Stance of Curiosity

Joelle and Gillian draw on their years of conducting autism evaluations, and interpreting the results of these evaluations with children and families to share their perspective on disclosing this diagnostic information.  Both note that despite the nervousness parents and psychologists both can feel before letting children know about an autism diagnosis, these conversations are typically somewhere between neutral and very positive for the children and adolescents receiving the information.  Joelle and Gillian stress the importance of getting informing adults connected to a neurodiversity affirming stance that autism is not bad news, before as promptly as possible sharing with a child what we know about their brain, and offering a framework for healthy integration.  

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Gillian and Joelle talk about the skill of self-monitoring, which is an executive functioning skill in which one can self-evaluate and take a “bird's-eye view” to see how one’s emotions, thoughts, and actions are working to meet their goals.  This goals is related to but unique from situational awareness, which is the skill of recognizing the focus, actions, and energy of a group of people.  In both cases, the awareness of self and social context can inform how the person may need to adjust their internal state or actions to meet goals and successfully join groups.  In this podcast, Joelle and Gillian discuss how to teach these skills and how our responses can focus on building capacity and self-determination instead of simply eliciting compliance.  Strategies including mindfulness techniques and working through a sequence of steps to check the vibe when entering a situation are detailed in this discussion.  With great appreciation and compassion for how hard school staff are working to respond and offer co-regulation, these ideas are intended to build self-reliance in students and prevent burnout in educators and school professionals.  

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Joelle and Gillian continue some “greatest hits” of school consultation, with two more interventions they keep finding themselves recommending in their travels this year.  A “parking lot” is a tool that can help with impulsivity and calling out in the group.  Having an idea, then sorting through whether it is a helpful idea for the group in the moment, and THEN figuring out how to “shelve” and remember it for later if it’s not a “right now’ thing are an incredibly complex set of mental and emotional tools that kids need to model and practice before they can do independently.  Teaching kids to externally and explicitly “shelve” ideas and information during learning time, and modeling to them that an important adult will come and sort through these with the student reliably, can have a huge impact not only on calling out but on the development of executive functions in general.  “Going at the pace of the humans in front of you” is a practice of courage, confidence, and finding an important middle between absorbing whole cloth the aspirational and often too-fast ideas of those who set the frameworks for schools in the abstract, and feeling we have to “go rogue” or defy the system by ourselves in order to do what we know is right for kids.  Joelle describes a process for staying curious both about the framework and about the kids in front of us, and collaborating with our teaching team and our admin to adjust the plan to meet the needs.

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Gillian & Joelle share two of their most common suggestions when consulting with educators and clinicians working with kids.  “Step over the behavior” helps us connect with the need and emotion driving negative behavior, shift engagement to be more positive for all, and protect us from taking on stress that is not ours to own.  “Two by ten” is a strategy of spending two minutes per day for ten consecutive days sitting nearby and focusing on a student with whom you have a tricky connection.  This can look like joining their action, asking connecting questions, and always looks like sitting next to and not in front of that person.  In both of these recommendations, a key idea is to state your intention or rationale so that you can relieve the other person of having to decipher your goal and emotion. 

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Joelle & Gillian discuss the tension between offering support and skills to help people build stress tolerance for growth promoting opportunities and validating and supporting those who are experiencing anxiety and trauma response.  Essentially how do we balance nurturing someone who is suffering, with offering them an empowering and consented-to push? Specific approaches of worry time and trigger warnings are discussed as far as classroom strategies where this balance can be struck.

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

In which Joelle and Gillian think they are doing a dress rehearsal for the first episode but surprise themselves and the world by identifying a bit of a mission statement of their work and of this podcast thereby stumbling upon a real episode.  The mission statement: To protect the “natural resources” of the bandwidth, emotional energy and creative thinking of children and adults in schools by addressing all that threatens slowing down and connecting to one another.  They define the main threat to that as being a sense of urgency and being caught in an impossible web of “supposed tos” in modern schooling, and in particular the risk of personalizing the inability to do everything one is “supposed to” rather than locating that as a flaw in the system.  They discuss the impact of fear on the brain, and the way that curiosity serves as an antidote to the closing down of possibility that fear tends to bring in.  They also define some practical ways to use the stance of curiosity, in particular looking for questions in hard situations to connect, empathize and make sense of our own and others’ responses.

Find us on Instagram!

Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

What's this?  A new podcast where clinical psychologists who work in schools advocate for a more curious, human-paced, compassionate approach to both teaching and administration?  In this trailer, Joelle and Gillian give their best elevator pitch.

Find us on Instagram!

Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/