Officer Friendly Pays a Visit

Anyone who has a baby and a dog knows that solicitors, mail delivery people, and UPS drivers have a knack for coming by and ringing your doorbell juuuuuuuuust as you finally get baby down for a nap. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we have a barky protective dog and all, but the BARK to WAAAAAAHHHH sound is one that makes mothers across the country cringe. So, imagine my disdain when I get a knock on my door at 3am the other night. Or I guess it was morning. It’s the police. He looked like this Officer Friendly guy:

 
Not really, I just liked this google image that came up when I typed "Officer Friendly." But I have digressed.

I had called the police at 7pm the evening before because we have had several break ins in our neighborhood recently and there were some suspicious “solicitors” who were “selling magazine subscriptions,” but they only had one crumpled up piece of paper with them and no information about any of the magazines. So, I called to report them, because they were totally shady acres characters. I didn’t want to seem paranoid, but my hubby said to call anyway. What could it hurt?

EIGHT HOURS LATER the police responded. When I opened the door, the policeman said that they got my call and asked if I had any further concerns about the suspicious activity. Um, no, I’m pretty sure they got away in the past EIGHT HOURS. A blind and crippled snail could have gotten away in that time period. The officer sheepishly apologized and said that it had been a busy night and calls are put in order of priority, and he just got around to responding to my call. Immediately, I understood why our whole family was woken up, and I empathized with the cop.

I know this scene very well as a school psychologist—having too many cases and crises to respond to, having to prioritize crises, and often having to follow illogical procedures.  I am certain that his ringing my doorbell at 3am was the result of some dumb rule that he had to follow like: “You must make contact with the reporter once you respond to the call” or something. I imagine him pausing before ringing the bell thinking, “this doesn’t make sense, but here I go.” As a school psychologist, have you ever been there, having to follow a district or legal procedure that defies logic?

The one that comes to mind in the world of school psychology is the manifestation determination rule. To oversimplify it, the law is basically that if a student with an IEP commits an expulsion offense or reaches over 10 days of suspension, then a meeting must be held to see if it was caused by the student’s disability or the team's failure to implement the IEP. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable law, right? I mean on the books, it makes sense that you should make sure that you aren’t penalizing disabled students for behaviors that are a manifestation of their disability. For example, a student with an intellectual disability might not fully understand cause and effect of his or her behavior and we wouldn’t want to go around expelling kids with intellectual disabilities for things they don't really understand. However, because this law extends to ALL kids with IEPs, I have found myself engaged in the most ridiculous conversations:

Me: We are here today to determine whether the child’s reading disability caused him to carry a knife to school.

Me: The purpose of today’s meeting is to decide if Johnny setting another student on fire was directly caused by his writing disability.

Me: Thank you for coming. As an IEP team, we need to figure out if Janice cut off Janie’s ponytail because she stole her boyfriend was due to our failure to implement her behavior plan of increasing her classwork production.

Me: Yes, Mrs. Jenkins, I understand that Frank has a disability, but I am having a hard time understanding how deficits in phonological processing cause you to threaten a student with a machete sword.

The manifestation determination law just never really seems to apply to the students with learning disabilities. I am basically the sheepish cop in these situations, trying to turn a stupid rule into something productive. At these meeting, I try to quickly get the dumb paperwork out of the way, and then work on the real intervention by discussing what is needed to support the offending student. Clearly, kids who are bringing weapons and hurting others need help.

As an aside, one good thing did end up happening as a result of our 3am wake up call (besides this post, obvi)—the cops ended up apprehending the suspicious gentlemen in a nearby neighborhood the next day, and they were found with stolen property from my neighbor’s house. So I wasn’t paranoid after all. But I am still paranoid of the UPS guy coming between 1-3pm and waking up Baby B...maybe it's a sign I should stop buying developmental toys online. I mean, Baby B kind of equally loves a tupperware container or a crumpled up piece of paper over the snazzy Baby Einstein stuff anyway.

Ma-ma!

This is my first Mother’s Day as a new mom! When my husband asked me what I wanted to do, I told him, “I want to sleep in.” I added, “until at least 7am.” A mom can dream, right?

 I got an early Mother’s Day gift of Baby B saying “Ma-ma” for the first time the other day…in context, not as she was gnawing on a wooden spoon or something. She distinctly said, “Ma-ma” and outstretched her arms to me. And I died.

But enough about my awesome baby (for now). Unless you want to hear about her latest developmental milestones, that is. *crickets chirp* Okay fine, I’ll tell you. She is pointing! I was so excited, I told my friend, Amber yesterday:

Me: Baby B has a new trick. She is pointing to indicate interest, which shows a burgeoning theory of mind, in which she understands that I have thoughts different than hers!

Amber: Does she have a burgeoning sense that her mom is a huge nerd?

Me: Probably.

But I digress. This post is about school psychology, not my mommy diaries. Therefore, for Mother's Day, I give you the top things school psychologists need to know about motherhood:

 1) Kids do waaaaaay more at home than they do in other settings. I know, this seems obvious, but before Baby B, I would sometimes raise a skeptical eyebrow when parents would describe their kid’s behavior or skills at home as much more sophisticated than what I was observing. I sometimes found it hard to believe that the shy kid in my office was Chatty McGee at home. Then, I had my own kid. Baby B can be a straight up infant blob in public, and at home, she’s pointing and imitating language and crawling around like a genius child. She also does not perform on demand when I try to get her to show her relatives her new developmental skills. She’s not anyone’s trick pony, thank you very much. As a school psychologist trying to get a little one to perform on demand, I can see why parents say, “She can do it at home though!” It’s not always a case of the parent having a halo effect on their own child. Kids do better in familiar environments.

 2) The instinct to protect your child from all things unpleasant is ridiculously strong. Before Baby B, I would sometimes catch myself judging overprotective parents. I would tell parents, "We can't smooth out the ocean for our kids, we have to teach them to ride the difficult waves." Good advice, right? Sure, but I totally get it now about how hard it is not to try to make everything happy for your child. When Baby B bonks her head, when a little boy takes a swat at her on the playground, or when she is crying because she can’t reach that toy, your heart aches to make it all better right away. I have to consciously stop myself from trying to save every wonky attempt at standing, doing a peer mediation with the swatting boy, or push the toy over to her to make it easier. Doing so would prevent her from learning.

The hardest thing was teaching her to self-soothe and fall asleep on her own. Any parent who has done some form of “cry it out” knows that you have to fight every instinct you have to swoop in and soothe your baby. It reminds me of that True Blood episode when the witches put a curse on the vampires to have a strong urge to go into the sun and they have to put burning silver chains on themselves to stop themselves. Hearing your baby cry and not going to her is like emotional silver chains. Or at least it was for me. And then, after a few nights, she learned how to put herself to sleep and it’s all good. So next time you think a parent is being too fiercely overprotective, know that it is hard not to be. I mean, I don’t want to be that mom who yells at the principal because during a fire drill, her daughter went outside without any sunscreen on or anything (true story), but I’m just saying I get the inclination to overprotect.

 3) Mothers get judged all the time, unless it is Mother’s Day, and being a mom is hard. We do the best we can with the tools we have. Moms are often blamed for everything. If we do attachment parenting, we are smothering. If we don’t, then we are cold and ruining our children’s attachment. Many a therapist’s couch is full of someone complaining about his or her mother. I also find that school staff are sometimes quick to blame the mother for their kid’s difficulties. Sure, there are instances where there is a parenting issue contributing to the kid’s challenges, but it is far better to support the mom than to blame. As a mom, there have been many times when I don’t know what I’m doing, and one call to another mom for support is all I need. Because the problem isn’t that there isn’t a manual for raising kids, there are TOO MANY manuals with conflicting advice. Every mom has to discover what works for them in their particular situation. As a school psychologist, I now spend more time asking questions of moms instead of prescribing "easy" solutions. Moms know their kids best and what will and will not work. 

4) Moms often know what to do to, but don't have the energy because they are teaching a human how to do everything all day. Give them a break! I have a school psychologist friend who has a toddler and her partner is also a school psychologist. I remember her telling me a story of how her kiddo was fussing for something and she gave in. Her partner said, "You know you just reinforced that behavior, right?" And my friend said, "I know, but I'm tired."  As school psychologists, we talk to parents about being consistent. Yep, I totally get it, but sometimes you are just tired. And that's life. There's a difference between being consistent and being rigid. Sometimes, kids miss their naps and sometimes you give in so you can go to the grocery store with a happy baby instead of a fussy one. So perhaps school psychologists should be asking "what conditions and supports need to be in place to have consistency in [insert behavior]? instead of "are you being consistent in [insert behavior]?" Being consistent is hard. Especially because your little one has such a darling face and sometimes, you give in. Babies have darling faces that makes you want to bend to their will, even when they are being tiny tyrants.

So to all the mamas out there, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day today! And a special shout out to my mom for all she has done for me--thank you! Also, as a special treat, if you want to die of a cute attack on this fabulous day honoring moms,  just google "mama and baby animals" like I did for the picture for this post. You. Will. Die.

It’s Shameless Self Promotion Month!

I promise, there will only be 75 more posts, tweets, and Facey Face status updates about my new book, The School Psychologist’s Survival Guide. I can’t help it, I am so excited that my book baby was finally born! It took longer to make this book than it did to make my actual baby. I wish I was Oprah so I could (as one reader put it), give out a copy to everyone and yell, “EVERYONE GETS A COPY!” I would totally put them under people’s chairs at NASP if I had Oprah money. I would probably put it in a gift basket with other survival tools, such as pens, pencils, energy bars, coffee, margarita mix…oh wait, cancel that last one. Not appropriate for work.

I’m loving the feedback on the Facebook page from people who have received the book. It’s kind of like when you’re driving and you let someone in and you are doing it because you want to, but then they give you the “thanks! wave” and you feel even better about your deed. I wanted to write this book forever to help out newbies and folks on the edge of burnout, but to get the proverbial “Thanks! wave” from you all makes it even more amazing.*

I am so glad that school psychologists now have a reference book to turn to when they have burning questions such as:

• What do I do when a principal calls me and tells me there’s an emergency at my school and asks me what to do?
• How do I react when a kid balks at testing with me? (like the time a girl screamed at me, “Go away! I ain’t no *bleeeeeeeepidy bleep bleeping” special ed!”)
• How do I delicately explain to a parent that their child has Autism? A Learning Disability? Emotional Disturbance? Isn’t eligible even though she is not meeting standards?
• What do I do when a staff member “goes rogue” in an IEP meeting and disagrees with my testing?
• How do I handle a group counseling session that turns into a WWE wrestling session?
• What do I do if a kid tells me she is suicidal?
• How do I find a space to work in that is a) not a janitor’s closet full of toxic chemicals, b) an old elevator shaft, or c) shared with 8 hojillion people with no privacy?
• How do I handle the stress of the job? (Hint: It’s not eating stray donuts in the teacher’s lounge at 2pm every day. Dang it.)

These questions and more are covered in my book! It’s like having your own emergency go-to guide for the sticky situations we all encounter as school psychologists. And we all know it’s crazy season right now, trying to get everything done before the end of the school year, so couldn’t you treat yourself to a little something something off Amazon.com? Yes, I believe you could.

Also, know that proceeds for the book go to a good cause: Baby B’s preschool fund. Turns out one year of PreK is as expensive as all four years of my college education. Who knew!?! I just know you all support early childhood education, so order now!

*The BEST “Thanks! wave” of all is a review on Amazon.com. Um…erm… *shuffles feet and looks at floor* if anyone wants to write a review, I’ll be your best friend.

Madness, I Say. Madness.

Every year my husband thinks I’m going to get into March Madness basketball thingy and whatnot. Every year, I slightly glance at the TV while he is watching if one of my alma matters, UC Berkeley or University of Northern Colorado is in the tournament. I don’t care for sports, mostly because I feel badly for whichever team loses. I imagine the losers going home and crying because it’s their senior year, or the guy who misses the final shot at the buzzer goes down a shame spiral and replays the shot in his mind over and over. I guess it’s a work hazard to have too much empathy for people’s feelings sometimes.

Anyhoo, this year, husband printed up a bracket thingy for me to fill out in an effort to engage me in the tournament. I decided I would make my picks based on which mascot would win in a fight. As a former cheerleader in high school and college, I was subjected to hours of long boring games in between our fabulous performances. I often entertained myself by focusing on the mascots. My favorite mascot moment was in high school, when our Bear did a trampoline jump in order to dunk a basketball and his head flew off. Awesome.

So it appears as if I finally found a way to make March Madness interesting to me! Husband was trying to go to bed last night and I was all, “Honey, do you think a Longhorn or a Gator would win in a fight? Honey? Wake up. A longhorn could stab a gator with his long horns, but gators are sneaky and fast. What do you think?”* Suddenly, I have March Madness! I’m 1 for 2 right now, because I correctly picked that a Cougar would beat a whatever this guy is:


So how do we, as educators, engage kids in a similar way—finding something they are interested in and tapping into it to engage them in something they are not interested in? As school psychologists, we are typically at the front line of working with disengaged students, right? I find that when I have Sulky McGee in my office, I have to find that spark—that connection—on which we can build our rapport. I have to say (reluctantly) that it does help to have some basic sports knowledge sometimes. “How ‘bout those [insert local sports team]?” works with a lot of kiddos.

I also find that once I’ve found a connection with a kiddo, we end up using the topic as a metaphor for their school or social difficulties. With a kid who loved tennis, we discussed what is “in bounds” and what is “out of bounds” when it came to disagreeing with a teacher. With a basketball player, we talked about how you miss 100% of the shots you never take as a lesson on risk taking. And for a kid who liked aggressive video games, we talked about how you “use up your energy” fighting others, and sometimes it’s better to “go around” the guy to get to your goal.

I have seen skilled teachers engage kids in similar ways—they find their “thing” and work it into their lessons. I find that the strategy of “tapping into student’s interests” is one of those things that is easy to say and much harder to do without a lot of planning. Teachers may wonder, "How do I make quadratic equations relevant to a kid who just broke up with her boyfriend? How can a student in crisis possibly personally relate to the plight of the Pilgrams 400 years ago? Can we really make the Canterbury Tales something meaningful for the Facebook generation?" Yes! Yes! Yes! Hey, maybe each kid can make a mock Facebook page for each of the characters in Canterbury Tales and write what they would say, what groups they would join, and who they would be friends with or something. To reach a disengaged student, you often have to get creative.

Hey, if I can get into sports, then anything is possible.

What else have you seen teachers to do incorporate student interests and increase engagement? Have my fellow school psychologists been able to turn a kid's interest into an analogy about how to deal with challenges? You all know I love me some teachable moments and analogies, so share!

Also, if you must, you can also share who will win March Madness 2012. You can use my mascot decision tree strategy if you want. And good luck deciding if a Bearcat or a Wildcat would win in a fight.


*By the way, by my logic, Florida State Gators are going to win it all. I saw this special on how Alligators have basically been around since the dinosaur age, so they have some mad survival skills. I also remember them saying they can run pretty fast AND climb trees, which is unsettling because I always thought I could run to a nearby tree and climb it if I encountered a hungry gator.

This Is My Confession*

I have a confession. I have been writing for another. I didn’t mean to cheat on you, blog, it’s just that…just that…well, I met someone else. Her name is Jossey. Jossey Bass Publisher. That’s why I haven’t been around much this past year. Just know I was going down a shame spiral when I realized it had been weeks between posts and I was staying up late writing for Jossey. Of course, there was also that business of me not posting as much as normal because I was tired from making a person too...

You know you are my first writing love, blog. You will forgive me in a hot second though. I have exciting news that justifies my shameful lack of posting the last year…wait for it…wait for it…presenting…

The School Psychologist’s Survival Guide!



Oh snap! Finally! There’s a guide for school psychologists that is practical, time-saving, and useful! This isn’t the run of the mill “What is School Psychology?” textbook from graduate school, but a resource guide for surviving in the chaos of the job once you actually get in the field. Newbies will love the advice and time saving tips. School psychologists who have been around a while will get fresh ideas and strategies to continue doing their jobs without going crazy themselves! Think you're going to tear your hair out the next time you get an inappropriate referral? Do you want to poke your own eyes out if you have to write another psychoeducational report on the weekend? Fret no more! There is help in this guide. And of course, it is written with juuuuuuuust a splash of snark to keep it spicy and entertaining. Snarky? Moi?

The guide covers many different topics, including:

• Finding where you belong in the schools and successfully navigating your role
• Dealing with “Bureaucracy Monsters” that ruin your work flow
• Organizing and being strategic about your assessment caseload
• Tuning up your skills in individual, group, and crisis counseling
• How to be preventive when you have no time
• How to navigate changing policies around Response to Intervention
• How to deal with people with…uh…erm…“challenging” personalities
• Preventing burnout and increasing job satisfaction

There are time-saving reproducible worksheets, letters, spreadsheets, and organizational tools that are ready for you to Xerox and use tomorrow. Be still my nerdy heart!

I am SO excited to share this resource with you all and I hope you will find it useful as you start out in the profession or revive and improve your practice as a school psychologist. Know that this survival guide was a true labor of love for me to write**, and it was inspired by all of you readers with your great questions, comments, and posts on the Facey Face page for the blog.

You can pre-order it off of Amazon.com by clicking here. If you pre-order, I believe you get a better price. The book will arrive right in time for the spring freak-out when everyone refers kids to you and you can’t imagine how you will do all your work without going cuckoopants. Hey, maybe the book will even come on your spring break, and you can relax on the beach with it? Erm, maybe it’s not exactly a beach read, but you get the idea.

Now I can relax and not feel guilty about my lack of posting on the blog, right? I mean, you guys can now have hundreds of pages of school psychology fun at your fingertips! Wheeeeeee!

I sincerely hope you like mama's other baby!


*For those of you who read “This is my confession” to the tune of R. Kelly’s remix “Confessions” you get extra points.

**Labor indeed. This book and my baby were both due in August. I spent my final weeks of pregnancy frantically trying to finish edits while Baby B kicked (punched?) my gut. She was really helpful in the motivation department, giving me a kick start when I needed it. Get it? Kick start? Oh, nevermind.

My Titanic FAIL.

I have been noticing advertisements lately for a new 3-D version of the movie, Titanic. I don’t know about you all, but when I saw that movie in regular-D, it freaked me out and strengthened my vow to never go on a boat again. In 3D? Shudder. I know what you’re thinking. How can this woman possibly make an analogy or poignant comment on today’s yoots or school psychology by discussing the Titanic? Well, I cannot. But I can share with you my most epic fail in working with students with disabilities from early in my career.

I often get emails from young, perky students who are eager to be school psychologists someday. They ask, “what kind of experience do I need to be a good candidate for grad school?” The better question, I think, is, “what kind of experience do I need to know this job is for me?” It’s not for everyone. I remember being a bit stunned in my grad school program when a few fellow classmates in my school psych classes admitted that after the first year of practicum, they’d rather do research on education than work with kids. They transferred to the research-side of the building. Now, I love me some research, but I love me some kiddos much more. Shocking they didn't think about whether or not they liked working with kids before signing on to a school psych program, right?

I think the best experience I had to prepare me for the job of being a school psychologist was working in group homes during summers in college. I have worked in group homes for students with developmental disabilities and students with emotional disturbance, and after basically living with these kids for a few summers in college, I knew I could handle any kid (or flying object) heading my way. I found myself learning the on-the-job skills that are not taught in any course: how to get a kid with autism off the roof, how to handle a kid twice your height having a seizure in the middle of the street, how to keep a kid from trying to kill herself or run away, and how to anticipate when a large object is going to be thrown in protest. I would come home after days at the group home and lament on how I had actually used phrases like, “Jeffrey, put down the stove.”

Anyhoo, back to The Titanic. One day, while working at the group home for students with developmental disabilities, I decided to take 5 teenagers to see a movie. Movies were always a good way to kill a few hours on a hot, summer day. The kids were typically happy at the movies. So I picked the longest movie on the planet. I would surely get 3 ½ hours of happy time if we went to The Titanic. It turns out, 3 ½ hours is way too long. To make matters worse, I had an “aide” with me, who had autism. Sure, she was high functioning, but she wasn’t the best person to help when chaos ensued. She had a “thing” about countries, and she had memorized every country and their flag, capitol, and main exports and such, and every time she saw a reference to a country she would scream out the name of the country. I don’t know if you remember, but there were a lot of immigrants on the Titanic. IRELAND! AMERICA! ENGLAND!

About halfway through the movie, the kids were getting restless. I saw one kid’s glasses fly across the screen, because another kid had an obsession about throwing glasses. I fumbled for them in the dark and found 148 old pieces of popcorn and 276 old jujubes as well. Gross. Then, another kid began to masturbate. After a fruitless attempt to tell him “that is for private time” I gave up. We got to the most dramatic point in the movie—[spoiler alert for those who lived under a rock in 1997] Jack is holding on to a piece of wreckage and Rose says, “I’ll never let go, Jack! I promise,” and as I am tearing up at the moment, and I look over to the aisle to see a kid taking his pants off and then running out of the theatre. I quickly grab the other kids and get everyone back in the van to go home.

I never got to see the ending of the movie. Do Rose and Jack end up together? I guess I will have to go see the 3D version to find out. And I will go alone with my box of Kleenex, thank you very much. I learned my lesson. I suppose the bigger lesson is that when you work with the most severe needs students early in your career, you have confidence that you can handle any kid that comes into your office after that. It also gives you empathy for all those special education teachers out there working with students with disabilities all day long. If I couldn't get 5 kids to watch a movie, I shudder to think if I had to teach them to read, write and do math. Here's to special education teachers!