’t work, think back to the other solutions you thought of and choose another solution to try. Let’s review how we solved this problem one more time. We described the feelings of everyone involved in the problem; we told what the problem is; we came up with a list of ideas for solving the problem; we predicted the consequences of each solution; and we chose the best solution. We also talked about what Julie should do if she tried the solution, but it didn’t work for her.

Story

Directions: Read the story and summarize the discussion.

Fairytales were coming to life in the classroom as Julie’s teacher read a book aloud to the students. The children sat silently in a circle around the teacher’s chair, listening intently to the story. A knight was about to slay a monstrous dragon when Julie felt a sharp pinch at her back.

“Ouch!” she exclaimed. The spot on her back stung painfully. Julie looked behind her and saw Jared snickering at what he had just done. He whispered a “roar” and made a clawing motion toward Julie with his hand.

Jared thought it was funny to pretend to be the dragon from the story, but Julie was not amused. When she turned her attention back to the teacher, she felt Jared pinch her back again. It hurt even more the second time.

Solutions

Julie could raise her hand to tell the teacher that one of her classmates is hurting her.

Julie could move to sit somewhere else in the circle, out of the boy’s reach.

Julie could yell and shove the boy to get back at him for hurting her.

Julie could ignore the problem and allow the boy to keep pinching her.

Social Interaction

Encourage the child to share personal experiences.

Describe the problem.

Describe the feelings.

What did you do?

Did it work?

Chapter 27

Teaching Executive Functions

Teaching Executive Functions

Example 1

The development of EF has been extensively studied. Executive capacities progress quickly through the first year of life, with another growth spurt between about 3-7 years of age. Inhibitory control, attention, set shifting, working memory, selective attention, and planning are among those abilities that develop at this time. The frontal lobes, and associated EF, continue to develop into young adulthood through pruning.

EF has been directly implicated in children’s social-emotional development by studies that demonstrate commensurate difficulties with both EF and aspects of social-emotional function such as distractibility, impulsivity, delay of gratification, recognition of the consequences of actions, etc.

Children with autism are said to lack a theory of mind, and, consequently, have difficulty in engaging in and exhibiting socially-acceptable behaviors. As a result, children and adults with autism are often viewed as concrete thinkers, impulsive, socially inappropriate, disorganized, inattentive, inflexible, and lacking in the ability to pursue long-term goals.

Since the human brain is undoubtedly the most complex of our organs, able to simultaneously perform and balance thousands of tasks, improving social cognition in individuals requires an equally multi-tiered approach.

Rather than approach ASD as simply a theory of mind problem, we must recognize the importance of executive functions for success in academic, social, and vocational pursuits, and seeks to improve executive functioning. By improving executive functioning, a child is able to develop an awareness of his or her interactive social strengths and weaknesses, participate in social settings based on this new-found awareness, and develop the skills needed to lead a fulfilling life.

There has been growing interest in interventions targeting social, emotional, and communicative skills. Given that deficits in EF appear to underlie many of the characteristic behaviors of children with autism, a consideration of including EF training in these programs may enhance the outcome of treatment. EF skills are thought to allow children to modify and integrate behaviors, emotions, and actions in order to handle relevant and developmentally appropriate social tasks. A sample lesson plan illustrating EF training within language and problem solving tasks is included in this chapter.

Lesson

Focused Attention

T: “Look here. What do we have here?”

C: “Beads.”

Using Verbal Statements

T: “That’s right. Let’s all say, ‘We have all kinds of beads.’”

Establish the Goal

T: “What do you think we are going to do today?” [Children give different answers: make a bracelet, make a necklace, etc.]

Intentionality

T: “Those are some great ideas. We are going to learn how to make flowers with the beads. Everyone will enjoy it!”

Goal Planning

T: “I brought some containers with beads in them. Open the containers and look at your beads.” [Children open containers and explore their beads]

T: “Look. I brought a picture of a flower made of beads.”

Decide on Starting Point and Assignments

T: “First let’s learn about the different shapes of beads we have. Everyone, take all your square shaped beads out of the container and put them in the middle of the table.”

[Children remove square beads]

T: Who can name another kind of bead besides square beads? Do you see beads of other shapes? [Children list various shapes of beads they observe—round, triangles, stars, hearts, diamonds, cylinders, half-circles, etc.]

T: What are some other ways we can describe these beads besides talking about their shapes? [Children call out various answers, such as colors, sizes, lengths, etc.]

Prediction

T: “Do you think it will be easy or hard for us to make a flower out of beads? How long do you think it will take us to make?” [Children provide different answers and teacher mediates the concept of time]

Executing the Plan

[TX directs children to sort the beads into various categories]

Classification: Need for Accurate Labeling

[Teacher goes around to each student and asks him/her to label each group of beads he/she made]

T: “I see you put these beads together. Tell me why you put these beads together.”

Sample Facilitation

If the student has difficulty labeling beads by the attributes:

T: “What shape/color/size is this bead?

[Teacher continues to lead the student to the answer through questioning, without giving the answer, such as “How are these beads alike?” or “Tell me how these beads are different.”]

[Once the children have their beads sorted and have explained the similarities and differences between the various beads and categories, discuss the parts of a flower]

Gathering Clear and Complete Information

T: Who remembers the parts of a flower? Let’s name them. [Children call out the labels for each part of a flower: roots, stem, leaves, and petals]

Referencing to Our Model

T: “Take another look at the model bead flower I showed you earlier. Let’s talk about how we’ll build bead flowers similar to this one. We will use glue to stick the beads onto the paper. We’ll start by making the roots of the flower. Take a look at the roots on the model bead flower. Which bead should we use to make the roots?” [On the sample bead flower the leaves are made with flat, round beads.

[Note that none of the students’ containers will include flat, round beads]

Executing the Plan

[The teacher asks children for feedback about which bead would be best for each part of the flower; the teacher models how to construct the bead flower, part by part. The teacher demonstrates how to dab a small amount of glue onto a bead and stick it onto the paper in the desired position and location.]

Using Mental Imagery

T: “Let’s describe exactly where we should place each type of bead for each part of the flower. Can anybody tell me where the roots of the flower are?”

C: “Below the ground.”

T: “Right. The roots are below the ground. That means the roots are under the soil where we can’t see them. How about the stem. Where is the stem of the flower?”

C: “Above the ground.”

T: “Very good. The stem is the first part of the flower we see above the ground. What about the leaves? Where are the leaves of the flower?”

C: “The leaves are attached to the stem.”

T: “Okay great. So when we’re making the leaves on our flowers, we can make them on the left and the right of the stem. What about the petals? Where are the petals?”

C: “The petals are on top of the stem. The petals are the very top of the flower.”

T: “Excellent. Now we know exactly what parts a flower has and where each part of the flower is located on the flower. We know exactly where to glue the beads to make our flowers. Go ahead and begin.

Searching Systematically

T: “Let’s look through our beads one more time and find the beads we’ll use to make each part of the flower. We’ll separate the beads into new groups based on which beads we’ll use for each part. For example, let’s look for all the long, green beads and put them in a pile. We’ll use the long green beads to make the stem. You can use the striped beads to make the roots. Find all the striped beads and put those into a pile for the roots.”

[The children search through their beads and categorize the beads according to which parts of the flower they will be used for.]

Self-Regulation of Behavior

[Some of the children use an appropriate amount of glue to attach the beads to the paper. Some of the children are using an excessive amount of glue on the beads, dripping glue on the paper and on the students’ clothes and fingers.]

T: “I noticed that some of you are using quite a bit of glue onto your beads. Think about how little glue is actually needed to stick a bead onto the paper. You should not have glue dripping on your fingers or on your paper. Pay attention to how much glue you’re using. Are you using just enough, or are you using too much?” [The students assess the amount of glue they have used on their projects and adjust accordingly]

T: “I also noticed that some of you are taking your time to create your very best work, and some of you are rushing to complete the project. Rushing does not produce the very best work we can do. In fact, it causes us to make mistakes. Check to make sure that you’re taking the time and making the effort to do your best, rather than rushing through it.”

Comparative Behavior

T: “Look at our model and compare it to your flower. Are they the same?” [Children give different answers; they should notice that their flower is missing the leaves]

Identifying a Problem

T: “Oh no! It looks like our bead flower is missing leaves. Can we find a bead like this one (refer to the flat, round bead on the model?”

C: “No. We don’t have it.”

Formulating Solutions

T: “What can we do to make the leaves?” [Children give ideas]:

C: “We can cut the leaves from paper.”

T: “That’s a good idea.”

C: “Or we can use the biggest beads we have in our containers to make the leaves.”

T: “That’s another good idea.” [Group of Children agree on the best way to fix the problem and the solution is implemented]

Review: Was the Goal Achieved?

[Teacher asks children what worked, what didn’t work, and what can they try next time]

Recall

T: “Let’s record what we did in our journals so that we can share with others (mom, dad, siblings) what we did.”

Narrative

[Children either write in journal or dictate to a tape recorder. Parents are asked to rehearse the script with their children]

Behind the Example 1 Lesson

An Integrated Model for Learning

The lesson begins with focusing the learner’s attention on an object and then linking the object with the goal of the lesson. By engaging the child, the teacher is facilitating the planning of the goal through a “show and tell” exercise.

In terms of executive function, the teacher begins by helping the child get past a possibly confusing situation (what to do with the beads) and helps him/her plan by first stating the goal (to make a flower constructed from beads) and then encouraging the child to explore the available materials (properties of the beads). Characterizing and classifying the materials forces the child to think about them instead of haphazardly assembling them. This exercises the organizational component of executive functions. Moreover, the way in which the teacher interacts with the child using MLE helps the child organize the materials while engaging in social interaction. s

The planning phase of obtaining the goal now begins as the teacher shows the child the finished product (bead flower) and draws attention to its different parts while asking him/her to think about how to build these parts. In addition, the teacher proposes a challenge in that some of the materials needed to make one section are unavailable, which tests the child’s ability to shift focus and to transfer and apply his/her knowledge base to a new learning situation. This shift ultimately requires a change of inner dialogue concerning the child’s perspective from “I know how to make leaves with beads” to “I can make leaves out of something else.” By eliciting responses from the child, the teacher encourages the child to build an inner dialogue and allows the child to come up with the best method of planning in practice.

Finally, at the end of the lesson, the teacher solicits a response from the child about the overall process—what worked well, what did not work, and what are the ideas for improving the process. The child then proceeds to write up the exercise so that he/she can recall what happened (a function of memory recall and lessons learned) and share the experience with parents and family members, which encourages social interaction. This process mimics what happens in typically developing children when the child tells his or her parents what happened at school.

Teaching Executive Functions

Example 2

Planning

A picture is shown of a boy looking sad, standing under a tree. The tree is surrounded by a fence and is in a neighbor’s yard.

T: Teacher

C: Child

Identify the Problem

T: Look here. What do you think happened with Johnny? (Focused attention)

C: His remote control helicopter got stuck in the tree. (Accurate definition of the problem)

T: How do you think he feels? (Perception of feelings)

C: Sad. (Perception of feelings)

T: How can you tell he is sad? (Confrontation with reality)

C: Because his hands are in his pockets, he is looking down, and he is frowning. (Selecting relevant cues)

T: Why do you think he feels sad? (Providing insight)

C: Because his helicopter is stuck in the tree and now he can’t play. (Establishing cause-effect relationship)

T: Very good! Johnny lost his helicopter in the tree and cannot play anymore. He needs to do something about it. (Feeling of competence, discovering meaning)

Identify if a Plan is Needed

T: What does Johnny need to do? (Goal–setting behavior)

C: He needs to think about how to get his helicopter. (Planning)

T: How can he do that? (Goal- achieving behavior)

C: He can think of a plan. (Planning)

Identify if There is a Plan in Knowledge Base or New Plan Needed

T: Can you think of a plan that Johnny can use? (Recall)

C: He can climb the tree and get his helicopter. (Problem-solving strategy)

Identify if the Plan is Reasonable

T: Do you think that climbing a tree is a good idea? What might happen if he tries to climb the tree? (Behavior regulation)

C: No, Johnny might fall down and hurt himself. (Verbal ability)

T: So, will that plan work? (Evaluation of the plan)

C: No, I guess not.

Develop a Better Plan

T: What do we have to do when we realize that our plan is not going to work? (Internalization)

C: We need to think of a better plan.

T: That’s right. What is something else that Johnny could do? (Alternate strategy)

C: He could go and ask the neighbor to get the helicopter for him.

Identify if the Plan is Reasonable

T: Do you think that plan is safe? (Spontaneous comparison)

C: Yes.

T: Why? (Evidence-based logic)

C: Because Johnny will get his helicopter back and he won’t get hurt. His neighbor will find a way to get the helicopter down safely. (Adequate verbal tools)

Evaluate and Monitor the Plan

T: How will Johnny be able to tell if his plan works? (Self-monitoring behavior)

C: He will have to go and ask the neighbor for help and see if the neighbor will get the helicopter down for him.

T: You’re right. Johnny can ask the neighbor to get the helicopter out of the tree safely. (Feeling of competence, sense of completion) And if the neighbor says “yes” then how will Johnny know whether or not the plan will work?

C: When the neighbor gets the helicopter from the tree and hands it back to Johnny, he will know his plan worked.

T: What about if the neighbor says “no?”

C: Then his plan did not work, and he must think of something else to do.

T: Right. If one plan doesn’t work for a solution, then you must return to your planning and choose another solution to try.

Reflect on the Plan upon Completion

T: What worked for Johnny?

C: Johnny asked the neighbor to get the helicopter from the tree, and the neighbor agreed to get the helicopter down.

T: What didn’t work for Johnny?

C: He originally wanted to climb the tree and get the helicopter down by himself, but it wasn’t a good idea because it wasn’t safe for him to climb the tree.

T: Very good. You figured out a way for Johnny to solve the problem.

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Afterword

This book was written to provide parents and other caregivers with a strong foundational knowledge of autism. I certainly hope you’ve found this book useful, and that you now realize a diagnosis of autism is not the end of the world for your child or your family.

Although our understanding of autism is far from complete, we have a much better theoretical base to work from, as well as a wide range of experience to guide us. Rather than having a watered-down approach, the key is to have the right approach—teach to the potential of the child. Although it will take a lot of work, and depending on your child’s specific delays, it may be possible to reverse the initial diagnosis to a residual state.

I have spent over a decade devoting my career to helping children with autism and their families, and it’s my fervent hope that you and your child will benefit from the experience and expertise I have drawn from to write this book. As painful as a diagnosis of autism may be for all those who are involved, you can survive it with dignity and with the family intact, and move forward with the confidence of a bright, fulfilling future for your child.

Karina Poirier, Psy.D., BCBA-D

www.drkarinapoirier.com

Available from Social Cognition Publications

Poirier Social and Emotional Curriculum

A Social Interaction Based Curriculum

Also available from Social Cognition Publications