Parent Support University: Week 24

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Hello AnswersNow, family and friends. Welcome to our latest edition of our parents support university, where we demystify all things, ABA. I'm Adam Dreyfus. I am the chief science officer and one of the co-founders of AnswersNow what's AnswersNow, why am I listening to this guy? Well, AnswersNow is an app or also a platform you can access it through your computer that connects you directly to your own BCBA. What's a BCBA? Well, this guy's a BCBA. It means board certified behavior analyst means we are certified to practice a behavior analysis, although states have their own kind of things going on. The main thing that we are known for is being an expert in ABA applied behavior analysis which is the most recommended intervention package for individuals diagnosed with autism to help increase good skills and decrease behaviors that are not working for them.

Speaker 1 (00:59):

And that's important to note behaviors that are not working for them, not necessarily for us, but for them that are preventing them from doing things. The way I think of it as kind of making their world small, how do we make their world big? You know, so they can do as many things as possible. So yeah, I am Adam Dreyfus, chief science officer of AnswersNow you can learn a lot more about us at getanswersnow.com just go to the website or you can go to the app store and download our app. So there's lots of ways that you can learn about there's a lot of these videos, we've got a little YouTube channel now. I don't know if you know all these pictures behind me. These are my son painted most of these and he's a big fan of YouTube videos.

Speaker 1 (01:40):

And he was telling me the other day that I need more likes and more subscriptions. And he didn't know that I had a YouTube channel. So I showed it to him, the AnswersNow channel, I didn't even think about it before. And it blew his little dome. He actually leaned over and he clicked it. He goes, you got another like that dad the world, these kids are growing up in. So today we're going to be talking about time delay. Now, this is one of those things that sounds like it makes a lot sense, like time delay, like I understand time delay, but if I said to you mom, or dad or uncle or grandpa, Hey, there's this really great intervention called time delay that can really help you out with your son or daughter, time delay. Sure. Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:23):

What does that mean? Like how does that work? So that's what we're going to unpack a little bit today. Just to remind everybody what we're doing is we're going through all the evidence-based practices in this parent support university, man, are we full of acronyms BCBA, ABA, PSU. So NPDC, the National Professional Development Center, about 10 years or so ago, a series of universities came together and was like, listen, this is trying to be a parent of a child with autism is really overwhelming. And what makes it more of a, is this just new information all the time? Here's a new drink, here's a new book, a new video, here's a new thing. So you're like, what do we know? Works? Evidence-based practices, things that have been tested over and over and have been demonstrated to result in what it is they say that they're going to resulting, usually in the case of autism more language, better social skills and reduced maladaptive behaviors.

Speaker 1 (03:19):

So usually one of those three things is what the evidence-based practice is pointed at. So we've gone through, I dunno, 20 something of them so far we're getting towards the end where it T time delay. So we'll be talking. Yeah, it is one of my favorite subjects. I'm going to get a little out of my lane. Cause what they mean by time delays, they mean like a prompting strategy, a strategy that you would use to help a child who is struggling to learn in, you know, the normal way, which is essentially just a trial and error, right? Like most of us learned you go into school, you take a test, you get some right, you get some wrong. They tell you the ones that you got wrong, you correct. It that's called a correction procedure. And so that's the way most of us learn you get some right and you get some wrong, you learn which ones are right.

Speaker 1 (04:04):

You learn which ones are wrong and you correct yourself as you go along. Unfortunately a lot of our kids don't learn great like that, where you just sort of put them in a normal learning environment. They lack some of the core skills that neuro-typical kids, lack is the wrong word. They have deficits in some of those skills that makes it a more of a challenge for them to just like learn in a classroom. We learned a long time ago. You can't just take a kid with autism and put them in a class full of typical kids and they learn all that stuff. But we do know that you can take a typical kid, put them in a classroom and they will learn all that stuff. So one of the techniques that has been developed over the last 30, 40 years is time delay, time delays.

Speaker 1 (04:49):

And I'm going to go through both sort of definitions of it. One is not so much the Adam definition, but a slightly different take on what we mean by a time delay. And the other one is the very strict, you know, like what does it mean as a prompting strategy? And that's how we're going to refer to it here. For the most part, you can learn a lot more about this. So the National Professional Development Center has a website site. You can go to it and they actually have made these free modules. And it's one of the reasons that we chose this resource because God knows we're spending enough money on all kinds of things, is it is. It's nice to have some stuff that's free. So you can go to the website, they call them the afirm modules, A F I R M just like the regular, afirm, just with one F and they've got them there.

Speaker 1 (05:36):

It takes about an hour and a half, two hours to go through each one. So I think it was 24, 25. So it can take you a while to go through all of them. And that's really, I mean, it's almost like the whole toolkit that a board certified behavior analyst would use and here's the rub. And this is what AnswersNow was really why we, why we developed it is that all this information is out there and there's all kinds of parent and stuff like that. And yet Jeff and I, the other co-founder of AnswersNow, he worked at an in home. I run a big school where like, even our parents who have access to really great staff, right? People who are coming into your home and helping you out, or your kid gets to go to this great school, that's run by people who really know what they're doing, and they can get great gains.

Speaker 1 (06:18):

These parents super stressed out, really overwhelmed very isolated. And so we're like, how do we help this out? How do we help connect them? And so that's where AnswersNow came from. We want to kind of bend the curve a little bit and make parents feel a little bit less stressed out a little less overwhelmed. Feel like they got somebody in their pocket. I'm like, you know, that's why I held up the phone, right? Like you had a BCBA in your pocket that you can text or video chat with when you're like, Hey, why is my kid doing this? Or how can I get them talking more? Or I don't understand why he does this thing when we go to the park or I'm really afraid to take him to church. What, every time we go to a restaurant, it's a disaster. We got you. We can help. So check us out, getanswersnow.com talking about time delay. So let's look at it from the way that the National Professional Development Center means it first. So it's a prompting strategy. So think of it like this. If so, I'm going to use some of my for those of you who are familiar with almost said paw patrol.

Speaker 2 (07:22):

Yikes, glad my kids

Speaker 1 (07:23):

I'm here. I'd be in trouble. PJ masks. This is of course outlet. One of the heroes of PJ man

Speaker 2 (07:29):

Backed up into the night to save the day.

Speaker 1 (07:32):

Favorite little go-tos. So let’s say I am trying to teach somebody that this is all wet. So I would normally like, if it was a neuro-typical kid, I'd say, Hey, who is this? And they'd say, Batman, I'd say, no, that's not bad. It's Outlet. And that is about as much correction procedure as most kids take. Oh, okay. It's not that man. It's all wet. And I might try it again. So, Hey, what is it?

Speaker 2 (07:57):

Outlet that's right. Hey, that's work.

Speaker 1 (07:58):

That's what we call general case teaching just a regular way that most people sort of learn things, trial and error. Now time delay, you can either do a zero second time delay, which means, man, this kid's really struggling to learn the name of this character. And I might've selected this character because they liked the videos. They watched them a lot. They liked the books. So it's nice to pick things that are very contextual for the kid that are in their world and have meaning for them. That, so you have some motivation. So a zero second time delay will look like this. Who's this outlet, right? No seconds to get the wrong answer. There's no opportunity for them to get the wrong answer. So this is also known, this is there's a, there's a, it's also known as errorless teaching. So there's no way for someone to make an error.

Speaker 1 (08:50):

So this would be zero second time delay. Right? So who is this Outlet bang, right? Like that. One second time delay is exactly what it sounds like. Who is this? Outlet. So you give them a little bit of an opportunity to get the answer or to give you an answer. But what we're trying to do is cut down on the errors, right? And cut down on the frustration, because if you just keep doing it and they're not getting it, you're going to get more and more and more and more frustration. And this is where a lot of the, sort of the behaviors come from is that the kid is either being asked to do something. They already know the answer to. So if I'm asking them, Hey, who is this? And I'm like, I'll let bro, like, you've asked me that a thousand times, I know what Outlet is.

Speaker 1 (09:36):

Or they have no idea or they just can't, they can't do it. And so both are very frustrating and both frankly are a driver of so many of the behaviors that we see, especially in schools and instructional settings is called the Goldilocks thing. It's either too hard or too easy. It's not just right. You want to find that sort of learning level where it's a little hard for them, but not too hard. So zero second time delay, who is this Outlet one second time delay, who was this outlet two second times away, who is this outlet three second time delay, who is this? Outlet.

Speaker 1 (10:15):

So usually you use those kinds of an order, right? You try to play around with them a little bit. This is why just pointing you at the National Professional Development Center website and saying, Hey, take the one and a half hour module on time, delay it, doesn't show you all of these things. So we're gonna go to another one here, our little friend, those of you who are familiar with PJMs know exactly who this is. Catboy. The second kind of time delay I want to talk about is giving them enough time. And this is pointed at you parents and grandparents and stuff. So what I just went through, it was kind of like the very clinical structured way to use time delay. You'll see that in the in-home settings and clinic kind of based stuff, it's difficult for parents to really grasp, not grasp, but get good at without lots and lots of practice.

Speaker 1 (11:14):

And so this is where parent training comes in. This is like, if somebody is doing this with your child, they should be showing you how to do it so you can replicate it when you're interacting with them. So here's another kind of time delay, same sort of idea. Do you want to get, you want more language? You want more sort of interaction. So instead of having like a really set time in your head, another way of thinking of this is latency, right? Giving them enough time to answer. And I'll give you a perfect example of what I mean by this. So I was working in a classroom in a, in a small school and they said that this kid doesn't talk. But he can listen really well. And but we're really, we're really working on language, so.

Speaker 1 (11:59):

Okay. Well, that's great. Can you show me what that looks like I said? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So they sat the kids down and they said who is this? Who is this? This is cat boy. This is cat boy. It's cat boy, C a T B O Y cat boy, it's cat boy, who is this cat boy? I was like, okay fair enough. Like that, that's good. That's, you're interacting with him. You're engaging with him. But he was not responding. So I said, let me just try something here and see what we can do. So I built in a little time till I wanted to see, maybe this kid just responds much slower than you were used to because we're so used to just really somebody said something, somebody said something back, somebody said something, somebody said something back. And a lot of our kids on the spectrum have a little, they need a little bit more time built in. So I actually had a ball, but we're going to do capital. I said to him, who is this?

Speaker 1 (13:01):

Cat boy. Teachers freaked out, Oh my gosh. He taught them how to talk. You're the kid whisper? And I said, no, no, no, that's not what happened here. I said this kid, and it's probably not exactly accurate, but a lot of kids have very specific sort of time delays latencies between when you ask them something or expect an answer and how long it takes them to answer. His was roughly seven seconds, which in conversational tones, like for you and me is for forever. So no one had ever waited. So it turned out. He had quite a bit of language, but nobody's waiting seven seconds for it. They just move on and he sees the move away or they ask something else and it kind of resets. So those two things are what I would like you to kind of take out of this video.

Speaker 1 (13:43):

One is when you ask somebody on the spectrum, a question, whether it's an adult or a child or whatever and they're looking at you, right? Like you have attention and you feel pretty confident that they've kind of heard you wait, be patient. Probably not. It can be seven seconds the longest sort of latency that I think I've seen for a kid who would reliably answer if you waited was almost 20 seconds and it was crazy to watch, like I'm not going to do it right now because it's just it 20 seconds you think, Oh, it goes so fast. But waiting for a response for somebody for 20 seconds feels like ages, seven seconds felt like ages. So two things, one build in some delays of your own when you ask somebody and keep it really short, right? What your questions are. We, we tend to talk too much.

Speaker 1 (14:28):

I'm totally guilty of that. And the other one is the time delay like the, as an evidence-based practice, it's a prompting strategy. It's a tool to try from zero second, right? The kid has a, it's a, it's an airless moment. To one second to two seconds to three seconds, you generally don't see much beyond three seconds in, of kind of prompting and giving them the answer. But I'm sure that there's exceptions to that. But for the most part, the protocols are around zero one, two, three seconds. You select one that you think will result in the child learning faster. So there you have it there's time delay as an evidence-based practice and as a sort of a conversational strategy for you to have we thank you very much for taking some time to check out this video.

Speaker 1 (15:21):

Feel free to shoot us a note, especially, I was thinking about this the other day, if there's a topic or something that you would like to know more information on it, it doesn't have to be an evidence-based practice. It can be an article you read, it can be a show that you're watching and say, Hey, I've got some questions about this. I might be a little nervous about asking. I guarantee you, lot of people are probably thinking that same question. So we'd be happy to do that. Hopefully you and your family are staying safe. We highly recommend wearing masks and washing your hands and maintaining social distancing. And hopefully we'll be on the other side of this sooner rather than later. Because I know that the pressure on parents and caregivers of individuals with autism and a variety of disabilities is just brutal right now. All the routines are out the door. A lot of the supports are not there. So check us out, getanswersnow.com. We're here to help and we hope you and your family are doing well.