Parents' Corner
February 2009
I Can get some Satisfaction …
The Art of Negotiatingby Robin Hurd
The Rolling Stones point out to us one of the realities of life in their song ” I Can’t Get no Satisfaction”. The singer tells us that he tries and tries, but still “can’t get no satisfaction.” Why not? He needs to learn the art of negotiating!
“mom, can I have some Kool-Aid?”
“Not in the living room. I don’t want it to stain the carpet.”
“OK. Can I have some sprite?”
In this typical conversation between a mom and a child, negotiating happened. While some children can negotiate so much that it drives their parents crazy, learning to negotiate is a skill that children who use AAC can and should develop.
Negotiating is finding a way to get some satisfaction, even if you can’t have everything you’d like. Being able to negotiate helps you to get along in a world where the unexpected happens. It allows you to enjoy some satisfaction and a sense of control, even when you don’t have quite enough control to have everything go your way.
How can we teach children who use AAC to negotiate? We start when we give choices. Choices can take 2 forms. Our kids can choose between 2 things: “Do you want to have grilled cheese or tuna salad sandwich for lunch?” But we also give choices when doing a task is optional. “Do you want to come to the store with me?”
Learning how to make choices is the beginning of negotiating, because our children learn that there ARE options in life and they learn that they can select one that appeals to them the most.
The next step to learning to negotiate is being able to initiate a conversation about what you need: “I need to go to the bathroom”, “I am hungry”, “I want a cookie”. Spontaneous comments about needs are important to negotiating because it shows that our children can identify and communicate what they want without our help to start the conversation. When they negotiate with us, they’ll need to offer a spontaneous suggestion for something they’d like.
The third thing our children will need is a sense of what might be an acceptable compromise. In the example where mom doesn’t want something to stain the carpet, the child must understand mom’s viewpoint (no colored drinks in the carpeted living room) and must be able to come up with a solution that’ll be acceptable to mom. There are several choices that might work: drinking something clear in the living room (sprite or water) or drinking Kool-Aid in a different place.
Learning about what might be acceptable to another happens in 2 ways: through understanding the rules and through being able to take another person’s viewpoint. If the mom in our example has always had a hard and fast rule about no colored drinks in the living room, it will be pretty easy to understand what might be an acceptable compromise. In some other situations, knowing what will work as a compromise may be tougher. In our house, Joshua really likes to watch videos with bad characters in them. Caleb, however, can get really scared by these videos. Negotiating a compromise when Josh wants a “bad guy” video and Caleb is scared involves Josh knowing that Caleb likes. For Caleb, who likes videos about trucks, getting to a compromise involves knowing what Josh likes (and it’s NOT those truck videos!).
Ideally, both boys independently negotiate with each other until they find a video that is OK with them both. Reality is that they are still in the process of learning to do this. So I’ll use them as an example of how we can work toward independence on this skill.
Josh and Caleb are both able to make choices and to initiate a conversation about something they want or need. So we are working hard on the final step: understanding the other’s perspective and negotiating a compromise.
After school, our routine is to watch a video and unwind a bit before homework, supper, etc. So both boys know that as soon as snack is over they can begin to “work out a deal” with each other. Someone will suggest a video—usually before we ask. The other boy will either respond with a resounding “yes” or will say “NO” and the negotiations (or the yelling) begin.
Mom: It sounds like Josh wants to watch “sleeping beauty but Caleb doesn’t. We need to find a video that everyone wants to watch. Can you think of a different video?” Caleb then suggests a video about trucks. Josh says “No”. Caleb yells.
Mom: “Caleb suggested a truck video but Josh doesn’t like truck videos. So we’ll need a different idea.”
Josh suggests the magic school bus video about the “bad girl”. Caleb counters with the magic school bus video about the butterfly. No yelling now. He’s starting to see that he’ll get some satisfaction if he keeps talking. Josh suggests the magic school bus video about the bees, and Caleb agrees.Mom:” Good idea guys! You both like the magic school bus video about the bees. Let’s get it”.
In adult life, negotiations happen all of the time. I want to buy a bottle of water, but the airport store has none. So I suggest orange juice. None of that, either. The cashier suggests grapefruit juice. I agree.
The school calls to set up an IEP meeting. I have an appointment at that time. So I suggest a new time that day. They are booked and suggest a different day but the same time. I agree.
Can you imagine how these daily interactions might go if I didn’t know how to negotiate?
Building skills needed to negotiate successfully into the IEP can certainly be appropriate. For students who are beginning to plan for the transition to adulthood, it can be critical. As young adults, they may be living, working or spending their day with people outside of their own family. They will find that things don’t always go the way they’d like them to. Unfamiliar communication partners may not be able to figure out what’s wrong. Without the ability to negotiate, frustration, and anger can spill over into behaviors that only make the situation worse.
The more chances our teens have to experience the reality of “can’t get no satisfaction” and to find ways to work around it, the better they will get at coping with life’s realities.
There are 3 targets for IEP goals when building negotiation skills: start with the area where your child is weak, and work you way through the process. The first is making choices. Being given meaningful choices is the starting place for negotiating. Too often, students with disabilities don’t have chances to make choices their regularly developing peers do. When to use the bathroom, how to spend money, what foods to eat and even what order they must eat them in may be dictated to them. At some point, however, we have to get our students comfortable making these choices themselves.
This type of meaningful choice making can be built into the IEP. Here is an example goal: “Given opportunities to make choices leading to self determination (ex: which lunch option to eat), the student will communicate his choice using the AAC system with reduced levels of prompting.”
The second step in learning to negotiate is initiating conversations about something you want or need. We can support initiation by “playing dumb”. Here’s an IEP goal: “Given daily situations where the staff doesn’t provide the desired materials as a choice, the student will initiate a request for their preferred item(s) with reduced levels of prompting”. To carry out this IEP goal, the student may be ready to do an activity about money. But the teacher hasn’t brought the box with the money to the table. The teacher follows the prompting order set out in the IEP (as an addendum) until the student lets the teacher know what needs to happen. The teacher is charting how many prompts and what kind are needed, and progress is documented by the need for less prompts when the student finds herself in this situation.
The third step is understanding what may be an acceptable compromise. Students can work on identifying whether a person in a social story would like or not like a given compromise. Here’s an IEP goal: “given social stories involving the need to reach a compromise, the student will identify solutions that the main character would like or not like with reduced levels of prompting.” An example story might be ”Mary goes to McDonalds. She likes shamrock shakes. But they don’t have them right now. She can: a) not drink anything b) have a vanilla shake instead c) try a cappuccino.” This goal is written with reduced levels of prompting as the criteria, because there may not be “right” answer to the social story. The key isn’t choosing what good behavior is or getting a “right “ answer, but being able to make a quick decision when you can’t have what you really wanted. Making that decision can be really tough. So prompting will be needed at first. But we know we are being successful when the prompting can be lessened and the decision can still be made.
The real success occurs when our kids are out in the community and run into one of these situations in real life. Instead of getting upset when McDonalds no longer sells shamrock shakes, we see our children working out a deal with themselves to get some satisfaction even they can’t have everything they wanted. They are negotiating! They CAN get some satisfaction! Life is good after all!
As always, feel free to e-mail me at parents@aacinstitute.org with any questions or comments.
NEW!
AAC ConsumerNet ----- Check it out!http://www.aacinstitute.org/AACConsumerNet
Your feedback is always valued. parents@aacinstitute.org.
