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special ed

When being different is so hard

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I had a conversation with an 11-year-old last week that I can’t stop thinking about. It tugged at my heartstrings because while my story wasn’t her story, I just so get her and I get it.

The minute we sat down together that day, she immediately said, “I’m like a multi-sided die. There are so many parts to me and I’m still trying to figure it all out.”

She happens to be one of the most introspective, super awesome girls I know. She’s brilliant, with an IQ that likely surpasses mine. She’s hilarious. She’s socially awkward. She has trouble in school. She has ADHD. She’s awesome.

She proceeded to tell me about all of the different parts of her – the nerdy part, the quirky part, the studious part, the part who likes art. “And there’s probably a lot more parts that I’m trying to figure out still,” she added.

We got down to work, but later on, seemingly out of the blue, she blurted, “I’m an odd duck. Strange. Peculiar.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked her.

“Because I’m not normal. Because I’m weird. And I have ADHD.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re strange or peculiar,” I responded.

She rolled her eyes. “All adults say that. They say I’m special and unique. But special is just a word they use to mean ‘different’ and unique just means ‘not like anyone else’. It’s just sugar-coating.”

I paused. “I wasn’t going to say that, actually.” I told her. “I was going to say that having ADHD wouldn’t make you strange or peculiar. It’s just a thing. Everyone has things.”

“No they don’t,” she slumped in her seat. “Everyone else is normal.”

I know. I so know exactly how she feels. Think. How would I have wanted an adult to respond to me? 

I took a breath. “Here’s the thing. And you have to trust me on this because I’ve been there. Okay? As you grow up you’ll realize that everyone has something. Everyone HAD something. You just might not know it right now.”

She slid a sideways glance at me. “Because it’s inside. Not on the outside.”

“Right.”

She thought about it for a minute.

“I wish I had x-ray vision so I could see what everyone else has…”

“I don’t blame you,” I told her. “That would make it a lot easier.”

“….but, then I’d be a cheater when I play Battleship.” she finished.

Excellent point, my little friend.

He told me

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Joey is amazing. (You can read more about Joey here, here, and here.). He’s amazing all day every day, but tonight, in this moment, here is why he’s currently kicking some serious butt:

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I wrote out the “Plan” of what we had to accomplish during our session. He read it and asked, “What do you mean ‘think of questions and give answers’?”

“Good question,” I replied. “So, we will read the book for number 1. Then for number 2, we’re going to use the question words and think of questions about the story. Then we’ll have to figure out the answers to the questions.”

He scrunched up his face. “I don’t get it,” he said.

This is so big. Please tell me you get how big this is. Years ago, maybe even months ago, Joey wouldn’t have told me he didn’t get it. And I don’t know why – maybe because his neurons didn’t yet have the association that a direction + a swirly foggy sensation = I’m confused + need to say something to convey that. But he would’ve nodded and smiled, and halfway through I would’ve realized that he had no idea what we were doing. Or seemingly out of nowhere I would’ve seen seemingly random behaviors – all a way of his brain trying to convey the confusion. But today? He knew. He knew and he TOLD me! Self-awareness! Self-advocacy! Communicating! Wait, it gets better.

So I wrote it down for him, just like I did on the whiteboard. I silently wrote:

-Read book
-Think of questions to ask about each page
-Answer questions

He silently followed along. He clarified (he clarified!), “You’ll write the answers to the questions. That’s fair.” And I agreed. And then he looked up at me, again, nodded, and confirmed, “Oh. Okay. I get it now.”

He told me. Again!

And so, I did my try-not-to-get-teary thing and told him how awesome it was that he told me when he was confused, and told me when it made sense in his brain again, and he wasn’t really into the mushy-gushy and was really just ready to read the book, so we moved right on, but really I didn’t move on because I’m still sitting here thinking about how awesome he is.

And how some small things are not small. Some small things are huge. And how the skills are there, and they come, and how they come in their own way, in their own time. And how we need to – always – meet them and their neurology halfway. And how I just feel so blessed and privileged to be the one who gets to witness these incredible successes.

Bella

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When I notice a behavior in a student, I think about it. I spend time analyzing, thinking, hypothesizing. There’s almost always a reason the behavior is occurring; it’s like a puzzle and I want to solve it.

So I’ve been thinking about Bella, one of my little elementary-schoolers – adorable Bella, with significant communication and social difficulties, among other challenges. A lot of the behaviors Bella exhibits, the things she says, or the games she plays, might remind you of what your preschooler says. But that’s not the concerning part. Bella acts the way she does, because that’s where she’s at developmentally. When a child didn’t yet have language, or any sort of interaction skills in preschool, they never got the chance to go through the phases of sharing, turn-taking, cooperation. They might not have had the experiences of having a toy grabbed out of their hands, grabbing at someone else’s toy, crying because they lost a game, getting angry when they can’t go first. So sometimes, we see those behaviors at age 9, because now they’re there.

Bella has been mean lately, to her friends. And I’ve been thinking – trying to figure out why she’s acting mean. And the other day, I watched through a different lens, and it clicked.

Bella and her friend Nicole came into speech the other day. When I asked how her weekend was, Bella told me that she had gone to a playground with Nicole.

“I went down the slide!” Bella told me excitedly, arms flapping.

“I went down the slide, too!” Nicole added.

Bella stopped flapping. She glared at Nicole. I watched.

“I also swung on the swings,” Nicole said.

Bella slammed her hands down on the table. “I swung on the swings! STOP COPYING ME!!”

Nicole looked at me, and then back at Bella. “I’m not copying you, Bella. We went together! We did the same things together!”

Oh.

When I thought back to when Bella gets upset, the pattern emerged. She gets “grumpy” and gets “Mean Jean” in her head when she perceives a friend to be copying her. And during those times, the friend is not copying her. The friend is agreeing with her, sharing a similar opinion, talking about a shared experience, or adding to the conversation.

While we often see kids get frustrated when someone has a different opinion (e.g., You can’t like tomatoes! Tomatoes are disgusting!), this is a little different in presentation. But it comes down to the same principle – understanding that different people have thoughts in their heads. Those thoughts might be the same as ours or different than ours, but everyone’s brain thinks its own thoughts.

So, I whipped up a social story, and the next time I saw her, she and I read it together:

When we were done, we played with some animal figurines, and Bella processed what we had just read by acting it out. My monkey figurine kept accusing her duck of copying me. Then the bear teacher reminded the monkey that two animals could have the same thought. Then during recess, the monkey and duck talked about movies and games that they liked. They realized that when they liked the same things, it was fun.

It’s a struggle for Bella to generalize much of anything she learns. Chances are good that we will need to read this again, and again, and again. And play, and act it out, and give her chances to practice.

The ultimate take home message – there’s always a why. Bella is not innately a mean kid. She’s not going through a mean streak. There is a reason she gets angry and frustrated about certain things.

There are locks, and there are keys, and some are clear and some are hidden, but we look. We don’t ever stop looking until we find them, put them together, and figure them out.

The brain and the heart

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[Written last week]

Today I was doing a lesson with one of my speech and language groups about nonverbal communication. We were identifying the “clues” that can help you figure out what a person might be thinking or feeling. We talked about what eyes can do (look up, look sideways, be open, squint), nose, mouth, and eyebrows. We talked about how hands can point and make gestures, how shoulders can shrug.

Then a student suggested, “What about your heart?” (In the Social Thinking curriculum that we use, we often talk about how we listen with our whole bodies – including our hearts).

I smiled, and told her, “Our hearts help us know how WE are feeling. But can we look at someone’s heart and know how they’re feeling?”

She shook her head and said she understood what I was saying.

A boy in the group, who had been fiddling with the ipad he was using, tapping his pencil, and seemingly not paying attention at all, turned to us and said, “Wait a minute. Your heart doesn’t tell you how you’re feeling. Your brain does.”

“No,” the girl replied. “Your heart feels the feelings.”

“Not for me,” the boy said. “Technically your brain tells you everything, it’s the only part of your body that can think.”

The third student in the class chimed in, with, “For me, they work as a team. My brain thinks and my brain feels and they work together.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” the boy responded. “But for me it’s usually my brain. My brain tells me what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking.”

“I think it’s both for me, too,” the first girl added. “Like, I know that my brain thinks, but sometimes I do more thinking and sometimes I do more feeling.”

They all looked at me.

I was (obviously) trying not to tear up.

“I think that you are all so smart and insightful and have such good thoughts and ideas,” I unhelpfully said, as they wanted an answer.

“There isn’t a right or wrong answer. We have a heart and we have a brain, and for some people one works more often than the other, and for some people they’re an equal team. For me, they take turns. Sometimes I listen to one more than the other, sometimes I need to remind them to work together.” I told them.

And as kids do?

They nodded, satisfied, and moved right on.

Because it’s that complicated – but it’s that easy, all the same.

Bio Poems

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I was out sick yesterday, and another therapist worked with many of my therapy groups. She did a fun, creative, describing activity, called “Bio Poems” – and reading them warmed my heart so much that I just had to share. These are all done by 6-8th graders, all with language and learning disabilities. They did a few pre-writing steps with writing templates and prompts for each line, but otherwise? These are their own ideas, their own words, with nothing changed (except names!). I laughed, teared up, and had my heart melted as I read these – it’s such a powerful experience to see how these incredible kids view themselves, and what their inner workings are like. I hope you enjoy.

Miranda
Who is creative, kind, and smart
Who enjoys Max Ride, math, YouTube,One Direction, tv, iPad, iPhone, pools beaches
Who is able to flexible thumbs, swim really fast, sing, act, dance
Who feels joyful playing on my iPad and happy reading my book
Who wonders what will happen next
Who fears when my mom is mad and the dark
Who cares about family, friends,cats school, books, stuff animals, necklace
Who dreams of being a famous vet/mom and meeting 1D

Ally
Who is Smart , Talkitive , Sweet
Who enjoys Playing sports , Playing with Sibilings , Drawing and
Coloring
Who is able to play soccer , Draw and Color
Who feels happy when I play with my brother
Who wonders what is out there in space
Who fears Thunderstorms
Who cares about Faimly and pets
Who dreams of About being a baker or a cook

Doug
Who is cool, kind, smart
Who enjoys video games
Who is able to beat video games easily
Who feels lazy when playing with friends
Who wonders how we got here
Who fears the end of the world
Who cares about the world of nature
Who dreams of being really cool

Nellie
Nice, fun, pretty
Who enjoys playing Minecraft
Who is able to do gymnastics
Who feels happy when I play Minecraft
Who fears big scary sharks
Who care about my family and friends
Who dreams of flying in the sky

Caitlin
Who is athletic, creative, nice
Who enjoys six flags, friends, drawing
Who is able to watch movies, go to school, play basketball
Who feels happy, loving, funny
Who wonders what I’m going to do when I grow up
Who fears spiders, reading in front of people, the dark
Who care about friends and family and animals
Who dreams to have a great rest of my life!

Gabi
Who is happy, kind, creative
Who enjoys tennis, yoga, baking
Who is able to biking, swimming, yoga
Who feels nervous, happy, shy
Who wonders what I am going to do as a future job
Who fears presenting in front of the class
Who cares about family, friends
Who dreams of to be famous some day