The Middletown Centre for Autism Podcast
The Middletown Podcast features interviews with leading thinkers and practitioners across the autistic and autism community. Conversations are autism-affirming and neurodiversity-informed with a focus on the lived experience and knowledge of our community. Episodes highlight issues impacting autistic people and we share ideas for family members and school staff who are providing support.
The Middletown Centre for Autism Podcast
Adaptive Teaching with Dr Jo Fitzsimons
Ahead of our Differentiation masterclass on the 15th, we chatted to Dr Jo Fitzsimons about adaptive teaching and the small changes that can have a huge impact in the classroom.
To find out more about Jo’s Masterclass visit: https://www.middletownautism.com/package/professionals/middletown-masterclasses
Welcome to the Middlepain Podcast. I'm Kat Hughes, I'm a researcher at Middlepain and I'm also autistic. In this episode I chat to Dr Jova Simons, a senior leader in special education as well as a researcher, lecturer and teacher. I want to talk to her about the topic of differentiation or, as she calls it, adaptive teaching, where educators adapt their work to students' strengths and interests. I found her perspective really fascinating. I hope you enjoy our chat. So, jo, it's so lovely to chat to you through the podcast. I wanted to start with a very kind of basic starter question. So what does differentiation actually mean?
Speaker 1:So, first of all, thank you very much for having me along and it's, it's wonderful to have the opportunity to do this, delighted to be able to talk about differentiation because you know, like everybody else, it's, it's, it's, it's another one of those words that's you know out there at the minute and sort of a word of you know, contention. I mean differentiation. If you're going to give a definition, you know, classically, across the board. I mean, you're looking at, you know, definitions from the DfE to UCL to the EEF, you know, and they are traditionally talking about this idea of catering for differing needs. I myself personally think that the idea of being different is maybe not given that kind of neuroaffirmative, kind of positive slant that maybe we want to work towards in the future. I know now words like disability and having a disorder are now getting sort of thrown out of bath, which is wonderful. I think the word difference and differentiation are hopefully going to be maybe you know there as well moving forward. You know, with the work I've been doing a lot of work over in England helping to develop ECT, so that's early career teaching, and NPQ, national Professional Qualifications, so developing the materials to support neurodiverse students, and what they seem to have done is they've changed the word differentiation and they call it adaptive teaching. So adaptive teaching is kind of the new buzzword Only since maybe 2020, 2022.
Speaker 1:So this idea of adaptive teaching I've been looking at a few kind of critical articles here and I think what's being communicated is the concern that traditionally, differentiation wasn't sort of making high expectations, it wasn't presenting that challenge with support. It was very much taking what's, on average, going to happen in class and how can we maybe sort of you know, reduce this or extend it or kind of bring it down. So it was the idea of a reductionist kind of like worldview of things. So it was felt that this term adaptive teaching was sort of more kind of you know, looking forward, looking out, saying this is what we're moving kind of like towards in terms of higher expectation. Arguably I'm not too sure whether it's just another word that's really trying to say, you know the same thing.
Speaker 1:There's been a few different articles, like there's one called the Death of Differentiation by a UCL writer, joseph Mintz, and he was talking about you know, this idea that you know we're kind of just losing sight of the fact that we're really working towards a personalised, bespoke way of working. We don't want to start with what generally everybody may be doing and then work down or up from that. We want to start with what generally everybody may be doing and then work down or up from that. We want to start from the individual and you know their own journey and their own pathway and say here's this wonderful person, whether they're, you know, neurodiverse or neurotypical, here's where they are, here are their strengths. And then here's where they are, here are their strengths, and then here's a wonderful lens and a way in to help them on their learning journey. And I think, to be fully inclusive, it should go for everyone that that makes a huge amount of sense, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:because I mean, if you want to use the word difference, everyone is different in in that sense. Yeah, that that makes absolute sense. And I think, yeah, it's lovely that idea of really focusing on the individual rather than kind of going this group is different. I would take it to this group. It's different, it's about the individual that makes so much sense. And then is there a model of best practice within those different definitions.
Speaker 1:I would say that, you know, I mean there's many other you know kind of buzzwords coming out that I myself are kind of even getting my head around. But, like in terms of a model, I mean I would. I mean I am very much coming from, you know, what they traditionally would have called like a multi-sensory background. So I very much come in with the lens that I'm working from a kind of bespoke approach and I'm thinking about, you know, what are the sensory needs of all the individuals in this room, and so those kind of sensory based traditions would be kind of one of my. You know principles and pillars when I'm looking. You know principles and pillars when I'm looking. Um, you know, to give an example, you know there's a there's a little mainstream classroom that I'm working with or a school that I'm working with in England and, um, you know they actually when the students enter the room, they give a choice of how they want to position if they want to sit in a beanbag, if they want to sit in a chair, if they want a standing desk, if they want one of those a chair, if they want a standing desk, if they want one of those that can get these like little cushions, that kind of like, you know, rock around. Now this started from one of the pupils having ADHD and they couldn't sit. They found it really really difficult to sit for long periods of time, arguably I don't even know if it's actually a good thing to have any child sitting for any long period of time.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know if that really effectively and optimizes kind of their learning, kind of ability capacity, whatever the word is going to be so like in terms of models, I'm very much going back to bespoke approach, sensory sensitivities, you know, obviously. You know if, if we're looking back to the traditional direct instructional teaching, chalk and talk, everybody's sitting in front of me. That's a very old thing, you know. Rote learning, you know, does it have its functions. You know things like routine, familiarity, consistency, you know, being clear and being direct maybe has its role to a certain extent. Moving on to our Piaget and you, you know all our kind of let's all sit in groups and work together and converse as peers. It has this role as well. But I think it's more about taking a package of all these things and kind of seeing what works for different students at different times of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that example that you gave, I think absolutely a chunk of organising, to begin with to get all those different sort of seating areas and preferences in the room, but then the the how empowered must students feel to be able to make those choices in their own comfort?
Speaker 1:yeah, and the biggest problem we're having is, you know, children losing and not having that sense of self, not, you know, not having that voice. You know from a very, very, you know from a very, very young age and you know, and children's voice and all the work that's historically been done from you know, the start of this century to you know, to really empower young children. You know there should be choice. You know in every aspect. You know of what they do. You know in every aspect. You know of what they do. You know, and, of course, they're the best assessors, they're the best quality assurers, they're the ones that will tell you if it's working or not?
Speaker 2:Is there a difference in how that sort of adaptive teaching approach would function in sort of different environments, say primary and post-primary?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what I would say is like, obviously, you know, when we're thinking about, you know, primary, post-primary, what we're actually doing is we're kind of nearly to me we're creating a kind of a like a model of what a primary child would need and want and what a post-primary child would need and want. The reality for a lot of our children and young people is that there are a lot of them working at very, very early developmental levels. So you'll have, like the majority of children that I've worked with, maybe between the ages of maybe six and 16. The majority of those students will be working at, maybe cognitively, from the age of a maybe a six month year old baby up to maybe a five year old child. So, you know, in terms of you know, looking at a setting and thinking, you know how am I going to you know best a setting and thinking, you know how am I gonna, you know best meet these needs? Um, yes, I most definitely look at the environment, but again, without meaning to repeat myself, I'm going to go back to the individual. I'm going to say, physically, what position are they able to comfortably cope and manage, feel comfortable with in terms of their level of, you know, learning in terms of their communication preference. How would that depict the structure of the environment?
Speaker 1:A lot of the students that I've worked with I would actually give them an auditory cue. So distance senses to me are also are always very non-invasive. So the idea of sound, the idea of smell, when they are managed skillfully, with staff with the chance to develop all that knowledge and training, they're a lovely cue for children to help guide them through the day, as well as all the visual cues and everything else you would give a child. So it's really important that you're doing. You're also having to be really really sensitive to how you use those in respect of the sensory sensitivities in class that different will have. But again, it's it's it's designing the environment to meet visual needs, auditory needs, where you're sitting, the work you're doing and how you're actually managing to sort of take in that information. Can I ask?
Speaker 2:what? What form would those cues take in terms of sort of the auditory cue, or did you say that there was sort of like a smell might be used as a cue?
Speaker 1:yeah, so, um, yeah, I draw and smell because I did my thesis and smell. But again, you know, I'm going to go back to this idea of, like, an individual experience and an individual preference and actually an individual threshold. So what you will have is that you know and, and to me, even you know, I'm sure teachers have said to me god, how long has it been since you've been in class when you're talking like this? But like to really master the art is to know every single child and have a nice profile of you know what really helps them get engaged. So say, for example, um, one of my children, in terms of smell, um, they, um, I would always have a signifier and my signifier would be my, my two rings and my thumbs, and I would always let them feel that and I would tap that because there's a certain sound and it's a nice soft, little tinny sound, but I always would wear distinctive perfume and then when I would come up to them, I would say who I am and whatever. But it wouldn't necessarily come up and I would not insist that they engage with me on, maybe, a way that a neurotypical or whatever may.
Speaker 1:But again, um, it's the idea of um presenting something that's familiar and, you know, consistent and in terms of an activity like, say, we would normally have done, you know, maybe a trip out, like a trip that we would go out to maybe go to the train station, that would be like a top favorite would be to maybe always pass by our sensory garden that has rosemary. So what I would do is I would maybe bring a little bit of rosemary into the class and then that would be a cue to say, oh yeah, now just another additional piece of information to support the visual cues that would be appropriate for that child, a young person. And again, you know, if we were going to say, for example, a cafe and they're always playing, maybe like where I'm working at the minute, it'll be some form of Turkish music, you know, I'll bring that into the classroom and I'll put that music on and I'll present that smell and you're given this kind of non-evasive cue as to oh, yes, yes, this is maybe where we're going next. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:that does and that is gorgeous because it creates such a safe environment around those sort of sensory experiences and making it sort of predictable for the young person. That is really lovely, um hopefully it's helpful?
Speaker 2:oh, I'm sure it is, and it actually reminds me of a friend of mine who's an autistic adult, and one of the things that she does, um, when she knows she's going to have to be sort of transitioning from, say, like, one piece of work that she's doing either into making dinner for her kids or another piece of work, whatever it might be, um, she will have different candles, different scented candles around her, and that sort of prepares her to transition into something different. So that's, it's so interesting um fascinating um.
Speaker 2:And then you mentioned the idea of um sort of students being the the best judge of what works and what doesn't work. Um, is there a way to kind of include that student voice in adaptive teaching and make sure that they're kind of heard within that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think you know, and again, things like, obviously you know, supporting the development of expressive communication, choice and offering choice, you know, in every opportunity possible and using absolutely every opportunity as a learning experience and a chance for the child to develop themselves. You know, transitioning times, changing, going outside, everything you know. I'm sorry I quickly made a little note here, but again, you know things like you know, even like asking the child, things like you know, do they want to do? They prefer to be outdoors or indoors whenever they're working. You know, like a lot of like forest schools have really, really, you know, kind of kicked off in the best way possible over in England and you know there's a lot of, I suppose, arts based stuff, even for me that I would have traditionally like oh, yes, oh, we'll go outside and we'll pick all them leaves and then we'll bring them all in and we'll always keep bringing them into this classroom that's got big strip lights and everything else going on and millions of people and millions of people walking in and out that are unfamiliar and they're leaving the door open and all that jazz, and we're putting all these leaves on the table and we're gonna try and recreate something that was already outside in the outdoor environment, so, so, so it's kind of like, okay, all right, so you know, but again, if you have a child, that's you know, and a lot of our children, you know. But they love being outdoors, you know. It's, you know, for their own well-being as well, as you know the wonderful ability it gives them to move and be free and engage with the environment and learn from it. You know. It's again about, you know, like, even if they don't specifically say to be very, very conscious of that and say, well, actually, let's take mathematics outside into the forest, you know, let's take our english, let's take our colored hula hoops and put them down and create a number activity on the ground. You know, let's count the cones. So I mean, I think so.
Speaker 1:Obviously there's a significant, you know, proportion of the children that I work with. That would be kind of non-speaking, they say, or traditionally they would say it would be pre or non-verbal. So what you're really having to do is, you know, interpret, respectfully interpret, use the insights of parents, the people around you, to get a, you know, a really true and as near to as respectful interpretation of what that child may like and may want to do and use that as a basis to determine how they want to learn. You know where they want to learn, what materials they like, what intensity of materials they like or not. So you know, to me really you know this is the way to go, like the really really basics are if I'm in a lesson, lights on, lights off, what does everybody want? If we want the lights off, somebody might want a little desk lamp, right, you know, by them on their own little corner.
Speaker 1:You know very, very simple things. You know color coding things. If it's really, really helpful, um, you know, at times of stress, you know, taking out something really concrete, like I mean, we have spent, you know, I spent most of my life, you know, and our biggest learning experience is a snack time. So snack time is a whole lesson and snack time is, um, is taking out loads of wonderful things that I could choose to eat or to smell, or, if I don't want to, I could do something else. But you know, at times, if you know if the child is feeling any kind of anxiety, it could be that that child is using a picture or a symbol to choose what they want, but it may be on that particular location, that they just want to choose the object itself. So if we sit down and we're like, choose, do you want? You know, black card orange, it's just.
Speaker 2:If the orange juice bottle is there, just just take the bottle you know you mentioned sort of the role that parents can can play in supporting sort of a young person who maybe doesn't speak many mouth words um, what and what. What can parents and caregivers do to sort of support teachers in that sort of adaptive teaching approach?
Speaker 1:so, uh, for me, the parents are the experts. So I think a lot of parents feel that they're not the experts and they feel that it's the teacher that knows. There's also a lot of maybe parents not doing particular things in terms of learning because they feel that it's better to just work with the teacher and do it with the teacher. But especially when you have children who, you know, really find it difficult to communicate clearly, you know, what makes them comfortable, what helps them learn easily in class, when that communication is is, you know it is much more difficult to manage. You know, it's really really important that, um, the information, that rich information that the parent has is is used alongside what information is in class and in school to make sure that the child has the most sort sort of the most effective kind of like you know, learning experience possible. I mean, we have various different ways in which we would, you know, invite parents in work with parents. You know there's the kind of formal, you know, coming in for your parent meeting kind of thing, but like it's that it's really cracking a really, really good communication system. So things like for us, like a little homeschool book and those little apps that you can use, you know. But I think you know for me what's really really important and you know I don't even think this may be something that is necessarily done for me at the minute is kind of nearly having a little kind of I felt like saying the word contract but it just sounds really really wrong. But having that initial meeting to just say, look, you know, we're all here together. That word professional is kind of out the window because what it is is just I've been told a few different strategies that might work for you. You have the lived experience and you have strategies that might work for you. You have the lived experience and you have strategies that might work for you.
Speaker 1:And we together need to try to find the best balance of how we can marry these two wonderful environments, which is home and school, and create that.
Speaker 1:You know, that lovely learning journey, you know, for the child or young person, you know. So it's having the community communicate, I would say having meetings and having like an open door policy where you can have. You know the parents can come in. I know actually half the time you end up like hiding behind the door, going if they see me, then that'll be it. You know they'll want to come home or whatever, but it's just kind of trying to manage that. So it's very much seen as this kind of like a community. And I know that that could. You know, some of the early years, kind of historic kind of philosophies and way of teaching, you know, would have very much been seen school as a community rather than school and home are two very separate things. So I just think it's kind of getting back to that and using all those sort of ways of working that that tries to sort of make communication really, really good.
Speaker 2:And then is there a way to assess that adaptive teaching is working and I know it makes it very clinical and sort of research focused. But is there, is there a way to sort of tell that it's working for someone?
Speaker 1:So what I mean like part and parcel of what you would do in school is, you know, the terms are kind of, you know, formative and summative assessments. So obviously you're going to have your summative assessment is going to look quite different for different students. You know, in terms of the end of a period of time and what you might do to check in and knowledge and understanding. End of a period of time and what you might do to check in and knowledge and understanding. I think the idea of formative assessment to me is much more interesting because what you're really really doing is on an ongoing basis, like we're talking every minute of the day. You're constantly putting something in place. You're checking in. You're checking in to see if it's working. Is it actually, is it kind of a valid, is it a reliable thing that you're doing? Is it actually doing what you wanted to do? And I think that's really, really important. So, yes, I would say by using, kind of, I would say, those formative techniques. Now, to me, that's about you and everybody else in the classroom, including including the, the pupil, been able to say this is what we aim to do. Yeah, and yes I think it worked, because now I think I know this, or I still not too sure. So let's do a little bit more work on it, you know, but it's about observations to think from.
Speaker 1:I would say I would always have like classroom staff. I'd say, right, right, today, right, our focus is to say, for example, really try and develop maybe the skill of turn taking and then say, ok, I want you to come back at the end and share, sort of like what you saw and to put those kind of together to get a kind of like an agreed perspective and kind of worked and whatnot. But as well as that, you know, allowing the child in terms of their dialogue, in terms of maybe little smiley faces, you know, in terms of they've been able to chat to their peers, so it's not this, oh, here's the adult saying this and you did and you didn't. But in terms of taking those power kind of roles away, and you know, allowing peers to sort of, when they can work with each other, to say is this easy, is this hard? Do I like it? Do I not? Why do I not like it? You know. So I think, part and parcel, good teaching.
Speaker 2:Then, as you say, that that element of sort of choice and empowerment just being threaded through everything is so important, is it, I suppose, is the approach then? That's like, if you're working on that sort of adaptive teaching approach, is it then that that adaptation is constantly happening, so say, progress is made and you can see that a young person is enjoying something, then is it, how do we build on that? Is it just constantly kind of moving things forward? Is that the idea?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I don't know, whenever, you know, I might have passed now, say, like three, four years, but basically in every single session we would start with saying, oh, what did? What did we do? What like celebrate what happened the last time? Then what are we going to think about today? And, hopefully, like we'll go away and maybe we'll, maybe we've learned something new. We really like really exciting, do a lesson and at the end of the session it's we do our own, separate as in what we learned about ourselves and our approach, but also what did we learn and can we learn? And you know, is there some, you know, what could we maybe do the next time to maybe stretch that a little bit, you know. So it's kind of like having that dialogue and making that kind of systematic kind of assessment, of kind of that acquisition of knowledge and understand part and parcel of what you do. And then you end the session with, well, this is what we're going to look at the next time.
Speaker 1:You know, what does everybody feel about that? Do they like? They like the idea that, how would you like to do that? Do you want to do it outside, inside? Well, we get some of those nice big, you know we've got these like huge dices that they're really really dope as well. So you know, just sort of making it, you know, not sound like assessment, but literally we're saying is does that, does that? You know? Do you do that make sense? You know, and it's our job to help you make it make sense, you know, and a so like that's it and and obviously you know, using various different ways to do that, concrete visual cues, you know, whatever works in relation to, say, like activity outside school and outside sort of the education settings, so leisure activities.
Speaker 2:Is there ways that that adaptive teaching approach can be applied in those settings to support young people to, to thrive in them?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah. So I think you know, I mean I mean looking at the kind of things that that you would do like. I mean the idea, idea, say like, say, for example, your playground. Now if you had, I mean, to me it's great to have a playground, free play. I mean a playground, a space with absolutely nothing in it. I don't necessarily think that that is enough. You know enough for any child, you know enough for for any child, you know. So, not too highly structured.
Speaker 1:But the idea of putting structure into, and I don't mean structure as in giving instructions, but what I mean is and some of the most beautiful examples I've seen have been actually in some little nursery schools so they have like an outdoor kind of construction area with these huge, big, like really light blocks that you can build and they're all different colours. Now having those there, having some half constructed and not constructed, having maybe two little chairs beside a table, or you're kind of like, and I suppose it's a very Montessori, you know, in suppose it's, it's a very Montessori, you know, in a way it's quite a Montessori approach, but the idea is that to do it, that it also encourages social engagement and social interaction. So setting things up, you know having another like a little corner that's maybe all sorts of recycling bits and bobs and you can stick things together and you can put it on your head if you want. And then you know having your like large apparatus and having your like your swings and your zip wire, and you know. So I think there's a lot to be said about designing the physical environment that helps to guide and support that kind of leisure, interaction and play, you know, and then letting the child choose from that what they want to engage with or not, or who they want to engage with. I think there's other things like like commonly and this would actually be more for the games, but we used to have a little like we call them like play bags, and so they say a lot of our like I was saying, dinner ladies, probably dinner ladies is really like a bad thing to do. So anyway, everyone that helped us out with dinner time.
Speaker 1:Quite often the staff would maybe be half an hour before the children would go back into class and it was always. It was always a bit of like an unknown and it was always where any incidents of somebody did something and something happened and it all went completely wrong. That's when it happened. So we started creating little bags for all the children of their favorite things to do, if they were going to play with an adult or if they were going to play with a friend, and we'd always have, like, their favorite ball. They might have a toy or a game, so they would all have a little bag of the different little things that they could do.
Speaker 1:So it's not so much that the environment is structured, but they have a little bags and in that would be like a little a4 piece of paper that says this is what I like to do and this is how I like to play. So it's just a really simple and, to be honest with you, I remember the staff saying to us they just said you know what? It was just simple. And you know because, like some people were rolling a ball to a child that maybe had a divergent squint, you know and and and, like you're kind of and they didn't know and and you're and there's, you know. So, like I mean, when you're like just put into a class, you don't know the background, the, you know all their needs, you know, um, you know their preferences. It's very, very hard to know.
Speaker 2:So you need a little be able to very, very quick guide to say, okay, this works, go for it yeah, that's brilliant because it's empowering for the young person, but it's also empowering for for staff as well, so it gives them immediate knowledge that they can use to support the young person. It's gorgeous, yeah yeah, yeah it's great. And then in terms of communication, is there sort of does that sort of factor in in relation to sort of adaptive teaching and how someone might approach the communication side of things?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean communication arguably kind of underpins everything. You know, a receptive, understanding or expressive communication, and obviously, you know we all communicate in different ways, we have all different preferences in terms of communication and it's just basically trying to. You know, I'm saying support and challenge but you're kind of you're trying to meet that need but you're trying to, you know, get that best fit approach. Um, you know I'm going from the very the most concrete.
Speaker 1:You know the idea of like an object cue or a sensory cue, something that's meaningful for the child. If I play with the red ball out in the playground, my cue is not, you know, half a tennis racket, it's that red ball or another one of those red balls. You know the most concrete objects of reference, you know, or visually impaired kids might go off and start doing moon and braille and things like that, but are, when we're looking at the visual stuff, you know our pictures, our tobies, our symbols, and allowing those children to have, you know, uh, maybe their own little pack, their own little key ring of all the little different things that they want. They could use that to communicate if they're non-speaking or if that feels more comfortable for them. You know, also having timetables also having you know now and next boards I think there's such a range of things. Obviously switches IT. There's so many different ways to communicate, but very much about, you know, fitting the chair's needs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's lovely and it makes perfect sense and then my very, very last question for you, um is what is something that you've learned from all of your work with autistic folk, um that you wish everyone knew?
Speaker 1:um, I would. I, to be honest, uh, there was two things to me. First of all was listen to the child, just listen, and by listening I'm gonna say actively listen, whether, um, there are words being said or whether it's some kind of you know, maybe like a non-verbal or non-speaking like cue in terms of body language, in terms of somebody moving back and moving forward. You know, just take that moment. You know, time is this thing we all feel. We have to rush, rush, rush, and you know, and oh quick, we have to get a sentence written before the bell goes at half ten. You know. No, you have to absolutely make sure that that child feels safe, they feel comfortable and they feel able to engage in whatever beautiful thing you can magically create for them that day.
Speaker 1:I think the other thing for me was say what you mean and do it. So there's a you know things like, you know, i're going to do this and next we're going to go swimming, and then, of course, if the plans change, a really, really interesting thing I did want to mention there's a really, really wonderful person called Joanna Grace, who is very much, you know, in the forefront of all our neuro affirming work that we're doing and she's a huge leader in the field of sensory learning as well, and she's autistic herself, and her little son I think it's maybe two summers ago sat down and drew a little book of her and him interacting together. So the little book would be a lovely book. If you haven't seen it, it's called my mommy is autistic and, um, in it she talks about the fact that, you know, he asked her to listen to him. So she said, because he said listen to me, I turned my ear and I faced him with my ear because he asked me to listen to him.
Speaker 1:He didn't ask me to look at him, he asked me to listen to him. So he had drawn a picture of him and his mummy talking. But he's looking at his mummy talking and she's got she. Her eyes are pointed away, it looks like she isn't looking at him, but she writes underneath no, I was pointing my ear towards him because I was trying to listen to what he was saying. You know it's like it's written on the tin. You know, listen to what you're asking you know our children to do and listen to what they're trying to tell you and act on it.
Speaker 2:Be responsive, you know thanks so much for listening to the podcast. This is a conversation-based interview designed to stimulate thinking and hopefully support the development of practice. It's not intended to be medical or psychological advice. The views expressed in these chats may not always be the view of Middletown Centre. If you'd like to know more about Middletown, you can find us on X at Autism Centre and Facebook and Instagram at Middletown Centre for Autism. Go easy until next time.