TRANSCRIPT
Calm Together - Co-Regulation in Practice
10/20/25

>>Sarah: Hi. Okay. Well, thanks for joining us. I'm going to be talking today about co-regulation. We'll start off and talk a little bit about what that means. And then more specifically what that means for our students with complex access needs. And then we'll talk about why it matters. And then we'll talk about some strategies that we can use to support our students once they're in distress, using co-regulation. Real briefly at the end, I would like to talk about some things that we as adults can do as the co-regulators to also stay grounded. When we're trying to help a student coregulate, it's easy for our anxiety to go up with theirs. So what are a couple of strategies that we can do that help not only the student but help us stay grounded. So, with that, let's get started. On the screen it says co-regulation and there's a GIF and there's a guy from the movie Inside Out and he's anger and his head is with fire. At the bottom it says, help, I blew my lid. When I think about co-regulation, I think sometimes about our students and how they have quite literally, you know, there's that old saying, they flipped their lid. When we get in distress, we flip our lid. We reach that point where we need somebody else to help us calm down. As a classroom teacher, I have had that student and I can think back to when I was in fifth grade on the playground and I was that student. And really I can think about times in my adult life, in the privacy of my own home, when I've been that adult. Where we all just kind of feel wrong. We get that dysregulated feeling and we flip our lids. We lose our cool. And the same thing happens to our students. So, when we have conventional language, we can cry. We can chat it out with our friends. Or for a student, maybe with a teacher or another student. And we can process through what we're feeling, what was hard about it. You know, what can we do about it next time. All those things. Well, it can be really hard, as a teacher, to support any student who is experiencing dysregulation and distress, right? But it can feel particularly hard to support a student who maybe has complex access needs or communication needs. Maybe there's some limited language there and so it's hard for them to really tell you, like, what happened. Why they're upset. What dysregulation they're feeling. And then what does it mean then when we have the specialist come in or the service providers and they're like, oh, hey. That kid needs some help with co-regulation. They need some co-regulation strategies. I Googled, as I was putting this Coffee Hour together, and you come across really cute videos about taking deep breaths. There was one that we used to use with a student back in the day and it was all about whale breathing and whale breaths. You can teach kids how to take a break. But a lot of the strategies involve using a lot of formal language and/or maybe even just concepts that we're not really sure our students understand yet. And so then, you know, what do we do? How do we teach that? I want us to take a look at what co-regulation is exactly. And then, like I said, let's talk through actionable strategies that we can use with our students and ourselves when there's dysregulation happening. It's a sense of shared safety and responsive interactions. Everybody has to co-regulate but it's us with another person learning how to soothe and how to manage those distressed emotions when we're upset. So co-regulation starts in infancy. A baby cries and what do we do? We soothe it. We don't necessarily know what a baby needs for sure. It's not like when a baby is crying they can tell us I need some milk or my diaper is wet. We can make a best guess based on a type of cry, the time of day that it is, what we think, hey, they might need this. They haven't eaten in a while. So we offer strategies. We offer solutions. Maybe we rock them. We talk to them in a calm voice while we're patting their back. And we help calm them down. And eventually their needs are met and our calm demeanor helps to get them to calm down, right? That's co-regulation. And just like we wouldn't yell, hopefully, at a baby, "stop crying." Our children experiencing fear or pain, they also can't stop crying. They're at a point where they're not really going to hear redirection. It's hard, if at all possible, to think about those consequences or any kind of instruction that we may be providing in that moment. So let's talk about behavior and brain science and why it is that sometimes we get to that point where we can't stop crying or maybe articulate what's going on. There's a book, it's in the handout in the resources, by Mona Delahook, and it's called Beyond Behaviors. She talks about top-down versus bottom-up behaviors. What she is referring to correlates to the image on the screen. It's a picture of a brain and it's divided into two halves. The upstairs brain and the downstairs brain. The upstairs brain is what's responsible, in everybody, for things like thinking, for reasoning, problem solving, planning. There's a cute little sign that says "under construction until mid 20s." And then there's the downstairs brain where things happen like safety, reactiveness, and sensory processing. And so Mona Delahook talks about when we're having those top-down behaviors we're using that top part of our brain. So we're able to access things like thinking and reasoning. And then those bottom-up behaviors, that's happening in that downstairs brain or the lizard brain, the primal part of our brain, and that's more reactionary. For anybody, when we start to experience distress, we all automatically get down in that downstairs lizard brain part of our brain and executive function, which we're going to talk about next, it starts to diminish. So our students, when they're experiencing distress, they're likely also in that downstairs brain and they're using bottom-up behaviors. And so this is really important that we know, as we start talking about co-regulation. Even though their behaviors might seem intentional or personal, often at this point the student is simply reacting to the situation. In fact, Mona Delahook talks about that sign at the top of the brain being under construction. Really we can't expect students to be able to do top-down behaviors or really start using that thinking and reasoning until developmentally they're more at the age of 4 or 5. So if you have a student who has complex access needs and developmentally they're functioning lower than that, it's important to keep that in mind when they start becoming distressed. Because they're really still down in that downstairs brain and using the more downstairs behaviors. So, along with that, that downstairs brain or that lizard brain, it struggles with executive function. So executive function is how we are able to come up with an idea. It's our ability to think like, I would like to do this. Your end product, right? And to think about what it is that you need to do, the steps, right, and what materials you need to make it happen. And this part, as an adult with ADHD that I struggle with, it's not just making a plan, but it's the ability to actually start the task and stay with it until it's complete. I can make a plan and list all day. It's real hard for me to get started and then stay with it. And research shows that students with complex access needs, as well as students and adults with ADHD, often struggle with executive function. So this is a task that's hard for us even before we have become distressed or dysregulated. So it's really important to keep in mind that this correlates with their ability to regulate themselves. So this is a task that's already going to be kind of hard. Okay. One other thing to keep in mind when we're thinking about regulation is I want you to remember that regulation is not the same thing as self-control. And so there is a GIF on the screen of Stephen Colbert and he is pouring all of the Oreos into his mouth. When we start to think about regulation and, like, calming ourselves down, it's easy to start thinking about self-control and how if I want them to be able to self-regulate, I just need them to have more self-control, right? Let's think about self-control and regulation as it applies to just us as adults. Stephen Colbert stress-eating the Oreos. Why do we stress eat? Because we're stressed. It is a lot easier not to eat a second, third, or whole sleeve of Oreos when we're regulated, when we're calm. Self-control is the ability to stop a behavior, for example not eating the third cookie. For our students struggling with executive function and creating a plan about what to do next, if we work on, nope, stop the behavior. And we weren't teaching alternative strategies to manage the reason behind the behavior. So, again, I'm talking about students with complex access needs. So let's think about a kiddo who may be sitting in a wheelchair and when he gets dysregulated he likes to hit things. Maybe other people, maybe his desk, maybe the wall. Maybe it's to communicate that he is angry. But we also know that our students with complex access needs tend to also have a lot of sensory integration and sensory needs. And so maybe he's hitting because he's angry but maybe also he's seeking proprioceptive feedback. Think about it. When we hit things, we get a lot of feedback in our body. Our hands, our risk, our elbow, if I'm hitting hard enough, all the way up to my shoulder. All of that gives me information about where my body is at in space, which can be really important if I'm dysregulated. So if I'm hitting when I'm dysregulated because I need feedback, I'm not learning how to manage that internal dysregulation with other strategies if we're simply focused on me not hitting. If it's just have some self-control, Sarah, we don't hit when we're angry. That's a bad choice. Okay. But what can I do? I'm not learning a replacement behavior and ultimately I still don't know what else I can do in that moment instead of hitting. So when I'm really dysregulated and when I need feedback in my body, what behavior am I likely going to fall back on? The one that I know works. That gets my needs met. So managing a behavior in a moment, that is self-control. But we need to go beyond that. We need our students to know other things they can do to be regulated. Also because it's much easier, right, to use self-control when we know what other options are and when we are regulated. Why does this matter more specifically for our students that have complex access needs? Well, that's because we learn so much incidentally and that is not different than these regulation strategies. We also learn a lot of our socially-appropriate skills for regulating ourselves incidentally. Sighted and hearing children, they're able to observe and internalize so many examples of regulation from just around their environment. They can observe their teacher up at the chalk board or the whiteboard who is obviously upset. Take a deep breath for a second. They can see their friends calm down after they're able to get the toy that they want. They can hear their parents' soothing tone of voice. Maybe they hear their peer or sibling help another peer work out a conflict. There's this constant incidental data strain, if you will, that's just building up their internal toolbox with acceptable calming strategies. But students who have complex access needs, they literally don't have the same access to this massive data stream so they're likely missing, seeing, and/or hearing subtle ways that we all use to regulate our emotions. Whether it's facial expressions, vocal tones, breathing. Emotional regulation is another concept that we have to explicitly and directly teach, oftentimes. That link between our internal state, feeling anxious and upset, and appropriate external response. Maybe I need to take a break for a second. It's not necessarily there unless it is explicitly there. Another reason why this matter is because for everybody we have to be able to co-regulate before we can learn to self-regulate. All humans learn to self-regulate through co-regulating with another person. Think back to the baby example. We have been discussing our our students need more direct and explicit instructions. Something else to keep in mind regarding self and co-regulation is even once we can self-regulate we often co-regulate with each other. For example, if I have had a bad day at work and I have regulated myself all day. I didn't say mean things to my co-workers. Maybe I did or didn't stress eat at lunch but I regulated. When I get in the car to go home, I'm going to call my mom or best friend. The need to regulate with somebody else, it doesn't go away. And the same is true for our students. And then also, lastly, another big reason that it matters is because co-regulation builds resilience. When our students become dysregulated or they encounter a hard situation or a stressful situation, and we're able to help them co-regulate through it, this builds feelings of success and it's building emotional resilience. Sometimes what happens when our kiddos become distressed, especially if they become aggressive. We start to step away and we hope that they're going to self-regulate on their own. And those students become, a lot of times, kind of isolated. They're other in the calm-down area or the back of the room or they're on a break a lot because we know they get overstimulated. They get upset. But they're not building resilience and they're not learning how to work through those feelings. So when we co-regulate we teach the student that sometimes things are hard or sometimes we don't feel good. But we still have to work through them. And we can, we just have to build that capacity. And so it helps them learn that an adult's presence can be a resource for calming. And that builds trust and that builds relational safety. And we'll talk more about that in just a second. When the adult also is able to consistently model regulation and strategies that we can use to achieve that, the student's nervous system learns to mirror that regulated state. And then, over time, hopefully the student will be able to use these calming strategies more independently. Also, it's a great time for our students that are more emergent communicators and they're just learning language to couple that with labeling feelings. We can do that during familiar routines and calendar conversations but also doing times of distress. And we're starting to give that student vocabulary to tie to those feelings in their internal state. And this helps them shift from I don't really know what's happening in my body to a more manageable experience. Okay. One other thing I would really like you to keep in mind before we start talking about more actionable strategies is that when we're talking about our students with checks access needs, oftentimes dysregulation is not simply a tantrum. It might look and feel like that but I promise you oftentimes it is not. We need to remember that often our students are searching for sensory input. And so when they're distressed, they may have developed self-soothing or self-regulating behaviors to try and meet these sensory input needs. And sometimes they become intense. Or they're disruptive or even harmful. Sometimes we see the eye pressing or the squeezing, intense rocking, biting themselves, or biting others. Head banging. But all of that is also giving proprioceptive input which helps you self-ground. Sometimes we see really extreme body tensing or even physical aggression because the student has learned touch is coming in and I don't know where from. It's unpredictable and they're trying to just get themselves maybe those feelings of isolation. Regardless of what those sensory input needs is, the student is likely not trying to misbehave. They are using the only means available to them, right, to try to organize the sensory information that their body needs for regulation. So this is where it becomes really important that we as educators can take our minds and shift them and recognize that in that moment the student is experiencing an emotion. But we don't know what it is but they're having an emotion. And the behavior that's tied with that emotion may be inappropriate. But we're all human and we're all entitled to have our feelings. I'm really going to go out on a limb here but I'm going to quote Dr. Phil. He had a book back in the day. Dr. Phil is my guilty summer afternoon pleasure. Please don't judge me. He had a book and his life law No. 3 was people do what works. He may not be a real doctor but the man is not wrong. He says all behaviors are performed because they have a payoff, and that is true. Thinking about our students, often those inappropriate behaviors are the behavior that the student has learned is most effective. And so we have to show them another way that's just as effective to communicate their needs and oftentimes to get their sensory needs met. Okay. So there's a tool, it's linked in your handout. It's a free download off of our website. If you just Google like TSBVI planning behavior document, you'll find it. It's really easy to locate but it's also in your handout. It was put together by members of our Outreach team before. And it was because they were going out to support students that were having behaviors and they were seeing a lot of the same things, same behaviors, same ways that staff were dealing with them. So they put together this document. And it's really helpful. I'll mention it again a little bit later. But it gives you strategies that you can use not only when you're trying to co-regulate and interact with your student, but also just setting up the environment. We're going to talk about co-regulation, we have to do it in the moment but we can also use a lot of these strategies proactively to try to help prevent the student from being in distress or from getting as distressed. I wanted to share this with you now for one other reason. That is because the very first thing it has you look at when you look at your current programming, proactive strategies for fostering feelings of safety. It has you look at your interactions and your relationships with your student because that is huge. It's much easier for your student to co-regulate with you if they feel safe. If they feel safe in your presence and they know that you are calm and you're going to help them through this. Okay. So, how do we support students in distress? I'm going to give you guys some examples and then we're going to watch a couple very short videos of some of these strategies being put into place. And you guys will have a chance to comment on them. First thing -- and I guess I had to stop it here. This maybe is like the most important one. And that is modeling the behavior that you want to see is basically what co-regulation is. Putting out for the student what it is you want back. So there's a meme on the left side of the screen and it's with Fry, a character from Futureama. He's squinting and it says I wasn't copying you, it was my mirror neurons. They activate, when we perform an action, but also when you witness somebody else performing the same action. My mirror neurons are going to copy you. So our calm is contagious. It may not feel like it. It may take a little bit for it to spread but our calm is contagious. We can either co-regulate with our student or we can co-escalate. Dr. Lane Pethik says a stressed adult equals a stressed child and that is true when we are trying to help a student co-regulate. If we're amping up with them, we're not going to help them calm back down. The student's lizard brain, they need us to show them where it needs to be and their mirror neurons are able to absorb, if you will, your calm and meet you there. So model the behavior you want to see. One way we can do this is there co-presence. Again, remember we're talking about students with complex access needs. For a lot of our students, just like watching you model a calm affect and hearing a calming tone, seeing you be calm and work slowly in your deep breathing, a lot of that not accessible. So co-presence is being intentional. It's a calm physical and emotional presence. It's a non-verbal way of communicating I'm here with you. You're safe. I'm in this with you. This is really important for our students because, again, a lot of times their primary way of receiving and interpreting information reliably is often through touch. Through touch and proximity and a shared calm physical space. In this moment through co-presence we're able to help start be a foundation for shared emotional regulation. Something that's important to remember is we want to offer our presence, but especially if a kiddo isn't used to co-regulating with an adult, they may not want or recognize initially that they need us to calm down and to regulate. So we don't want to grab or force physical contact ever for a student who is blind, low vision, or Deafblind. But especially when they are dysregulated. We don't want to grab or force contact because this is going to escalate those feelings of distress. Instead, we want to initiate contact on a neutral body part such as the shoulder or their back. And then we're going to actually see this next part in one of the videos. Once contact has been established, we can just be a passive contact that's there. Because we don't want to add to the distress by giving them more input. But if the child has complex access needs and they can't see us, they may not visually access that we're here and waiting. Just that calm reminding touch lets them know I'm still here. I'm hanging out. I'm just waiting on you. We'll move on when you're ready. That can be a calming reassurance. Lastly, we always want to use hand under hand any time we are working with our students who are blind, low vision, or Deafblind. But particularly when we are helping them to co-regulate. Feelings of choice and control are super calming to a dysregulated system. So hand under hand. You have the opportunity to move away, much more regulating than forcing that contact. Also is tactile-bodily communication. This is a way of using touch as a primary means of communication. So when we're assisting a student to co-regulate, this isn't just touching and patting and whatnot. It's much more intentional and meaningful physical contact. Maybe it's a gentle tap, a sweep of the arm. We're affirming we're here and sharing the experience. Like I talked about before on the last slide, we know that touch can often be the most reliable sense for our students. So even if they can and do communicate verbally, they might not need verbal communication in this moment. Because they're already escalated. It may just be calming touch, joint compressions. Some deliberate slow breathing that helps you communicate to them that they are safe. It's not what you're saying, it's the input that you're providing. Rhythm is inherently calming so maybe a little bit of a rhythmic movement. Doesn't mean you have to put them in your lap and cradle them and rock them but just being together. Maybe a little bit of rocking while we're deep breathing. That provides proprioceptive and vestibular feedback. Also co-exploring an object, if that's appropriate. That can help facilitate a shift from them focusing on what they're feeling inside so a shared more manageable outside experience. But, again, without words and without having to talk about it. Something else to consider when we're co-regulating or when the student is distressed is pacing. And this might look like doing things together. When a student is in distress, they need more support from us, not less. So this goes back to that building emotional resilience. It doesn't mean that we just stop having expectations like, whew, you're upset. Go over there. Take a break. It might mean we have to adjust our expectations. So, for example, maybe it's a task that I know the student can do independently. But today is not the day that they're going to do it independently. And it's okay if I have to offer a little support so we can get through it. We can finish and they can experience success. Maybe I need to slow down my pace, my expectations so that they can work a little slower and do it independently. Maybe I need to increase my support so we can do it a little bit faster so that we can just get the activity finished and moved on. It's that gut and knowing how am I going to support this student together so we can get it done. Not just you're on your own. Finish. Also with that pacing comes complexity. And that might be the complexity of the task and the work area but that might also be the complexity of the support that you're providing. So it might not be how much you expect the student to accomplish or how big the task is, but it may be the way the workstation is set up. We have all done it. We planned a lesson and we start to execute it and it's as epic fail. Maybe there's too much on the desk or it's presented in a way that doesn't make sense to the student. Adjust that support and help them get through it. There's a picture on the screen of a snack routine that I used to do with one of my students. I wanted him to understand that bread didn't magically appear from the sky a slice or two at the time. But initially having an entire loaf of bread was way too much so I had to adjust the complexity of the task because it just resulted in him biting and being upset. Once we established it was safe, the bread wasn't going away, it was just moving over, then we were able to start adding back in more of what he had to do to accomplish the task. But this may also look like adjusting the complexity, like I said, of our support. Maybe the student and I are working together and I notice that they're starting to become upset. Then what we see happen a lot of times is we start talking to the student. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. This is hard. It's okay. What do you think? What do you want to do? What do you want to do? Do you need a break? Do you want to take a break? What do you want to do for your break? Are you finished? Maybe you're finished. In that moment it may no longer be the task that I asked them to do that's too complex but my support. Sometimes we need to adjust the complexity of the input we are providing, at least initially, until the student is ready. So that's where offering touch and being a calm presence when we're allowing the student to calm down can be useful. The student might realize too that they need a break. But, like, again you're asking the lizard brain to make choices and to tell you the things. And their brain isn't in that upper-level brain and in that moment they're not ready to do that. We're adding on. Okay. Another one is predictability. And this is huge because it can be huge in preventing distress but it's also huge once the student is in distress. We know that predictability to our day, knowing where our things are, knowing where my symbols are, the routines for how things take place. For all of us that's important. That helps keep us calm. Predictability and what's going to happen next, once we become upset, that's huge. Think about your own experience. If when I'm upset my go-to is to call my best friend but suddenly, talking to you, Kaycee Bennett, she's on vacation in Montana and she's not available, what happens to your stress level? It goes up. For our students, if there is not a reliable system in place to communicate what's happening next throughout my day, that is stressful. And then if I'm starting to feel upset and I don't know for sure what's going to happen next, what adult's going to help me, what am I going to say. How are they going to touch me. Is an adult going to help me? That's also distressing. Routines and calendars are huge for establishing predictability during the day. But also, again, predictability about what's going to happen when I'm upset is also important. So sometimes our students get upset and we're not sure what they want or we're not sure what to do. But if everybody handles it a different way and everybody has different expectations, that's also stressful. So this is where having a plan for what we're going to do to support the student comes in handy. So maybe it looks like having two choices that we all know are always appropriate choices for the student in that moment. And that's what we offer. Instead of asking, we just give them, oh, hey. Do you want this or do you want that? It also helps reduce the likelihood that the student is going to ask for something that's not appropriate. Having a predictable plan in place helps everybody know what's going to happen next, including your student. And that takes me to my next slide, which is we want to make sure that we're teaching all communication partners co-regulation strategies. When a student is upset, we all know that's not the time to work on teaching the student new skills. But it's also not the best time to have to coach four or five staff members. As we're learning what works, it's critical that we document this information and we're sharing it during team meetings and while we're collaborating. Let's say the itinerant TVB only comes for an hour every third day and nobody really knows for sure exactly what she's doing that seems to work so well for the student. That's not benefiting the student or the classroom staff. We all benefit from having a plan. So if everybody knows what to do or where to find the strategies that they can use, this increases the likelihood of fidelity in not only implementing but also in continuing to use the same language and the same co-regulation strategies across all situations and all staff. If we think back again to what we talked about on the last slide, it's increasing predictability for staff and for student. Like I said, sometimes we just don't know what the student worked once or what we should do. If we have it in place and everybody's responding the same way, at least we can start to collect data to better understand what does and doesn't work for the student. 

>>Kaycee: Sarah, you had a comment from Sara Kitchen. She said it seems like co-regulation is a foundational communication skill. 

>>Sarah: For sure. For sure. We talk a lot about how our students with complex access needs can have what the Nordic community calls low readability in their communication. So this is definitely one of those times when we don't necessarily know -- even for those kids who do have language. Think about it. As an adult they can't always articulate why I'm upset. Like Kitchen said it's that communication strategy. It's acknowledging I don't know what you're communicating about but I sure as heck know you're upset so I'm meeting you there and I'm going to help you calm. It's definitely a communication strategy and definitely foundational. And we all benefit from it. So don't think about it foundational as it's only appropriate for our emergent communicators, but we definitely all need it. And speaking of communication strategies, back to that document that I linked before. This is definitely important when we're thinking about that planning piece and if we're thinking about doing an assessment. A lot of times when our kids repeatedly have behaviors, what happens? We decide we need to do an FBA or VIP but we're not taking into consideration those access needs that our students have. So instead of thinking about why, like why are they doing that, can we start to think about what. Like Sara Kitchen said, what are they communicating, what do they need. What do they need to feel safe. And then we can use the answers to those questions to start to create routines and supports throughout the student's day. And so this is a great place, again, if you're new to supporting students who have complex access needs, if you're new to co-regulation. This is a great place that you can start to get some actionable strategies and look at the student's day and what are we doing, what are we not doing, and what can we maybe add in. Okay. So now we're going to take a pause. I'm going to show you two short videos. And then give you guys an opportunity to talk about them. So I think it's not going to play when I click on it, but if it does play, I'll pause it. Give me a minute. Perfect. So I'm going to show you a short clip. And then I'm going to give you a little more information and then I'm going to let you watch it again. Initially, I want you to watch. Kaycee Bennett -- pretend you don't know Kaycee Bennett. She's the one in the blue who is kneeling in front of the student. I want you to watch the support that she is providing to the student. And then we'll watch it again.

[Video, No sound] 

>>Sarah: There's no sound. She's signing "finish, finish" and she has her hands out. She's touching the student on the forearm. The student was very overstimulated. He was doing an activity that he loved. He was moving and dancing. First he was dancing with Rachel, the lady standing behind him, and then Kaycee joined in and he was having the time of his life but then it became too much. That's the thing about distress. He became dysregulated because he was so excited. This is the best thing ever and then it was too much, too much. He didn't know how to calm it back down to keep doing it. It became too much so in that moment he's already overstimulated but he can't see. He's blind. So he needed touch because he needed to know his communication partner didn't leave. But he also needed less input than what those same partners had been previously providing. Feel free to put in the chat things you're noticing. I'm going to play the video one more time and I want you again to notice how Kaycee is using touch to provide support.

[Video] 

>>Sarah: She just signed "finish, finish" and her fingertips are on his arm. Okay. Go ahead. 

>>Kaycee: You got some stuff in the chat. You want it now? 

>>Sarah: Yes. 

>>Kaycee: Okay. We had not controlling. Brief touch and then keeping within reach in case he wants to initiate. She was taking his lead. Lightly touching his forearm with her fingertips. Hand under hand and a lot of wait time. Waiting with her hands open. Allowing for response time. Physically below him. Not so many words. 

>>Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Those -- yes, yes. A + all of you. All of the things that I was hoping people would point out that are powerful about what she did. So, again, she didn't take away but y'all mentioned the wait time. We're going to talk about that more in just a minute. She got down to his level. Even though he can't see her, we all know, we're aware of what's happening around us and he is too and so he was aware she was right there. She was in front. She was waiting. Again, she wasn't talking but she also wasn't sign, sign, signing at him. She gave him some information and she waited. Okay. I'm going to have you guys give me more feedback on the next video. This is the same student but it's a different time in the day and they're using a different co-regulation strategy. So, again, it's Kaycee in the blue and seated at his head is Rachel. So I want you to watch what happens and then I'll give you guys a little bit more feedback and we'll watch it again. And, again, there's no sound so you're not supposed to be hearing something. Okay. Oh, no. Oh, pause. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, no. Okay. Hold on. We're going to get it back. Okay. It worked. Let me try this again. Sorry, guys. I'm the worst at technology. There had to be at least one mess up. Here we go.

[Video] 

>>Sarah: So Rachel is using the pillow to smoosh and he moves the pillow down to his legs. And now Kaycee is using the pillow to give some feedback, some pushing, some squeezing. And she tactilely touches under his left hand signing "ready." Now he brings his left hand down. He's exploring. He takes the pillow and he moves it a little bit. He reaches back to her hands. And so she's giving him some tactile information. She signs "ready, ready." And then she starts again. He is sliding the pillow around to a new area of his body, on his hips. She counts to him tactilely. One, two, three. Okay. So the student had been squeezing his head and you could tell he was starting to get kind of like -- you could just feel it. Sometimes we can just feel that they're getting to that place. And so we helped him sit down on the yellow pillow that you can see below him. Rachel brought a small green pillow and she was using it to lightly give him same squeezing feedback but on different parts of his body. And so it began at the top of his body with Rachel. He took the pillow and moved it to his knees and legs. Kaycee starts to give him that same feedback but then she adds tactile cueing. He's following along now with the interaction and the co-regulation strategy. We're going to watch it one more time but feel free to start chiming into the chat about what did you see, what did you notice. Thoughts on what is happening with this interaction strategy. Again, Rachel is pressing and he takes the pillow. He loves it down. Now Kaycee is offering the same feedback on his lower body. She starts tactilely counting for him. She's signing one, two, three. He slides it up. She signs "ready." Okay. Kaycee, do we have any comments on this one? 

>>Kaycee: You did. Following his lead. Serve and return. Watching his face for responses. Giving him choice about where on his body he wants the pressure. And waiting for his response before continuing. Deep pressure and waiting. 

>>Sarah: That's awesome! Again, the last one we saw more of her providing that consistent, passive presence. But in this one, like y'all said, we talked about being able to have choice. That's calming. He was able to move the pillow. They weren't just like no, this is what I'm doing. I'm giving you squeezes. He has a choice about where he got the squeezes. Following his lead is huge. Somebody mentioned serve and return. In case you're not familiar with what that means, all of us, serve and return is how we communicate. I serve something and then my communication partner acknowledges it and returns it. That might be just facial expressions. That might be through conventional language. That might be through sign or through speech. But I serve something and then my communication partner returns it. What we know is if we serve, serve, serve and nobody acknowledges and returns, eventually we stop serving. And so the serve is important but so is the return. So them acknowledging his attempts is just as important as him doing it. Because then he knows someone is here. They're acknowledging my behavior. They're helping me through. Serve and return is a huge one. Awesome! I'm going to keep moving. I have a few more strategies for us to talk about but this time they have to do with thinking about the teacher as well. Or the co-regulator. It might be another related service provider or intervener but the co-regulator. What are some strategies that benefit not only them but also us? As y'all know, co-regulation is hard. When somebody else is upset, whether it's a student, a friend, a family member. Like if we're truly co-regulating, we're taking on some of that emotional stuff ourselves. That can be hard. It can be stressful so let's talk a little bit about that. So the first one is the power of the wait. These come from a book -- it's in the resources. The co-regulation handbook. And then she talks about co-regulation a little differently than the way that I'm talking about it today. But she does give some strategies that you as an educator, as related service provider, even as a parent, if you're working to co-regulate with your child, that you can use. So one of them is the power of the wait. There's a little dumpster fire to the side. What this is talking about is especially as educators, we're in the business of helping kids, right? So we want to fix things. We want to talk about it. We want to show them this is what you should do. You can do whale breaths. You can take a pillow and squeeze. Like, we want to help them. We want to restore order. We also want to have a calm classroom. We want to be able to get back to teaching. We want to stop if they're aggressive, if they're hurting themselves or other people. Like, we obviously want to stop that. But when we're constantly just fix, fix, fixing or talk, talk, talking we often, unintentionally, keep adding to that dumpster fire. If you think back to that video we were watching initially with Kaycee and the student who was overstimulated, Kaycee took a moment to just wait. You could see in both videos that wait time that y'all pointed out, it was deescalating for both him and for her. It's a little harder to tell in the video because they're adults. But in that actual moment, it was stressful for all of us to see him becoming dysregulated and to know that he was feeling stressed. So taking some wait time and just letting everybody have a -- it's very deescalating for them but also for you. Remember, they need you to model the behavior that you want to see. And so when we amp up, we're unintentionally also amping up them. Okay. The next one is count to 30. I feel like when I've practiced this I get to the slide and I'm like this is where they throw tomatoes at the screen and they're really, lady, we came and saw Coffee Hour for you to tell us to take a breath and wait? But I promise you it is a thing. So if you can count to 30 or 15 or 20, whatever it is, it's a strategy you can use during the wait. And it gives you time to process. But it also gives the student time to process and realize, like, what it is you're trying to show them. Because time is arbitrary no matter what. But if everybody is stressed out, time is moving and sometimes we don't realize just how quickly we're giving the next time, showing them the next thing or giving the next redirection. When we ask it or we show them or we do the thing and then we wait or we count, it gives us a measurable amount of time. And it gives them time to process but it also gives you time internally to calm down. And sometimes we all know, we have been there. We tried all the things. We tried a list of things that we know works with the student and nothing is working. It gives you a minute to think about what the heck am I going to do next? Just gives everything a moment to -- [Breathing] But also repeating yourself. Get your shoes. You have to go to PE. Get your shoes. Get your shoes. We have to line up. Get your shoes. It not only frustrates the overstimulated child, even me pretending, it adds to your own stress levels. When you can say it, show it, sign it once, wait, count to 30, it really does help give everybody. [Breathing] We talked about the inputs we're giving and so thinking about the language that we're using. So there's imperative language, which is language that requires a response. It's asking a direct question. What should you be doing? What did I ask you to do? What's the time for? You're giving them a question. And maybe you don't even really mean for them to answer the question but you're asking a question. Or a direct command. I need you to sit down. I told you to sit down. That's language that requires a response and you're asking something, again, of an already amped up brain. Then there's declarative language that we use to share information. Here's the important part. It doesn't require a response. So for a student who does have language and who is at a place to hear us model out our thought process, it can help them build that executive functioning skills that we talked about before that's hard for them. But it's also just being cognitive and thinking about making sure that we are commenting and explaining at a level that is understandable to the student. So, again, it may not be conventional formal language, it may be touch and it may be being sure that we are providing commentary that's understandable and useful to the student. So, again, labeling feelings. Short, short things that just provide information about what's happening. Nothing more. Nothing less. No demands. I see that you're angry. Yep. I'm angry too. Just very simple. We're not adding. We're not adding input and stressing them out. Okay. One more. Again, this is where you want to throw tomatoes at me again, right, because some of you are thinking tag team? Take a break? Lady, my kid's beating me up because I have a sub and I can't get a regular para in my classroom. I know. I promise you I know, as I say this, but tag teaming and taking a break is not always an option. But support is key. And the opportunity to take a minute and just regain your composure after you have been co-regulating with a student. Like you self-talked yourself through it. You knew it was hard. You knew it wasn't personal. You got through it and then you went to the bathroom and cried. We have all been there and sometimes you've got to do it. Strategies are proactive and they're responsive and having a plan in place for you is just as important as having a plan in place for your students. If you can get support from a related service provider, from your admin, whoever it may be, tag teaming and having the opportunity for a break is also huge. Also, the power of teamwork and collaboration and just feeling heard by people who know is also huge. I'm going to use my last slide to do a plug and offer an opportunity. So we have a community of practice. It meets four times this year. We have already had our first meeting. The next one will be November 12 from 3:00 to 4:00 central time. The sign-up is in the handout. There's also a QR code on the screen. Basically we meet, we get together. We talk. There's a short session at the beginning, 15 to 20 minutes that talks about that month's theme. Our next theme is preparing students for breaks. We have a case study where we talk about we're having trouble with this. We ask questions, what could we do. An opportunity to collaborate with your peers. So it's for related service providers, teachers, everybody is welcome. If this is something you feel would be meaningful, reach out to me and sign up. I'm running out of time. I do have some resources but they are in your handouts. Lastly, thank you for joining us, joining me. It's something I get excited about so I apologize if I talked too fast. But thank you for joining us for this topic. 

>>Kaycee: Thanks so much, Sarah. Can people still join the community of practice if they missed the first one? 

>>Sarah: Yes. You can come to one. You can come to all. And also one other thing is there are office hours on the off months but you have to come to a community of practice meeting to get the link to sign up for office hours. If you come to the November one and there are strategies you're trying with your team, it works or it didn't work so you want to talk to other steps, you can come to the office hours and we'll support you in the meantime. 

>>Kaycee: Fantastic. We had another question. There was a reference to a handout review of the current program. And someone was asking if that was a link somewhere or what that was in reference to. 

>>Sarah: Yes. So that's in reference to the behavior planning, the behavior planning guidance document -- it's a lot of words and I think I did not say them in the right order. It's the TSBVI document. It's in your handout. I showed it -- here. I'll go back. Don't get sick. So sorry, everybody! It's this guy right here. The guidance for planning behavior intervention. The first part is narrative information about just behavior theory and how it applies to our students who are blind, low vision, or Deafblind. And then the second part is a set of forms that help you and your sensory team look at your current educational programming as it applies to behavior, your interactions, and how the environment is set up. It has questions, strategies, and data sheets to help guide the team in taking data. It can be very helpful if you are at the point where you're doing an FBA and VIP, this can be a great document to guide your team.