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.

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