School Year Kids/Teens 09-10 Session - 14

Hi Parents,

So one more group to go. Tonight was laser tag and we had thirteen out of our fifteen kids. Everything went pretty smoothly. We did have one episode of one of the kids striking another child. He hit him in the upper lip.  Obviously, this is something that is completely unacceptable. I spoke with each of the parents involved and will be following up. This is always something that is hard because I don’t want to deny the opportunity for any child to attend group.  But most importantly, I have to think about what feels comfortable for the group as a whole. We have been fortunate in that such events have been extremely rare throughout the history of our groups.  When these kinds of things happen, it’s usually with children who either have more limited language or have in general, more difficulty controlling their emotions. Fortunately, the child who was struck handled it in an extremely mature manner.  He and I had an opportunity to talk as we walked from Laser Tag to In 'n Out Burger. Other than this serious situation, the evening went smoothly and looked to be enjoyable for the kids.

Parents were really great, getting their kids there on time and picking them up on time. At laser tag, the kids really seemed to enjoy being on teams and the level of friendly competition was evident. They also were getting better at strategies in general and knowing what to do with their “down time” between games. They played two games of laser tag and then we gave them arcade tokens where they played for about fifteen minutes before we headed off to dinner.

Going to someplace like In 'n Out Burger is always an interesting challenge. On the one hand, it’s nice to see them socialize informally at a place that is more likely where they are going to go with friends than to some of the restaurants that we travel to. At the same time, we have less privacy, there are more “strangers,” which means we have to really monitor our supervision and pay extra attention when the kids go to use the restroom.

By the way, just a reminder on our policy on that: When a child goes into the restroom (if it’s a male) I immediately go in for just a moment and usually wash my hands (I wind up with really clean hands throughout the course of the evening) just to check and see if there are any other adults in there. If another adult happens to be in the restroom, I remain either in the restroom or right outside until the child has departed. If there are no other people in the restroom, I wait nearby and then watch to see if anyone enters and then I go back in to wash my hands again. Just thought you’d like to know that because I think that how your children are monitored and supervised when they are in public places is important information for you.

Having your kids going to a fast-food type restaurant is nice because it gives them a chance to order where there’s a bit of pressure, it’s a little too noisy, they have to say it correctly.  We try to take correct their order if we hear something being said that we think isn’t what the child meant to say so we give them a chance on the spot to correct it.  Tonight that happened with two kids who managed to slip in orders that weren’t exactly what they had hoped or planned to get. So their food was delayed for about 5-10 minutes. Having said that, it went extremely smoothly.

There was one apparently homeless person who lingered near the kids (we moved a couple of kids to create a safe amount of space).  What was surprising to me was how little attention any of the kids appeared to pay to this person. It made me nervous because it was an individual who seemed to be interested in hanging around the kids, although nothing happened.  I wish, as a group, they would show more awareness and even a little bit of trepidation in such situations. Just something to be aware of and watch out for.

The socializing between the kids was great.  When the manager asked if the kids wanted hats, I assumed that they didn’t. (But how wrong was I?) Nearly all of the kids wanted to have one of those paper hats and they appeared to enjoy wearing them. As they walked around cleaning, couple of them told me that they were acting like janitors but I suggested that they were probably management material.

So now we have one more meeting. It will be at the office and that will conclude the program for this school year. Thanks to everyone.

School Year Kids/Teens 09-10 Session - 13

Hi Parents,


Now we’re down to the third to last group session for the kids. Next time, we’re going to be doing to a community outing for laser tag and then we have our final meeting in the office, the first week of June. I have to say, once again, your kids really held it together certainly because there was a parent meeting and three different raffles, it was a chaotic evening, but other than some minor problems that were easily resolved by counselors, the evening went smoothly. So first to start with the minor problems. We did have two group members who decided that they thought it would be a good idea to pick a fight with each other and there was a very short amount of light hitting that occurred before it was quickly broken up. I think that each of the group members were surprised that the other person had hit them and it seemed to be very much related to being very impulsive and feeling out of control. The counselors handled it by separating the students and both of them were able to calm down successfully. One of the things that we noticed that happens in general is that when it is a more stressful evening and having the kids barbecue even though that’s a pleasant thing, is a stress. Also, having a parent meeting is a stress. It seems that on these nights, it simply is a more chaotic evening and interfering behaviors are more likely to occur.

Back to the barbecue. We started off going into Gelson’s and the kids really have gotten the idea that they have to occupy one side of the aisle or the other. They’re not as oblivious as they once were about other customers being nearby. They were able to figure out what they wanted and collaborate with one another to make sure that they shared things so we purchased steaks, kosher hot dogs and buns, and an array of sides and some fruit. We also threw in a dessert this time, which we don’t normally do. The kids were well organized, they all carried some of the food back with them, and we barbecued around 5:40 pm just in time for the food to be ready as the parent meeting commenced. The kids sat outside and other than the problems already noted, things went smoothly and there were three raffles. So our blue raffle is where everybody won, in our red ticket raffle, eight prizes were given away, and in our LUNCH points raffle, there were a total of two prizes given away for the three kids who had LUNCH points and were therefore eligible.

The parent meeting was wonderful. We had nearly every parent there and there was just a good amount of discussion. I can’t say we went over critical information, but rather parents simply asked questions about their child’s behaviors, what to do when they have meltdowns, and we addressed these from the perspective of what we do in group. So we talked about things like time away, I talked about positive practice, some of the modeling we do, and making certain that we’re giving them an opportunity to practice more positive behaviors even if it’s for short periods of time. We also talked about something known as habituation where if a child is constantly getting upset at something, you practice it over and over again even encouraging them to get upset and keeping it a little like a social story or scripting. That way by a child doing it repeatedly, they know they’re going to get upset. They tend to learn to have better control over that behavior. And the last thing that I recall we talked about had to do with differential reinforcement. Look this up on the internet and you will find it is a very easy way of reducing unwanted behaviors through reinforcing alternatives.

So as I said, two meetings left, one in the community and then our last session which will occur here around the office. And then we’re done for the year. Thank you very much for being such wonderful participants and I will look forward to seeing you soon.