Kid/Teen Program Overview


Some programs seek out children who all have the same diagnosis or characteristics. If the goal is to teach a child about their diagnosis or specific coping strategies that only affect them, then this makes sense. Our model is different. In working on social skills, we are not trying to have, form example, kids with Asperger’s only socialize with and greet other children with the same disorder. We believe that, by combining individuals with differing problems, children act as appropriate models for one another.

We generally group the kids, as a result of our pre-assessment process, into “Externalizers” and “Internalizers.” Externalizers are impulsive, but they also say “Hi” easily and usually know how to tell a joke. In contrast, Internalizers are quieter and more inhibited, but they generally follow rules without difficulty. Each child’s strengths can act as a model for the other child.

Another reason to mix group participants together is to teach tolerance. Children diagnosed with Asperger’s may react when asked to go to a restaurant that is unfamiliar or if they smell foods that are not to their liking. We believe that repeated, positive, supportive exposure to such events is a helpful intervention and this is supported by our past results. Children with ADHD or ODD may be prone to make fun of a child who reacts in such a manner over food. We teach them to not only inhibit such responses, but also help them practice seeking out another child’s more positive attributes. At the very least, we require, not that children like one another, but that they behave respectfully.

The most common diagnoses of the children we have accepted into the program include:

  • ADHD
  • Asperger's Syndrome
  • Oppositional Defiant Disorder
  • Social Shyness
  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder
  • Learning Disabilities
  • Semantic-Pragmatic and Nonverbal Learning Disorders
  • Mild to Moderate Depression
  • Social Anxiety Disorder
  • Selective Mutism

Program Highlights


This program is designed for students aged 7 1/2 years old to 12 years (Child group) and 12 to 17 years (Adolescent group) who have difficulties with basic and pragmatic social skills, executive functioning skills and academic readiness skills. The program includes:

  • One-to-four staff to student ratio
  • Three kinds of session raffles
  • Home-based behavior generalization program (LUNCH Points)
  • Parent support, consisting of in-office meetings, dinners, and tele-meetings
  • Eating out each session. This allow students to practice a variety of social, environmental awareness, and related skills in a naturalistic setting.
  • This program is approved for Regional Center funding and we accept private pay clients and NonPublic Agency school district contracts.
  • Our parent support meetings occur monthlly as well as tele-meetings where families can inquire about their child’s progress or participate in general discussion.
  • We make use of a variety of technologies, all designed to be secure, friendly, and informative for parents. For example, we blog the group’s progress and parents can receive these updates.

What We Do

We conduct a pre-group assessment for all students who have not previously participated in our programs. This allows us to determine what intervention strategies will likely be required for the group as a whole plus specific behaviors to target for individual students.

We have both a School Year and an Intensive Summer program and they operate slightly differently.

Both programs begin each session with the kids/teens being dropped off by their parents. We encourage parents to make it a quick process and not to linger with their children. The kids are encouraged to “hang around,” check in with others, and not isolate. One aspect of our program is that we focus on building and socially reinforcing behaviors from the moment they arrive until they depart. After they are dropped off, the kids have up to 10 minutes of semi-structured, guided, social interaction time while they are waiting. In both programs, at the time group is scheduled to begin, they transition as a group next door to our office. As we walk next door from Gelsons Market to the office, we monitor their walking gait, how they interact with others, look for extraneous asocial behaviors, or any unsafe behaviors (such as wanting to dart between a light pole and the curb.... a forbidden, unsafe activity in our program).

Arriving at the office, they need to wait a moment at the entrance while everyone catches up, then make room for one of the adults to come to the front and open the door. Pushing, irritation at the speed of others, and other problem behaviors are monitored as they transition into the waiting room.. Typically, they find their seats and settle in. Some will look at magazines (they can be rewarded if they look with a peer and talk about it), others engage in conversation. The kids we look out for are those who “bury” their heads in magazines and act oblivious to their environment. We monitor the “buzz” level of conversation in the room, giving corrective feedback if it is “too loud,” (it’s never too soft!). I will announce to the group that I wish to talk with them and we closely monitor to see if everyone stopped what they were doing the first time and paid attention. This, as with many activities in the program, are designed to represent an analogue situation for what might be experienced in school or at a social gathering. We typically discuss what we will be doing for this particular meeting. This provides an opportunity for some members to repeatedly raise their hands with questions, helping them learn how to wait and how to ask more relevant questions. We monitor to see who is listening and, rather than “put someone on the spot” which does not build their listening skills, ask them to attend, have the person who was speaking “back up and repeat,” then reward the child for attending. After a few minutes, the kids go into our group room, a large multimedia environment set up in “classroom style.” The process is the same for both programs.

Projects

During “Project” time, we might discuss where they wish to eat or otherwise plan parts of the session. Members spend a few minutes reviewing or updating their “Behavior Points,” (called LUNCH Points) from our generalized program (see below). Throughout the programs, members earn raffle tickets for engaging in adaptive and prosocial behaviors, and practices skills using an indirect teaching method (we actually have three different raffle programs). “Working on a project” can take several forms: Sometimes they are generating ideas, other times they write out scripts, select animation types, or engage in other collaborative activities. The thing to remember is that the technology is “just a hook.” It helps to engage the group members, while providing opportunities to work on their executive function, social, and language skills.

It is during this part of the program that we use our “Externalizer/Internalizer” model to have those kids who are either more gregarious or better rule followers act as models for one another.

After they have been in the office working for 60-75 minutes, we head out for dinner. Occasionally we BBQ, which means that we go shopping as a group to determine what the members wish to have, then cook it back at the office in our outdoor courtyard. Other time we have them choose their meals to share at Gelsons, then eat outside picnic style.

What is LUNCH Points?

Our home-based behavior generalization program, LUNCH Points, allows participants to use a video game in the office for about 15-30 minutes. This has quickly become a popular reward and we have observed that a significant amount of useful socializing occurring during this activity. Depending upon the game, we can have up to eight kids at time playing. We stay aware from games that are highly interactive or have lots of sound effects because we want the focus to be more on the social rather than the gaming aspects of the activity.

Community Activities


We take the group members to a variety of restaurants, where the focus is not so much on the food, but rather on socializing and maintaining control. When we hold “mock parties,” the intent is to providing an overstimulating situation where kids have a chance to practice maintaining control. In this regard, we employ a range of positive behavior management, psychoeducation, and modeling strategies. We frequently shoot pictures and video (no... it does not show up on any public web Internet sites) so the kids can view themselves in a positive light. Parents sometimes request that we take shots of their kids behaving poorly, believing they will learn from this. The research on this suggests just the opposite. Children and certainly teens find such video humiliating and embarrassing. Nothing good comes from that. Our approach, known as video modeling, provides them with useful role models, sometimes others/somtimes themselves, to help them develop a visual image of expected positive behaviors.

Our community activities, such as bowling, laser tag, and going to the mall are again designed to foster group cohesion, independence, and problem solving. During the school year, parents drop off and pick up kids at the community activity, while in the summer we travel by public bus to and from the activity.