Social Humility: Replacing confusion with curiosity. Featuring Aaron Lanou!

The podcast welcomes our second guest, Aaron Lanou!  Aaron is one of Gillian's longtime favorite colleagues and thought partners, and you can read all about his work here:

In brief, Aaron worked as a special education teacher in New York City public schools for 10 years, working with students with autism and learning disabilities in inclusion and specialized settings, from kindergarten through high school.  He went on to be the Director of Professional Development and Executive Director of NYU's Nest Support Project, leading the team and supporting the largest autism inclusion model in the country. He developed and presented dozens of workshops, and consulted with hundreds of teachers and principals to help educators see and meet the needs of autistic students in inclusive classrooms.  Now, Aaron works as a fantastic consultant and trainer for school settings interested in supporting all learners in an inclusive and inspired way. 

In this discussion Aaron shares with us one of Carol Gray’s concepts, social humility.  Social humility refers to a stance in which one is “confused with a good attitude” and allows us to pause to understand what may be inspiring behaviors and let go of our basic belief that we (the adult in authority) is right and the unexpected actions of others are to be corrected.  In this discussion, we discover very practical and powerful ways to offer co-regulation, increase our understanding of each other, and create psychological safety.  We unpack the first main point of social humility that the social impairment surrounding autism is shared.  

Links:

Carol Gray:

http://carolgraysocialstories.com/

Social Humility Pilot Project:

https://carolgraysocialstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Social-Humility-Pilot-Project.pdf

Ross Greene's Collaborative and Proactive Solutions:

https://cpsconnection.com

Double Empathy Problem:

https://reframingautism.org.au/miltons-double-empathy-problem-a-summary-for-non-academics/

Find us on Instagram!

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

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

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Stance of Curiosity. Hi, Joelle. Hi, Gillian. How are you? I'm good. I was just mentioning before we started recording, I was a little late today because I have a swarm of bees in my backyard and I had to Google whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. It turns out it's neutral and you just wait it out and usually it's temporary. And if not, you can have someone gently relocate them. What did people do before the internet? I genuinely don't know. I look up. How to open my front door at this point. I really overused it. This is such an exciting episode. We have our second guest ever on Stance of Curiosity. This is a person very close to my heart.  So this is Aaron Lanou, who's a friend of mine from Brooklyn. I met Aaron through the Nest Support Project through NYU, which is one of my favorite programs ever. It sets up any school in the New York City Department of Ed that opts in to just be great for autistic and neurodivergent learners, which, spoiler alert, doesn't negatively impact anyone. If we set things up well for neurodivergent learners, turns out the impact on everyone else is neutral to positive, almost always positive. And I had the great honor to do some behavioral consultation for them. For a while, which was so wonderful. And Aaron was the executive director of that project after being an educator who taught in Nest classrooms for a really long time. Now he's an excellent consultant and trainer in the New York City area.

Some fun facts about Aaron that I really enjoy are that he is a master jump roper. And he has what I deem to be the most correct music taste, which is 90s indie rock moving into punk. So he wins on those fronts. Thank you. Isn't our song that we have for this podcast called Indie Folk? It is. It is. Wait till you hear it. Wait, just wait. Just wait. Yeah. Is it play now or is that going to come later? No, no. It's going to rock your socks. Yeah. Welcome, Aaron. Thank you. Thank you. We're so glad to have you. So happy to be here. I am a longtime listener, meaning it's been all of how many months y'all have been doing this, but it's been great.

And I do my very, very best to keep up with your very impressive pace of distributing these. It's been great to listen to. One thing I don't know if we've ever shared on the podcast, but we have shared with you, Aaron, is Joelle and I actually do not edit. So we simply have conversations and we put them on the internet. And if that's all you're doing, you can really be quite prolific, it turns out. Yeah. Nice. That weird John Mulaney Netflix approach to television, where you just, let's start now and do it, and then it just goes out to everyone. That's right. Single shot right here. We embrace all mistakes. Yeah. Love it. We do embrace all mistakes, which is not a bad segue into the topic we have Aaron on to discuss today.

He has a wealth of knowledge of so many things, but today we're here to talk about social humility. Would you give us a little bit of a thumbnail sketch of what social humility even is? Yes, happy to try. I can’t thumbnail sketch anyone, but I’ll talk for 14 minutes without breathing, if that’s what you meant. Honestly, that is what I’d like the most. Yeah, so social humility, as I’ve come to know it, comes from the work of Carol Gray. It is the sort of foundational philosophy for the social stories approach, which Carol has developed and continued to develop over the last 30 some odd years. And I am a very proud member of Team Social Stories, a very wonderful crew of just a small number of folks who get together every month or so to meet with Carol and collaborate with Carol and develop social stories and update the training and talk about magical things.

And so, social humility as the foundational philosophy of social stories, it's sort of like the starting point. That you kind of have to adopt, the mindset you have to adopt before you even consider writing a social story. But I think it's a lot more than that. I think even not in the context of writing a social story, it's a really important just stance or orientation to have about children and the world and humans. And basically, it's the idea that I have to know that I don't know everything objectively right and don't have the complete and full accurate picture of what's going on in the world, especially with other human beings. And that seems like maybe, that's the thumbnail sketch. That's like the quick like headline. But it's pretty, you know, it's a lot deeper than that.

Like if you do accept that you don't have the full and accurate and complete picture, it means that like when a student in particular, if we're talking about a school context, if a student does something that's like really baffling to you, instead of like jumping to 'he shouldn't be doing that' And here's why. And here's how I'm going to respond accordingly. It really requires us to be like, wait a second. Someone did something that I don't understand, instead of rhetorically asking, 'Why would he do that?' I have to sort of like authentically, genuinely ask, why would he do that? And like really try to answer my own question. And there's probably a reason or some reasons or a perspective or an experience that this young person was having that made sense and was the reason that they did this thing that is to me baffling.

And I think it's really important. When you work, especially if you're a non-autistic neurotypical teacher and you work with autistic neurodivergent students, which is most teachers, I would say, it's really important because a lot of times there are sort of neurotypical, cultural, social expectations and values that we aren't aware of and don't question and don't examine that we just sort of foist upon students without knowing that we're doing it. And then when students act differently than those norms that we aren't always aware of, it can not just be confusing, but can be kind of like upsetting or like feel like an affront to our, you know, authority. It can be stressful, too. You know, it can it can be hard to just sort of get through the day.

But it is it is it is meant to be I think social humility is meant to be a very like freeing, interesting, eye-opening kind of way of going about. you know going through the world and and looking at students and like thinking about your classroom and why people are doing what they're doing um and and i think if people sort of the more people it's not an on off it's not a yes no i do it i don't do it but i think the more people sort of commit to a stance of social humility the more like accurate read though they're likely to have the more sort of like um you know I guess, effective problem solving.

Not the kids are the problem, but if there is a problem collectively in a classroom space, the more effectively we're actually going to be able to get to the root of that problem and solve that problem. I think it's a better way to connect with other humans, especially humans you might not be understanding all that well. And I think it's a good way to apply the way we think about humans outside the classroom as well, to just walking down the street. Being kind of confused about why a human might be doing a thing that is confusing to you. And I guess having a little bit more interest, curiosity, and compassion than judgment and evaluation. Yeah. What I'm thinking of as you're talking is Gillian and I have talked together for years about how interfering the urgency can be that the the sense the pace that we can when we're very busy and we have a lot of responsibilities and we're trying to do many things at once which is the life of a teacher or anybody that works in a school, you can get going and and then there's a sense of urgency that that really is counterproductive. And so what you're talking about is intentionally working on a stance. When we talked about this briefly before, you said confusion with a good attitude, which I love that idea of your confusion with a good attitude. It's like, I didn't expect that. I'm going to slow down and be confused and curious about what might be going on, which would allow you to pause from feeling an urgent need to respond, to redirect, to address behavior before you have understood it. So it's sort of like it could be an antidote to that. Yes, absolutely. And that phrase is one I borrowed and repeat frequently from Carol Gray. It's one of the tenets, one of the five elements of social humility, as she sort of outlines it in Social Stories trainings. But I really do love that. almost it's not even a reframe i guess just a different definition of curiosity um confusion with a good attitude usually we think of confusion as being a bad thing like we it's a it's an unresolved state and we need to fix it we need to do something so that we're not in that state anymore but if we can kind of shift our understanding of curiosity or like have curiosity but that will lead us somewhere interesting and real and needed.

And it's more of an investigation. I think it does have a lighter kind of feel to it than it might otherwise. Yeah. It's like reframing confusion. It's like confusion is no longer a threat. Confusion is now an opportunity. It's a yellow light. It's an opening in the space-time continuum through which more understanding might come if we sort of pause and welcome it. Yeah. No, sorry. Oh, no. I think confusion can feel like such a threat and like something that we're supposed to get rid of or bat away, right, in our culture where we kind of are pressured to know everything. Yeah. Yeah. In our culture and in teaching. You have to make a million decisions. You have to react to things you didn't know were going to be part of your day.

And you have to keep your cool amongst it and keep teaching the partial quotients method of division or whatever you're teaching. And yeah, if you throw uncertainty or confusion into that mix, it is understandable that people would feel thrown off a little bit. They would feel that sense of urgency. I need to repair, fix, get out of this state. There's a thing that is very, I don't know if it's nerdy or not, but I just I think it's relevant that there's this there's this quote that I love. It happens to come from Voltaire. I'm not trying to be like, oh, I quote Voltaire in my free time, but it just says this really well. He's reported as having said or written, 'Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.' I just really appreciate that, that like we do have a choice and I get. Of course, as a fellow human, that it doesn't feel good to be sort of like off kilter and like feel like you don't know something that you should know or that something's uncertain when it should feel resolved. But especially in the context we're talking about, a kid, a student is doing something. Some students, plural, are doing something and it's making you feel off. I'm not sure where this is coming from and why. It doesn't feel good. It's unpleasant to feel like, I don't get it. I don't get it. Why are they doing that? But if we jump to, oh, they are. They know the rules and they're just choosing to break them. Or they're just doing this to piss me off. If we jump to something that we are certain about, we're likely to be really, really wrong. And that will get us somewhere, but probably not ultimately where we want to be. 

Aaron, can I give you like a sequence and you tell me if you approach this with social humility, how it would be different? Okay. So this is something I talk about with teachers a lot. A student does something unexpected, maybe even disruptive. And what I try to get teachers to do is to resist the temptation to ask, why did you do that in that moment? Right. So step over the why, even step over the behavior and get curious together and try to figure out what the unmet need is and how to meet the need. So what I talk about is what happens is student does unexpected thing.  Teacher says, 'Why did you do that?' Student makes up an answer that is not usually not anything about why they did that. Teacher responds to the answer. And now we together. Oh, and then and then students like that doesn't make sense. But they double down on what they said because they don't want to say, oh, I mean, most people, even adults can't say, you know what? I felt pressured to give you an answer. So I actually just blurted something out that's not actually true. I would like to take that back and explore this further. No, like adults don't even do that. So student makes something up, adult responds to the made up answer, student doubles down on the made up answer. And now we are both on a tangent that's not even related to what happened

So I'm trying to stop that from the beginning. So let's go back to unexpected thing happened. Instead of why did you do that? What would teacher do? Yeah. So a student does something that's like baffling, confusing, like you said, even maybe disruptive, however that gets defined. I think the first thing is just to pause, like to try to just take a beat. And it can be like, it's not like six deep breaths. It takes 45, like no one's got time for that in the classroom, but like literally just one breath, just be like a. Like that kind of a thing, that kind of a pause where you're actually really trying to think, like, hmm. Right, like which is supposed to be an utterance of interest, curiosity, not the right, like certainty, the jumping to conclusion.

I think instead of why did you do that? Although it depends on all the factors and all the realities of what's going on and dynamics and relationships, all those things. I think instead of why did you do that? You could potentially just tell them what you saw. Huh, you just, it's math. And you just stood up and yelled in the middle of the lesson. Like not in a way to single them out or to humiliate them, just like a genuine like, huh, you just did this thing. You could even follow it up with like, I'm gonna, you know, if you need to keep going with the lesson, I'm gonna keep going if you don't mind or something, right? But naming what you see, I think can be really, powerful as long as it doesn't come with that tinge of judgment or certainly like public humiliation that it might. Part of the reason I said, you know, it depends on all the factors and stuff. If you've created a classroom culture where like kids aren't afraid to have you speak with them in front of their peers, that's gonna make a big difference compared to a place where that is going to, kids haven't learned that that's a safe kind of interaction, and it will likely lead to the same thing you were just talking about. Yeah. So like tone and body language matter a lot, but I also, you are acknowledging them. And sometimes what people, sometimes the unmet need is to be acknowledged.

And so you're acknowledging them with very thoughtful tone. And maybe for some students who don't read between the lines well, you're also adding, you just, it's math, you just stood up and yelled. I want to understand that better when we're done. With this math lesson, huh? Okay, and then you just keep going with the math so you're being sort of like almost talking out loud, you're like thinking out loud, so that letting them know what you are thinking about them. It's not judgmental, you're not angry, you're surprised, confused, you know, with a good attitude, so but you're acknowledging because I think planned and boring can also be really um agitating to a lot of students, yeah. There's something I want to bring in from the super shrinky world too, which is that there's a therapy skill that's called mentalization, which is doing just this, right?

So even if you're sitting one-on-one with a client, if a client does something really confusing, or if I find myself a little bit jarred or somehow off of what they call my therapeutic seat, what they tell you to do is not pretend like you're not a little thrown off because something you know, something out of context just happened in the room, but instead to start mentalizing, which is exactly this. It's like helping the client understand your thought process, which usually starts with, this is a little shrinky, but usually starts with language like I'm noticing. Right. So, you know, it might be like, oh, I'm noticing that I asked you about, you know, if I was working with an adolescent, you know, like, oh, I'm noticing that I asked you how your test went. And then you told me to go F myself. So I'm, I'm wondering if we had a miscommunication or I'm also wondering if maybe you really didn't want to talk about the test. Right. Like, and so it's sort of like, I'm, you know, in a therapy setting, you have all the time in the world, which is not the case in schools, but it's like mentalization is this really helpful way. Yeah. Then the other person also doesn't have to wonder what like the, the person in charge of the room is thinking, which can be very. Grounding and can also take some of the stress of the power hierarchy, it's like, 'oh, I'll just lay my cards on the table', I'm noticing XYZ and I'm wondering a couple of things about that and I'll circle back to that uh when we're finished with this math here, we go, yeah, I, I appreciate too that that like you said it might feel a little...

I don't remember those little words you said, but it might feel a little unnatural; I'd rather go with unnatural than like totally wrong and triggering and fueling a conflict. Right. And so there's, there's a, along these lines, Carol Gray shares another great example from, from her in her workshop where she talks about a time when she was called in to support a team working with an autistic student. And as she got there, as Carol got there, like the student just like, you know, yelled and ran over the table and the teachers were like, well, you know, what are you going to do now? Kind of thing. And Carol went over to the table and crouched down and said, 'Huh, it looks to me like you're feeling very,' and she like caught herself and didn't want to say like upset, you know, angry. She didn't want to like put the words in this person's mouth, didn't want to assume. And so she said, 'It looks to me like you're feeling very under the table.' And like, that might feel silly to say too, but again, rather silly, rather a little unnatural than. Fueling uh right some kind of larger conflict or missing the mark and making someone even more upset um, and in fact it did like you know create some levity and the kid smiled and you're much likely to get further with a smile than you are um otherwise, so I think sometimes we have to get over the like this doesn't feel right, this feels icky to say, like if that's going to get you to a better place and is respectful and doesn't you know spiral things worth a shot.

It's interesting also to think about, because we're trying to notice we're trying to acknowledge but we're trying so hard not to assume and so it's like wow, you have to be just so literal and so like declarative of what you're seeing with non-judgmental language. Like once I remember this is shrinky again, but when I was learning to be a play therapist and I was at my internship right um, I like came in cause I've been working with this kid and you know they were like stirring a pot and I was just, you know, you just go through like really the details of a session when you're learning. So I didn't even have a question about this part. I just said to my supervisor, yes, anyway, they, you know, they were making a potion and I said, Hey, are you making a potion?And my supervisor was like, well, what were they actually doing? I said, well, you know, they were like doing this. And I made the hand motion of like stirring, you know, the pot. And my supervisor said, all you know is that they were stirring. You don't know if that was a potion. They were like, I've gone back and been like, I notice how you're stirring. I would never have thought potion. I would have been like, oh, you're baking cookies. That is so funny that you said making a potion. Why? That's the thing. Because I thought any human in the world would see potion. But no, every human would see a different thing. And that's why it is so important just to say stirring. Even though at the time I was like, come on.

But it's like, no, that's right. You do have to, all you know is that they're stirring. All you know is that this kid is under the table. Yeah. And you also didn't, like, let's say in that situation, you assuming it was a potion didn't lead to some problem, but there are situations where if you get that, even that little thing wrong, it feels like such a, like, refutation of my reality that that's going to be a further, right, fuel in this problem. That's right. There are certain kids who, for one, just have a great need for accuracy, right? And for two who already feel misunderstood all the time. And so if you've now outed yourself as yet another person who made an assumption and misunderstood them, right?

Okay, well now that's gonna damage that relationship if this was a kid for whom not having the wrong assumption made was very important. Let's see. I also, I wanted to bring in an example too of this because It also dovetails with Ross Greene's Collaborative and Proactive Solutions. And listeners will link all of this. So if you're like, what's a social story? We'll link an example of social stories. We'll link Carol Gray's work. I'm sure we've already linked Collaborative and Proactive Solutions on this pod and we'll do it again. But that's basically a way to just take a look at the behavior that isn't working for one or several people in a system, right? And just to speak in a very pragmatic, non-hierarchical way about what we can do about that.

And so, you know, the, um, I will often work on this with kids with bedtime. Um, I find that a lot of social humility can help with that because parents understandably get really spun up about bedtime because it's so important by the end of the day for parents that bedtime goes smoothly and they can just for Lord's sake, be off duty. Right. Um, they, parents can feel a lot of, um, not malice, but a lot of volition or a lot of on-purposeness in kids delaying bedtime or in kids insisting on sleeping in a parent's room, right? I find that the more negatively something impacts us, the more quickly we are to assume that somebody's doing it kind of on purpose.  And so, for example, right, there was this kid I was working with, I think they were about nine at the time, and they had just been sleeping in their parents' bedroom just forever, right? And it was causing all the problems you can imagine, and parents were feeling really frustrated. And, you know, we could have started at a place of, well, we just have to adjust this behavior, right? Maybe we can set a reinforcement plan about staying in their own room, or, you know, maybe we need to just, you know, really set some consequences around, you know, you're in the wrong room, this isn't your job. We could have done that, but instead we did a process where parents were sort of like, 'hey, we notice that you are sleeping in our room a lot. That's okay. We like being near you, but it is impacting just our sleep in certain ways. And we want to have more energy to be really present for you during the day.' Can you help us understand what's hard about staying in your room? And wouldn't you know it, it had turned out that I might've shared this on the pod before they were renovating the house next door. And they had been since the time when the kids stopped sleeping in their room. And there was a big tarp on the building that was billowing in a really scary way. And they could see it out their window when they laid in their bed. And so this is like the easiest CPS solution ever. So I share it a lot.

It's almost never this cut and dry, but it turned out the issue was a blackout curtain. And once we had that, the kid was a hundred percent able to go back to their room. So there really was a reason. And by pausing at all, we can tell is that you are sleeping in a room different from yours. We're going to try not to assume that like, we're not even going to assume this is about separation anxiety. We're not going to assume that this is relational in any way. We're going to see if you happen to know why this is and pausing and asking that question led to a very clear cut solution that we wouldn't have generated on our own. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about how the examples that you're giving explain a very efficient way to co-regulate.

And we talk about co-regulation all the time. And what I hear a lot from people who are very busy is, 'I don't feel as though I have the time to stop everything and co-regulate students because it feels like co-regulation should involve identifying how they're feeling.' Understanding what triggered that emotion and teaching them you know to understand that differently in a more accurate and adaptive way, and then helping them get their emotions back to a calm and regulated place. However, what we're saying is all that's lovely when it can happen, but you can just co-regulate by broadcasting what you're thinking in a calm way so that you're I don't you're basically saying 'You' and I don't need to know why you just did that. But we can be in this together.

And I'm calm enough as the person who's sort of the adult in charge, like I'm calm enough to sit with not knowing comfortably and sort that out with you now or later. But knowing why isn't even integral to us moving forward together. So it's sort of like, 'I wonder why you're not sleeping in your bed.' Let's go lay down in your bed together and look. It's like you're feeling very under the table and it sounds like she got under the table. Or like, 'I didn't expect you to yell in math.' I want to understand that better. Right now my job is to teach math, so I'm going to keep going. But let's check in as soon as I'm done with that. All these things are co-regulating.

What did you call it, Gillian? Mentalization. Mentalization. And just making a statement of of how you're responding to them. That's really offering everybody psychological safety, which is we can make mistakes in this in this group and maintain belonging. And we can we're in this together. Your belonging is unconditional. But that just that very simple act does all of those things. to um that whole that that pressure to co-regulate or like do this whole evaluative thing is is real and it's understandable question slash push back when teachers are like yeah this all sounds well and good but like in the heat of the moment what do you do and i think might have been you both might have been Gillian I've heard before talk about like how we sometimes think There's like a Smith song. Maybe you'll appreciate this, Gillian. But like, does the mind rule the body? Does the mind rule the body? Does the body rule the mind? I don't know. But it's like, so like, we usually think like, oh, we think a thing and therefore our body does something, but there's this other way that it goes. And I have this thing where I don't know if people have been able to know and maybe my Zoom filter is good enough that it hasn't been impacting it. But I have a very wrinkly forehead and I have since I was really young. And I do this a lot. I just, and it's just sort of like pensive or sun's in my eyes or like, I just had a thought, something, it just happens all the time. And I, and I realized that I could feel it sometimes, and sometimes all it takes is for me to like feel that I'm doing it, and then just go, like this, and it's a very different feeling. It's like, impacts the how the rest of my body feels, and sometimes how my mind feels, if I just go from this, like furrowed brow, oh yeah, we're on podcast for folks who are watching if this is available in video form so, furrowed brow to just sort of like raised eyebrow, it feels very different. And I think there are little things like that. I think, Gillian, I've heard you talk about when our body slows down, our mind must be like, well, nothing can be that important if this big machine is going this slowly.

That's a way to combat urgency. Little things like that, like feeling what's happening in your body and doing something a little different. And the other thing that's not necessarily in the body, but another practice, like hack, that I've tried that I like is this: only works in certain circumstances, but when these come up, I think it's great, is when a kid asks you something, can I get a drink of water? Can I, you know, I'm all done. Can I such and such? Especially if we're like amped up, not in a great place. Oh, he just asked for water. Like he just went to the bathroom. You know, everyone's in the bathroom now. Just answer yes all the time and then qualify it after.

So like if a kid is like, hey, I'm done, can I go get a drink of water? Yes, as soon as I check your worksheet. So head on back there and I'll be over there in a minute. But it's instead of like, no, get back to, no, how many times have I told you? Just responding with yes and then doing the work to figure out what the conditions of that yes are, like feels better, feels better as a teacher, as an adult to say out loud, then, oh, come on, the stuff that understandably comes out when we're frustrated and we know the kids shouldn't be doing the thing they're asking to do. So little things like that, like I think in the moment to just interrupt, do a little reset, whether it's in your body, in your shoulders, a stock response you have, I think those things can interrupt the pattern we get into that can snowball of sort or negative or, you know, rush to judgment kind of stuff.

The, okay, so the power of yes is really interesting to me too. So much to everyone's chagrin, I have this comedy improv background and comedy improv is all about the ‘yes and’, right? So you're supposed to like, ‘yes and’ everyone in the scene, whatever weird thing they say, right? You're supposed to be like, 'you're right'. We are on a boat made of snakes and we're having a birthday party, right? When you're creating like a wild scene. But when they taught us to 'yes and’ in my improv 101 class, shout out Natalie Miller at the Vermont Comedy Club. But they, they hadn't, I remember they just paired us up. So I was with a stranger who I didn't know yet. And first, they said, 'Try no-but ing’ and then try ‘yes and-ing’, right? So we were trying to plan a birthday party. And so this, you know, stranger was like, 'Why don't we have a costume party?' And I was like, 'No, but that won't work because of blah, blah, blah.' And he was like, 'And I was like...' And he was like, 'What about this?' And he was like... And he was like, 'No, but...' Sure enough, by the end of a volley of no but-ing, you have no ideas. And both people, even though we knew this was an exercise are feeling like bummed out and shut down. Right. Whereas when they did have you try yes-and ing, right. We're not even going to have this birthday party, but it’s like, yes. And this, and by the end of it, right. Everyone in the room is just like shining and glowing and like, you know, thrilled with a birthday party they’re never going to have. So. When we’re working with kids, like, yes, of course they don’t like to hear no, because nobody likes limits, but also the power of yes-anding, even if it’s adult to adult, even if it’s people who have no power over each other, a yes-and will bring in a much more effervescent, like kind of possible vibe than no-but ing. So I love that. It’s like, it’s always a yes. Of course they can always go to the bathroom at some point again in their lives. So, you're safe to be like, 'Yes.' Let's talk about when and how.

I think that's so great. Yeah. And I'm always trying to find practical ways to help kids build delayed gratification, and stamina, and perseverance. I think that post-COVID and also with technology in our lives, I will just say anecdotally in my clinical observation, there's been impact on delayed gratification and perseverance so it's always about stretching a little bit more stretching the student wants to be done or take a break can you just stretch a little bit more before they do that and so then you're building stamina and and so the idea of yes after we check your work or yes as soon as This is done as soon as somebody else comes back from the bathroom. So they have a path toward meeting their need.

And it requires a little bit of delayed gratification, frustration tolerance, all of that, which we desperately need to be building in every way that we can. And if you just say no, because you need to wait for the break, now you're going to get that, potentially get that escalation that is going to be challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it does. It does feel better to say yes as a teacher to like that. I think the improv-y, you know, whatever. Energetic. Energetic. Yeah. Yeah. Effervescence that you said that it's felt to it just feels better to be able to say yes on the teacher end too, which hopefully puts us in a better place to then deal with the rest of the stuff that comes up 90 seconds later too.

So today we're, you know, we're doing two things, you know, Aaron, You and I are kind of doing a classic Nest thing, which is that we're describing a model that I think was kind of built to help folks communicate like with autistic kids a little bit, it's to help bridge that gap across neurotype, but that also surprise, surprise is a good practice for everyone, right? Will have no negative side effects. And in fact, if we all did more of this, that would be better. So it, you know, it applies to listeners, both who can think of an autistic kid in their class who they're trying to connect with, but also will apply to everyone who's trying to talk to anyone. And then, so that's like a very kind of Aaron and Gillian thing that we're doing today. And then we're also doing a very Joelle and Gillian thing, right? Which is we're sort of taking this lofty goal that we all sort of agree would be easiest to practice if you had all the time and space in the world. And ideally, we're only dealing with one kid at a time and we're really making it make sense for the stampede of public schooling, which is all made up of individual kids who need. Really skillful co-regulating strategies, right? To be delivered to them in a group, right? So we're sort of magically trying to give kids a good one-on-one experience in a group. I wonder, should we go through, Aaron, you were kind enough to let us know in advance that there are sort of, is it sort of five pieces of social humility? And I wonder if we went through each of the five, if we could then talk about. Okay, not only how is this useful for everyone, not just if you're talking to an autistic student, and also how on earth are we meant to do this in real-time in the stampede of a public school? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We will likely, I don't know, we'll probably run, get into two of the elements and then have such a fabulous conversation we might not finish them off. Fair enough. And we can put all five in the show notes, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a good resource I'm happy to share, too, that goes into all these and more and has little, you know, exercises people can try, too. But the elements of social humility, the order sort of shifts over time.

That's part of what Team Social Story likes to noodle on and sort of refine and make sure it's clearer and more accurate. But one is social impairments are always shared. And so especially if you're talking about a non-autistic adult, educator supporting an autistic student. Just our starting point being that this is not a social deficit on the part of the autistic student that we need to teach or skill train away, but that anytime there is an interaction between more than one human being and there's a breakdown, that both parties have some responsibility. And in fact, non-autistic people all the time, like we were talking about earlier, we sort of go through the world as if we sort of know how things should be and how people should act.

This happens to all, actually all sorts of privileged cultures as well. That like we go through the world, not examining or questioning sort of the values that come naturally to us and are around us most of the time. And there are the dominant ones in society. And then we assume people who aren't doing that, acting that way, thinking the same thing are somehow wrong or missing something. And so this does away with that from the get-go. Like we have to recognize we make mistakes. We're part of this equation. That's a huge one. That's a huge one, especially when you're talking about autism. It's directly related to Damien Milton's double empathy problem theory, which is essentially that, maybe you've talked about this on the podcast before. As we're talking, I'm like, oh, maybe we should talk about that next time. I think we can do a whole episode on it, but let's talk about it now, too. Yeah. Yeah. It's you start and then I'll. Sure. Sure. I mean, in a nutshell, even though I'm bad at that, it's the idea that in contrast to the dominant sort of notion that and actually really damaging, inhumanizing notion that autistic people lack empathy. I actually confronted, what's his name? Who's the guy who said, who talks about it all the time? Simon Baron Cohen. I confronted him at a conference one time and I got so nervous that my throat dried out and I couldn't finish my question, but I was very happy. I tried to get an answer. I didn't get a good one.

Good for you, Aaron. 

Anyway, the damaging notion that autistic people lack empathy, in contrast to that, the double empathy theory from Damian Milton, who's an autistic researcher, academic, says that if it is true that autistic people sometimes lack insight, awareness about the minds and perspectives and thoughts of non-autistic people, if that is true, when that is true, it is also equally true that non-autistic people lack interest, insight, awareness of the minds, thoughts, and motivations of autistic people. And therefore, it's a complete two-way street. And we, I say we meaning neurotypical people, don't get a pass at, you know, we do social right, they do it wrong, it's our job to fix that and teach them and make them do it. But rather, like, this is a true, you know, collaborative, equal level human interaction thing that we have to resolve together to the extent there are things to resolve. Yes. And there's evidence for that. So one study I love is that if, you know, if you picture a game of telephone, right, if, if we're like telling each other a message person to person to person and hoping that it, you know, gets to the end of the line correctly. If you have a whole line of autistic folks. They can get the message, you know, from person to person, person to person, person with little gap in translation. And if you have a whole line of non-autistic or allistic folks, same thing, like pretty good, pretty good. And if you, if you alternate it, right, if you have an autistic person trying to talk to an allistic person, trying to talk to an autistic, that's when it really breaks down. Right. So, you know, what I love to take from that is that we all have some trouble translating across neurotype. It's just that non-autistic folks are currently the dominant majority in our culture and they were the ones who made up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. So the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is all the ways that autistic folks process and communicate differently from allistic folks that can look like pathology if you're not using social humility and you're assuming that your way is the only right and healthy way. Yeah, exactly.

And I think the other thing that comes from that is recognizing that the ways that non-autistic, allistic people socialize, it's almost a little fun sometimes to be like, 'it's a little arbitrary and actually not that great sometimes.' And I did a great conference presentation, co-created, co-presented with a former student of mine who's now a special ed teacher in the city, in the high school in Manhattan here, Colin Ozeki. He has a great example of being in college. He's autistic himself. He was in college. He was at some event, some whatever thing you go to in college. And a classmate, young woman, asked him if he wanted to go to some other event. You want to go to this thing this weekend? He goes, yeah, sure. That sounds fun. And she also was autistic. And she said to him, oh, by the way, this is not a date. And he was like, yeah, I didn't think it was. And I was like, wow, the amount, the like hoops we jumped through, we non-autistic people, neurotypical people, like wondering, oh, what do they mean by that? Do you think this was a date? Is this, should I read this? Is this, what do you think? Like the amount of energy we spend and often waste wondering about the motives, hidden meanings and messages and motivations of other people. When he was like, this is an autistic superpower. We say what we mean, clarity. You know, no confusion. This is the, like, I would rather operate that way in the world personally than the way that we often do making assumptions based on hints, based on messages that we might have meant, someone might have meant or might not have meant.

Because that is honestly a common social blind spot that I, Gillian Boudreau, have had throughout my development. The number of hangs I've been on that I thought were dates that weren't. Honestly, this would have really helped me out. Yeah. Yeah. So now from now on, you should just say at the beginning, 'this is the date.' That's what I'll do. Yes. That's what I'll do. Just declare it. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, that was number one. Should we keep going? Social impairments are always shared. Well, but okay. So, number one, so that is something that I think we can do even in a stampede because that is more, it's a new way to think. But it's not necessarily an extra thing to do.

So, and I guess that new way to think is just my perspective might not be the only perspective that makes sense. Or it might also be to remember, especially if you know you're interacting with somebody who has a different neurotype than you, right? Could be to think to yourself, I probably am equally as baffling to this person as they are to me right now. Isn't that, you know, and just sort of to go into situations remembering that. If you have a social blunder and you're approaching it with social humility, your questions are going to reflect that. You're going to want to understand; could I tell you what I thought happened and then you tell me what you thought happened, as opposed to you're approaching to understand, as opposed to approaching to correct.

Yeah. A great example of this, and actually something that was sort of formative for me in my career, I got to work and still do get to work with the amazing Lauren Hough Williams, who is a mutual friend of Gillian's. And we taught at the same school together. This is like 2008-ish. And we were early on in those days, we were learning from a source that was telling us. Kind of that's counter to what we're talking about now, like we were learning about, like you know that autistic people think wrong, we'll teach them how to think right kind of thing, um early early days little bits that got corrected soon enough but a language language that developed from that was telling kids that they're missing information oh yeah and and and it was sort of like we were we were supposed to do that and it was supposed to actually be a sort of like social cognitive strategy to tell them that so they could be more aware, and Lauren to her credit it didn't take her long to like just flip that around. And so I remember being at instructional lunch, which was sort of like, you know, facilitated fun when we could manage it. You know, lunch to help autistic young autistic students sort of like, you know, integrate and play and whatever at recess and lunchtime. And a kid, like we were playing, I think we're playing blob tag or something. And a kid ran up to Lauren and said something super confusing, like nonsense words. Best I can remember it. And she just went, whoa, I think I am missing information here. And it was like the most like lighthearted, like you, I think what's happening is you are trying to communicate something to me and I'm missing something. And it was just such a like good example.

You know, I didn't know what social humility was at the time, but a great example of social humility, just like recognizing I'm the one missing something here, even though it's not a problem, a conflict to solve, right? Like it was just this, what could have been a really fun, playful interaction. Yeah. But she was just recognizing, oh, I don't know. I don't know what to do next because you're, you know, you're initiating something with me that I'm not sure what the next move is kind of thing. That's what I read anyway when she said that. And I just love that. I love that flip. What would the flip be if a student came in, entered a situation and was completely on like not jiving with the group?

Plan right and so a lot of times I hear 'read the room' which makes me-I really don't like that, it makes me really uncomfortable, so I'm trying to. But I do want students to have situational awareness, which means I want them to be able to recognize the situation for many reasons including safety, and then I don't really need them to conform but I want them to be aware right. And so I'm a lot of times trying to teach situational awareness without making it seem like the goal is compliance. So 'read the room' I don't like because 'read the room' feels judgmental and it means you need to change to match us. So, what would a response be that would be in line with this? Yeah.

See, I love these questions and I also feel I need to qualify every single one of them because the way I answer questions like this is like very conditional. So it's like, if this, then maybe this, if this, maybe this, if that, maybe that. But a couple of thoughts that I have with those conditions in mind, like in general, sort of maybe safest or a safe. response is if you have the power ability as the adult in the situation to like bop over to the where the person is and be like oh oh oh oh like just kind of playfully interrupt like oh oh there's something happening here there's something happening here we got to figure out what's happening here let's try that again and like kind of leave the room with them and let's let's see what's happening when we come back in so it's it's it's what people I think intend let's let's you know best of intentions when they say read the room but like help them get there instead of like finger wagging version of that right I do think there's other, like, depending on your dynamic with the student, I've worked with fifth grade students for a long time. And there were students who would just come in, you know, not a thought in the world about what might be happening in the room. And as they come back from speech session or whatever it might be. And I did feel comfortable knowing the student being like, whoa. Try that one again. And they know what that means because they knew me. And again, it comes from developing a culture or community where kids know they're not being humiliated or it's not punitive, but rather that we're doing a thing here. And so I think it doesn't always require the most hands-on, patient, touchy-feely response. It doesn't always. I think that's usually the safer bet. If those other things aren't in place but I, but the reality of teaching is that some let's just know that like they're you're not always going to have the resources the patience the time to do that and sometimes as long as that relationship is there it's kind of okay to do the more yeah hey buddy this isn't gonna work you got you got one more time let's see how this happens different round two.

Yeah, I'm feeling good about what you're saying because what I do is I put on the door of the classroom something that I've called the vibe check. So it reminds the student to pause and look and just ask yourself three questions. And so three questions are on the vibe check sheet. And it says, what is the group thinking about? What is the voice level? And what is the vibe? Like, what's the energy? And then the question is, can I, am I ready to match that? And if not, like, what's my plan? Like, should I go right to the calming space? Should I be a participant observer? Should I not go in? Can I go like, so it's just first, like, what is the vibe? And then can I do that?And if not, what's my plan? Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. And it is, it's good to have. That's the other conditional thing I might have said is like, well, even better than having to respond in the moment. What if we proactively, you know, have this be part of our routines when kids come in the room? So I love that because that's that's rather than. Yeah. But what I do in the moment questions are the hardest because they rely on having built a certain foundation. And often it's harder. It's easier to have some things in place that. Prevent that from even being a need to respond to in the moment or more so, right?

So if you've role-played that before and everybody in the room has role-played it, so everybody's expected to know what that means and it has like visual, then the teacher can just say, hey, how about a vibe check? Yeah, yeah, right. And they know what that means. That doesn't mean you're expected to comply. It means, can you check the vibe and then figure out what you need? Yeah, I could also even imagine maybe a teacher being like, OK, let's do a quick five check. So I think we're all thinking about this. I think the voice level is this. And I forget the third one. Right. But even just quickly, let me just tell you the three. OK, now make your own choices about whether you can do that. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's what's great about that is, though, we're not like dipping into social skills, teaching stuff. There is a truth that sometimes that needs to be taught. And the only way that's taught is not the only way, but sometimes the way that's taught is not asking people questions and to do it themselves, but to model it and to show them. And I was just working with a teacher pretty recently on reading comprehension. And there was a lot of questioning, good questions, but it was like, you know what? Next class, let's. tell the kids what the summary of that paragraph is. They don't know how to do it. And you keep asking them and prompting them and maybe they're getting closer. Show them what you're thinking so that they can try that thing that you're doing.

And so I do think the same thing is true in social world that sometimes instead of like, hey, what's going on here? Hey, question, question, question. Let's offer that. Let's think aloud. Let's show what we talk about what we think is actually going on. I think this is something really interesting here. So, social humility, because people might be like, 'Oh, I guess.' In social humility, you can never tell somebody what to do or what's going on. And it's like, no, no, no. You actually want to be really accountable with sharing what you think is going on. Yeah. Just from a position of this might be totally different from what you think is going on, other person. And that would also be valid in order to solve what's probably a translational challenge.

I'm just going to tell you what I thought was going on, but I'm going to actually tell you that early and often, but it's not as a prescription. That's the difference. It's just as I'm going to offer my location of self. I'm really curious about your location of self because it may be different. And then we're going to try to make that all make sense. Yeah. Another element good segue of social humility is never argue perception and so yeah I think like if a if a person child student is experiencing a thing and expressing that they're experiencing a thing, we don't say that that is not true; we don't say that they are not feeling that thing if they are. Like it's cold in here; we don't say no it's not it's 80 degrees! Like it might actually be 80 degrees, but a kid could be experiencing it as being cold right? We don't we don't argue what the, the experience that they're having. And I think that, as long as we acknowledge that we can offer our own perception. Yeah. Like you're, you're feeling really cold in here. That surprises me because I'm feeling hot. Let's see what we can do. Yeah. That's, that's worlds different. That is not even the same in the same realm as no, it's not. It's hot in here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we got through one. And we're out of time. Yeah. That's great. As expected. As expected. We'll probably need to ask Aaron back. And in the meantime, we have a lot of resources in the show notes so that folks can also keep digging if the social humility thing seems like it might honestly just help you have more fun at work too.

I think social humility makes things a lot more fun. It feels better. That's for sure. Yep. Thanks, Aaron. This was thought-provoking. I really appreciate it. Thank you both. I really enjoyed the conversation and thanks for all of this that you're putting out into the world. I'm loving it. Oh, just, you know, we're happy to chat and not edit any, anytime. So you're so welcome. It's fun for us too. Thanks everybody. And we will see you next time. Bye everybody. Thank you for listening to another episode of Stance of Curiosity.

Listeners should always consult with a qualified mental health professional whenever needed for specific concerns or questions related to their personal situation. Stance of Curiosity is produced by Gillian Boudreau and Joelle Van Lent. Our cover art is by Aaron Lanou, and our music is upbeat indie folk by Twin Music. See you next time.