Functional social competence is the effective and fluent use of social awareness, social processing, social skills, and social cognition to interpret and analyze social environments and use social behavior to achieve one’s individual and group goals. This is done through the flexible use of internal and external social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and motivational skills across multiple environments, novel situations, and persons so to respond and communicate in socially...

This Dad and his child are engaged in what we call joint attention. I will grant you it is pretty early on but the skill does tend to emerge between 6-14 months. It is also another one of those skills we take for granted because most of us have never heard of it before and we do not know what it means.

Joint attention is the co-ordinating of the attention of two or more persons towards an object or event and occurs every 30 seconds or more. Poor joint attention is linked to poor language...

Anyone know why a person with a PhD is working at a fast-food place? If you think it is because they may not have very good social skills, you have maybe 20% of the answer. Actually, they may have some very reasonable social skills; however, like most topics connected to learning, the concept of social skills is just the tip of the iceberg. It is only in addressing the entire topic of social competence that we can save our children from the social isolation that so many experience...

POSITIVE TACTICS FOR NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR

When I was teaching life skills in a high school, I had a non-verbal student whose reaction to a perceived challenge of almost any kind was to rock violently at his desk, scream at the top of his lungs, and bite his finger down to the bone. It did not take long to realize that changes from the expected schedule, and any circumstance that induced confusion or frustration was worthy of an outburst. He also had lots of tells. You know all those subtle...

MAINTAINING  SANITY IN THE MIDST OF NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR

If it is well established that all behavior is a form of communication that does not always translate easily and can be quite obscure. Why is it then that behavior frequently can send otherwise rational adults to the brink of mental and/or emotional breakdown with irrational behaviors of their own? Do you really think that child is deliberately trying to make you crazy?

Our job as adults is to understand what the child is trying to...

IS YOUR CHILD

LOSING OUT ON SERVICES ? 

14% -19% OF CHILDREN

ARE DUE COMPENSATORY EDUCATION SERVICES 

DUE TO STAGNATION OR REGRESSION!

BUT WILL THEY GET IT ???????

The COVID-19 pandemic created very unique challenges for schools, students, and parents but, School Districts had continued obligations to students with disabilities during COVID-19 school closures for students receiving IEPs and 504 plans.

GET YOUR NATIONAL

COMPENSATORY SERVICES GUIDE

FREE BELOW....

When I read that a six-year-old has been taken from a school in handcuffs by police, as a former special ed teacher, I want to take every administrator in the building from the school in handcuffs by police and let them stay in jail for a couple of days not knowing what is going to happen just to give them a taste of the trauma imposed on that child.

COMFORT not CONTROL

CONNECTION not CONSEQUENCES

I realize that behavior can be exceedingly disruptive and that is why it is so important...

UNDERSTANDING

COMPENSATORY EDUCATION

What is it for?

Who is entitled to Comp. Ed.?

Why is it awarded?

Things that can go wrong!

Compensatory education is for a student deprived of reaching their special education and related services goals in their IEP. Compensatory education is an educational fund or services put in place to help a child to get caught up where deficiencies have been found in meeting IEP goals, when the school district is out of compliance in providing FAPE, a Free...