5 Ways Hand in Hand Parenting Is Helpful for Doctors, Teachers, and Therapists June 2021

0:03 [Music] and i welcome everyone who's here we're very excited to get to share this with you today and we know that you have very busy lives and that you're that you've taken time out to do this and we expect that many people who signed up for this webinar are going to get the recording and that's just fine so we are glad you added us to your busy day and we'd like to support your work as

0:33 professionals working with parents and if some of you who are on this call our parents and not professionals we welcome you totally as well and we want to give you tools that you can use at work and at home and um well so i'm going to talk just a few minutes about hand in hand and while everyone's joining and then we'll begin our our webinar on the topic of hand in hand for professionals so my name is shelly macy and my

1:04 co-presenters are maya coleman and pam otis and a little bit about hand in hand we're a non-profit organization based in california with instructors all over the world it was founded 32 years ago by patti whitler to share both her tremendous respect for parents as well as her insights about the emotional needs of children which are based on many many years of real life experience and but we're also research based hand-in-hand is a valuable

1:34 resource for parents and for professionals and the three of us are here because we have used it in our professional capacity as well as parents parenting so we bring lots of valuable information tools and support to back the work that you do supporting parents in this work that's most important to them we know that the work of supporting parents is often done in isolation we are the teacher or the therapist or the pediatrician and hand in hand is a way

2:05 of building com building connection for us as professionals and certainly it's a tool for building support for parents we have a variety of resources both free and pay those with fees and we would love to share this vast resource with you excuse me today we want to especially highlight our eight-week professionals intensive that provides a thorough introduction to supporting parent professionals and to use hand in

2:37 hand in your practice and you can find all these tools through the website so there are four main ideas behind hand in hand one that parents need and deserve support for the emotional challenge of parenting parents can build that support and have much more success meeting their own needs and their children's needs number two children are born to feel connected to us so the sense of connection is what they

3:07 need in order to learn to grow to build friendships and resilience and confidence number three when children don't feel connected and their behavior goes off track and they signal they signal to us that they need help and the disconnection we get a chance then to work with and number four when we foster laughter and play without tickling when we set limits without harshness and we support children to have good hearty cries and tantrums it helps

3:40 children feel more fully connected to us and helps them leave difficult behaviors behind and i'm going to add a fifth idea and that's for us as professionals hand in hand helps us to partner with parents to be the kind of support we want to be in helping parents be the parents their children need parents get to feel successful as they love and raise their children and children thrive on the love their parents and caregivers have for them

4:08 we as professionals get to see the fruits of our work blossom okay i think probably everybody who's signing on today is here so we'll start with today's presenters and seminar i'll introduce myself and let my colleagues introduce themselves and then we'll begin with our topic sharing hand in hand for professionals so my name is shelly macy i'm an educator i retired after 27 years as the lead faculty at northwest indian college at tribally controlled

4:39 college here in washington state and before that i was a preschool teacher a family child care home provider and after i became a parent i was the teacher in a parent co-op preschool at northwest indian college i taught and actually developed so much of the program all the courses for most of the courses and um in the degree program the child development associate program also in the paraprofessional

5:10 we had a three-course certificate program and in the parenting program there i incorporated the tools of hand-in-hand parenting uh and this approach in every course whether it was how i treated my students or what i was teaching them about children and and handling the things that happened with children and of utmost importance in my life are my two adult children and my four adult stepchildren and my nine precious grandchildren

5:42 so i want to turn this over to pam and maya to introduce themselves let's see uh thank you shelly it's a joy to be here with all of you today and um my name is pam otis i am in toledo ohio i'm a pediatrician and i've used these hand-in-hand tools throughout my entire career i have done inpatient and outpatient primary care medicine

6:13 and i am also the mother of three adult children two sons that are adopted our eldest and youngest are adopted and our middle son is a foster child who came to us in second grade with whom we are still connected so thanks to you maya thanks pam and shelly and really thanks everybody for being here it's really really great to have you here um i am in washington dc and i live with my

6:46 spouse and our 15 year old i'm a clinical child psychologist and have been working primarily in in private practice with parents of young children primarily birth to six um and um recently in the program director position um at hand-in-hand so moved from from private practice uh into into this position but i'll be talking today a little bit about what

7:16 these tools looked like and sort of what my practice looked like before before now so thanks thanks for being here all right maya i think you're gonna talk about hand in hand you know yes so um what we wanted to do first is give you um kind of a a quick moving um overview of the five concrete

7:47 caregiving teaching strategies that make up the hand-in-hand approach um so probably for the next five or ten minutes i'll just be passing on sort of information but then you'll get to hear from all of us about what this actually looked like um in different settings so all of the tools that um that we're going to be talking about are called listening tools because they provide structured ways to offer connection and listening

8:19 um to build to build relationships with children so the first tool special time is a structured one-on-one time with a child that builds a foundation of connection and increases cooperation so to implement special time you just set aside a specific period of time usually you know in a classroom it might be between two and ten minutes to focus your complete attention on one child and to follow their lead

8:51 and play so first you're you're naming this time you can call it special time you can call it uh you're the boss time kids rule time um and you announce how long it will be and where it will take place so we're going to do some special time during special time we can play whatever you want to play um i have three minutes and we can have special time in the dramatic play area and and then

9:16 you just set a timer you let them know that it's special time um and during special time you just play whatever the child would like to play you do what they're doing you follow their instructions you notice and comment on things that you appreciate about them you just let them know how much you enjoy spending time with them and you try not to ask anything in the form of a question so even try not to ask what they want to

9:45 do in special time you just say it's special time and you see and aware where their mind takes them so when the timer goes off um you let the child know special time's over for now you tell them you enjoyed playing with them and you let them know if if you'll have another special time planned so then you build in a little bit of time after special time we recommend you know two or three minutes two to five minutes in a in a

10:13 classroom during which you can listen to the child if they have feelings about the end of special time or or if they show any kind of off track behavior shortly afterwards and this is when you're using the next tool stay listening and stay listening is an approach that helps you anchor a child during high emotion um and it supports them in offloading stress tension upset through

10:44 the emotional reset processes of crying tantruming trembling laughing yawning talking so when a child becomes upset or does something off track you just come physically close um you offer physical connection and support as you're able um you pay attention with eye contact and and you just listen while allowing the child to express their feelings to have them so

11:14 most of your support here is non-verbal but um you can offer just some reassurances that you're you're present you're listening you'll stay with them while things are hard you'll keep them safe and you you can set limits here on uh any aggressive or kind of unsafe behavior but otherwise um you're just kind of setting aside the strategies you might tend to use for for just a few minutes so if you would typically go to you know rewards or consequences or

11:45 negotiation or verbal processing you know use your words um and you just try to listen while the child has a few moments to have and express their feelings so you may not have much time to stay listen um you know partic before you need to kind of move the class on to another activity or whatever your setting is you know before something else needs to happen but even a few minutes of emotion

12:16 having before moving to emotion regulation or kind of other activities is really helpful so i mentioned uh the third tool already actually which is setting limits um and setting limits is is an approach to off track behavior is a three-step process to address behavior while keeping the connections strong so so during this three-step process

12:49 which is listen limit listen you first in the first listen you kind of notice what's happening you assess the resources limitations of the setting of your own attention and you think about what kind of limit might be most helpful so like a firm and quick safety limit you know in response to aggression or um just a common confidence statement about an expectation or playful limit setting um so you're

13:20 just taking stock of your own resources um time energy attention and and support from others you know who who's available there to take care of other things to back you up and then the second step is you're you're setting that limit so for example oops i can't let you throw that toy um and and you hold that limit as the child reacts to it so you know if they try and run away with the toy you're you're placing your hands

13:50 on it you're saying well i'm going to hold this toy right here to keep everybody safe and the third step involves listening to the child as they express their feelings about the limit or they express the feelings that were driving the off track behavior and making it hard for them to cooperate with you or or kind of reasonable expectations and that third phase the the second listen is actually just stay listening there um

14:21 the other play-based tool um in addition to special time is called play listening and play listening is when you take the less powerful role in play and you promote laughter without tickling so you know on the playground it might take the form of physical play so um chase games where the adult is kind of slow and bumbling and can't can't catch the kids or you know they're chasing you and you can't get away it usually

14:54 involves the adult like making some kind of mistake doing something ridiculous um being roundly defeated in play well you know the child is laughing and and just explores being in the more powerful role and play listening can happen anytime so it can it can happen in special time you can kind of take that take that role but it can also spontaneously happen kind of during regular play time with groups of kids it's not

15:24 it's not necessarily a one-on-one tool um but you can also use it as a strategy when a child is is like hesitant about something or having trouble playing cooperatively so play listening builds um a child sense of of confidence and competence and it just builds flexibility and cooperation with you um that actually tends to sort of generalize to interactions with um with their peers with you know kind of the wider classroom

15:56 so so then the fifth tool uh a listening partnership is a support tool for the adults in a child's life and a listening partnership is a structure through which you and another adult another teacher another therapist and other parents can provide support to each other for the emotional work that you do in in supporting children and caring for children so you and another adult um

16:28 just take turns listening to each other for a set an equal amount of time um you know often this can be 10 to 20 minutes for each person and during your time as a listener you just listen attentively without interruption without questions without advice you're really just listening um and and then you switch and your listening partner listens to you and when you're being listened to you can

17:00 use that time to talk about to have feelings about anything that's on your mind you just notice how you feel you can express any emotions you have you can talk about you know tricky things you're trying to figure out um and what someone shares during listening time it's not shared with others it's not referred to by the listener even later to the person who shared it so it just really stays right there and listening partnerships can happen in

17:31 person by phone um through video conference um they can be arranged with people you know uh with people who are not in your day-to-day life but you know who've learned about this tool and want to try it out often that's really helpful to say get connected with a with another teacher who may not be in your particular school or you know to get with to get connected with another therapist who's not in your community um you know to exchange

18:00 listening time so anyway quick intro to all the tools we just wanted to you know give you give you an intro but really we want to share with you how we've used these tools in different professional contexts what does it look like you know to use stay listening in the classroom to use play listening in the doctor's exam room to use special time in a therapist office so we will we will move into just sharing those

18:31 um those experiences with you so pam would you share first gladly gladly thank you um shelley and maya thank you for that beautiful synopsis um well done well done um so yes i've been a pediatrician both in the hospital and in the outpatient setting probably more primarily in the outpatient setting than the hospital but i've done both and i will say that connection the underpinnings of

19:03 everything that hand in hand stands for and aims for was the lifeblood of of was and is the lifeblood of my practice as a pediatrician that my connection with parents my connection with the children and my my ability to foster connection between parents and children when those when those connections can get frayed um really has made has brought the joy to my pediatric practice i i never got burned out i've never been burned out as

19:33 a pediatrician um and uh that and i've been doing this for over 30 years um my practice has shifted and changed with a variety of foci but i've been doing it for over 30 years and it still brings me great great joy um so my connection strategy begins when i walked in the room to a family that i've known or a family that i've never met before and i start with an appreciation of that parent something specific they were

20:04 there on time for an appointment not a small thing um their baby is well fed whatever it is that i can know specifically about them to appreciate them for which shifts our relationship um to one of respect and my goal is respect my goal is to show caring and to build a mutually respectful compassionate relationship and then i listen and i listen to how they're doing how is it how's it been i listened to the upsets um how's it going managing

20:36 asthma congratulate them for their child not having been hospitalized for asthma um those are not small things and um as i listen i can be observing lots of things about the relationship and i can be also building the same trust and mutually respectful relationship with a child that's in the room depending on how verbal they are um so listening is the foundation on top of the connection and then

21:07 certainly stay listening is one of the one of the big tools that i use in my practice certainly i don't my goal is to not initiate tears but tears often happen in in an exam room um shots are anticipated and and when when the tears happen my response is to congratulate the parent which always surprises them a little bit but i congratulate them for their child feeling safe enough with them to be able

21:38 to show this and that it's a really good sign and i model um i model paying attention not not being in a hurry um and not distracting um but listening and and hopefully keeping them close physically together and then i often ask the mother and or the father eye to eye we're usually pretty close what what would it be like if someone had listened to you when you felt

22:08 scared or sad or upset you felt like something hard was happening how different would your life be if someone had listened to you and sometimes they get tears in their eyes um there's a there's a there's a aha moment there um that the tears actually are a healing and connection building experience for them and their child as well as for me that it's it's all three of us um so stay listening happens um

22:38 on a regular basis both in the hospital and and in the office um and play listening is another one that's j i don't know it's just fun i mean when i'm when i'm in the office i sort of have this feeling that i'm at an open house and i don't i don't know who's going to show up the schedule's filled but it's an open house to be able to visit with and be with and enjoy families um whatever the circumstance is

23:06 and um so again it's following it's following the child's lead in in me being willing to be silly me being willing to not know what color something is well but of course this child knows their colors and but i'm not sure i thought this was green no it's red and no i get to be the one who's not so altogether smart they get to laugh and feel empowered and and um confident and it and it builds my

23:37 connection with them and with their parent um the parent could see them being smart and me appreciating and enjoying them um as as a young one so and i i will never forget a boy who used to hide he was i don't know he was i think in in preschool and he'd hide well there's no place to hide in an exam room i literally no place um but he delighted in the fact that i couldn't find him you

24:03 know i looked in the waste basket and oh i wish i wish i could find him i'm so looking forward to seeing him and we're going to see and um meanwhile he's laughing and laughing at some point he jumps out you know right in the middle of the room and you know these things don't need to take half an hour it's you know a minute or two um which it just shifts everything um so we all get to laugh um and special

24:28 time i have not figured out how to do special time in the office um because of of timing and you know what is there to do in there except no you can't touch that and that i mean we have enough of that going on with things that they want to grab so but i have done it in the hospital i do do it in the hospital um very definitely a child who's bedridden can do special time um and uh

24:57 and i um i talk about special time for parents and children and i describe it i write prescriptions for it um and you know ask the child what they might like to do and watch the parents face fall or get excited you know i want to climb that tree and then i get to talk with a parent and say well what would it be like to climb that tree oh we're climbing that tree and i get to express my confidence and their

25:26 willingness to try and get enthusiastic and you know eventually we all get to be laughing um and and it has shifted relationships for and this is for every age from toddlers through teens um really especially with teens for parents to be willing to to try that even um can make a huge difference and last but not least i probably should have said this first is listing partnerships without them we don't even want to go there we don't want to talk about it

25:56 i have a dear husband now 44 years and i can't imagine we'd still be married um i'll put it that way and we are very happily um i do listening partnerships most days of the week i have some exchange of listening with someone and the more i do the the more fun i have the more relaxed i am the more the more good ideas i have i mean a miserable problem turns into a oh this could be this could be an

26:25 interesting thing to try um so it lifts my worries and my fears i sleep well at night um and it it helps me in enjoy enjoy my life i'm more me um with my listening partnership so um yeah i could say more but uh i'll turn this over to uh shelly i think right chilly are you next sure sure thank you pam the thought of getting a prescription for special time is like oh how thoughtful anyway thank you that was

26:57 wonderful so i love sharing hand in hand with educators and with anybody who listened to me actually but anyone who works with children and families because it's so sensible and it allows us to get to be the parents and teachers and kind of do the professional work we signed on for when we decided to do this so i'll share a little bit of my experiences and i warmly invite you to learn about these tools yourselves um

27:27 i think i said first i was a montessori teacher and that was before hand in hand and oh i would i i would have been a much better teacher um then i operated a family childcare home which was also before hand in hand and i had a child who came for months she stood at the door and cried for her mother and i tried everything i learned in my montessori training and other advice and books and everything and

27:53 you know distracting finding things to do and it took her months but eventually she cried her way into seeing that things were okay and that taught me something about the brilliance of children that you can try everything but they need to do this work and then when i was a child care i was center-based child care and i learned this tool the first big aha came to me in a listening partnership i was i was furious with the administration of

28:26 my child care center and and i didn't know what to do with myself and actually the person who taught me was um had been a single parent and she wanted child care providers to have these tools anyway i went to my very first listening partnership just sort of like a powder keg and sat down and was you know going to be very professional and i was given the opportunity to say

28:57 whatever i wanted for i think we had 45 minutes each it was amazing and i just started talking and then tears started flowing and then i started to be angry about things and my listening partner put a pillow on my lap and i was able to just pound it and she encouraged me to say things i would never say in person to my administration and it's like my brain was just gradually clearing up and i had

29:25 never had anyone give me permission to cry like that and i'd always been told i had a terrible temper so i was supposed to keep the lid on and i didn't have to for 45 minutes i mean that was immense and it i felt better afterwards and went home and the next day i went to work and my boss commented on how relaxed i looked and what a pleasure was to work with me and and i was astounded because we had been

29:53 like this so we went on for the next many weeks and months to really improve the situation at the child care center listening to staff as well as to the administration so i was sold and it also meant that i fully understood what a good thing it was to listen to children when they cry i mean if you could feel that much relief from a big cry and a tantrum then why would i stop a child from doing

30:24 that and things just really changed in my life as a child care provider and listening to getting the staff to take turns listening to each other in the guise of we've got a we got a problem here why don't we pair up and just share what how we feel about it and then we'll talk about it as a full staff and we came up with marvelous marvelous solutions to what had been sticky problems so the the ability to listen to children

30:54 um stay listen as maya described gave me such satisfaction and joy and it wasn't always easy there were times when i thought oh my gosh am i doing the wrong thing i stopped a child came in the doors from outside threw his coat on the floor and i said oh let's pick that up and put my hand gently on his back you know let's pick that that up an expectation limit set and he just arched his back

31:21 through himself backwards i caught him thank goodness and had a huge tantrum and you know again he's telling me how awful i am that i stink he's not the one who told me i had bo someone else told me that but this very big cry and then afterwards he was chipper and cooperative and it was a huge change but while it was happening i'm like you know the other staff are a lot watching me but then they were like okay what did

31:53 you do i want to know what you know because that was a big change for this little guy so when i became a college instructor i was so excited to share these tools because i knew that i could plan out a curriculum and an environment and set things up so children could self-select things and learn and everything's developmentally appropriate but when a child's behavior went off

32:24 track everything could go down the tubes and if i if i knew to stop a child's off-track behavior or to expect something of them that things would shift if they could have this big cry so i was excited to teach teachers well of course i had to teach some curriculum development health safety and nutrition well what are all the courses there's so many courses in early childhood education in a degree program but i infused every course with respect

32:55 for children respect for families and respect for yourself as an educator with the need to be listened to as an early childhood professional and then the tools of listening and were certainly key in a guidance and discipline course and i also taught what we call the starter course or the professionals intensive as a quarter long course for the early childhood degree program and i had a practicum called playing responsively where i was teaching how to use special

33:26 time and it was so exciting what different teachers would figure out i had a first grade teacher who figured out to do a special time for the first 10 minutes of lunch one child at a time until she got through her whole classroom she said it changed her life she's still my husband works at the same school where she works now and she tells him every time she sees him which isn't often but shelley changed my life like

33:51 wow but she took in the tools observed what happened with her children and has used these tools for the rest of her you know as she teaches um so my early childhood education um degree program students over and over expressed surprise and delight at learning what they were hoping for all along to get have tools to handle things when things fell apart

34:21 and then you can get things back on track and those marvelous plans you made the children start to enjoy and cooperate and you learn from the children what they need and then you you follow their lead and they learn to do special time with children they stay listened they set limits oh and i have to tell you one last thing that um the director of a program where i got to teach all of the staff except one or two but it was a small

34:50 program about nine staff i got to teach them the professionals intensive course and they were using it and what the director said who had taken the course earlier said it is so much happier there's so much more laughter at the center now it is so much more fun to come to work so um there are great riches in this work for us as professionals and um i am eager to share more with you but

35:20 i'm going to turn it over to maya great thank you both oh my gosh it's so great to listen to both of you i love it so um well i can i can talk a little bit about um you know using these tools in in a therapeutic context and and also in a preschool context so um i'm a clinical child psychologist and was working um with parents and children uh together uh and had primarily a

35:53 home-based practice so i was actually working with with parents and children together right right at home to bring these tools on board and um i would say about 95 of what i was doing with with parents and children was bringing these hand-in-hand tools on board and the the way i actually framed the work with families was actually through special time so i was

36:24 meeting with families at home and we were meeting to to do special time um and so it was uh it was the very first thing that um that we would do when i arrived was we were we were offering special time um to the child and you can really see everything in special time it's like that is the quickest way to get to know somebody um to get to see

36:56 you know where where challenges are where um where good connections are um you know to see the relationship between parents and children it's like such a rich experience um but but the thing that i really love about it is that is that the child is in charge that's what we're that's what we're starting with and so you know i would show up to somebody's house and the way i described you know to kids

37:28 what what i was doing who this person was who was arriving is um that i help parents play better with with their children and um and you know i was not you know going in and doing clinical interviews with the kids or you know it was like we were moving right into um they got to just lead the play um and there was one one little kid who i really um who's so great he started

37:59 up calling me the special time wizard what was this special time wizard coming so um you know i just i just really appreciated this tool for sort of structuring our our time together and um it was also really helpful because um there was so much to to sort of debrief about from these special time times with parents

38:29 so i would do do time with parents and children together and then i would meet with parents and we would talk about you know what was that like to be to be connecting in this way what was it like to be to be playing to offer this kind of attention and and it's like everything comes up for us in special time it's like all those feelings about well nobody ever played with me in this way or you know like if i did that i would

38:59 have gotten you know really nailed for that or um you know i can't stand the idea of like playing this this game one more time like all of our feelings come up in special time and so that that structure for parents where we could where we could talk about that what's happening for you what kinds of supports are you needing there and and and parents can really see their children in certain ways

39:31 in special time that that sometimes it's hard to do without without that kind of structured focused time so you know one one parent um commented to me after you know after bringing that on board at home and we had our follow-up you know session um like two weeks later you know and he said it is really amazing what my child is showing me about themselves like

40:02 i'm really getting to know them and all of these things about them and it was like it's a it's a it's a simple setup but it's really amazing you know what how children use that time what they bring into that time um and what what you can notice and appreciate um as a parent and so so special time for me was really like the frame in in all of the work that i that i did

40:34 with parents but also um you know bringing in all of all of the other tools so always talking about um the stay listening piece because it's because it's this kind of time where children feel um the attention the presence of of their parents um you know that that like makes room for all those feelings you know things that haven't sat right or

41:04 things that they've been sort of carrying around and all of those feelings bubble up um and and kids are looking for support and assistance with with those things and helping parents um you know not feel like they have to be get so busy sort of stopping the emotion having you know really recognizing that that actually these emotional processes

41:37 are the mechanisms by which children heal from hard things that have happened to them they offload the tensions they clear their mind um and and that the the crying the tantruming even that's not the problem that's the reset process where their emergency response systems get reset um and and recognizing sort of all of those processes um

42:07 you know not as not as sort of negative outcomes but as there's some there's some real healing happening here um and and i'll talk about like that piece in in working in schools also so so lots of the the kids that i worked with would come to me because of difficulties in preschool and i have a background in special education learning disabilities and so it was often consulting with

42:38 teaching teams working with that child's school as well as working with with parents at home and usually kids were were coming to me because they had arrived in preschool and they were hitting their friends or they were having regulatory challenges where they were just having lots of feelings um and and that's when they would call in you know call in a psychologist often often these were children where those those feelings those behaviors were were

43:10 meaning they were um you know being asked to leave preschool programs they were being um expelled and um there there is quite a lot of that um you know happening and so um so i would come in and be able to talk with teaching teens about um how to bring some of these supports on you know on board at school and you know at school you are working with

43:42 tiny chunks of time during kind of critical transitions you're working with two three minutes where you might be able to bring some of these really powerful connection tools um on board and so often you know i would be working with with teachers to think about um you know these these transition times when kids are arriving at school when um you know the the activities are changing in the classroom when it's time to head

44:12 out to the playground and figuring out where can we build in some of these connection tools in the in that two to three minutes and um it is actually amazing how powerful that is um to make room for emotion having before you're moving into sort of you know the regulatory strategies that are that are really you know pervasive in classrooms this is often you know we're focused on

44:43 helping kids develop self-regulatory strategies or you know you ideally co-regulatory strategies where they're connecting with their their adult um but there's an incredible benefit to just making a little room for the emotion having before you need to move into some kind of regulation and so stay listening um actually has been really powerful for

45:14 for teachers when when they they can sort of say all right i'm just just gonna take two minutes here my co-teacher is kind of you know generally has has the rest of the class on board here i'm i'm literally gonna stop and and just for two minutes listen before then you know the next part of the classroom routine happens or the next strategy and one one classroom um we're working with a teacher in a head start classroom

45:45 and she went through this uh professionals intensive and it was really the stay listening tool that um you know that that they took on on board um you know really comprehensively throughout the day um what they had previously in their classroom was one of those cool down zones you know little little calm down area um in their classroom it was called the alone zone so kids would go and you know hang out there and try and use some

46:16 self-regulatory strategies which didn't work super well so what they did in status they turned the alone zone into um a stay listening place so teachers would go in with with kids during during that time um they would also set up particular um special times in in that area really these were max five-minute special times but they were really really powerful and that's where they would happen so

46:47 um this one little girl in the classroom that had arrived and was having so many be just challenges um knocking other kids projects over just having lots of feelings big tantrums all these kinds of things happening so they just decided all right we're gonna we're gonna have somebody be with her we're not going to try and have her manage this on her own when things bubble up we'll head into the alone zone with her they proactively

47:17 put in really it was like five minutes of special time a day for you know a couple weeks um and it was unbelievable kind of what happened for this for this child and for the classroom so the alone zone became so popular they had to set up two alone zones in the classroom and and and this child who had been knocking kids stuff over

47:48 and like having such a hard time um was no longer doing that i mean surprisingly actually no longer having those challenges and was offering other kids special time in the dramatic play area and it's like when you see that when you see kids like really know what this is and pass it on to other kids it's really um really powerful so i mean you know we could talk all day about like amazing stories but

48:21 what is um what is so amazing to me is how how powerful these tools are how effective and also how efficient it's like in all of these settings there are limits on how much time or you know how much one-on-one time you can get and and it's like it's amazingly powerful even these small little chunks of connection and building those in and and resourcing

48:51 parents um to bring these tools on board at home because there's different kind of room um you know to to use these tools at home too and when when everybody in a child's life has access to these tools it's such an amazing it's such an amazing support for kids um you know to have teachers and their pediatricians and their um you know speech language pathologists and their families like just knowing

49:23 about these connection tools so so that's what i'll say but i think we can we can yeah we can move into some um q a here we have about about 10 minutes so some questions have been coming in on the chat i don't know if you've been keeping track of those shelley and thank you so much maya that was wonderful i hear new stories every time we do this from these two brilliant women uh pam

49:53 was gonna respond to one of the questions go ahead um let's see let me open it where do i have it no i don't have q a there it's blank mine is um let's see oh um yes nikita

50:25 you wanted to um know whether there was a recording and yes there absolutely is a recording um so and that will be available to people who have registered you'll get it you'll be sent a link and we would strongly welcome you to sign up for the professionals intensive which will start soon that the professionals intensive happen periodically through the year and

50:56 it's an eight-week experience for those of us that are working with parents and children in our work um there are hours of video video tapes video recordings um a lot of reading and we cover each one of the listening tools each week so you get to read about it watch something about it try it and then come to a mentoring call with me or shelly or robin and if we have too

51:28 many people we might even draft maya to do another call as well um and there are a variety of times offered and the mentoring call um during the mentoring call we um we get to share our experiences we get to say what we tried what we learned what doesn't make sense we get to ask questions learn from each other and um and we definitely do list we do a listening circle on the call and we help people to set up

51:57 listening partnerships in within the uh within the professionals intensive group the groups are small we're limited we limit them to a total of six on the call the call is an hour and a half long so it really does give us a chance to to get to know each other more deeply than you can sort of imagine by the week end of week eight none of us want to part and we're looking at how we can

52:24 maintain some of these connections listing partnerships go on and on for years and and people go on with hand in hand as they choose so you can you can find out about the um about the professionals intensive on the website and we look forward to you all signing up we'd love to have you is there another question yeah pam in the q a vicky asked i have some questions about special time what if the child asks for special time all the time and

52:53 what if the child does something that breaks rules how do we set limits during special time thanks oh great really good question nikki um well it with in a family or in a regular setting where special time at school um or as maya has described my the ultimate is it is special time period and when that young one asks for more from the parents it's great to schedule it so when when we finish special time do we know it's going to happen every

53:24 wednesday when i get home from when i get home from school or every saturday morning i get special time so that it's something they can count on and we can remind them oh you know we can't do it right now and we are on the schedule for such and such and the other is for when there is high need um given the ebb and flow of family life sometimes three minutes every morning can change the whole tone of getting

53:55 ready for school or leaving leaving for school so that i mean getting dressed oh my goodness i remember getting getting children dressed in the morning and gosh just three minutes of special time then five minutes of special time helping do things that they really knew how to do but there was something that shifted if i did it with them and for them delightedly so if there's a high need sometimes it's

54:26 worth it to put us put the time in as maya described it's so efficient um three to five minutes invested in special time can save a half an hour of a really messy departure um that doesn't end well um and and we we set limits during special time the same way we bring limits we love the idea of bringing limits um because we bring ourselves to the limit of it's warm it's firm it might be playful

54:57 um when we when we bring a limit to to a child's behavior no it's it's not okay to write on the wall with the crayon you can see the crayon you see them eyeing the wall you can see them heading toward it so i just get between them and the wall and nope it's this is special time but but that doesn't mean you can write on the wall and and as maya described how what our attention's like

55:24 when my attention is really good and i can do that with a smile and i can be relaxed it sometimes brings laughter when i'm tense and i really don't want them to do it and i bring the limit like that and they laugh then i'm not i don't think it's i don't think it's funny at all so where i have attention really does it's worth noticing um and the lighter we can be in the warmer and the tender but firm um

55:52 and then listening so yeah good questions nikki thank you and i like um the idea of of sort of saying yes but making it safe so uh you know so a child comes up with something in special time you know i want to leap off the top of the bunk bed and that that's not a safe setup of the way you have it um so to be able to say like oh my gosh that sounds super fun let's

56:22 figure out like we can let's figure out if we can make that safe you know maybe it's they're jumping into your arms and you're catching them right there or maybe you have you know three other mattresses that you stack up underneath or you know the idea is not that you sort of have to do it when they propose something that is safe or is gonna cause a lot of damage and you know be expensive to fix it's like

56:50 but you go with you go with their thought you go with what they're wanting to explore and like oh man let's let's figure out if we can make that safe um you know and the limits in special time are around um you know around safety like you're really setting safety then it's you know there you're not not letting kids you know get hurt or or cause more damage than you know then you're willing to pay for

57:18 as part of it so um you know that that does come along with it you can also decide um sort of where special time happens so this is often you know the case in in school so special time happens here in this in in this special time center over here so that you're not continuously having to set limits around while they're actually working with that material or no we can't pull this out now you one of the things you decide is

57:52 when special time is happening how long it's happening for and where um so yeah you can sort of engineer in you know some see there so we have about two minutes left and we have three beautiful questions that we're not going to be able to answer but i promised isabella i would answer the question about um for the transition that involves of the car that you're having um you have to drive away time is the hardest any thoughts about

58:22 how setting up a calm down time for these transitions like pick up from school or other activities and i've got a quick answer for you my daughter who had always loved her car seat suddenly didn't want to get in when we went to school and i asked patty what it was so frustrating she would cry and arch her back and patty i asked patty and she said shelley set things up so you leave half an hour

58:47 earlier get up happen i'm like oh you're kidding but i did and the the job was to to listen to her and keep saying we're going to get in the car seat now and it wasn't calm down time it was actually let these big feelings come out time you know like once and for all and she had this huge crying as she stopped crying i would sort of gently start putting her back in the car seat and she would cry

59:14 hard and truly the first time it took a half an hour and then miraculously she let me strap her in and she talked all the way to school and then the next day we went it was every other day it was only 15 minutes same thing we're gonna get in the car seat now and every time it calmed down i'd put her further toward the seat and she'd cry hard again and then i and then it took three times and then

59:40 the car seat was okay now had i known to do a few minutes of special time in the morning that would have helped too but whatever you use these tools as a parent creatively to help your children go go through these hard times of life there are a couple more questions about special ed um teaching on an online platform yes and also a question of working with children with autism and special time we have um the tools

60:10 are so useful look on the website for a slew of excellent free articles about a topic you're interested in parents experiences teachers experiences you'll get lots of lots of clues and of course join us for the professionals intensive if you possibly can this time or another time because we really get to delve into all of these questions and you have the resource of other professionals thinking with us and you

60:40 pam you have a wrap up for us i just want to say thank you shelly for leading us organizing us and maya for your invaluable input as always and to all of you participants for your commitment to children to parents and to being professionals uh to make a difference in families lives we we are building the future that we envision so thank you and congratulations thank you thank you everyone everybody

61:14 bye bye