It’s unethical to appropriate a human rights movement, It’s repulsive to commandeer that human rights movement to hawk the very treatment the movement is trying to eradicate.
CEU event: “Expanding Perspectives: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Series - 2-Part Speaker Event: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Series PhD, BCBA-D, CPBA-AP MCD, CCC-SLP
“The first section explores the concept of joy and discusses the role of contingencies in understanding and changing behavior for the better.”
ABA: a contingency can be either a reinforcement or punishment that occurs after a behavior has been expressed by an individual or group. ... See MoreSee Less
By popular demand, and a lot of hard work to make it happen, Therapist Neurodiversity Collective is excited to now offer neurodiversity-affirming, high-quality, low-cost online short courses and presentations to everyone!
neurodiversity-training.therapistndc.org/
Image description [The 24 second video has a white background and the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective logo on the top half and a typed message at the bottom that says “By popular demand, and a lot of hard work to make it happen, Therapist Neurodiversity Collective is excited to now offer neurodiversity-affirming, high-quality, low-cost online short courses and presentations to everyone! neurodiversity-training.therapistndc.org/”
The logo is in the shape of a circle and has illustrations of several colorful arms and hands in shades of pink, orange, yellow, and brown raised to the sky over a blue world map with a black background. The logo’s first line reads “Therapist Neurodiversity Collective.” The second line reads “Therapy. Advocacy. Education.” These three words are separated by red, blue, yellow and green dots. Third line reads “Established January 2018.” The video starts and ends with animated smiling face emojis bursting out of the logo towards the viewer.] ... See MoreSee Less
Can we talk about how the toxic stress of incessant public school standardized testing is destroying kids’ mental health? I’m on campus supervising one of my new assistants’ therapy sessions recently. She tells me that she changed the therapy schedule the week after winter break and now is seeing XYZ in a 1:1 session because the kid is getting into fights with the rest of the group, is irritable and moody, and demands all of her attention. I’m kind of stumped. XYZ, a bright kid with a learning disability and language disorder, has been on my caseload for over three years and up until now has always had a sunny, friendly, happy-go-lucky disposition. I tell her that something has to have changed in XYZ’s life. I ask my assistant if she knows about any changes in XYZ’s school life? “No,” she says. Homelife? “Not that I know of.” I go next to the ELA teacher and ask what’s up with XYZ’s new behavior.
“XYZ’s been struggling and in a spiral since early in the school year last fall. Because XYZ’s now in ___ grade, they’ve spent literally school week after school week practicing for a district-wide or state-wide standardized test. They recently took the district test and failed it.
XYZ’s ELA teacher goes on to say that a few weeks ago, XYZ, (a student with a documented learning disability and a communication disability), was informed that they had failed the district standardized test, so they need to work harder and longer to pass it next time,. XYZ is informed that they will be starting Saturday school. The campus then writes a letter to XYZ’s parents to tell them about XYZ’s “failure” and subsequent Saturday school enrollment. They put this letter in a sealed envelope and give it to XYZ in the last class of the day.
Of course, XYZ opens and reads that letter and then bursts out crying in front of everyone in the class. Now XYZ is embarrassed and ashamed, living with the realization that not only do their parents think that XYZ’s a failure, but their classmates think it, too. Is it any wonder that XYZ is irritable, moody, picking fights with the kids in the speech group, and demanding all the attention from my assistant, a safe person who is always kind to XYZ (and everyone else)?
Now I that have my answer, with my heart breaking for this kid, I go to my favorite assistant admin on the campus, who, like me, is more concerned about the mental well-being of our students than about their “standardized performance.” Admin listens intently, with empathy as I vent.
Mind you, these are kids who already live with a lot of traumas in their lives. Teachers who don’t understand the importance of accommodations for their disabled students especially the ones who don’t necessarily “look” disabled. The inherent traumas associated with the intersectionality of disability and minority status. Poverty, sometimes abject, food, housing, and transportation insecurity. Immigration or refugee status – documented and undocumented. Limited or not-even-at-all English speakers. Some of them have incredibly difficult home lives for a multitude of reasons.
And on top of trying to deal with all of this and you’re just a kid for god’s sake, now you’re informed that your failure to pass a damn test (and make the district look good, and your school look good, and your teachers look good) means that you just didn’t work hard enough, so it’s your own fault you’re going to Saturday school. And the shame of knowing that your parents (and your classmates) also think that you are a failure is too much to bear. All of this internal anguish has to go somewhere so it manifests in “maladaptive” behavior, and now you’re in trouble for that too.
Admin sympathizes and says all of this is wrong, a big, big problem. But unfortunately, their hands are tied because standardized testing is state and district mandated and the kids who are required to take these tests have to practice for them, and they have to take them because it’s the policy. Admin says that there are a lot more stressed-out kids on this campus because of the never-ending schedule of practice test-taking and actual test-taking. Campus behavior referrals are up, nurse visits are up, and counseling requests from teachers and parents are up.
Why does our society put so much pressure on our children to perform the same as everyone else? We are literally creating unnecessary trauma and harm. Research demonstrates that toxic stress actually weakens the architecture of a child’s developing brain, leading to lifelong poor outcomes in learning, behavior, and physical and mental health. Is forcing our kids to take a never-ending cycle of standardized tests really worth sacrificing the mental and physical health of this next generation?
No. It’s not. We need to dismantle what’s not working in our public schools and start over. When I say dismantle, I am talking about abandoning draconian protocols such as PBIS, chronic standardized testing, the “normalization” (erasure) of our authentic autistic and wider-neurodivergent children through ABA/behavior modification and social skills training, and the practice of fading and removing accommodations, modifications, and supports when they are actually working just so we can document progress on an IEP. Our kids deserve change. - Julie
Franke HA. Toxic Stress: Effects, Prevention and Treatment. Children (Basel). 2014 Nov 3;1(3):390-402. doi: 10.3390/children1030390. PMID: 27417486; PMCID: PMC4928741. ... See MoreSee Less
