Monday, August 14, 2017

Theory of Mind

The other day my three year old asked for a glass of milk. When I brought her the milk she burst into tears. "I wanted orange juice!" she cried. I groaned, and then logically tried to explain to her that she'd asked for milk. Milk! The words milk came out of your mouth- not orange juice. Why was this so hard to understand?

Then I had one of those strange moments where I suddenly realized what the problem was. "Let's play a game" I suggested. "See this toy car? I'm going to hide it right here under this pillow." Everyone in the room watched as I hid it. "OK, now, Daddy's going to leave the room." My husband looked perturbed. He was sitting quite comfortably in his chair, reading. "Up! Move! Out!" I demanded, and so he cooperated, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"OK, I explained to both my girls. "Now, we're going to hide the toy car again. Let's put it behind the couch. Now we'll bring Daddy back in." My five year old giggled at our trickiness. It seemed delightfully wrong to have hid the toy again from daddy.

"Where does Daddy think it is?" I asked, when my husband came back in. My five year old immediately pointed to the pillow, where we had originally hid it. My three year old however, ran to point behind the coach. "Daddy thinks it's here!" she announced, while her older sister groaned.

She doesn't have theory of mind yet! I realized. Of course she is upset that I didn't bring her orange juice. She still doesn't understand that we do not know the same information. She does not yet understand that my perspective is different from her perspective. If she KNOWS that the toy is hiding behind the couch, then daddy  must know that too.

We played the game a few times, and each time got the same results. The three year old had no idea that we were tricking the family member outside of the room.

Now, this is a great opportunity for getting the truth out of any situation as we know we can always ask her what is going on (until she develops theory of mind and then we'll have to resort to other lie detector test methods.) But it also explains a lot of that three-nager behavior we know so well.

It's so easy to forget that this confident little person who can speak in paragraphs, run, jump, leap, open small containers, and put on her own shoes is still not developmentally just like us. I mean, she looks like us, talks like us, and can fight with her five year old sister. She doesn't have a sign that says "I have no idea that you don't know what I'm thinking right now." But she doesn't. It's coming and pretty soon she'll understand that when she changes her mind and wants orange juice she actually has to ASK for orange juice. Or that she wants to go look at something on the other side of the store instead of just running and assuming I'll be behind her. Or when she started sobbing on the swing yesterday because her daddy wasn't pushing her high enough. She'd asked him to push her, but she hadn't high. Why was he ignoring her? It's got to be confusing to wonder why all these people aren't doing what you think they should do. While we're frustrated with her big emotional outbursts, our silly game served as an excellent reminder of the motivation behind some of her behavior. She's still figuring out the world, not just intentionally yelling at us (which is what it feels like sometimes).

This is also important to keep in mind with many of our high-functioning students with autism. They are slower to develop theory-of-mind as well, which creates conflicts for them in the classroom, as well as with peers in natural social situations. Not seeing someone else's perspective can make them targets, or put them in situations where they become easily frustrated. (Ever heard  a child say, "He's fat! Everyone knows that, why can't I say it?") This is when it's important to remember the question "Is it a can't or a won't" Is the child being intentionally mean (which is what we initially assume) or is it that he really does not see how his words hurt someone else? We can use this moment as a teaching opportunity to explain empathy, or we can punish the child, without explaining the problem, which won't help us or the child in the future.

In the meantime, while we patiently wait for my daughter to develop theory of mind, we'll keep occasionally testing her with our fun new game.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Drama Club Success!

On Friday afternoon, my daughter burst into tears as she watched us strike the set and turn the small stage back into our basement playroom. "But I want drama club to keep going!" she expressed through her tears. It's hard to be five and experience something fun ending.


But truthfully, I felt the same way. For the last two weeks I've hosted a drama club in my basement. It was just an hour a day, for two weeks, and was for a small group of early elementary school children. I designed it as a way to support children with their reading over the summer, but quickly realized just what a great opportunity it was to teach social skills as well.

I've always been a big fan of using readers' theater to support readers. In my last year as a full-time teacher the reading specialist and I started a drama club for fifth graders during their lunch time, so they could work on their reading and fluency. We were surprised by the amount of kids who joined the group. We never opened it to all of fifth grade, but kids heard about it and started showing up. Putting on shows is fun, and gives reading a purpose.

Reading scripts is a natural way to work on fluency. Kids are not always willing to re-read a passage with expression, especially if they struggled through it the first time. But when you give re-reading a purpose - like say, needing to read it like an actor would, well then, the motivation changes. Re-reading familiar text is essential when children are learning to read, and repeatedly practicing a play lets kids do this in a way that doesn't create boredom or monotony. 

When you involve kids in the planning of the play itself, you are working on their retelling and comprehension skills as well. An actor has to understand a character's emotions before he can take on the part, and so just encouraging the readers to think about how their character feels is a way to foster deeper thinking about the text. 

What's more, in order to block out the scenes, you must be able to sequence the events in order, know which character comes first, next, then, and last, and consider what a character's costume may look like. You even have to spend time thinking about the setting so that you can create the scenery. All in all, you can't put on a play if you aren't comprehending the story.

Then we get to the social skills aspect of drama club. Improv is an excellent way to work on social skills. Any improv game requires its participants to watch one another's body language, and flexibly respond to the stimulation at hand. We played games where we could only communicate with each other by using our eyes (forcing us to make eye contact), or where we needed to guess what someone was doing based off of their actions and emotions (forcing us to attend to body language). We spent a long time discussing different types of emotions, because you need to be able to identify and understand emotions in order to act them out.

What I realized during this club is that the mere act of being in a play requires a fair amount of social skills. We came up with a list of "what actors do", that included reading with fluency and expression, changing their voice to match their emotions, waiting their turn to speak, staying near the other actors and not walking away, and listening to the other actors speak so they know when it is their turn. It might just be me, but these aren't just skills actors need...

On our first session we identified our goal (to put on a great play) and used the Goal, Why, Plan, Do, Check method from the Unstuck and On Target curriculum to create a plan to stick to over the following two weeks. We referred back to this plan daily, and always stayed focused on our goal (we can't put on a great play if we're talking while someone else is practicing). 

We spent the first week selecting a play, and we read many different scripts I'd adopted from different children's books. This required the group to read new texts, and then re-read them in order to decide what they liked better. Before we voted, we created a chart of the different books so we could compare the problem and solution in each text (another essential retelling skill). Finally, the group voted on the book Peanut Butter and Cupcake. 

We spent the second week practicing our lines, painting costumes and scenery, and blocking out the play, and ended with a performance for our parents on Friday.

Like my daughter, I found myself disappointed that it was over on Friday afternoon. The ten sessions gave so many opportunities for reading and social skills practice, and I want to keep working with the great group of kids.