Not a Listening Problem, its a Self-Regulation Problem

Today I'm going to talk about something that comes up a lot in my behavior assessment calls. So when people call in and they have this problem, a lot of times I'm using similar strategies or I'm talking about similar strategies from call to call to call. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to make a podcast episode about this so that work smarter, not harder. I'm not repeating myself, parents aren't having to do a behavior assessment to hear these strategies.

So today's is called come early, stay late and this is a strategy that I learned from a national conference that I went to when I was a teacher for preschool and I had a really difficult class as I've talked about before, but there were some kids who like, they didn't need a behavior plan. They didn't need like positive behavior support, individualized interventions, but still I would say something and they just wouldn't listen. It's like, they couldn't hear it, they couldn't tune into it. So for example, I'd be like, okay, we need to use walking feet and I like stop him and be like, Johnny use walking feet, Johnny use walking feet and I would say that in two seconds later, Johnny would be so excited to be running again.

What I realized in learning about this and learning about regulation and stuff like that is

It wasn't a listening problem. He heard it, he tried, and then two seconds later he was doing it again.

It was a self-regulation problem. 

So couldn't self-regulate his body enough to continue to listen because he was hearing it, he was trying it and then he just went right back to what he was doing, which was running because he was excited. He was excited to get to the next station. He's just like a mover. He's super active, that kind of thing. So when our body has a difficult time self-regulating, so self-regulating instruction, self-regulating slowing down that kind of thing, then to get feedback from your teacher that you need to use walking feet, isn't going to go very far. So you've probably seen this before; if your kids constantly jump on the couch and you're like, I have asked them to stop jumping on the couch like 30 times today and if they do it again, I'm going to scream. It's not a listening problem most of the time. I mean, sometimes they might be testing you, but a lot of the time it's a self-regulation problem. It's not that they don't want to listen to it's that their body cannot self-Regulate the task of calming down and not jumping because jumping is so much fun and this and that. So what this strategy looks like is come early, stay late and the goal of it is not to get your child to listen, although that does happen.

The goal of it is to help support and teach self-regulation. 

So kids who are very inattentive, active, just don't really listen and their bodies are moving, moving, moving. They need support in learning the skill of self-regulation. So there are some fun games you can do before I get into the strategy, come early, stay late.

Self Regulation Games to Practice

You can play some games at home or at school that really helped them to learn some of these self-regulation strategies. So some of these games are like red light, green light. They have to stop their body on a red light and this is a fun way to practice self-regulation because it's a game it's competitive, everyone's playing and laughing and it's fun.

Another thing you can do is freeze dance. So you just pause the song and they have to freeze, there are other songs like I'm trying to think, songs that we used to listen to that were so fun, they're kind of like stop and go type songs. So listen to and like obviously the freeze dance, but then there are other songs that stop and go and let me get you some names of these songs and I'll put them in the show notes, but Jim Gill, he is an amazing children's artist. He has a bunch of songs that are so good for self-regulation and I'll put some names of those in the blog or in the show notes. So those are just some things you can do to practice self-regulation.

Come Early, Stay Late

There are obviously lots of other things you can do to practice self-regulation. But the strategy here is called come early, stay late and the way that it works is you come early and you help them process what they're doing and then you stay a little longer to help them regulate their body. 

So it seems like it's going to take more time, but if you think about how many times you're saying stop running, stop running, stop running, stop running and getting frustrated it's going to save you so much more time in the long run. So you go up to Johnny and Johnny's not using walking feet and he knows the rules, it's clear, he knows them. There are signs or whatever you have in your classroom, or at home, they just know they're not supposed to run in the kitchen or whatever it is.

So they already know the role so all you have to do is say, “Hey, Johnny, stop and look.”

So you want him to stop and look at you because if you're giving them instructions and they're not looking and they're not stopping, then it's going to go in one ear and right out the other.

Johnny, stop and look, and then you say, “what do you think I'm going to say?”

So now the ball's in his court, he has to think about what it is you're going to say. So instead of him just hearing it, he has to stop look and think about, okay, she's probably going to say, and then he might come up with the answer and say, oh, “you're going to say he's walking feet because I'm not supposed to run in here.”

Sometimes they aren't going to get to the answer on their own, a lot of times they will. If they know the expectation, it's going to be easy for them to come up with the answer. If they don't know the expectation, then it's not going to be easy and it's kind of more of a, let's make sure the expectations are a clear type of problem instead of a self-regulation problem. So keep that in mind. 

So you say, okay, what do you think I'm going to say? He says, Oh, wait, I need to use walking feet and say,

“Yes, I was going to say that, what should we do about it?”

So balls back in his court, he has to think of what he needs to do about this. So he'll be like “stop running.”

“Yeah, great, let's do it together.” So then you go over to him and say, “okay, let's walk, walk, walk, walk” and you walk together and then you take their hand or you just like walk to the doorway or the hallway or something and say, “what should we do next?”

And have your child choose what they want to do instead of running around the kitchen or instead of running around the classroom and then dedicate three to four minutes to that play. So maybe it's play dough, maybe it's Legos, maybe it's playing outside.

You say, “okay, let's go run outside.” You go outside and you just be with them for three to four minutes. What is happening is we took a lot of time to focus on the behaviors that we wanted to see and it helped him to realize, okay, you don't want me to be doing this. I should be doing this. I'm going to do this and he went through that whole process of problem-solving with you as a support.

So obviously we're not going to be with them their entire life every time they need self-regulation support but these chances and opportunities now to help them develop and practice that skill is going to help them so much when they're in high school, when they're on a sporting team, being able to control their body and to be like, oh, okay. I need to like to stop and remember what I'm supposed to be doing and now I'm going to do this. 

They have this like problem-solving ability now because they've practiced it and practiced it and practiced it and you've helped it and you've supported it and they're going to learn this independently.

Jumping on the Couch

So I'm going to use another example because this actually was a real-life example of somebody that I helped using the strategy and it worked immediately. She was like, seriously, this is life-changing. So the mom contacted me and she had taken a bunch of my classes and she's like, Lauren, what do I do about this? Every single time we're at my mother-in-law's house, my kids are jumping on her couch. She has this really cool couch, it's really fun but I constantly am saying, stop jumping on the couch, stop jumping on the couch and so I told her the strategy and I'm like, okay, it seems like they're having not really a listening problem, but they just like cannot regulate their bodies to not want to be jumping on the couch or they want to be jumping on the couch so badly that nothing else is enticing them. So I say, okay, so here's the strategy, Tommy, stop, and look, what do you think I'm going to say? And they say, oh, we don't jump on the couch. Yes, I was going to say that, what do you think we should do about it? And they say get off the couch. Okay, great, let's do it together. So then you take their hand, walk them off the couch and say, what should we do next? And you go with your child to the next place, dedicate three to four minutes to their play.

We focus on the behaviors that we want to see. We help them regulate their bodies and pretty soon we're not constantly repeating get off the couch, get off the couch, get off the couch. We are helping them to regulate their energy and their body state and the goal here worked immediately, like I said, with this family.

So that is all on the strategy today. I mean, I could give example after example of how to use this strategy but what I would prefer is you take these little golden nuggets and try it with your own kids who have a hard time. If you're constantly repeating yourself over and over and over and over and over the same thing, try this strategy. Because a lot of times they know their expectation, they heard you, maybe they've even tried but they just cannot regulate their body state. The other thing to do is practice some of those games, those self-regulation games to practice that body control, body state, energy state, all of that.