The Conversation Game - Ep. 050

If you’re looking for a method to teach natural, spontaneous conversation, look no further than The Conversation Game. This episode describes how to improve an often overlooked skill needed for conversation. 

---- Useful Links ----

Conversation Meme 
Gelatin Brain Mold 
Pencil Grips 
Simple Tools Snack Time
Snack Time Social Skills

Get sample goals for conversation at the Free Resource Library thespeechumbrella.com/free

Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission

Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcing The Speech Umbrella

Hello, it's the beginning of a new year and it's also our 50th podcast. Can you believe that? We are so appreciative of our listeners. Without you. We wouldn't be where we are today, which is 3,870 episodes have been downloaded as of today. I'm super excited about that number and I hope you keep on listening. We've got some great stuff planned for 2022. I don't know if you noticed anything different when you listen to the intro, but we have an announcement. We are renaming The Mindful SLP to The Speech Umbrella.

And here are the reasons why. I love, love, love mindfulness. But mindfulness is just part of what we do. Mindfulness is under the umbrella of what we do. We needed to corral all our different names under one brand. The Mindful SLP just started as a way to get you to know about Impossible R Made Possible, and it's grown into so many other things. So now we're bringing in all under The Speech Umbrella. On Teachers Pay Teachers, on our website, we'll all be known as The Speech Umbrella as fast as we can make it happen. Every time I turned around, I was referring to things being under the umbrella, like the phonological awareness umbrella. So it was just a natural new name for our company.

Now, no worries about going to the wrong place. You'll be redirected to the new URL. The old URL will point to the new URL because Dan, my technical wizard makes that stuff happen for me. So it will be a seamless process. And certain big products I have will retain their unique names, such as Essential Language for Autism, Impossible R Made Possible because they describe a methodology. So that's our housekeeping done now onto today's topic.

[00:02:19] The Conversation Game

SLPs, do you find it difficult to teach clients with autism to engage in natural and spontaneous conversation? Do you find yourself thinking it might be even beyond the realm of possibility?

Now I have seen a meme going around recently. It shows a person with autism trying to answer a question. Someone asks, like, how are you something really simple like that? And there's like 20 thought bubbles around this person with autism about not knowing how to respond, about being anxious, about responding and all of this.

And I was like, whoa, if I saw that as an SLP, I be like, forget it. If I had to pop every one of those bubbles, I've had to address every single one of them, there's no way I'd get them to conversation. But what is really interesting is not a single one of those thought bubbles addresses what we're going to talk about today, which is a really, really key factor for helping many clients with autism engage in natural conversation. I'll link to this meme in the show notes. So you can see what I'm talking about. 

So in today's episode, I'm going to share a very effective way to help our clients step into the world of naturally occurring conversation. Now, the clients I'm talking about are those who are verbal, they can converse with someone. They just don't converse well. They're speaking in complete sentences. They're what we used to refer to as Asperger's. So, those are the clients that this works for. 

So you've got that prerequisite being able to engage in conversation to some degree, and also they need to be able to pay attention to what others say. Even if it's minimally. I've done this with a client whose attention was so minimal to what others were saying, that I wonder if it would work, but it did work for him. He could do a little bit of that listening. So it was enough to get his foot on the first step of the ladder. 

 I talked about this on my second podcast and I just want to do an update. I didn't know very much about podcasting and when I did my second one. There's points I've missed. I made it seem really specific to 'this is what you do in an autism group', and that's not actually true. You can do this in so many different settings. It's so flexible. 

 What really made me want to redo this, is a couple of people who have children with autism have told me, that even after speech therapy, their kids still can't converse well. In fact, one of my husband's coworkers has a son with autism and he told him that he thought they kept their son in speech therapy too long. I was like, "Ouch!" Okay. Because their son can only converse on certain topics. And then once that topic is exhausted, he's done. He can't converse anymore.

He thought that speech therapy sort of put his mind on that one-way track, I guess. I was like, oh man, I'm going to redo this. I'm going to do this for all those families out there who are feeling this way, because this can totally be done in a family setting, in a therapy setting, in a teacher / classroom setting. 

So what we're going to cover is where this idea came from. Let me just say, necessity is the mother of invention and sometimes desperation is the mother of invention. I'm going to talk about the basic implementation, how to modify it, some success stories and overcoming some obstacles you might meet when you're implementing this.

[00:05:26] The Genesis of The Conversation Game

How was the conversation game idea born? Soon after I started my own clinic, I started an autism group. I had enough clients at the same age, kind of in the same level that I thought I could do this little autism group.

 We started with a time that we call , Hello Time, a greeting time, when everyone's kind of gathering and getting settled. We to talk about what we do for the day. That was such a disaster. I call it my Hell On Wheels experience. 

Each of these clients, I also saw them individually and they were fine individually. I mean, their behavior was fine, but when I got them in this group and we were just trying to get started, they were just all over the place. I had a kid rolling across the room and I was like, what is going on? One of the children was always first. He always came a few minutes early and I'd usually go out in the waiting room and talk to him while I waited for the other kids to come.

And he would always ask me the same two questions. Every single time he would ask me what day it was, because he came twice a week, once with a group once on his own. And he never remembered, "was it a group day? Was it an individual day?" And the other thing, once he found out that it was a group day, he asked who else was going to be there always, always, always.

 He knew who was in the group. It just struck me. He's got no memory. He has no memory to talk about the events, to remember people's names, to talk about what has happened. And if you have no memory of these things, how are you going to engage in even the simplest kinds of conversations? Boom. 

[00:07:00] Basic Implementation

So that's how the conversation game was born. And all revolves around post-it notes. I'm the queen of post-it notes. I mean, you can use paper. I just use the larger size post-it notes. We gather in a group and I give everyone a post-it note and myself a post-it note and a pencil and say, "I want you to draw something that you did, somewhere you went today or yesterday" or something really recent and they draw it and they hold it up and they talk about it. They share it with the group.

 I have a plastic brain mold. It looks like a brain it's plastic. It's used to make like a jello brain . Okay. Really cool. But you could use anything, a bowl with a picture of a brain on it.

And I say, we're going to put these memories in our brain and I hold up the Post-It Note pictures again. We'll review what Johnny did. What Sarah did. We put them in the brain. And it really emphasize your putting that memory in your brain, too. And they put the brain away and I say, okay, we're going to bring this back out at the end and we're going to see what you can remember and we go on to the rest of what we do for the day.

 Now a couple things to remember while you are modeling, talking about what you did, you're modeling how to be succinct for those kids who go on and on and on. They don't really have so much of a problem remembering what they did. They do have a problem remembering what others do. But, they don't know how to stop talking about what they did.

But, they don't know how to do that succinct things. And of course, in a conversation, people just turn off, they lose the attention. So you're modeling for them how to be succinct, how to use a couple sentences to talk about what you did. You're also modeling for the kids who say almost nothing about what they did. Almost no information. You're modeling how casual conversation works, when ideally every one says something, but not too much and not too little. 

You have to remember what someone talked about in order to comment. Right? So this is helping these kids remember what other people did so they can then comment. So you're working on two things, you're working on them, remembering things that happened to themselves, their own events, if that's an issue with them, and it often is. And also remembering what other people talk about. Here's another little point, which I'm sure many people run into. A play-by-play rehearsal of a video game does not count as conversation. Yes. Playing the video game is something you did. You can say something brief about it, but many kids think that is conversation. I'm going to tell you every little thing that happened in this video game, and of course you lose your audience. That's not good casual conversation.

Now we come to the recall time, which if I'm doing a group, it happens during our snack time. So it's a really like, this is a dinner time conversation. We're having our food. Now let's talk about what people did. So I'll say, do you remember, do you remember what Johnny told us? Do you remember what Melissa told us about and see if they can retrieve these memories and you'll be surprised how difficult it is at first.

So you might need to give some little prompts. You might need to hold up the post-it note and say, oh, remember, this is the picture she drew remember, and then you can gradually fade that and you can just give verbal prompts. The memory is like a muscle. You can actually build their ability to remember what other kids are shared. And then they naturally start to comment on it. This is the fantastic thing. And this was rather unexpected. I was just looking for a way to control the group, but I realized they didn't need prompts to comment on what the other kids were saying when they could remember, and they talked about it during snack time. They started to make comments naturally. So, whoa, that was a big discovery for me. 

It's really critical that there are some lapsed time, talking about it because that's how we engage in casual conversation. We remember things about people after we haven't seen them for a while. So that's what you're helping build. You're helping build that ability to recall something after some lapse time.

[00:10:53] Modifications to The Conversation Game

Let's talk about how to modify this. Suppose you want to do this in a family. Families are so well equipped to know what events happened to help kids build memory for times like yesterday and last week and special occasions. You can do this as a group, as a family. You can do it one-on-one with your child, but let's draw something that happened when we're on vacation or let's draw something that happened yesterday. Parents, you know, your child, so, you know what they're best able to recall, and you can gradually build out from there. You always want to start where they're going to be successful, so if their memory is for something very recent, then that's where you're going to start

 Suppose you're doing this an individual therapy, which I've done many, many times. It's pretty much the same thing. You may not have snack time, but you still have your recall time. Another thing I do is sometimes I get input from parents about what they've done. If they're having a really, really hard time pulling something new, or unique, out of their memory, I can ask the parents so I can prompt them a little bit. 

Another thing I do, if they're interested in writing or starting to get interested in writing I'll do this in individual because we have more time for that. I'll have them draw their picture on top of a paper that has lines underneath, so that the top half of the papers blank, and then you've got your lines underneath. After they draw their picture, we'll write what they did. And they've got a little journal page. I call it a journal page to take home. 

 Now here's a modification that extends their abilities in a group. When they're getting really good at this remembering what other people have done, you can have each child talk about what they did and someone else draws it, like on the white board.

So then they have to be checking with the person who is telling the story. Did he get this right? Is this what you did? And that is really, really cool because now they're using a lot of their brain to listen, to draw, to make sure they get it right, to make sure they get someone else's story right.

Okay. Here's a great, funny story about someone drawing someone else's picture. I had a client who was pretty poor at drawing. I mean, at the beginning, he would only draw two dots and a little half circle for a mouth. He wouldn't even enclose it in a circle for a head. I mean, that's where he was with his drawing capability.

So I was pretty excited when he started to draw stick figures and he started to draw hands. So he was drawing another child's story and he happened to give the child three hands. Well, the other child could see what he was drawing across the table and he was more of the artistic sort and he was like, "He gave me three hands! He gave me three hands! He gave me three hands!" So I was like, "Okay, okay. Let's just calm down. He's doing the best he can." Here I am being super excited that he's even remembered to draw a hand, but that's some of the things that can happen when you have kids draw other people's stories. 

 It's great for perspective-taking. They're taking someone else's perspective when they draw their story.

[00:13:35] Success Stories

So let me tell you some success stories about this. about this One client I had, I mentioned earlier with so inattentive to what other kids said, I didn't even know if he could manage to hang on and do this with the group. And he did. And I remember the first moment he actually remembered what someone else said. It was during snack time and he didn't actually remember what the child had drawn on the post-it note, but this child made some comment about liking apples that crunch, and he looked up like he was electrified and he said, "He likes crunchy apples."

I was like, well, okay, you heard something. Somehow his brains started to recognize that he needed to listen to what other people were saying. And that was his first success. Now this child is telling and writing stories that I tell him. I mean, that's a great, but that was his first big success.

Here's another story. Two kids found out that they had a shared interest. By doing this a shared interest in a TV show or something. And so the one child, the next session brought his lunch box because it had a picture of the characters from this TV show. And he said, I brought this to show Tommy. And I was like, "Whoa! He remembered!" He remembered that the whole week in between that they had a shared interest and something to talk about. And that was really, really cool. That's what we want. . That's the start of casual conversation that leads to friendship.

 Here's another success story. This client, she was individual therapy to start with and she had such a hard time remembering anything that had happened to her. She could always remember something about breakfast though. So we started with just breakfast and going on to lunch and we really had to take baby steps to get her, to expand her memory.

But then her mom told me, she's asking her other therapists, what they had for lunch or what they had for breakfast. So it was transferring. It was transferring to taking an interest in other people and asking them questions, which is again, the start a casual conversation. 

[00:15:37] Overcoming Obstacles

Of course you might run into some obstacles as you're doing the conversation game, which I have one of the big ones for some of them is poor motor control. So drawing for some of these kids is super challenging. I found the best pencil grips. I put a pencil grip in the hand of one of my clients and he could draw. It was very, very simple, basic at first, but he gradually got better and better and better, and he was just able to do it, made him able to participate. So I'll put a link to those pencil grips, which I absolutely love. 

Here's another obstacle that might happen. You might get someone who has figured out what to share, and that's all they want to share week after week after week.

I'm just going to say the same thing. I don't settle for that. If they do it the second week in a row, I'll be like, oh, can you tell me a little bit more, remember something next week, two weeks is as much as I allow. And then they got to come up with something different and they can, you just set that expectation, but I really frame it as "I'm so interested in you. I want to know about you. I want to know what else you did because I love to hear about your life." So a very positive way to tell them they have to come up with something different and it's always worked, even if they had to think for awhile. 

So, when I have a group, I've always had my Rembrandts and my, "I can't even draw a stick figure" clients and no one in between. Isn't that autism? You have to sort of manage the time because you've got the kids who want to make very detailed drawings and that's going to take the whole session. And you've got the kids who, five seconds they're done and they're ready to share. So what you can do is you can spend a little bit of time with a child who made such a brief sketch and talk about how they can extend what they say, helped them, maybe rehearse it.

And then you remind the others that they want to have time to share, because they're all motivated to share. I mean, they really are. They want to talk about what they did. They want to talk about themselves, which is a very human thing. So you just remind them that they need to make it a quick sketch. They can certainly take the post-it note home and finish drawing it at home so that we all have time to share. And that usually works. I already talked about this a little bit, but using prompts to help them succeed if they don't remember what the child that they don't remember, what other kids have shared at the end, you know, you hold it the post-it notes, show them a little picture to help them remember, fade that to verbal prompts.

As I said, even my most inattentive kiddos eventually began to remembering other stories. Some kids just need more time than others. 

And the last thing, your Rembrandts are going to look at the kids who draw poorly and sometimes not understand about being kind about how other people draw. So you just need to explain you're all on your own level and drawing some kids' talent and not others, but we're just doing this so we can remember what to share.

[00:18:27] Memory and Conversation

As I was writing this podcast, I thought of something I hadn't before, but I think it's really worth considering. How do preschoolers begin to converse? It's all centered on them, on their experiences, on what they did. And I'm wondering if we're expecting our clients that we're teaching to do conversation, to jump from, not really remembering how to talk about their own experiences and their own events to being interested in what other people are talking about and holding a conversation with them. I wonder if we're just skipping this whole piece, that preschoolers go through where they talk about themselves. So this is what this conversation game does. It gives them an opportunity to talk about themselves and to figure out how to do that and how to remember it.

 We shouldn't assume that just because someone has a really good memory for, say the facts about trains, we shouldn't assume that they have a really good memory for talking about things that happen to them, for remembering people's names and for remembering names of places, even because oftentimes they don't. In fact, people's names can be a really, really difficult thing for them to remember. And then that makes conversation hard. 

Here's a quote I found by Steve Brunkhorst, who is a life coach, but has been a therapist in the past. "The more often you share what you've learned, the stronger that information will be coming your memory." So I'm taking that and applying it to The Conversation Game. The more often you share your experiences and other's experiences, the stronger, the skill to converse will become.

And this is something anyone can do. A family can do it. A teacher can do it. A therapist can do it. A parent can do it one-on-one. You're helping them build the memory so that they can have conversations. 

[00:20:07] Wrap Up and Helpful Tools

Let's wrap it up here. I just want to review the basic methods.

So the child that comes in at the beginning of the session, or the children at the beginning of your group. Everyone gets a post-it note. You do to, as a therapist. Draw your experience. Model how to talk about it. Put it away. Bring it back at the end and exercise the memory muscle.

Now, I know I talked about snack time and how we do our recall during snack time. Well, I also have a really cool, fun snack time activity board, where someone is the person who acts as the waiter or waitress and nasty other kids, what they want. And we fill out these menu boards. And I just love that as part of snack time, so I'm creating a short video for Simple Tools Under The Umbrella that will show how to do that snack time activity. 

Everything you need to do that activity will be available at Teachers Pay Teachers and on our store. Our new URL is TheSpeechUmbrella.com. And in the free resource library, I have a list of sample goals and there are some that pertain to this Conversation Game activity. So hop on over there and check that out. 

Now, remember when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself. So simple conversation tools work best. What's simpler than a pencil and a piece of paper and maybe a plastic brain. 

Join us next time for an interview with an experienced teacher I love. Her name is Jacquie Johnson. Jacquie is exactly the person I'd want my child or my client to have. She's going to share her perspective on how SLPs is can best support teachers. Jacquie has taught special ed with a focus on autism and regular ed, and she has a wealth of knowledge and caring. Join us next time on The Speech Umbrella.