Parents' Corner
Talking about itRobin Hurd
Those of you who read last month’s article about teaching fire safety to Josh and Caleb, my sons who use AAC and have some anxiety issues, may be curious to hear how it went. This month, I am going to tell you how it went and share some of the words that the boys use to explain the plan.
As you may remember, we had a flow chart to help us organize how we would make the plan and some symbols to cut apart and paste in order to show our final plan. There were a variety of symbols on the worksheet, but we focused on fire safety if a fire were to happen at night, when the boys were in bed.
After we talked through the flow chart, the boys took the symbols that showed their plan and put them in order. Once we had the picture supports in order, we numbered them and began to talk about them. Number one was “loud noise”. We have been working on describing words all year, and this was a good chance to practice this skill again. The second picture showed a person crawling. While mom preferred “get down” for this, the boys enjoyed the rhyming sound of “low is the way to go”. The third picture showed someone at a window. “get out window” was the phrase used here. The final picture was 2 people meeting. We used “meet at tree” as our phrase.
You will notice that almost all of the words we used to talk about fire safety are basic sentence building words or high frequency words. None of these words are “fire” words like fire extinguisher, flames, or even fire truck. We’ll talk more about this later
Since others of you also have children with anxiety issues, you may be wondering how we dealt with Caleb’s anxiety over the discussion of fire. We have been doing our emergency planning in small steps. As I described above, we started with symbols and putting the plan together. We then hung the plan in the play room (not the bedroom) to get used to it. A week later, we had clear weather so we reviewed the plan and took photos as we walked through the steps in the bedroom. We took a photo of the smoke alarm and then set it off. We all got low to the ground in the bedroom and took pictures. Then, momd up the bedroom window and reached in. About this point, Caleb began to get nervous.
People don’t generally come in through the window (especially not with snow on the ground). This was a bit too weird. But we took pictures and I just hung out there talking about who might come in the window to help him, trying to get him used to the idea. He clutched his stuffed animal, but stayed there. (We made Mom the window person on purpose. Mom is the most comforting, and we wanted this to be as easy as possible. Later on, we’ll have other family members and even the neighbor come to the window. He’s not ready for that yet.)
We took these pictures directly to the computer and printed them off immediately. Both boys took their pictures and glued them in order on a small poster board. At this point, Caleb was having fun.
Then we talked about the steps yet again using those high frequency words. As we began to talk about the plan, Caleb got anxious about the window again. So we stopped and asked, “ What should you do if you’re having some feelings?” answer “tell.” Another high frequency word. Caleb then told us “worried and scared”. We briefly talked about why we would use the window, then changed the subject.
When it came time to hang the photo art work, both boys chose to put it in their bedroom. For us, this was a sign that Caleb wasn’t too anxious. The photo version of the plan remains in the bedroom and the boys look it over from time to time. The part of this plan that helps Caleb the most is knowing where he will be once he leaves the house (at the tree). He finds this comforting, because he did NOT want to end up sitting in a fire truck!!! He also continues to think long and hard about going out the window.
Here is the list of words the boys used when talking about fire safety: loud, noise, get, low, is, the, way, to, go, out, window, meet, at, tree, tell, worried, and, scared, help, one, two, three, four. The amazing thing about this list is that we didn’t use one word about fire, but they clearly explained the plan.
At times like this when I collect a language sample of what words the boys actually used to talk about a subject, the power of those simple little words we use every day really shows up. When talking about this new topic, we didn’t need to learn a list of new words. Simple basic words got the point across quite well. When we are working on new idea and pushing the edges of comfort with anxiety problems, not needing to worry about new words too is a big help for all of us.
As those of you with anxious children know, we aren‘t done with our safety training yet. We will go over the plan again throughout the year, as the seasons change and the view out the window looks different. Eventually, we want to take the boys out the window. If an emergency should occur, we don’t want panic to make it difficult to get them to safety. Each time we go over the plan, we’ll use the same simple words that we use every day to explain what will happen.
Choosing those same everyday words does 2 things for us: It makes the new and different situation seem less unfamiliar and it also allows the boys to more easily talk about the new situation, without having to learn a bunch of brand new words that will only be used during a fire drill. I think of high frequency words as “comfort words”. They are the familiar words we all read, hear and say every day. In an unfamiliar setting, these words can be as comforting as a favorite meal at the end of a hard day.
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