Martha: Compared to the other videos with the ball and the target touch and the first part of this video, Tink seems more agitated here when the bowl comes out. She bites on the ball, does some stimming, looks around, seems a bit distracted. Eventually leaves.

It is wonderful to see that Tink knows she can stop a session without a meltdown and that Seany is a good observer of her behavior and knows when to stop. Again, this is just a marvelous skill to have.

Are the any other questions or comments?

Joan (reading from webinar chat): This is from Seany, who of course is the expert on all things Tink. “This is exactly what I find is the problem when professionals work with my daughter. They don’t know when to stop and to avoid shutdown and flee.”

Martha: This is where I think TAGteach can play such an important role, because from any professional’s, or parent’s point of view I can understand where they are trying to keep working with the child. You have an hour of therapy or 45 minutes of instruction so as a teacher or a therapist you want to push as much into that 45 minutes as you can. The child may not be able to do that. With TAGteach, when the child shows discomfort and turns away, you can tag that turning away. You can reinforce that turning away and tell her that, “sure it’s OK to turn away”. And as she goes away and does something else, maybe she’ll look at a toy or touch a toy, so in what we used to call that lost down time, instead with TAGteach you can continue to reinforce positive behaviors. They may not be the academic skills or the play skills that you had on your agenda for the day, but the child will still be moving around and doing things. And then you can find those little nuggets of really good behavior that are occurring when the child is relaxing and reinforce those. I think TAGteach not only has a tremendous role in teaching the behaviors, but in helping with the down time. It takes the pressure off the teacher and the therapist, because the break is not lost time. You can use it, but in another way. So I hope more people will think of TAGteach in that aspect, since it is just really wonderful.

Joan (reading from wbinar chat): This is from Teresa Lewin. “Well done Dad! I’m thinking about the hour and the money. If you are working and getting paid for it, you want to make sure that people get the most out of it. Permission to leave is wonderful and it is a win all the way around. Woo hoo!!”

Martha: That is a really big point, the hour and the money and the time allocated and there is so much pressure on the hour for the teacher or the therapist or parent and I think TAGteach can relieve a lot of that pressure.