Summer Session 09 - 10

Kid blog entry-Monday, July 27, 2009

This begins our last week of the intensive summer program for kids. Today is mostly an in office day because, on Wednesday, we will be headed off to laser tag for a second time. Friday is mostly a “wrap up” day. We will have completed all of our raffles earlier in the week and we mostly spend the day on “end of group” activities. Sometimes the kids have emotional reactions to group closure and I have found that staying close to the office, with the exception of having lunch nearby, seems to be most productive.

Today’s session included working on a new type of animation where the entire group had an opportunity to participate. It will be posted later this week because there are some publishing tricks I need to perform to get it up on the web. Most of the kids did find today, except three had increased levels of externalizing behaviors.

We started the day off by serving breakfast to your kids. I had announced this at the parent meeting the previous Friday and most of the families knew about this. It should also have been posted on our calendar and I’m sorry that I neglected to do that. In any case we served them pancakes (yes I made them from scratch at home the night before and refrigerated them), bananas and blueberries, turkey bacon, dry cereal, and orange juice. One child does not eat dairy and so, for him, I made a special nondairy version of the pancakes (surprisingly good!). I’ve never seen 40 pancakes disappear so quickly as they did into the mouths of your children. What was especially nice was that we saw a level of conversational interaction that simply normally is never seen early in the morning when they first arrive.

After breakfast we began our Hollywood High animation project. Initially, some of the kids were out in the waiting room playing the Wii, having earned them through their LUNCH Points. The others remained in the training room and I demonstrated how this new type of animation works. Actually, it’s a very old program that will not run on Windows Vista and will not run on the new version of Mac OS. Despite that, it is a quick and robust method for having your kids pay attention to story lines, conversations, emotional expressions, and simply being creative. The story that developed turned into a classroom teacher who speaks with an unidentified individual as the two of them relate what they did during the summer. It’s a bit silly, but it held your kids’ attention for nearly 2 hours during the day today as they put it together, working on it before and then finishing it up after lunch. I especially liked the fact that we were able to have two kids generate entirely different endings for the story, and the group was able to blend them together to create one integrated ending.

Lunch today occurred at Chipotle, and nearby Mexican restaurant. Your kids learned a valuable skill today, unintentionally. Apparently the question, “is it spicy?” Is important to ask. Some of the main entrées are not spicy while others are. One of the things I like best about this particular restaurant is that they have an area, which for our group, turns into a “conversational pit.” Watching your kids just having a bite to eat and sitting around talking with one another is extremely rewarding.

After lunch we finished up the animation, made chocolate dairy and nondairy milkshakes for the kids, and had our final Blue Ticket raffle, and called it a day.

I did mention that there were problems with three kids. One child, “J,” had started off having a rough day and chose to express himself by purposely breaking our sign-in pen. when he was asked about this, "J" said that he had been angry. I acknowledged his feelings and explained that being angry did not give him the right to damage our property. Initially he seemed to have little interest in trying to resolve this and made little eye contact, something that is not uncommon for children who have just behaved in an oppositional or defiant manner. I told him that the pen which he had broken had now become his reward since he didn't appear to have any interest in discussing the matter further. He looked somewhat surprised, and asked him if he cared about receiving that is the reward as opposed to participating in the upcoming Blue Ticket raffle, which would be held later in the day. He indicated that he "didn't care" and I said that that was fine and just keep the pen and return to group. Parents and others often assume that when a child says "I don't care" they actually mean it. I've found that it's best to us than they really do care but not to confront them at that point in time. In the case of "J," my plans to let him sit with this information for a few hours until the time of the raffle and then to reapproach him. In fact, later when it was time for the raffle and I informed him that currently has reward was the broken pen and once again asked "do you care?" I received a different reply. This time "J" said "I do care." Obviously the pen itself was irrelevant and this was much more about the level of antisocial behavior that needed to be addressed. The plan that we came up with was that "J" would take responsibility for bringing in a replacement pen on Wednesday in return for participating in today's raffle. Those of you out there who are strict behaviorists probably feel that I have things a little backwards. However for me to behavior that I was rewarding was a child's acknowledgment that they had done something that was unacceptable and I felt the "J's" statement to this effect was significant.

The second child, another "J" had a meltdown in the morning, after staff asked him to place his toys that had been in his pocket and found their way onto the desk, in the adjoining office. He became inconsolable over these two pieces of plastic and, when I could not calm him down in the office, I took him outside. He began making negative statements saying that he did not deserve to be in group and he did not deserve to participate in the raffle. I had made no mention of taking any of these things away from him and chose to verbally punish him for making these negative statements. Early on in group when he was making frequent negative statements I initially tried to be supportive, which caused the frequency and intensity of them to skyrocket. Ignoring the statements does not appear to work as they have a self reinforcing quality. Verbal punishment has been effective in creating "teachable moments" and providing an opportunity for him to say something more positive and/or neutral about himself or the situation. This one did not resolve as easily as previous ones and it was necessary to give him an actual "timeout," Something I almost never do. I had a counselor remain with him and placed him in a seated position outside that, while not uncomfortable, did not provide him with additional reinforcement. They were both instructed that, when he was calm enough to return, he was welcome to come back into the group. After approximately 10 minutes when he did not comment down, I let him know that we were about to do "a surprise" and I was sorry he was probably going to miss it because he was so agitated. At that point "J" began screaming "I don't want to miss the surprise." I reminded him that the only way he would have access to the surprise was to be calm and in control of his emotions. Within two minutes he had completely calmed down and was able to return to the program. He participated without incident for the rest of the day.

The third child, "A," had his meltdown during lunchtime just as we were about to order. As with the second "J," I was unable to calm him down quickly in the restaurant environment as I had on previous occasions. I asked him to go outside and he refused. At this point I picked him up and carried him outside, something that he did not like but my purpose was to quickly move him into a different environment so he could begin the process of calming down and begin collecting himself. Because he was outside closed to traffic I lightly held his wrist. He did not want this to occur and began to struggle and I explained to him that it was not an option to have me not holding his wrist as long as he was agitated and outside near traffic. I explained to him that I was worried about him and wanted him to calm down and, once he regained control, he was welcome to return and join the group as well's order his lunch. within a couple of minutes he calmed down and was able to return to the restaurant. It almost went smoothly after that, however he was ordering his food in a way that bordered on "ordering around" the staff behind the counter. We use positive practice, which he found mildly frustrating but complied, to have him order in a way that was more respectful.

The rest of the day went smoothly and, as I alluded to earlier, we did a Blue Ticket raffle, where each of the kids had an opportunity to win a prize. That pretty much covers today.