Socialization and Inclusion with Dr. Mary Falvey

How can school teams encourage socialization with peers? How can parents make sure kids with extensive support needs get the opportunity to participate in school dances, sports, plays, clubs, and other extracurriculars? How can IEP goals help children with disabilities feel included and make meaningful connections? Inclusion expert Dr. Mary Falvey answers these questions and more in the full recording of our live event.

To see a recap and clips of the highlights, check out 4 Ways to Help Our Kids Socialize and Make Friends. For further reading about this topic, see our article, Socialization and Inclusion: Nurturing Authentic Peer Relationships.

Lindsay
Hello everybody, welcome to this week's Undivided Live. Today we are going to address one of our most requested topics from parents and that’s socialization. Will my child have friends? Will my child have friends who aren’t adults? Will people recognize all of the beautiful things inside of them instead of only seeing their differences? For any parent, watching your child struggle to form friendships and connections with peers is painful, and many of our children face cultural barriers that can make this even more difficult. So what can we do at school to ensure our kids are part of a community and making friends? Sometimes this happens organically. And sometimes we can optimize environments for more directive opportunities. So how and what can we write within the IEP? What can we do after school to promote healthy socialization in this great big world, and what needs to be in place for inclusion to foster authentic peer relationships? Luckily, we have the right person here to help today. I'm Lindsay Crain and I head the content and community teams at Undivided. With me today we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Mary Falvey. Dr. Falvey is an emeritus professor from the Division of Special Education and Counseling at Cal State LA. She has advocated for hundreds and thousands of students, no exaggeration there, with disabilities to be educated alongside their non-disabled peers while receiving the supports and services to be successful. for over 25 years. She coordinated the credential and master's degree programs in moderate to severe disabilities as well as the master's degree program and inclusive education at Cal State LA. Mary is a parent of an adult son with learning disabilities and has a nephew with Down syndrome and autism. She's also one of the founders of Cal TASH, the California Chapter of TASH. And we can probably go on and on because Mary literally has a lifetime of service for our community. But welcome, Dr. Falvey, and thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Falvey
Thank you, Lindsay. And thank you for inviting me to come and talk about such an important passionate conversation, which I would also say not only parents asking those questions, but I would say really good teachers, gen ed and special ed, really good teachers are also asking those questions because they see when it's absent for a child and they get nervous about it, and they feel badly about it and they want to do something to make a difference.

Lindsay
Absolutely. 100% You're right. You know, every day my daughter is going to school, and there are awesome people within that school trying to talk and come up with a plan and figure out how we're going to make this, you know, as fantastic as it could be for her and all the other kids. So you're exactly right. I also want to let everyone know that, you know, throw any of your questions in the chat. We have our community manager Donna and one of our Undivided Navigators, Iris, they're going to pass along you know everything to Dr. Falvey and I, and we're gonna get to as many as we can. And if you still have questions after our chat, or if you want one to one support, our Undivided Navigators would love to help. You can learn more about our kickstart in the link that Donna shared in the chat. But for now, let's make new friends. And so we are going to start with school. So Dr. Falvey first, you know, what are the biggest barriers to building authentic friendships for children with disabilities in school?

Dr. Falvey
So I've had this question for so many years. And many, many years ago, I began to look at the literature and the research. And I looked at the research around and among friendship of kids who didn't have disabilities. And one of the things that comes up over and over and over again, and it just makes so much sense is that a prerequisite for friendship development among any children would be close proximity and frequent opportunity. And if we think back on our own lives, we think back on our lives when we were in school, but we also think back on our lives 10 years ago, five years ago, yesterday, that close proximity and frequent opportunity is absolutely necessary. Now, once a strong relationship has been established, you can pull away from that and the closeness and the frequency of that interaction because you've established those friendships. But it's a prerequisite for establishing those friendships, which has given me a lot of passion for why inclusive education is so very important. We should not be pulling children out of their neighborhoods to go to another school where there are so-called specialized services over at that other school for the sake of convenience, because what we're missing is that opportunity for kids to go to school with and get to know kids in their neighborhood. And that's what's often missing because kids have those after-school therapies often, and so between that and not going to their neighborhood school, we pull them out of their neighborhoods, which is where the most natural relationships get developed organically, just because kids want to be kids and kids being kids, whether they're five, or whether they're 15, or whether they're 30, they want to have that opportunity to interact with people that they care about, and that cares about them. And so building those relationships is so very important. I would say segregation to me, for segregation for kids with disabilities, is by far one of the biggest barriers to forming those kinds of relationships, and building those kinds of friendships. So remember that close proximity and frequent opportunity is cited over and over again, in the research on children's friendships, and then eventually, adult friendships. So keep that in mind.

Lindsay
I can personally attest to that as well as, yeah, my daughter was put into a special ed program for elementary school. And so yeah, walking out outside of our house, all the other kids who knew each other and we're, you know, all together at school, you know, was not the case for us. And that, and that was hard. It was obviously right. You know, it's you want to be able to walk out and have that shared experience. And when you don't, it just makes things that might be hard, it makes them even harder.

Dr. Falvey
I think what also it does is just taking your example is that the other kids that are living in that neighborhood and are seeing that happen, they're wondering what's wrong with her, and there's nothing wrong with her. It's just that she's going to a different school. And we put the adults in charge, put that on her. And that's not fair to her. Because even if she were a typically developing kid, she would still struggle with those issues. And so we really have to recognize the role that adults play, whether it's parents, teachers, administrators that make decisions about putting kids in schools outside of their neighborhood where they just can naturally organically build those kinds of relationships.

Lindsay
Absolutely. And we actually, Lisa just asked, can you please speak to the impact of grade retention on a child's existing relationships with peers?

Dr. Falvey
Ah, boy, tough one, very big, tough one. I think that grade retention implies a couple of things that have to be addressed. One is that my guess is they're not using differentiation. Because if they were using differentiation, then it wouldn't matter where the child is, developmentally, along with all the other kids in the class. And so grade retention can be traumatic. And more often than not, we do grade retention in kindergarten, as opposed to upper grades. But sometimes it gets done in the upper grades also. But it is really difficult for children to be able to still go forward building those relationships and friendships with their peers, when they were very close during kindergarten, or during seventh seventh grade, all together, and now they're no longer together. And again, I think the more we put questions in the minds of non-disabled peers, the more we're going to wonder about what are those questions they're asking? And are those questions impacting the relationships that they could have with kids with disabilities if they just got over it? We didn't place all those decisions that are not necessarily helpful to children.

Lindsay
I mean, talking about all the decisions that adults should be making in the classroom, how can teachers facilitate socialization within the classroom?

Dr. Falvey
So you know, there's a lot of literature out there in elementary, secondary, and in special ed about the importance of collaboration and co teaching, the importance of recognizing that cooperative groups are really a powerful teaching tool, regardless of whether you have kids with and without disabilities. They're just powerful teaching tools. And they teach so much. In fact, when we talk to employers about why people lose their jobs more often than not, it's because they don't get along with their co-workers. It's not because they didn't learn the job task very well, or they don't hold on to the job skills. It's more often than not because socialization gets in the way. Well, how do kids develop those socialization skills? Well, starting in elementary school or even preschool, we set up those opportunities for kids to learn how to get along with one another. And those are as important as the task analysis or the sequence of the job itself. And so we were building these skills so that children when they grow up, and they get to be 16 and get their first job, or they're 18 and they're getting their first job or after college, they're getting their first job that they have built those schools, those skills of collaboration and cooperation, and they understand how to work in an environment where it's not all about me, it's about us. And we need to learn how to do it about us, not just about me. Right?

Lindsay
And yes, so important. I mean, and then there's that organic learning for when you have, you know, all kinds of, you know, kids, you know, in every beautiful kind of diversity in a class. And then sometimes we do need some, some more, you know, directive, like, Hey, this is another great way. And I know you have talked, I think you might have even been the first one when my daughter was really young that I heard talking about, like peer modeling or peer tutoring. And we have a lot of parents kind of say, like, what is that? Right? So how can that look and what do parents need to know about that?

Dr. Falvey
So I think it's very effective, and I'm not judging, I know from the research that it's a very effective tool and a very effective strategy. But I have also seen it overused to the point where that child without a disability is always treated as the peer tutor. And the child with a disability is always the person receiving the tutoring. And so I want to remind everybody that every child, no matter what, every child has something to teach another person, another child. And so recognizing that children with and without disabilities both need to play the role of tutor and the role of tutee. Now, it may be that, as parents or as teachers, we help the kids with disabilities to be in a position where they can actually develop their skill set and teach their skill set to their peers. And that's really important to do. So making sure that it's not that the children with disabilities are always over the children who don't have disabilities, but that they have opportunities for reciprocal relationships, because my experience is that when we don't, we aren't cautious about this, it actually creates a hierarchical relationship, which is often not reciprocal, and is not necessarily a helpful kind of building relationship that's truly genuine and authentic in the process of both benefiting from that friendship. It's like if you had a friend, as an adult, who, you know, always came to you. And you might even have somebody who’s a friend who comes to you with complaints and with problems. And their expectation is that you're going to solve all those problems. At some point, you don't answer the phone when they call. I don't really want to go there every day, some days, I actually need a little something. And I need somebody to support me. So remembering that we want to build those reciprocal relationships so that both children with and without disabilities serve in all roles that are played out in, in schools and in friendship, development.

Lindsay
That's such such an important statement. And it takes me back to how my daughter uses total communication. So she speaks and she uses sign language. And when she was first starting out, you know, we really, you know, a lot of the kids loved it, of course, right. And we asked if she could, you know, go into some of the classes, right? Because kids were asking, and we were told it would be a distraction, and no, and so, you know, then organically they did it, but it was kind of like why, you know, why would we want to do that where it was kids were so interested and so that, again, that interest like kids have in each other with or without disabilities was sort of like well, no, you know, this would be too much, it would mess up her minutes on her IEP. That's what I was told. So, anyway, that's a really good point. Good point about the peer models that I don't think a lot of times, you know, people think about and that we do need to be explicit about so we aren't so it isn't like always, hey, we're we're helping out Johnny right. I mean, but then like, and then why does Johnny gonna do just like for all of us? That's a really great point. Always. It looks like Jana had a comment. And she said my child was in a special education school due to emotional disturbance. He's afraid to be with groups of peers because he doesn't want to hurt others or himself, but he wants to have friends and is lonely. I feel lost helping him navigate building relationships. Is there anything?

Dr. Falvey
Yeah, you know, there are a number of kids with and without disabilities who would benefit from smaller school environments, especially when they get to middle school and high school because those are huge environments. And there are kids who would benefit from smaller school environments and I have to say that I think that, although I'm not necessarily a charter school advocate, I do think that there are charter schools out there that offer the opportunity for parents to choose a different kind of school environment to send their child to, I think also, the the special schools that have been set up in, particularly in LA Unified, that are magnet schools around a particular topic, those are often smaller school environments. And so I think looking for those smaller school environments where it offers the opportunity for kids with and without disabilities, to be successful in those settings, and not, I mean, and I think it's true for adults, too, when adults feel stressed with large environments, they're likely to pick in careers and jobs that aren't going to necessarily force them to be in the presence of 200 people, but maybe to be in the presence of five people. So looking for how to hone in those skills. It's not necessarily a definite that you're, I think it's a son, I know, you just said child that your child struggles with, with large environments, it's just a piece of information that should help us to figure out an educational environment that he can achieve, and he can succeed in, he can thrive in that setting. So looking for smaller group environments, and I would encourage you to look for general education settings that are for smaller group environments. I'm particularly concerned about kids who have the level of emotional disturbance going to school with other kids who have emotional disturbance, because what my experience has told me is that at the beginning of the year, if you've got 10 kids who are all emotionally disturbed and all manifests in very challenging and difficult behaviors, by the way, all 10 of those kids have not only theirs, but they've now modeled nine children. And so can you have appropriate role models, peer models, that can help kids understand how to communicate and how to interact? How to support each other, how to be kind to one another? How to do all of that in a way that is consistent with what their needs are, their learning needs are?

Lindsay
Right? Well, and if we think about some of the common times in a school day, where socialization is really the focus, so if we think like elementary school, right, lunch and recess, how can socialization be encouraged if there's, you know, students where maybe socialization isn't an easy, natural thing, like maybe, you know, a neurotypical child might approach, and by the way, there's kids without disabilities where socialization is very difficult as well. But how can we encourage that if it's not naturally happening?

Dr. Falvey
So I would say that probably one of the most important characteristics or skills in the area of socialization is communication. And so we have to help kids with disabilities figure out what they're going to talk about, or what they're going to communicate about if they're using an AAC system, or sign language or something else going on. And so making sure that students with disabilities have that capacity. When my nephew was in third grade, the speech therapist had suggested to us that we do a lot of things on weekends. And so we go here, we go there, we do things. And, you know, we would write it in the notebook to the teacher so that the teacher had some sense of what we had done over the weekend. And so the speech therapist read the notebook, and she's, you know, what you need to do is take pictures of Michael engaging in those activities in that role, and put it in so I got one of those little mommy picture albums, you know, and I covered it so it wasn't proud mommy, it was proud Michael. And it was his way of saying, Hey, I went to see Toy Story this weekend (you can tell he's in his 30s now). So that was what was playing at that time. And I love Woody. And, and that's the truth. Michael loved everything, Woody was great for him. And that opened up the possibility of him having conversations with other kids who also saw Toy Story over the weekend, who also seemed to love Woody, and all of a sudden, like the barriers of them connecting people together is gone, because now that common element is kind of in their face, and I don't mean that in a negative way. And so every Monday morning, Michael would bring his book to school and it had pictures of whatever it is we did. Could be French fries that he got at McDonald's. I mean, it didn't have to be sensational. But whatever we did, say we went to the beach, and it was a picture of the beach. And so then another kid says, you know, I haven't been to the beach, how is the beach? And then there's more conversation possibilities in his book, because his verbal skills were very, very limited, still are, he uses typing, spelling much more frequently to communicate in more depth information. And he's kind of moved away from pictures, although, like any of us if the pictures are there, why not talk about it, because it's not necessarily a disabled thing. It's that the pictures remind us, you know, if you're on Facebook, and you get a picture from five years ago, and it's like, oh, it reminds me of this wonderful thing we did and, and then you send it back out to remind everybody about what a fun time that was, or how special that friend is to you, or whatever.

And so, I think giving kids, particularly kids with disabilities who struggle with communication, which is such an important skill and socialization, that we give them a means to be able to communicate. The other thing that we did, you know, the most common thing a parent does when a kid comes home from school is well, so what are you doing today? And usually, what the kid says is nothing or there's a blank look. Yes. So this is another wonderful idea. Now, this wasn't necessarily for helping socialization, but it made me think of it, she would write a note about what they did during the day and put it in a sealed envelope. And our directions were we couldn't open it until after Michael communicated, because if I saw it, then I wasn't expecting him as much to communicate in whatever way and yes, we're playing a guessing game, because I'm trying to figure out what it is he did. And then pretty soon, we started doing that the other way, too. So Michael would get a question at school about what we had done over the weekend or last night, and it was in a sealed envelope, and those were really effective ways to kind of pull that communication system out a bit more.

Lindsay
I think my daughter would love that. Like, let's open it. Let's do it. That's, really, I love that idea. I love that. And I definitely have some follow up questions from that. But I want to, I also want to ask about the social time at secondary first, because, you know, you know, like many incoming sixth graders, the horror is to learn that there is no recess in middle school, like, you know, is, you know, lives on. And, you know, there's less group work, right, sort of, even within the classroom, and a lot of socialization happens between classes at lunch, or after school. So how do we approach that traditional social time differently in middle or high school where it feels like it's a lot more difficult during the school hours?

Dr. Falvey
So one of the things to do is for the teachers to find out, like, let's say, I want to know, I want to have a peer buddy, we meet at second period. So who in this class is actually going to the same second period class, because that's one of the complications in middle school in high school is, it's not going to be all 30 students, it's going to be maybe, you know, one or two, or maybe 12. But you kind of get a sense of who's actually in that class. And then looking for volunteers, Hey, would you be willing to walk with Michael to his next class, and, and you guys can, you know, have an opportunity to communicate with each other on your way to the next class. It's important that if there are AAC systems involved, that you have them out of the backpack, so that he can communicate because he's got his system in front of him, so that he can communicate with his peer. I always want to look for peers that are voluntary. But I want to also be careful, because sometimes voluntary peers have a hard time separating out I'm here to help as opposed I'm here to be a friend. And so you want to be careful that it's not so many volunteers that only want to help as opposed to want to build a relationship with a student. So so that's one of the things I would do is kind of structure it, and that's the kind of thing that can be written into an IEP, because you can identify that as a support system for a child going into, say, middle school or high school and allow them to have somebody walking with them. I know when my son was in middle school in seventh sixth grade, he broke his foot and we were at a kind of middle school at the time that didn't have elevators. And so he couldn't actually manage his backpack and his crutches to go up the stairs. So they just did and at that time, it wasn't even an IEP decision. It was just a good educational decision that a peer who went to the same class got to leave five minutes from their previous period. So of course, there were a lot of volunteers who were happy to leave five minutes early to go with Nathan to the next class, but then they carried his backpack up the stairs for him.

Lindsay
Oh, I love that. And yeah, I had put Shari’s comment on there because right when you were saying that Dr. Falvey, Shari, one of the parents said, that's exactly what the her son's IEP team said was, hey, like, let's get volunteers as he's going into sixth grade to walk him around. And exactly. And that's, and I love that, yeah, we've had, we've had that happen with my daughter as well. And when you have that extra travel time, my daughter has cerebral palsy as well. So you know, she needs to kind of leave a little early for safety reasons. And one question that I'm seeing coming up a lot, which I know it's a broad question, but really important, how can we use our IEPs to support social needs? How can we write socialization into the IEP?

Dr. Falvey
So remember that an IEP goal, an objective needs to be stated about what that child with a disability is actually going to achieve or learn or acquire as a result of instruction that's going on or intervention that's going on. So we're wanting to actually, I don't think we can say that at the end of the day, Lindsay is going to be friends with Mary. But we could say that at the end of the day, Lindsey has three kids that she considers to be friends. And so she gets to identify, she might know the whole class, but she might not consider herself friends with. So it's recognizing that even though schools are not building it into the curriculum, as a normal course of events, it is where most children without disabilities build their friendships is in school. So we really have to recognize that for some kids, we might need to give them a little bit more support, a little bit more interventions, identifying goals and objectives that have to do with what Lindsay is going to learn by the end of the year or whenever that she's going to have three friends that she considers to be friends. Right.

Lindsay
I would love to hear in the chat if anyone has had a goal like that, right? I mean, I don't know if it's a regular thing, because we've never had any sort of socialization goals. I think for a lot of parents, the socialization goals that can be recommended at IEPs are that they have to say, hi, they have to wait, they have to look you in the face. Right. And usually with a teacher. You know, I don't know if you want to say anything about that. If there's other parents that have had socialization goals, like that in their IEP, if you want to address that.

Dr. Falvey
Yeah, I think you know, though, that's really the surface. And it's not really getting to the notion of socializing for the sake of becoming a friend. So I think, you know, that's, that's okay. But it's really, really limiting. I think if we can talk more in terms of what the child perceives as being friends in their life, whether the other kids are or not, because the truth is, typical kids might think these three kids are my friends, but they might not necessarily reciprocate and think they're friends, too. So it's not a matter of saying they're going to guarantee be friends by the end of the IEP meeting or the end of the IEP timeframe. But it does say that the child herself is going to actually recognize that there are kids in this school that are my friends, right?

Lindsay
Yeah. And everything that we also just talked about, if you're going to have peers walking your child to class, or if you're going to have, you know, the peer models that are maybe you know, to make sure that what you're doing small group work, or maybe there's inclusive speech goals, to just really kind of try to think about all of the things you know, that your child is going to be working on. And how can we build peer models in a way that is everything that you've said, Dr. Falvey, reciprocal, and not like anything hierarchical? You know, just to try in every way. But yeah, if anyone else has. Oh, I'm looking at Andrea's comment. She says, My son's case carrier has asked him if he has friends and has reported that he can identify a few students as friends, but it's not written into his IEP. That said, my son doesn't talk about his friends at home and never wants to invite them over.

Dr. Falvey
So yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe one of the things we need to do is to help kids with disabilities understand, what does it mean to be a friend? What are the characteristics of friends so that he begins to see that friendship is furthered by virtue of how Having more opportunities, more proximity. And so by inviting friends over or inviting friends maybe not over, because maybe that's overwhelming, maybe it's inviting friends to go bowling or getting friends to go to the movies together or go to McDonald's and play on the McDonald's thing. Or if you're in high school to maybe go to a football game, or a basketball game or a dance with a group of kids. All of that has got to be facilitated, because kids don't necessarily just come to that understanding of all of that. But I think the more we can help kids understand what is friendship and what it isn't, we'll help them to understand those distinctions.

Lindsay
That's so exactly right. And I was just looking at Adrian's comment, which is directly aligned to what you just spoke of, she just said my son's goals are conversational and appropriate social cues. But I've been stating that he's having difficulty building meaningful friendships, he's in eighth grade. And I think that's just something that so many of us can relate to, or adjust how you were saying Dr. Falvey about teaching what those friends are. Sometimes it can be the opposite of like, you know, everyone's like a friend, but not really understanding the meaningful relationships like Adrian was saying, or Andrea or, you know, and that's it's, is it that they don't experience that or, you know, I don't know, there's, there's all the dark places this, you know, that I can go and that, I think, is one of the most absolute, like most difficult things to have people who are truly nice and enjoy them, but are not calling them and saying, Hey, like, let's get together, let's go meet let's go to the football game. And so then parents feel like they really have to be the facilitators of that. And it can be nerve racking, right?

Dr. Falvey
I mean, it can also be off putting, because high school kids do not want to have parents around them.

Lindsay
My daughter does not want me to be around her all the time.

Dr. Falvey
Yeah, so it can also be interfering if we're not careful with it. And so this is another place where I think we can also tap into siblings, because if the siblings are reasonably close and age, maybe the sibling goes to the football game and facilitates with a good understanding of what their sibling needs, as opposed to having an adult kind of go in that environment. Or maybe it's a neighbor, or maybe it's a former babysitter or somebody that the kid actually trusts.

Lindsay
Right? I have to say you just got a shout out from someone you might know. Sally says praise for Mary as a parent of a 55 year old son in the 80s, we wanted what you are all about Mary, and we knew you at Cal State with Richard wanted what you are working towards now. Now I need this at Mount SAC program for DD folks, your words are golden. Thank you, Sally. And I have to say you know the 55 year old son and and what Dr. Falvey is talking about so many of us are still trying to you know, it's still sadly happening that we are having to fight for this and ask for it and that it's still so misunderstood, or it's just very frustrating.

Dr. Falvey
Adults. One of the things I want to do is look at adult environments, where do adults meet each other? Where do adults meet potential friends? Well, one of the places could be church or synagogue or some kind of religious institution. It could be clubs, it could be like a book club, it could be other kinds of clubs that are out there in the community. And that's fine. I'm in a book club right now that happens to be that most of them are former teachers. And, you know, sometimes we don't read everything, or I only listen, I don't read because I tend to fall asleep. Now, the older I get, the more it's hard for me to stay away. So I listen to books on audible, because I can do that. So that's actually an avenue for adults with disabilities to be able to still get rich literature and then perhaps once a month, or whatever the structure is, getting together with potential friends. Joining political groups is another place where people build friendships and sustain those kinds of friendships over time. Certainly family, I'm half Irish and half Italian, so I have a huge family. So doing anything with my family is always a joyful experience, and lots of opportunities for friendships. But I think we need to look at ourselves as adults and ask ourselves where do we build those kinds of friendships, and the fact that Sally's son is at Mount SAC, here's an environment where there are peers and so looking for places where maybe meeting with the Office of students with disabilities and seeing if they're willing to partner and create some operatory entities in their service mind to, to offer opportunities for friendship development in the process. So thank you, Sally, I appreciate that you've been in my connection for a long time.

Lindsay
And Andrea actually just asked her about another program that we hear a lot of great things about, she said, can you comment on the Circle of Friends program?

Dr. Falvey
Okay, so I have seen Circle of Friends programs that I think are powerful and very good. And then I've seen others that are patronizing and basically interfere with reciprocal relationships. And so I think a lot of it depends on how it gets implemented, how the teaching staff introduce it to the student body. It's typically in middle schools and high schools, mostly in high schools. But I think it has a lot to do with are you doing this because you're doing a community service? Are you doing this to really build relationships with people in your community? And I think that's a really important distinction, really, really important distinction.

Lindsay
Absolutely. I think that's one of the most important things that we can walk away with today too is, you know, if something's being put in place, we need to make sure that we're asking the right questions about what is this going to look like, you know, it's not, that we're not just thinking great, someone's going to be put with my child, and they're going to be friends, and it's going to be great, and they're going to feel great. And this is their new friend. And, you know, to really come up with those questions about how does this look, what's my child going to also be giving all of these important things? We're also having a lot of questions on something that you touched on earlier, which is AAC. And so how do we, you know, how do we encourage, and I know you gave some ideas about how do we encourage or teach students to communicate with peers who use you know, AAC, or they don't have a formal communication system. And then someone even asked about, like, what if your child signs, you know, so an alternative form of communication? You know, I say in quotes, form of communication. So how can we approach that?

Dr. Falvey
So first of all, I hope you saw the LA Unified decision this week that, in fact, sign language will be considered a foreign language for high school students, which is a great thing, because that offered that offers an opportunity then, for non-disabled kids to also learn sign language, and maybe even bring it down all the way down to the elementary school level. So I think giving kids an opportunity to kind of experience it. Kids love to learn sign language, I mean, one of their favorite things is the signs that are typically similar, like my favorite sign that I teach kids is milk, because it's like milking a cow. Now, a lot of city kids don't know that's milking the cow, but here's a cute sign, and then it gives you an opportunity to talk about that. And then I think that the AAC devices themselves are fascinating to children, you give a kid a tablet, and they're gonna go crazy because they love this idea. So that places the kid with a disability who has a tablet at all times, you know, in a powerful place. But let's give the tablet to non-disabled kids so they communicate back in the same way, and they learn and they're learning typing skills, then and that's a good thing for them to be learning. I remember when my son was, now he's 36, but when he was in fifth grade, they were all worried about the fact that he wasn't learning handwriting. Well, he struggled with fine motor skills and handwriting was very difficult for him. And so if he dictated a story, it was much more interesting than if he wrote it, because his writing would just get in the way of being able to have a creative idea in his mind. And I remember saying to his IEP team, I think his future will be much, much more impacted if he has keyboarding skills. And they looked at me like I was crazy. Because truthfully, if you watch his dad's handwriting, you can't read it, because at least I have no idea what's on it.

Lindsay
Especially in this day and age, right, we are lucky.

Dr. Falvey
Getting back to the AAC device, just share it with kids, give kids that access, give kids an opportunity, and they'll see wow, this kid is really smart. Because look at how he could type really fast. And then the voice comes up, says what he typed up and, and it's great. So giving kids the opportunity to touch it, feel it, learn sign language, all of those things.

Lindsay
It’s so important to think about, like if if all kids would have been doing that, like they do in inclusive classes in schools right from the beginning and how yeah, it doesn't become under what's going on, it's the like, let me see that, oh, I know how to do that, right? I mean, it just becomes so normalized and cool and not like, what's happening? Right? And what about kids, Dr. Falvey, who their speech might be hard to understand, or maybe even a student who scripts so communicating in ways that might not, you know, immediately be understandable in whatever way for a neurotypical child, how can we approach those situations?

Dr. Falvey
So, I think that the more time they spend together, the easier it is for people to understand. I've experienced that myself with my own nephew. And with the hundreds and thousands of kids I've interacted with over the years, the more you spend time, the more you understand it. The more you spend time, the more you understand AAC, or the device that's actually being used. So I think it's all about making sure that they have an opportunity to learn the system. And then I think proper modeling. So we can take some time as the adult, we're teachers, to teach kids how to use those systems so that they feel more comfortable with the system. And truthfully, what I've seen is that when we really do open it up to peers, peers up often offer the opportunity for kids to learn things that go beyond that. So hey, let's go in and play a game. Oh, my gosh, look at this game. Oh, what you need to do is you need to do these things. I can remember, for years, Michael had on his IEP, learning how to tie a shoe, learn how to tie a shoe. Finally, in first grade, we were living across the street from a family. And we were in Culver City at the time, we were living across the street from a family and they had a daughter the same age as Michael. And she came over one day and she was very shy. And she came over one day and she said, Michael, let me show you how to tie the shoes, and did the bunny rabbit ears, tie his shoes. And of course he learned it like that. And that IEP goal, like this was a three year goal, it took one year to learn from a peer.

Lindsay
Well, and my answer to that would be Velcro.

Dr. Falvey
You know, my granddaughter in the morning, I often get her ready to go to school. And I'm like, Okay, what shoes are you going to wear? And she goes whatever shoe it's going to be the slip ons.

Lindsay
Yeah, I mean, you know,shoelaces can be a nemesis for many children. And then Robin actually asked about the AAC. She said, how do you get schools to provide the adequate AAC training to staff and parents so the entire team can help teach, you know, the child, the peers, all of it right, so that people actually know what's going on and can help?

Dr. Falvey
So that's considered a service. And it should be written into the IEP, because if you don't put it in the IEP, it may or may not happen. Good, even good, intentional people, it may or may not happen. In my experience, the more accountable people become. And perhaps we even as parents need to remind the school staff that it'sin the IEP, and it's been in there for three months now. And, you know, we're going to have to reevaluate at the end of the year. So let's make sure we build it into the IEP as a service. It's not a service that necessarily involves the child, but it's a service the school is responsible for. That's true for accommodations, modifications, if you've got a school staff that don't understand Universal Design for Learning, or MTS, multi tiered systems of support, built it into the IEP, build that training into the IEP so that people get the training. And what I've often hear heard afterwards is the school staff is thanking you, because they're thanking you that you set aside the time, and you have the expectation, and that the school then picked up that expectation to learn it, because to expect teachers to do things they don't know how to do is just banging your head against the wall. So making sure that teachers have the resources, the knowledge, the wisdom, to be able to carry through with an AAC device or whatever it might be.

Lindsay
Absolutely. And Kristen had a question. She said, I'm wondering if engaging neurotypical kids to interact with neurodivergent kids, it seems a bit staged to me, it seems a bit dangerous. What are your thoughts on this?

Dr. Falvey
Yeah, I think in the beginning, it is often staged. And so what you have to do is have a long term plan. The long term plan is getting rid of the adults so that the adults are not controlling the environment, but that kids are controlling the environment. And I also say ask the kids, ask the kids, what are ways that we can engage Lindsay more often in our classroom discussions when she uses an AAC device or she's signing? And if it's not, we're now on to a new topic. What could kids come up with in actually acknowledging their peers who have disabilities?

Lindsay
Absolutely. I have to put in a word that Tina, this is what I was thinking Tina, peers are the ones that should suggest and program all the important slang words.

Dr. Falvey
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lindsay
All the kids have their own little Urban Dictionary, right? For their AAC device.

Dr. Falvey
Absolutely, yeah.

Lindsay
Maybe somebody should look after they program those words. But yes.

Dr. Falvey
Especially all high school kids.

Lindsay
Right, exactly. We all learned the most colorful words from our friends, or in my case, but we also I know, a lot of friends have talked about a lot of parents about doing a presentation, maybe about the child's disability for their class, either the child or the parents, so they can educate and you know, demystify the disability as well. And maybe you could also add about their AAC device or whatever kind of comes under that umbrella. How do you feel about that? And, you know, what are some things we should keep in mind if we're considering it.

Dr. Falvey
So let me do a little scenario. Because I'm Italian. And I tell stories. When Michael was in second grade, we noticed that the girls especially were treating him like a little boy. And they were using that kind of voice tone that you would use when you were talking to like a three year old. And so one day, he had a doctor's appointment, and my sister was going to take him to the doctor. So I asked the teacher if I could come in and do a little conversation with the kids. And so I read a boo. It's really hard to find this book, but I love this book. It's called, “Someone called me a retard and my heart felt sad.” It's a very powerful book that goes through, I love that it also features a child and a dad, and the child has a disability. And so I read the book to the kids. And then I had the kids come up and model how to interact with Michael. And I asked a couple of kids to talk to him like he was a three year old. And then I had somebody else pretend they were Michael. And I said, How'd that make you feel? And they said things like, it made me feel like I was a baby. And you know, when you're in third grade, you don't want to be a baby. So the conversation allowed us to kind of call on the kids that were treating him like a baby without punishing him or without, you know, bringing out the negative of all that. And it made a huge difference. He got back to school about 10:30. And there was a recess now. And I stayed and went outside and watched the kids. And they were even correcting each other. They're like, No, no, no, oh, don't don't talk to Michael, like a baby. So I think it can be a powerful place. But I also think it's really important that you take into consideration the dignity and respect for the child. So I would prefer, and I, in retrospect, wished I had had Michael present so that Michael could also do the talking. And maybe he would do the prep work ahead of time on his tablet, and then convey that information to the kids. So that the kids are hearing from him firsthand, rather than just hearing from me as the aunt.

Lindsay
That's great, yeah. And I think that's something that a lot of people weigh. And they also wonder, you know, if I'm talking about that, like, do you wait, like until the situation where the girls are sort of, or you put it out there, it's not. In many cases, it's not like kids aren't going to notice. And so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. It is just really kind of talking to the child taking their lead.

Dr. Falvey
Yeah, I I think it's just recognizing the dignity and respect for the child and also recognizing, like Michael loves it when I talk about him, he often comes to presentations and he sees the slides up there, he loves it, but other kids might not, and so recognizing that the individual sense of how comfortable I am being in this position, being in the spotlight of this has a lot to do with it.

Lindsay
Yeah. And another, you know, huge part of what people think of socialization are aides, and they can be very beneficial in facilitating peer relationships and in other instances, they can really force that organic socialization, so how can we ensure that aids are positively impacting our children's social universe?

Dr. Falvey
So first of all, we want to get rid of the helicopter and velcro aides that get in the way of social interactions that happen between kids naturally. And I think monitoring, I see way too many one to one aides that have no supervision, don't have evaluation, we need to make sure because remember that most of the people who serve in the role of an instructional aide went to segregated schools when they were growing up. So they never saw kids with disabilities in any kind of equal format or strength. And so we may have to do some really serious training to help the aide understand that they're there to just provide a little bit of impetus, but then back off as quickly as they can. And recognize that they need to encourage everybody. I think the other piece is, the aides are not just there for that person, they're there to help other kids too, even though they're technically on the IEP that one to one student, that aide needs to be like a member of the educational team in that classroom. So that they see that they're really here for everybody.

Lindsay
Absolutely. Another question we received in many different forms from parents was what if your child likes shows movies or characters that aren't age appropriate? Maybe like a 14 year old who likes Curious George? So how do you balance that? You know, with the socialization of you know, let's face it, kids who think they're, you know, they're defining what cool is, you know, at very young ages, how do we handle that?

Dr. Falvey
So I think it's really important that we not deny kids their strengths, their lives, their interests, their likes. On the other hand, we need to broaden their perspective. So if you're into Power Rangers, for example, which is a big thing my granddaughter's into, not Power Rangers. Oh, I forget the name of them. But anyway, there's it. There's it. I can't remember the name of it.

Lindsay
Powerpuff Girls?

Dr. Falvey
I have a thing on Paw Patrol. Right, right. Yeah. On my phone. So she's really into Paw Patrol. So we went if she were 15, she's only five now. But if she were 15, and she was still into Paw Patrol, I would try to get a sense of what is it she likes about Paw Patrol? Is it the game? Is it the music? Is it whatever? And then try to match it with something that's maybe a little more age appropriate. When I was starting out at Cal State LA in the early 80s, I'd go out to classrooms and there'd be 18 year olds in the classroom and they'd be playing Palmer, I don't know if you remember Palmer but he's from a long time ago. Mostly you saw it in preschool programs. And I'd say to the teachers, have you put on other music like maybe they like Palmer because that's the only music and songs that you've actually introduced him to. So recognizing that, that there's other means out there that maybe they need to be exposed to in a larger context.

Lindsay
I love that. I love that suggestion of like, exactly what you said music and then trying to kind of figure out okay, what do however old you're looking at, in this example, 14, right. So what else are 14 year olds and trying to kind of match? Well, you know, maybe they're gonna find joy in this because the cultural pieces are, even though kids are so vast with their interests, there's touch points that you might want your child to understand. Right, as people are talking about it, they can say, Yeah, I've I've, you know, I've heard them. I've seen them, you know, to have, you know, just all that in common. You know, all the things that they could have. Let's see. Oh, Robin asked, Someone just mentioned asking for an accommodation of a trained communication partner. I love the idea of this. But how do I handle asking for one? They said my aides and teachers are not trained on my son's speech device. So is there anything you want to say?

Dr. Falvey
So I would include the speech therapist or the AAC personnel that are in the school district, and ask them to provide the training for the staff that's absolutely necessary. There's no point in an AAC device if nobody knows how to use it, because then the student’s going to be voiceless and have no means to communicate. And that's very dangerous.

Lindsay
Absolutely. And then I know I'm watching the time and I know you have to get your granddaughter Paw Patrol on the phone, but Tina had a quick question. She said can we put into an IEP goal, student will remain at blank distance for blank minutes from adult support staff or something like that?

Dr. Falvey
Sure, absolutely.

Lindsay
Why not? Right.

Dr. Falvey
Now what I would want to do to actually implement or to write that IEP goal, I'd want to have some data taking, where is it not happening? Then that, then you know that when you say how many minutes it is, and how far it is that you are based on, you know, kind of where the kid is at and where you're trying to get to.

Lindsay
Right. Right, exactly. And I, you know, we've been talking a lot about school, obviously, our kids are, you know, in school a lot of the day, but something that you touched on earlier, the reality for a lot of our kids is they have tons of therapies, right, and little free time. So how can we seek and build friendships outside of school?

Dr. Falvey
For kids to be able to socialize in middle school and high school, they have to be participating in after school programs. When I went to my high school reunions, we didn't talk about chemistry, we talked about what we did at the football games, and what we did at the dances and, you know, that's what was really memorable. And that's what connected us as friends. And so making sure that kids have opportunities to be involved in activities after school, and not be so programmed that they have no opportunity to build those relationships. Yes, it's important for speech and physical therapy, and OT and all the other support services. But it should be done in a balance, so that there's also opportunity for kids to be connected to their school communities.

Lindsay
Right. And if it's a school sponsored activity, then you can have that written into an IEP. And if it isn't, then you can talk to, you know, if your child's a Regional Center client, you can talk to Regional Center about an inclusion aide and supports. So did you want to add anything to that?

Dr. Falvey
Well, I wanted to add that a conversation would be important to have around transportation. To me, it seems like transportation is an interfering variable, because the bus comes at three o'clock and the after school activities start at 3:15. And so what we need to do is to build in transportation that is at 4:15, or five o'clock, whatever time those activities are over, or family has the option to be able to pick their kids up at a later time is really important, because transportation often dictates what kids can and can't get involved in.

Lindsay
It's a really, really good point. I mean, you know, and it's sometimes those like very logistical pieces that are huge barriers.

Dr. Falvey
It’s not a philosophical barrier. It's a practical barrier.

Lindsay
Exactly right. Like, we have to figure out right, and it feels like we should be able to, but if enough of us are talking about it, maybe we can break through, which actually have, you know, leads to the question, you know, we're talking about all this because it's way too common for students to leave high school without strong friendships. And so how can we systemically approach and improve this crucial element of school for our kids? What do we need to be doing?

Dr. Falvey
So again, I think those after school activities are absolutely essential. I know that my joy and my friendships were developed with those after school activities that I was engaged in. And so making sure that they're really meaningful after school activities, and then looking at how do we then get kids together on weekends, and in the evening, or summertime, and have those opportunities so that those relationships carry on. I don't think there's anything so magical around kids without disabilities, that allows those friendships to continue on, we need to make sure that those opportunities and experiences are also available to kids with disabilities, so that we can continue on those kinds of relationships. And I love that we have email and text messaging, and so forth. So we need to make sure that we create an atmosphere where kids can actually connect after school or after they've graduated from high school in ways with their friends. Because as they connect, whether it's Facebook, or email or text messaging, it gives them opportunities to be connected beyond and that's the only way you sustain those relationships.

Lindsay
Absolutely. And I mean, even though we've, of course, been talking about inclusion, because our children are a part of the world. We don't want to overlook the importance of relationships with other peers with disabilities. And I mean, if you could just reiterate why that's important, and how can we find these opportunities outside of therapy clinics?

Dr. Falvey
So I think very strongly that kids with disabilities need to have access to friendship development among kids with disabilities. I know that kids make choices, and maybe don't want to be friends with somebody who's over here and somebody who's over here, but it's their choice. And that's the really important piece of friendship development. So we don't want to limit opportunities, we want to expand opportunities. But when I say limit, I'm referring to segregated classrooms and schools that only involve kids with disabilities, which means you've not allowed for the possibility of building friendships with other kids. If you go to truly inclusive schools, you now have kids with and without disabilities, who are in the array of possibilities of building friendships. And I think those friendships are absolutely powerful and important.

Lindsay
Absolutely. And I will have to say, then, when you have your, your other, you know, mom, friends that have children with disabilities, and you know, I mean, some of your friends, you know, your parents might not have known their parents, but then you know, when you have your people and you know, you're going to be, you know, close to for a long time, you know, your kids are going to be together, right? Like it or not, they might not like it. But I mean, those are also great opportunities for peers. And I love what you said, it's a really important reminder for me, and for everyone, you know, therapies are so important, but like, we all need to, you know, break out and just, you know, chill out and find our people. And, you know, everything you said, so many things that I know, and there's so many questions, and we're going to, you know, we're going to need to do a part two of this. And as we're, you know, going into summer, I know, I'm going to be taking a lot of what you've said, and I you know, thank you so much, you know, Dr. Falvey, just for your time and your expertise. And I know I said this before, but you've spent your professional lifetime and beyond, right, she is supposedly in retirement, but sharing your time with us today. But thank you so much for a lifetime of system building and system breaking, and I mean that in the best way, and supporting our families and our families and children which you know, I know is very personal to you as well in many ways.

So you know, for everyone watching today, you know, just take Dr. Falvey and everything that she said and let's all figure out how we can build our communities, you know, amongst each other and amongst the world, and it is not easy. So let's all keep talking. You're getting lots of things in the chat window, because you always speak to parents in such a way of respect and understanding and I know none of us will ever take that for granted. So thank you so much. And I also just want to say Pam, Tina, Shari, everyone's saying thank you so much for breaking the mold and making new creative solutions happen. She really is, if you don't know about Dr. Falvey look her up, she is, you know, a pioneer. And it's always inspiring to hear and motivating for me and I know for everyone, and for everyone listening, we know that it might feel scary to put your kids out there like we've talked about. And if you do want to partner for your child's strength based IEP or you need help finding inclusive, accessible social opportunities for your child, we are heading into summer as well. Our Undivided Navigators would love to help. Again, check out the information Donna put in the chat. Our mission is to support you so your children can thrive and we want you to thrive too. And if you're not already a member of our Facebook group, please join us, all of us are hanging out in there. This week we're talking about state testing, service dogs, and swimming lessons. So please come and join us. And lastly don't miss next Thursday's Undivided Live, Education advocate Dr. Sarah Pelangka is going to give us a rundown of how we can wrap up our child's academic year. So before you pack for that summer vacation, make sure your IEP is where it needs to be. Donna is gonna put the RSVP info in the chat window. That's next Thursday at 12:30. Thanks again to Dr. Falvey for giving us all kinds of hope and inspiration to get some summer friendships cooking, to Donna and Iris in the chat and especially all of you here. Thanks for stopping by Undivided Live, sending you lots of fun social thoughts for the weekend and for the summer. Have a beautiful weekend everyone.