School Year Kids/Teens 09-10 - Session 7

Hi, Parents:

The kids’ group tonight was very interesting, and, I would say, went very well. We did kind of a backwards night. We spent, nearly the entire time out of the office. I started off, as I had promised the kids, by taking them for frozen yogurt. In keeping with the idea that we wanted to teach them portion control, we got them infant sizes. Now, infant sizes happen to cost $2.50, so no bargain there, but it was a suitably small portion for them, especially because we were going to continue on and take them to dinner next door at Numero Uno.

A lot of the kids did simply great. One of them, SB, was more in tune with other kids, and responded more easily, and even acknowledged that he had had a bit of a good time. Also, wasn’t as concerned with his diet. Lots and lots of social interaction, and one of the things that we began doing is tracking for our targeted interventions how often we were rewarding certain behaviors for the kids. Several of the kids were interacting in dyads and triads. CJ was playing with two other kids, QM and EM, and she was doing a “double thumb wrestle.” KK was more attentive and began using “please,” more. MH had a chance to practice asking another child to play but doing so politely. JH had trouble being in emotional control, but maintained, by and large. When offered tickets, he at first refused, but then changed his mind and was more accepting of them. DG had a chance to work on gross and fine motor control with spaghetti, and also conversations and jokes.

Dinner was one of the more conversational dinners that we’ve had with the kids. We gave lots of raffle tickets out, and we told them why they were getting them. At times, it was simply a very relaxed evening, and it was amazing to see that there were some fourteen kids who were there (we were missing two), and the group simply interacted quite well. We did a LUNCH Points raffle at the end; only three kids brought them, and, of the three, one of them, JC, repeatedly ignored my prompts that we were about to do the raffle, being so engrossed in his magazine. Finally, I proceeded with just two kids both with initials "SB."  They did a coin toss; the coin landed on tails.  One child chose a Nerf football and some other objects as his prize. JC, upon learning that he missed it, started to apologize, did not get upset at all, and maintained good emotional control.