TRANSCRIPT - Behavior with Layne Pethick >>Donna: Welcome to TSBBI Outreach. Tech T-time. Our weekly session. And before we start here, our goal is to build our community of practice for technology that allows us to support our students. In the spirit of that goal, T time is going to be as interactive as we can make it. We've got a question and answer section that is open. We also have a chat that's open for you to drop. Your questions into that and I'll be monitoring that and I'm sure Lane will see things pop up. >>Layne: Sometimes. >>Donna: So. We will be able to field those. Be it advised that this session will be recorded and posted on our website for a later viewing. >>Layne: Yeah. So behave yourselves. >>Donna: Beard yourselves. And by registering for this session, you grant us the permission to publish that content that may include your image or audio. Alright. And today. Too light. Nope, you're here. >>Layne: Is it too late to disagree with that? Yeah. >>Donna: It's done. So today we have Lane, with us talking about behavior and I hear that he's gonna throw some assistive technology in there with the behavior. So, so excited. And for our VI kitos. So. We get the hat trick. >>Layne: Possibly. Yes, there it is >>Donna: I'm using my hockey. Yes, so we're going to, pass this on over to Lane. I'm going to stop my share. >>Layne: Alright, let me get mine going. Let's see. Alright, so. Well, good afternoon everybody. I have my Tea here with me. Because it's T time and we just get to hang up and chat. You know, Donna approached me about, hey, I do this T time thing for VI and Texas school for the blind and this and she was, you want to talk about behavior? And I'm like, well, of course. I mean, especially if it's T time, I'm gonna do this. So, I appreciate being asked. I will say it wasn't the easiest thing to sit and think about. Behavior VI. I've had some super cool kids over the years. I'm 31 years into this and I have had Oh, I was just telling Donna I have like 2 of my favorite kids who were in VIA who had VI and serious behaviors. And one of my boys, I called him Batman. He actually liked Batman. He wore like a mom made a puffy print on his t-shirt of the Batman symbol and he'd like touch it all the time but he was funny because I was telling Donna I would walk in there and you could see him. You could just watch him and he had kind of listen. And he knew exactly where the person was he didn't like how far away they were and how much he had to put on that trajectory for whatever it is that wasn't nailed down. He was gonna throw at him. And he hit people 9 times out of 10 like this kid was I called the he had sonar it was his absolutely incredible what he could do. He was one of my favorite kids. He, we found out his issues stem back. He was also non verbal. And it stemmed back to he had some gut issues that we finally figured out were actually causing a lot of the behaviors. You know but when you have you're pretty much totally blind and you're not verbal It makes it a difficult go. It took us about 2 years to get it figured out, but we got it. And he is He's done amazing ever since. As far as I know, he's doing wonderful in life. So, but so my world is behavior. And so when you do the world of behavior like I do, you basically cover every single person. It doesn't matter the disability, it doesn't matter the things. You're dealing with people with autism, ADD ADHD, AI, VI, XYZ, Elemento P, you got it. It's everybody there because human behavior is human behavior. I do love to talk about behavior with VI and AI especially what people don't realize is, is how the brain compensates for a lot of things when a major sensory system is having difficulty or shut down. The human brain does a whole lot of other different things and it can actually create a different outlook on behavior when we're working with our kados with AI and VI especially. We have to be extra careful at how we look at behavior. And so I figured today that's what I'll cover. I'm gonna take a look at it. How do we look at behavior differently? Not just with VI and everything else, but with everybody. And, and today is about how do we start looking at this behavior thing in a different way. To get better outcomes. And so that's kind of what I planned. But the first thing I'm going to share with you is I got some brain research for those of you who don't know who I am I'm at region 10 I do behavior and autism I've also been doing brain research around the world in different countries for about the last 20 years. How their brain learns, how their brain behaves, how sensory inputs affect the brain, ADD, ADHD, autism in a brain, all the fun stuff. And so I'm gonna share whatever I got with you and what we know so far. Because it is absolutely invaluable when you're looking at it, especially when working with kids with severe kind of sensory impairments. So first thing I'm gonna share with you is one of my favorites. This is literally one of the most amazing, incredible learning and behavior interventions we know of today through brain research. I will tell you. We have looked at the research on kids with sensory issues and this is an absolute game changer. But. Here's what it is. Precess. We actually have to have recess. Not for 15Â min a day. We need to have recess on average for almost 2Â HA day. I know. We're in the state of Texas. State of Texas has some of the lowest research or recess rates in the world. Not in our country in the world. We only average about 15Â min per day. Realizing here's what I want to tell you is those of us here in this room because we're here because you know School of the Blind and VI and and our VI population think about it. One of my major senses is shut down. The way to build up and and synchronize and get my other sensory inputs to work better is to get me exposed to as much input as I can so it can work through that stuff. Outside at recess, one of the greatest things for us to do, get outside, get out there, manipulate, explore, go touch, go, feel, go interact, go do, go run, go move. We have to get that done. And it's it's just has we've done a lot of research on movement and the sensory production of the brain. And we have found that if I am. If I'm lacking vision. My other sensory inputs need that work out that outside gives naturally to help build the capacity of all those other areas. Recess, recess, recess. So. We're on Zoom. Can't take you outside to run around or do the usual. Recess activities I do with groups when we're face to face, but I'm still going to give you recess. So what I need everyone to do is I can't see you, so this is an honor system. I trust you're going to do this. Let me see if I can make you feel real bad. I really trust you're gonna do this because you're amazing people and you're just great professions and parents and others. So there you go, deal trip. All right, recess. Ready? Here's your first thing. What I want you to do is point with your index finger. So I'm gonna try and do it myself. Take your right hand point with your index finger. Rotate your index finger clockwise. As you rotate your index finger clockwise, try and rotate your risk counterclockwise. Yeah, we call these strong brain activities too. So here's something I'll share with you. I don't remember if I stuck it in here or not. I think I did. We're gonna talk about strong brain activities coming up too, and I'll explain why these are important, but these strong brain activities are your recess for today. So we're gonna do one more. One more recess and it's just to get you ready because it's mid afternoon. Most adults are starting to. Wind the brain down for the day so I need to keep going. Recess second part. Here we go. Rotate your neck in a direction. Just, just stretch it out. Roll your neck in any direction as you're rolling your neck in that direction, roll your tongue inside your mouth in the opposite direction. Yeah. There you go, welcome to recess. The best I can do on Zoom. We'll do recess again in a second. I'll share some more. So here's what I want to share with people. I just gotta hold on. Let me close some things because my screens covered with all kinds of, little bars and stuff. This is something I want everyone to think about when it comes to behavior. In my world of behavior, this is my feeling. We got to stop worrying about punishing them for their anger. They're already being punished by their anger. Whatever it is that is my behavior, you realize that behavior is communication. It's something I am not able to communicate in a proper way, so the only way I got is this. It comes out as behavior. It comes out because of memories that were created by a situation that I keep reliving these memories and I kind of I can't express to you what's happening. And so that anger we see sometimes is actually my punishment. And I tell people we gotta get off of this world or this. This I call it the crazy train in education when it comes to behavior that we're still on the retribution you did this so we're gonna do this to you you did this we're gonna do this we need to stop We need to look at they're doing this because What do we need to do to help them get this figured out and have a better way to communicate those feelings or those memories that are attached to those behaviors. And so it's a different way of trying to look at how we do behavior. So I'm going to share some more brain stuff with you, look at some things in regards to how we can be better at doing behavior. And I'm gonna try and do it all in the next half hour. 45Â min. So. We're just gonna get right into it. I tell people when it comes to behavior, it's about what we need to do for our students, not what we're needing to do to our students. I still see too much. Is like, what do I need to do to them? What do we gotta do? What do I have to do to them? It isn't about doing things to our kids. It's about doing things for our kiddos to help them get through whatever it is that is creating that behavior in there. It's just The people working with behaviour have to be of the highest caliber and highest need. I also tell people control compliance programs should be used and implemented with great caution. I'm going to explain something real quick also. We've done the research in autism. The brain research in autism is off the charts. And it's another area that I tell people I can't even begin to talk to you about what we have to change immediately, how we deal with business with autism. We've also done this in sensory integration. We found out that the more controlling and compliance based a program is the higher you start to raise my anxiety. And when I already have a major sensory input that is having difficulties or that I I is diminished. I'm already under high stress. My brain already has a level of anxiety and stress that's already higher than most because of that sensory input. Delay or or deficit. You now try and push me deep into control compliance programs. Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. Here's your reward. Do this. Here's your reward. Do this. Use it. Those types of programs actually cause the limbic system in the amygdala to fire up. And cause more anxiety. What we're finding is we're needing people to realize that there's 2 things we need from the human beings. There's gotta be calm and genuine. You have to be in a genuine good mood. Realizing that even if I can't see you I can feel you. And I tell people this is the neatest thing I've ever seen. I can go sit in a room with people who are totally blunt. And I can sit in there and within about 10Â min they're already reading my body language and my demeanor just by being in the room. That's how powerful our brain is. So it is about you know, whether you can see me or not or even whether you can hear me. We have an innate, it's interoception, we can feel other people. And I tell people one of the coolest things ever happened in my career was about I guess it was about 20 years ago. I was teaching special education at the time and one of our middle school girls, sweetest thing ever, her anxiety was off the charts. She was functionally blind. Just a doll like she was super night but her anxiety was so high she just she had such a hard time calming down she had peer mentors that walked with her to classes got her to places which were phenomenal but we would always notice that she just had this higher level of anxiety. It was interesting because she was kind of on my case, so I'd go see her on a regular basis. And her behaviors would go a bit. They'd get a bit difficult. Because it Piece of her life and and and how her brain was not able to quite get itself calm down because of number one the VI issues but number 2 is She was lacking a certain skill set to like maneuver her world at the time and we were working on all those pieces too. It was interesting though because I'd go see here like 3 times a week spend about an hour with her just talk to chat just stay in the room with her, go find her, you know, watch her go down the hallway, go with her, go to class. And it was interesting because it was at the end of the school years like, mid-May. We're winding the school year down and I went and sat in the classroom. She was in there with friends, they were doing stuff with the teacher, I sat in the back of the room. I didn't even say I was there. The teacher knew I came in all the time. So I just kind of quietly walked in the door. Went sat down. And, it was interesting because It was about 20Â min later, she got herself up from her group, walked over to me, sat down next to me. She used a, she used a cane, so to maneuver to figure out where she was. And she sat down and she goes, you know, Mr. Pethick, I could feel you. I knew you were here. You got here about 15Â min ago. She goes, you, she goes when you're around me, I'm calm. And it was the most profound thing. I think I've ever had a student tell me that just me being around them brings them calmness. The realization now that I know with all the brain research is being done, it's actually very true. Teachers classroom teachers, any teachers in there, what I need you to understand is I put it in here, but I'm gonna cover it right now. Once you're around students, parents, once you're around your kids, you have a 10Â min time window tops. To get yourself calm and in a genuine good mood. If you can do that, you will affect the brain chemistry of everybody around you. If you're in a bad mood or you're uptight, you can't calm down, you have the office effect on the brain chemistry. You increase anxiety, you cause more things to react in the brain. It's the most amazing thing. And I think, you know, when we're talking about VI. It is vitally important to understand this. It isn't whether they can see me or not or whether they know I'm there. Not it's actually My persona in there and who I am and how I conduct myself that has the biggest impact. Which is why I tell people it's not about programs, it's about our people. Especially when it comes to behavior. So just something I wanted to share. I know I have this stuff called ADD. So I will talk forever on things. So and you're in Zoom land, which makes it even harder because I can't see your faces with the eye rolls and like all hurry up. So have fun. Here we are. Strong brain activities. We now know. This is something cool. So everyone in the room with me today, parent parents, teachers. Just amazing human beings who decided to join us for T. Here it is. We now know as we are sitting here together today. Our school age children in the United States have some of the weakest brains known in human evolution in about 3 to 400 years. There are 3 reasons for it. The biggest reason right now is technology and it doesn't matter if I'm VI, technology will still affect my brain to an extent. It's parenting styles we have in our country. It is also number 3, the heavy hitter, lack of outside, lack of being in nature, poor diets and lack of exercise. It's all lumped into one. Those are the 3 big factors that are causing the brains to become weaker. But I tell people is we got to do some strong brain activities to build them up. Our brain is like a muscle. When we work it out, it gets stronger. When it gets stronger, it can process, integrate, intertwine, intermix and analyze with Which means just throwing tick objectives and academic objectives at me to learn doesn't make my brain stronger. It actually makes it weaker. What makes my brain strong is it is a solid, it's solid and it's strong and it can lift the weights of knowledge and behavior that I'm having to learn so they can be processed, analyzed. Attached to other learning and things like that so it's about how strong my brain is and the only way to work out the brain is it's got to be uncomfortable. So your first 2 recess activities were actually strong brain activities. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a couple more here. And so parents, teachers, whoever's in the room, I have a starter kid of strong brain activities if you would like them. With our kiddos with sensory issues or meteoric issues, we did some of these hand over hand. You look at the list, you look at what's feasible, even if it's hand over hand to start teaching and get after. It's it's still will have the same effect on me. You do them only for about 10Â s. If you do them for about 10Â s, if I could scan your brand, they'd be lit up like a Christmas tree. So it's fantastic stuff and we've already done a couple, so we're gonna do another one. It's called bitch can't do this. So here's what we're gonna do. I just want you to snap your fingers like it's a bad poetry reading. Well, let me turn my camera so I can see if I'm being a good role model for you guys or not. I said I had to turn the screens off so I could see my screen so all right stamp your fingers like bad poetry reading Now what I want you to do is wink each eye so wink your right eye, wink your left eye. Just go back and forth and winky chat. Alright, here we go. You're gonna snap your right hand and wink your left eye at the same time. Ready? Alright, now you're gonna snap your left hand and wink your right up. Ready? Go. Alright, so for those of you who are good problem solvers, you know what's coming up next? You're gonna alternate. We're gonna go left and right, so you're gonna snap with your right hand wink you if the left eye and then you're gonna snap with your left hand wink with your right eye. Ready? Go. I've done this a lot so I'm not so bad at it, but I watch people do this and weekend gets really hard they start like rocking their head up and down trying to get the winks out because it gets tough. So just a strong brain activity. Don't have time to get into all the research on this. Just please trust me. You do these for 10Â SA day, kids attempt them, you take their brain to the gym. It is also good for our adult brains. To ward off a lot of things that we are fighting in our society currently with brain issues. So get after it, have fun and get those brain stronger for our kids. >>Donna: And then there's those of us that can't wink their right eye no matter how hard they try. >>Layne: So. Some people will actually push their eye up and down while they're doing the activity. It's hilarious. So you do what you gotta do. It's the attempt that counts. You just attempt it for 10Â s and your brain gets taken to the gym. So. I share this. >>Donna: And we saw a hand co-OP with Mr. Rosario. >>Layne: Oh yeah, just interrupt anytime. I don't, I can't read chat and talk at the same time. >>Donna: That's okay. The hand went down, so I guess the question went away. Yeah, if you if you raise a hand. >>Layne: If anybody, I mean. Oh, oh sure, fine. Yeah. Oh, you press it back? Oh, you should have just made something up. >>Donna: Oh, press by accident. That happens all the time. If you all have a question, drop it in the chat or in the QA and I'll interrupt and I'll interrupt. >>Layne: I mean, you pressed it back to like, hey, you know, just make something up. So I'll keep going because. >>Donna: Okay. >>Layne: Here's a major factor. Now, for all of us who have ever worked in special education, resiliency is probably It's number one on my list. I'm just gonna tell you that I need resilient human beings. I need the our kiddos who struggle with VI, AI, autism, ADD, ADHD, ID, all the things that can that we're dealing with. I need resiliency. Resiliency is my ability to continue on with life even when things get hard. I will tell you right now in our society this is the number one thing that we are lacking in all school age children. And one of the things I share with people is I think The thing I've seen the most is in the AI and VI worlds. I see our kiddos and our students with AI and VI, probably with the greatest capacity for resiliency. And I see this because if they are surrounded by the right people as they're developing and growing up. They gain that sense of resiliency. They know that they have control over things. They know that they can pick themselves up and dust themselves off after they fail. They have a sense of optimism they have. That belief in themselves. And I think this is something if I have parents in this room today, if you are a parent. Parents, if there's anything you do for your children, anything, it is to build that resiliency. When I lack resiliency, I get into adolescence and as early as and as soon as early adolescence. I start developing anxiety and depression issues. And as I get later into adolescence, it turns into anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies. I lose that ability to be resilient in life and then I don't know how to function and manage. And so this is a major component and I tell people the in the VI world in the world, you know, where, you know, Totally blind. It's about giving them that resiliency to keep going. You know what you have. You have a different world you're going to live than other people. It doesn't mean it has to always be hard or it has to be you have to overcome different things in other people but you can do this and you've got this. And I also see that we're we're as we get into middle school high school ages. If there's no resiliency, I'm busy as a behavior person. Because with no resiliency I quit, I shut down, I am done. And these behaviors start to increase as I get older. And so this is something that I think is extremely important for us to look at also. To look at that whole idea of how do we build that resiliency because it does it's like a force field against a lot of the behaviors that I am tending to deal with right now, especially in had a lesson population. I tell people VI has been one of my best places for a sense of humor. I had one boy who was, he was, totally blind. And, he would put on these big glasses with eyeballs on him and just sit in class. And I would walk in and he would carry him in his pocket or try and sneak him where we didn't know he had him. And I'd go to check in on him because he was in resource or you know inclusion. And I walk in there and he's in this part of the classroom and all you see are these big eyeglasses staring up at the teacher and I'd have to go in and start laughing and walk out of the room because it was the greatest thing I've ever seen and he just have this grin on his face like. Yeah, I'm here. It was fantastic. That kid had the best resiliency I think I've seen in a long time. And so those are the things we're looking for with our, Oops, let me see, So what I want to share with you is, We, in education, parenting. Even in a lot of our therapies and clinical. We've been revolving around the thing called the behaviors theory for about a hundred 30 years. The behaviorist theory is. Why we have token economies, clip charts. You know, the reward systems, the consequences. This, that and the other. I will tell people with brain research and the understanding of how all brains do behavior and what happens in our brains when we get behavior. It's time for us to start turning a corner and kind of getting away from that traditional sense of behavior. This is not easy for people to hear. But I tell people this has to do with all of us. It isn't just if I have via. It's all of us. So everyone in this room right now, what I'm gonna preface this with is The next 10Â min or so, I'm going to talk to you about how all of our human brains technically and basically do behavior. It's actually hopefully going to be like a 10Â min therapy session for everybody too. It's going to help you understand maybe some of your behaviors and why you do a you do. Doesn't mean you're gonna be able to fix it today, but when you understand why you're doing something, you're more apt to be able to fix it. And so or make it better or change it. And so behavior in our brains is something I thought would be very important because It's not based on just because I have VI or just because I have autism that I have these behaviors. Everybody has behaved because we're human beings. Behavior is behavior. There's no such thing as autistic behavior or this other. The behavior that I'm exhibiting is for human reasons. And we gotta get into that category first and understand that. But, I was gonna show a video but we're gonna we won't have time because I'm gonna run a time with you off. What I want to share with you all is here's your 10Â min therapy session. I'm gonna try in about 10Â min to explain to everybody. In as general and understandable terms as I can about how our brains do behavior and why people exhibit behaviors. And so if you take a look at the screen right now, you see those 4 levels. Looks pretty fancy. It's the basic 4 levels of the human brain. We have the brain stem at the bottom, midbrain, limbic system, and at the very top is called the cortex. Interception if you take a look at that one side it says inter-reception it will not register as a word no matter what you put it in but it's an actual word. Inter receptionist is things that we feel and learn from inside our body. So it's our body's way of teaching us good, bad, not good. It's our gut feelings. You ever have those gut feelings where it's like, mmm, something's just off. That's an interception. That's that's a learning process from inside our body. Senses is everything from the outside that our body learns. Our body solely learns from all the senses. All of our senses are integrated, interlocked. And coordinated to learn simultaneously from our outside world. When I have one of those major senses diminished. Or have difficulties with it or there's issues with it. That's why I told you earlier it's important. You gotta get the other sensory systems built back up. The only way to get them built up is to work. Which means outside at recess interacting with as many types of different things is vitally important to build up those other sensory systems. It's the only way we learn. We all of us human beings learn from our sensory inputs all of us. That's how we learn life. That's how we do life. That's what we do as human beings. The problem is, all this information, inter reception and all the senses. That information comes into the bottom of the brain and has to get processed to the cortex. So we have a bottom upbring. Everything comes into the bottom. If you look at the bottom, the brain stem is just automatic functions mostly. It deals with just a lot of like breathing. Blinking, things we don't ever think about heartbeats, making sure our heart is beating. It does a lot of the automatic stuff. Midbrain and limbic system are high emotion. Hi, a motion, high feeling, highly reactive parts of our brain. It's not till we get things to the cortex that we actually process it. Ironically, the cortex is the only part of the brain that makes us human. So when I talked earlier about the behaviors theories, the reward system, the token economies, though, if you do this, then you get this. If you do that, you get that. That whole world. Is based off of the behaviors theory. Watson, Bandura, Vagotski, Skinner, all the big dogs down there. Think of it was, all that research was done on Animals do not have a cortex. So yes, we can give animals rewards. We can train them with their behavior because that's how their brain is set up. It's a reward driven brain. It's a brain that gets rewarded and then it becomes the new pattern. The human brain is not the human brain has a cortex and I tell people I'll prove it to you. Most of our kids they can put on these token economies or reward systems. They might work for a week or 2, but then what happens? They change. They don't work anymore. That's because my cortex figured out your plan and now my cortex is holding you hostage because I don't just want to skiddle, I want the bag. And until I get the bag, my behaviors are coming back. And so it's interesting because I tell people we've run this system for a hundred plus years. I love these guys. The behaviorists Watson, all the big wigs of this this era, Bar Wolf and Riseley, all the big dogs in this world. I absolutely love these guys. Actually have some of their seminal works and their writings up in my office and here at my house. Because I respect them. But the thing of it is that's all they knew a hundred years ago. That's the only information they had about behavior. And they did their best with it to do something to help kids. We now have brain research. We know, know how our brain does this. We now know better. It's time to start doing better for behavior. So here's our brain. This is it. We have to get everything to the cortex to get processed before I learn something or change something. Now with behavior, there's some there's a cool little thing you need to understand. When you're going to change any human beings behavior. Any human being's behavior. I have to look at my behavior on a timeline. I have to look at it as past present and future. The only part of my brain that can tell time is the cortex. So you have to get everything processed to the cortex so I can look at my behavior as past present and future. I can timestamp it and now I'm able to change my behavior to something different that's a better outcomes for me. I get what I still need, but I get it in a better way that's more appropriate. So here's how that looks. I basically explained to people here's how this looks. In life, we all go through situations. Some situations are good, some situations are not so good. Pause trauma. Cause big feelings caused big emotion. A lot of the times when we're dealing with situations in life that cause the bigger emotions, the bigger trauma, What our brain does is it pulls those memories in and it keeps them down in that lower part of the brain, those lower 3 areas. While those memories are stuck in those lower 3 areas, if I hear something, see something, I smell something, you sound a certain way, you look a certain way. It pulls out those memories related to that traumatic event and it just makes me react to it. I don't understand why my brain just reacts to it. It's a protection mechanism that's evolutionary it's been through evolution in our brain. Our brain puts itself on alert for certain things to make sure that it protects itself. So think about it. I want you to think about a kiddo right now. Might be your own child. Might be a student to yours, might be a kid or that you consult with or work with that has behavior that has struggles with behavior. Those behaviors that they're struggling with are attached to memories that are embedded down in the lower part of the brain. The brain stem midbrain limbic system. When those memories are down there, what happens is I literally hear something, smell something, set something. See, you know, notice how you walk or approach me. And it triggers those memories and I just react to them with that behavior. Now, I might like skittles or I might like a shiny toy. What that does is you can say, oh, no, here's your don't do that because you go if you don't punch me, you're gonna get this. Okay, well right now that motivator or that reward Okay, that that pulls me away and distracts me from that. Memory. But I never deal with those memories and they stay embedded down there. So I hope this is helping you understand a little bit more. Welcome to your brains also. All of us together in this room today. I'm the first to admit. We've all had Trump. I've had trauma. I've had trauma that's embedded memories that I know behaviors because of that trauma, they're not good behaviors for me to have. But for me to change them is hard. Because the only way to change human behavior is you have to get behavior. So what I tell teachers and parents and everybody else is those behaviors you're really trying to change for your children and for your students are stuck onto memories in the lower part of the brain. And as soon as the brain detects a, a smell or a sight or a sound or something that associates those memories, the behavior comes out. They react to it. What we need to do is after I react to it after I turn your world upside down, after my behavior comes out, after I have a hard time with you. Once you're calm, once I'm calm and the dust settles, Here's what you have to do. You have to come and talk to me about my behaviors. You have to come and Get me to look at my behaviors and understand them somehow. If I'm non verbal, maybe you're showing me pictures about what was going on. You make pictures of how it went and why it's not rut. You, you have to get me to hear it or see it so I can my brain can start recognizing that that's attached that's my behavior that's attached to these memories. I'm most of us depending on how traumatic the event don't know the memories. We bury the memories so deep that we don't know what memories are attached to our behavior. I just know my behavior is not good behavior. The more we talk about the behavior, the more someone gets you to talk and look at and discuss that behavior. It's like you're yanking those memories out of that lower part of the brain and as soon as they're out we process them to the top and once they get processed through the cortex Now I can think of it like, oh, you know what? I need to stop hitting my teacher and spitting at them because That's what a person did to me a couple years ago and this isn't the same person. So now I'm thinking of my behavior in a timeline. You realize that even as even as grown adults. Us grown adults. We have behaviors that we don't like or we shouldn't have. For that exact reason. We're not facing those memories. Those memories are very deep and we can't get to them alone. So we go and seek out the people called counselors and therapists. Councillors and therapists make us pull those out, make us look at them and help us get them processed so we can do. Different way deal with them differently. We adults. Can't really do this on our own till about age 19. No child can do it on their own. So that's why all of our kids, all kids with VI who struggle with behavior, they need that person in their life that once the dust settles behaviors dealt with, you're going to work with me on that behavior and help me try and understand it so those memories can come out and we can process them to the cortex. So I hope that kind of helps you understand. I also just basically explained to you the stuff called PTSD. The more traumatic the event that surrounds those behaviors. The deeper those memories get pushed back and the harder they are to pull out and process. So just so you know, I got lots of information. I'm not gonna go through. I put a bunch of stuff extra stuff in here for you all to have to read on your own. But what I want to show you is People always ask, well, how long does it take then? So let's say. I have my kiddo. Well, I'll take for example the one kiddo I worked with that she She had a lot of issues. She was VI. We worked with her for years. She was probably my 10,000 kid. We started trying to figure out ways to help her look at her behaviors and understand her behaviors in the way that she could. Once we found that process, then it was about doing it consistently. Helping her mitigate some of the behaviors she already had. We, you can use reward systems to help mitigate the severity of some of the behaviors, but you still, no matter what, if you're using a reward, let's say you gave me a Skittle because I didn't punch you. Okay. Once you're calm, everybody's calm, you still gotta go in and talk to me about this. You still got to have that interaction with me about my behaviors so I can get those memories going. Oh yeah For sure. >>Donna: Lane, we had a question come through the QA. Rita asks, how do you get a child who is deaf blind autistic, etc, who is also non verbal to understand when they're functioning at a 12 to 24 months. When they're now 8 years old and he's doing things like head banging and and those kind of self injurious behaviors. >>Layne: So the self injures behaviors, especially with that type of a situation. Sometimes that is their sensory input. I've had kids who will head back to their head bleeds. And I'll never forget the one kid we had him all through elementary school and And I mean, we, we mitigated the head banging as best we could. We would do different things to help them soothe. When you became verbal eventually in high school he told us that When is head hit the wall for that split second his head hit the wall, he actually had calmness in his life. Craziest thing. I mean, just sitting there listen to him. I just. Almost, you almost want to cry because of You're trying to figure this out for so many years. Well, we did for him though, and he even kind of said that what we did helped him because he was nonverbal. He. Yeah, I mean, he was able to, he had some auditory so his vision was low but it wasn't like off the charts we actually gave him things to feel So like when. And we saw he was getting ramped up and we noticed he's getting ramped up. We put something soft in his hand. And just kind of have that calming motion. To help his system settle down. And then, you know, after he's had a hard time, we put like a hard ball in his hand and we'd have him touch it and then we switch it to the softer one and kind of do the, we kind of moved his hands down to show him that she's got to calm down. It's that's the tricky part when you're dealing with people and and students who have multiple sensory issues and multiple types of interacting. It's just a matter of how do we at least get that concept of calmness and and like anger like the hardball represented anger and not happy. What he eventually started doing, so you take the hardball and bang it whenever he was about to have a hard time. And so we, if we had about a 15Â s window to get over there, we take a softball, switch it into his hands and just kind of rub it with him like this to help him calm down and remove him from the situation. It is trial and error. Heavily on the trial, hopefully not as much on the error. But those are the things you're trying to do is help the body and the senses. How do we represent those different feelings whether I Can hear, not here, not see, have all these other issues. How do I get this? This brain in this body to recognize the differences between certain sensations. And that's why I tell people I have to get the behavior to help the behavior. Because unfortunately that child will probably have to get anxious and wound up and, you know, and very uptight for us to try and represent it with something. And then when they're calm and relaxed and they're having a relaxed episode, we represent that with something also. It is an easy and I tell people there's no exact science to that one. That is just us reading human beings. We call them micro expressions. Body language and we relied heavily on that kind of stuff for our more involved kiddos so I hope that kind of helps you think of something at least. >>Donna: And we've got a lot of stuff going on in the chat here. This is awesome. So we had Meagan come across with going back to resilience. >>Layne: Oh cool. >>Donna: Do you have any suggestions on how we go about teaching resilience? >>Layne: I'll be perfectly honest with you. The brain research even shows one of the best ways to teach resiliency. Is playing board games, playing card games, playing some sort of games, and stop letting kids win. Bye. Like, don't always let them win, you know? They lose the card game. It's just a card game, but when I I learn how to lose and I have an adult that teaches me how to lose or how to fail and then helps me figure out how to get better. That is one of the best things we can do to start building that resiliency in a human being. >>Donna: That's great. Love that. >>Layne: Card games. Yeah. So card games get the big cards that so our lower vision kids can see and just play go fish even. And when they're not getting what they want. So Uno makes big cards now. Uno's the best. When I was gonna tax your resiliency like no other card game. >>Donna: Ono has braille cards too. >>Layne: Oh my gosh. Who knows the greatest so get the Uno Braille cards. And I'm being honest, card games are actually one of the best things we know of for building behavior competencies, self regulation and resiliency. >>Donna: Who knows the greatest is best. Yeah. >>Layne: And just have fun. And it's okay. Let them fail. But fail with them. >>Donna: Yeah. >>Layne: And then teach them how to come back out of it. >>Donna: There's failing with that in that safe place where we can address it. Yeah, yeah. We had Shannon make a wonderful comment. >>Layne: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's awesome. Okay. >>Donna: She goes, she already knows that she could spend the whole day and then some just learning from you. And I felt that way for years. >>Layne: Yeah. I mean, I, my brain is like I said, you're dealing with an ADD brain, so you better hang on, but. >>Donna: Okay. >>Layne: I could talk about this stuff forever because it's I get to go out every like I was out today working with kids today doing the exact same stuff I'm telling you today. And, and I watch it work. If we're consistent with it and we're just relaxed and calm about it. Being uptight. I will tell you right now. Children with visual impairments and children with auditory impairments are probably some of the most perceptive human beings that walk this earth. And if you walk in a room and you are uptight, they're going to be the first ones to feel it. And when I feel it, my reaction is greater than if I actually just see it and notice it. So I tell people we got to be careful about who we are and how we conduct it every day. Real quick, so everybody knows if everyone in here is wondering, well, how long does it take to change human behavior? Well with consistency and everybody around me helping out and people doing all the things I just said. Neuro-typical brains is about 5,000 plus times to change behavior. 10,000 plus for certain brains. So if I have trauma. I have some mental health issues. The older I am, Autism ADD. I've struggled academically or behaviorally in school for a while. You're looking at 10,000 plus interactions before I start. Taking over and become somewhat independent with this new behavior or social emotional skill. Behavior is a marathon, not a sprint. >>Donna: Awesome. >>Layne: I will tell people this is the reason I have job security till the day I die. Most people if it's not fixed in a day or 2 doesn't work. And so it just doesn't work that way. >>Donna: Sorry, Lane. There's The folks want the brain exercises and your handouts. >>Layne: Oh, for sure. >>Donna: So after the session, Lane will share those with me and I will post them on my website so that you can get them. >>Layne: Yep. LPDF everything and it's all yours. I will I tell people so everybody in the room with me. >>Donna: Yep. >>Layne: I share everything I have and more if you ask for it on one condition. You share it with other people. That's it. Oh no, you gotta share it as much as you can because I tell people I'm on this. >>Donna: No, Gate keeping aloud. We share and share and share. >>Layne: Hi rate across education and across human development that we gotta change business. I can't do it by myself. I'm not stopping, but I just can't, it's harder by myself. So get it out there and get it changed. What I'm going to go to, I talked about a lot of this stuff. Let me go to something for you all real quick about behavior and then I'm gonna wrap it up with something that's vital for us to do. For our kids, especially with VI, have already kind of alluded to it with recess. But I'm going to show you the brain research behind it. And then I'll finish up because I know I'm running out of time and I want to give Donna the last 5Â min because she's got a feel you all in on fun stuff. So Here's what I tell people. Everybody on this planet can be good at human behavior. I'm not some specialized human being that I just have a knack for human behavior. I have a skill set. I have a particular skill set. That is needed to be good at human behavior, but that particular skill set I have. We've done brain research on this. It can be taught to anybody. So everybody can be good at this. And so I tell people what you need to look at behavior as. the biggest issue with behavior is people just don't know how to decipher the complex language of human behavior. Human behavior is literally its own complex language. If you don't know how to decipher it, you will forever struggle with it. And I have to say there's probably the majority of our population does not know how to decipher it. However, good news is we can teach everybody how to be good at deciphering it. So, real quick, I'm going to show you the last few slides. You're going to read them over on your own if you're interested, but I'm going to share the top 8 skills. You have to work on and fine tune and practice in home. For you to be good with human behavior and deciphering that complex language that comes with it. So here they are. I'm gonna share them with you. They're fantastic. These are the top 8. There's about 16, but these are the top 8. Can you pick up on micro expressions? Micro expressions really only last for about one fifteenth to 1 20 fifth of a second. But those are those little expressions that pop up that actually show the true feelings of the human being before the brain. Grabs on and covers it back up again. They are quick. They are very, very fast. They are not noticeable unless you are good at picking up on them. I tell people it's amazing because even today with one of my favorite one of my favorite kitos I work with. I know every micro expression that kid has and I know where to look for him, how to look for him. I'm trying to teach the teachers. How to look for it also like you gotta be aware of this you just have to practice look at this I think this is awesome. Really, words are only about 7% of communication for human beings. The rest is body language and the tone of voice or noises that I make. So when I say tone of voice, it doesn't mean words. It can mean my grunting or my my utterances that I create listen to the tone those have more meaning than even words will have. So it's about recognizing these micro expressions. So what I tell people is you take a look and read through these. I'm not going to cover them all because I'm running out of time very very quickly but I'm just gonna show you them so micro expressions you gotta be very good at micro expressions in human beings. You also have to be able to read body language like a book. I tell I tell people this is the part I think I take for granted. I'm very good at reading people's body language no matter what. I just, there's just something that I, I can easily read people just by how they move their gate, their movements, their looks. And I always thought everybody was good at it. I find out that no, there's lots of people that are not good at reading body language. This is a major component to being good at behavior. Behavior isn't always going to be verbal. Mostly behavior is non verbal and you have to be able to recognize these things. So number 3 is you can sense the change in the tone and speech patterns and sound patterns of noises. Kadence pitch up down how it changes if it changes radically and you and you have to know the human being in order to know if it's a pattern that is is not the usual or not the norm. And so that's another area to be good at behavior as number 4 is you just understand social dynamics. And I tell you, this is my favorite thing. I by nature am an introvert and extremely shot. When I'm out in big crowds, I stand in a corner. What I'm actually doing is I'm analyzing the whole crowd. I can literally look through that crowd and I can literally map out a way to get through that crowd to go by the people that are. Kind of the least threatening to me at the least intrusive to me. But it's how I read and the social dynamics in there. And that is something you just practice. I tell people if you want good practice, that it go to Walmart. Just sit down and watch. It's fantastic. So. It's a joke, but I'm actually being serious. So, Are you sensitive to others energy? Can you sense when something is changing? This is that girl, Mr. Pethick, I can feel you. Mister Pithick, I can, you, when you're around me. I feel calm. That's that sensitivity to others energy. And this is a real thing in human beings. Everybody experiences sensitivity to other people's energy. We just don't always stop to think about, hey, why does that person make me feel that way? Why is it when there's a room full of people laughing and giggling and one person comes in the energy changes. What's happening? And when those instances happen, take time just to analyze it and think it through as you're watching the dynamics unfold. Pay attention to habits and routines. When you know someone well enough, you know their habits and routines, you can look at little changes, even micro changes that will point to something that's going to be. Might be something bigger coming up, bigger behavior, bigger explosion, you know, bigger outbursts, whatever else. Notice small details, fleeting looks, little nervous twitches. I had a boy that he would do this with his little pinky. Right before he was about to light us up. And it was just this little twitch and we noticed it and we knew that when he started doing this, we had to pull him away and get something else going for him because he's not going to do well. And no how to ask insightful questions. You know, it's just like, how are you feeling? What do you think? What do you need? I was so people, sort of saying what's wrong with you? Ask me what I need. Hey, what do you need? You know, I notice you don't seem right. Do you need something? Is there something I can get you and start talking through things and ask good questions. So those are the top 8. I'm going to give him to you. Practice them so you get great behavior also. Last thing I got for you, moving in the brain, kids who struggle the most with emotions in behavior and learning and with sensory input should have recess 3 times more than anybody else in a school. I know, fantastic. I put stuff in here. Here's the latest research. This just came out about a month ago. We now found out that after kids have been sitting for about 5 or 10Â min, 90% of the oxygen in their blood is stale. The brain cannot use stale oxygenated blood. Therefore the brain starts shutting itself down. It can't function. The only way to get oxygen back in my blood is to Move! Get me up! Get me moving, get me active, get me going. The more. Oxygen in my blood, the better my focus and the better my ability to remember any material taught to me. So teach while I move, get me moving, get me up, get me going. When I have sensory issues, the more I move and interact with the environment, the stronger my other senses start to become. So. Get out there and move. Get outside and teach. Turn the screens off, turn the technology off, get yourselves outside, sit by a tree, go on a hike, talk math while you're walking, do what it is you need to do, but get them outside and get them moving. And with that, that's all I got for you. I hope, wasn't too fast and furious. I appreciate everybody. It was fun. I will send all this stuff your way so long as you promise to use it and share it. So your joy, fantastic. I'm gonna try and look at the chat now. >>Donna: Woohoo! I think the last comment that we didn't get was please help change this in our schools and Yes. >>Layne: Oh, trust me, I'm the person on the tirade for our school systems. It's not an easy fight. I'm gonna tell you right now, but it's one that I'm battling every day. And just so you know, I am, I am out there. So. Y'all, fantastic stuff. Thank you for hanging with us. Thanks for the T and and and friendship and and you all get out there and keep doing what you're doing.