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KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Episode 56: Strengthening Cognition Through Gaming. A Conversation with Anna Vagin
Discover how games can revolutionize the way we support children with social cognitive differences in our engaging conversation with Dr.Anna Vagin. Anna takes us on her journey into the world of social cognition, sharing her expertise in working with children on the autism spectrum, children with ADHD, and other communication challenges. Learn how attachment theory plays a crucial role in understanding these differences and how parents and educators can shift their perspectives to better support unique communication styles. Anna's personal anecdotes highlight the transformative power of empathy, offering insights into creating inclusive environments for diverse learners.
We delve into practical strategies for making game nights an enjoyable and educational experience for the whole family. Discover how games can become powerful tools for teaching emotional intelligence and social growth. We share tips on adapting complex games for neurodivergent children, creating a safe space for emotional learning, and encouraging post-game discussions to enhance children's emotional intelligence. With Anna's wisdom and experience, this episode is packed with valuable tools and strategies to make your next family game night not just fun, but a meaningful learning opportunity for everyone involved.
More About Our Guest
Anna Vagin, PhD, is a licensed speech/language pathologist with over 30 years of experience. In her private practice in Marin County, California, she provides individual sessions and social learning groups to children, young adults, and their families. Her particular interests are using media and gaming, including Therapeutically Applied Role-Playing Games, to support students with social cognition and language differences, and the role of mental processes in communication, relationships, and life satisfaction.
She provides consultation to parents and schools, is a frequent US and International speaker, and a prolific writer/contributor on topics related to social cognition.
Connect with Anna
Website: https://www.socialtime.org/
Instagram: annavagin.sociallearninglabs
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About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
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that build skills, that build cognitive process, that support students in thinking and noticing and realizing, and that vocabulary is so important for life.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling, the motivation, curiosity and mental well-being of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 3:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. How do you feel about playing games in your house?
Speaker 2:Board games, oh man, I we've talked about my relationship with play before, right, so it's not, it's not great because I'm misproduct, I'm just misproductivity. It's like is this a? I just feel like with games you can be more. Yeah, so this is why I like board games Cause it's like, okay, I can. It's like a more discreet task that I can feel like with games you can be more productive. Yeah, so this is why I like board games because it's like, okay, I can. It's like a more discreet task that I can feel like I'm doing something instead of like let's play Cupcake Unicorn Land, where I get a little bit lost in like a lack of productivity there. So I really like games and I like never like I just want to buy all of the games, so I love it. Our family plays games all the time, but they can be contentious. I have some kids who handle failure and like losing better. We get hurt feelings and but I also see how much it makes them grow and builds their relationships. What is gaming like at your house?
Speaker 3:I love buying all the games as well. However, I have PTSD from playing games because I have children that are very intense and they really get into it. So I cannot wait to talk to our guest today. Her name is Anna Vagan. She's a licensed speech language pathologist with over 30 years of experience in her private practice in Marin County, california. She provides individual sessions and social learning groups to children, young adults and their families. Her particular interests are using media and gaming, including therapeutically applied role-playing games, which I can't wait to figure out. What that is to support students with social cognition and language differences and the role of mental processes in communication, relationships and life satisfaction. She provides consultation to parents in schools, is a frequent US and international speaker and a prolific writer contributor on topics related to social cognition. Okay, let's go talk to Anna. Hi Anna, welcome to the Kindled podcast. We are so excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 1:I am very happy to be here and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:Of course, okay, so let's dive right in. Tell us a little bit about your background. What is your? Why in the work that you're doing in the world?
Speaker 1:Well, just like Katie, I am a speech-language pathologist and when you start your training you start broad and then over the years you kind of find your niche, you find where you're supposed to be and I was working a lot with kids and with adults and kind of doing a lot of that broad therapy work and then I decided to go back and get my doctorate and that was a real turning point for me and I had the real pleasure of studying with Mary Main over at UC Berkeley, who was kind of the person who brought attachment theory from England here to America, from John Bowlby, so worked a lot on attachment theory and craniofacial disfigurement and child language, and so that was kind of an interesting compilation wrote my dissertation on mother-child interaction with babies with cleft lip and palate and as I then got into my career, part of what I realized was that a good thing for the world is that the incidence of cleft lip and palate is not very high.
Speaker 1:What that means if you're a speech language pathologist is that I started looking for other areas where I felt I was a good fit and really with all of the work in attachment theory I was really diving into relationships. What made relationships move forward what made relationships more challenging to establish the role of language in that, and then over the years ended up with the population of kids who have social cognitive differences, whether they have autism spectrum or ADHD or anxiety disorder, selective mutism a real broad range kind of falls under that umbrella and I have just been so happy there working with amazing students and families and really found my niche right there, and so I've been so happy there probably now for about 25 years.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. I love that you call it social cognitive differences instead of disorder, because it really is a difference in the way that they communicate. My home is filled with lots of the kids that you work with and it's sometimes it is challenging, but also I feel like they've taught me so much about communication number one relationship and they just see the world differently, so I can see how you are drawn to working with kids like that.
Speaker 1:And part of it, I think just picking up on what you're saying, adrian is that ability. You know, we often as clinicians and as parents and as adults, are pretty egocentric ourselves. We don't have that perspective taking to think well, wait a minute, let me look at it from your perspective, from your position, and once we can shift that lens, it's really interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and what for me, it went from this. I had to really look at my role as a parent, instead of seeing myself as someone that's controlling or you know, cause? One of my sons is PDA and so I can't give him demands in the way that traditional parenting styles tell us. If you're a good parent, your kid behaves and your child will do this. Well, guess what? That doesn't work for him, so it's really helped me go okay, have true empathy and look at it from his point of view. And then I go into so many different micro schools and I go into so many different micro schools and I'm around so many different kids and it's really allowed me to have empathy for all humans really and look at it from their perspective, which is really beautiful.
Speaker 1:And micro schools really give us that opportunity to individualize more, to be more empathic, to individualize more, to be more empathic, to help our students self-advocate as they get older.
Speaker 1:So they have the tools to say this is what I need and this is how you can help me get there.
Speaker 1:And we can also supply our students with tools that might say you is where you are now and you're happy there, but maybe there are options when you're ready, to look beyond where you are now, to map that out visually so they can see alternatives, and to see them visually rather than being told and talked to about it.
Speaker 1:One of the things I talk about a lot in my writing and in my trainings is the need to provide so many of these students with visual information that just talking it is not enough. It's easier for them to see it. It's easier for them to see it. They can keep it in working memory, whether it's a sketch or a list or a write-up of some sort or a continuum that shows them options. Those visual supports are so important, maybe especially for those kiddos who have a lot of language, because so often I get the pushback of but they don't need visual. They're so chatty, they talk all the time. And yes, they might talk all the time, but that doesn't mean that they can keep complicated, abstract social information in working memory while they think about it and learn about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, modeling is really important too. So seeing it in visually, but then also having people around them modeling those behaviors is really huge as well.
Speaker 2:So I want to kind of pull us back a little bit. I think some of our listeners maybe aren't quite sure where they're not so familiar with this world as we are. So can you just like go back a little bit and talk about the type of kids that you work with and how, how, like bridge the gap? But so often so, as a speech language pathologist, I find you know therapeutic or like what am I trying to say Methods of practice and interacting with kids that are really helpful. And then, nine times out of 10, I think this is good for all kids, this isn't just for kids who are neurotypical or anything like that. So kind of bridge that gap for us. How can we, as adults and parents, start to think about helping kids with this social interaction piece?
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that I always try to keep in mind is that whenever we're working with kids, it doesn't matter how old they are.
Speaker 1:We want them engaged in the learning and most of the time that means it needs to be interesting and fun, especially as kids get older and when we're working with students who have maybe perspective-taking differences or challenges, identifying you know how the behavior of one affects the behavior and feelings of other, what we want to do is to make sure that they're interested in the material, that they're interested in the material and in my work.
Speaker 1:You know I'm kind of known for, you know the woman who watches animated videos and uses animated videos to make the point, to make the lesson, to say let's talk about, if we're talking about something like flexibility, which is a big issue for lots of kids and lots of grownups, I know too. You know we can say wow, flexibility is really complicated, depends on where you are, who you're with, what's happening. It's so abstract. Let's talk about it as we watch examples of interesting, cute characters in a wonderful story demonstrating flexibility. Let's talk about what's happening that's working, maybe some little glitches that come up in their interaction. Let's just talk about it in a fun and relaxed way, rather than saying I heard you weren't very flexible yesterday. No one's going to want to have that discussion.
Speaker 3:I've never said that before.
Speaker 1:So when we can find the back door the back door being more fun, more engaging, where we want our students sitting up and taking notice and laughing, but then also saying, oh, you know what? That kind of happened to me. I kind of felt like that. Then we've had the discussion develop organically and we're off to the races because they feel safe, they feel like they're not alone, they feel like they're relating to the characters. And then we could take the next step when we're talking about tools and strategies. And then we could take the next step when we're talking about tools and strategies, finding examples of strategies being used in an animated video and saying, well, that worked for that character, do you think it would work for us? I think that's a really practical way of making the learning fun.
Speaker 1:You know what happens as students get older. They've seen a lot of the materials they come in and they, you know, they might say in September I know that program, I do that all the time. Oh, I've done all those worksheets, I did that in kindergarten. We have to show them something new, something exciting, and that's why I think in one of our first conversations we talked about the power of games, because games, you know I don't know if you feel like this, katie, but when I was going through my training, games were the break from the learning totally, and now games are the learning, because we can channel a fabulous game to work on so much that's involved in social engagement. We can work on regulation. We can work on flexibility and cooperation and managing feelings and conversation, tolerating mistakes in ourselves and in others. We can work on levels of competitiveness how do we handle and manage competitiveness? How can we be more resilient? It's all wrapped up in so many engaging and fun activities that we can harness in our work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in your work you call this therapeutically applied role playing games, is that? I mean there's lots of different games, but can you kind of tell us about these applied role playing games that you use in your work a little bit more?
Speaker 1:Sure. Therapeutically applied role-playing games are a very specific format of games. The most commonly known role-playing game is D&D Dungeons Dragons. However, about 10 years ago I met Adam Davis and Adam Johns up at Game2Groworg up in Seattle. I met them when I was presenting at the PAX convention on gaming and students with social learning differences and they have developed a therapeutically applied role-playing game called Critical Core and for any of your listeners who are interested in RPGs and role-playing games possibly they are dungeon masters they need to look into Critical Core. It is an amazing, a powerful way to work with our students. I was able to go through their mental health training program and get certified. Critical core works on five core capacities. Here's your quiz.
Speaker 1:Let's see if I know them all off the top of my head. I have to use my fingers Regulation, collaboration, planning or executive function perspective taking and pretend play. And when I heard those core capacities I was like, wait a minute, that's exactly what I do. I need to learn about this. So critical core is a quest, unlike D&D. There are pre-made characters, so you take on a character. There are pre-made characters, so you take on a character. So I might be an elf wizard or a half orc barbarian and I can give my character a name. I can create their backstory, but they have certain strengths and weaknesses and the clinician, as the dungeon master, takes the group through a quest.
Speaker 1:And I have seen I was a beta tester for Critical Core during Shelter-in-Place and boy did it save me clinically. Because it was a wonderful program to test during Shelter-in-Place because we were all stuck at home with our families and this allowed the kids I was seeing in group to go. It was like we went on a vacation for an hour and it was fabulous. But the game itself I've seen it really change students in how they think about themselves. It allows them the opportunity to experiment, being a little different and getting the feedback from the group in wow, we really wow. You're not just throwing bombs anymore, you're starting to you know, talk to people we meet along the. You're not just throwing bombs anymore, you're starting to talk to people we meet along the way, instead of assuming everybody is an enemy.
Speaker 1:It was such a powerful influence on my clinical work, not just when I'm playing critical core, it applies to all of my clinical work now. It's made me a much better clinician because I think it's opened me up a little bit more to how can I be even more fun? Because, again, especially as our students get older, they really need to be engaged and feel safe and respected and supported, but also like doing the work is fun, because what we want them to experience is that sense of wow. I really am connected to somebody right now. I'm part of this group right now and it feels really great. I want more of this and it looks like I'm actually kind of okay at it, that I'm being successful. I'm doing something different. It might be challenging me, but wow, I'm kind of hanging in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's that's like we talk a lot about self determination theory, where I'm just like you're creating the perfect little recipe here, Like they're feeling this feeling of belonging and relatedness, community, they're feeling competence and then they're making, you know, independent, creative choices and that's giving them a sense of autonomy and like that's going to be really, really healthy for the brain to sit in that state, in that state of flow, with all of those things present. So that's we've. We've been talking about their role-playing. What other like categories of?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, they're all useful. This is a very exciting time in games Because I'm in private practice, I'm able to use video games in my practice and I really lean toward the Xbox Kinect, which, if you don't know your gaming systems, the Kinect is the one where you move your body and the avatar on the screen moves, and so that means that my kids can play beach volleyball, they can play soccer, they can do all kinds of sports. Pixar has a wonderful Pixar Rush Connect game where you're the Incredibles and you have to solve these problems and work together. So I love using video games again because it builds resilience, it builds the ability to interact while you're doing something. I love card games and tabletop games and penguin flicking games, and I have lists of penguin flicking games.
Speaker 3:Hold on. What is that?
Speaker 1:It's wonderful. It won all the awards. Maybe now, maybe it was even before covid ice cool or cool ice I always get the two words. I'm not sure which one comes first. Uh, there's ice cool and ice cool two. This is a penguin flicking game katie are you?
Speaker 2:familiar with this? No, I'm not, but my, my nine-year-old, loves penguins and games, so I'm very intrigued.
Speaker 1:This is a great game. It's a box in a box in a box game. So you put together all these boxes with clips and you make a school that has doorways and you have to flick penguins through doorways to collect fish and the chore is not to get caught by the principal, so one person plays the principal who's trying to catch the other penguins. This is a fabulous, fabulous game. You know, part of what happens is one of my pet peeves, I have to confess, is when I see high school students who still only play Uno. They started playing Uno kindergarten, first grade, and they are still playing Uno. They're still playing Uno. I'm not saying Uno is not a great game.
Speaker 1:Uno is a fabulous game, but there are dozens of schools that build skills, that build cognitive process, that support students in thinking and noticing and realizing, and that vocabulary is so important for life. Mental state verbs we have to make sure that our students have facility with them, because those are the words that bind anxiety. If we think about when we're worried about something, what helps us often it is remembering that we've gotten through something like this in the past past or knowing that tomorrow will be a better day. So those mental state verbs really are feathered into a lot of games.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've learned in 40 plus years of being a clinician is that no matter how we as adults and parents want to protect our students, we can't.
Speaker 1:Things will happen to them that we have no control over Parents will get sick, moms will get cancer, grandparents will die, kids will have accidents.
Speaker 1:The more that we arm our students with maximum resilience, maximum understanding of mental process, maximum ability to think about the future and the past, the better equipped they will be. And I have had so many experiences now that a lot of the kids who I worked with when they were three are now in their 20s and I see this happen to them and the ones who are more facile at everything we just talked about, do better, and the challenge there is that there are a number of those students who I had misjudged and I had not thought they could get there. I had not thought that they could understand complicated words like imagine, and I was wrong, because when presented with the material in a way that they could understand, they got it and it helped them in their young adulthood when things happened to them. Some terrible things have happened. It's just how life is, and so, even though we're coming at it from a fun angle of games, it's actually a very serious business. Yeah, you know our children, especially right now.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. Can you explain a little more of the connection between mental processes, communication and relationships?
Speaker 1:That's a very big connection and it's very super complicated and part of the challenge is that they are all interconnected, they all build on each other. But we can also watch these strands and think about these strands separately. So if we're working on mental processes, we can build mental state verb vocabulary, because studies have shown us that we can build it in students. We just have to give them that stimulation of the vocabulary.
Speaker 2:Can you just define what a mental process is for our listeners? Just give us some examples.
Speaker 1:Well, you can think of it as mental state verbs, and so a mental state verb is a verb. First of all, that is abstract, that you can't see. So you can see me drinking. First of all, that is abstract that you can't see. So you can see me drinking, but you can't see me remembering. So mental state processes are mental state verbs, like remember, know, understand, think, decide, plan, hope, miss, love, forget all of of those. They are so important. We're often wanting our older students to collaborate in writing goals. To do that, you have to know what you want and what you hope and what you wish. Oh, I wish I could move out of my parents house. Okay, well, let's anchor that with some goals, because what do you need to do to get to that point? And so those are mental processes.
Speaker 1:We can work on them separately, but they have this huge ripple effect into everything else. If we're talking about communication, we can work on communication from a conversational perspective. How are you doing with your you know? Do you add comments? How are you at asking questions? Do you ask follow-up questions? How are you at expressing your opinion? Do you feel confident or do you not really want to take the risk of maybe everybody will have a different opinion. How can we support you in broadening your conversational abilities so we can work on it in isolation, but again it has ripple effects into everything else. Similarly we can work on attachment and relationships kind of, you know, in a little capsule, but of course that works within the larger construct of our humanity which encompasses kind of that trifecta, with a lot of other factors also obviously coming into play. But that's what we want is to kind of juggle all of those balls and watch them all flourish together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a good reminder that sometimes as adults with fully I'll put fully in quotation marks here developed prefrontal cortexes, because we know that the prefrontal cortexes, because we know that the prefrontal cortex does not always naturally develop um, needs certain, certain uh experiences and things to help uh, help its um development. But um, it's. It's sometimes easy for us as adults, with with um, with our adult brains, to think like, well, it's obvious and natural to decide something, to remember something, to wish something, to do all these things, and so we kind of project that, that skill and we assume like, oh, this nine-year-old should be able to do that, that's not hard, right, but we need to really just take a minute and reflect on the fact that those are actual cognitive skills that are not just. We should not assume that kids have them, even typically developing kids, neurotypical kids, um, because it really it creates this, this break where the where there's the student is suddenly lacking, like they should be able to do something and they can't, and then there's frustration and that actually makes it more difficult to have relationships and to be playful and all these things.
Speaker 2:So I think when we sit in a place of like observation and curiosity around, like, oh, that's so interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, I can naturally do these things and plan and stay focused and things like that. And this child seems to struggle and that's not wrong, and that's like that. And this child seems to struggle and that's not wrong, and that's not bad, and they're not deficient, it's just where they're at, on their like. You know, if you imagine like the brain on like a little conveyor belts of like, you know, getting all of its things put on, it's just like, oh, they're just here and you know, tomorrow they'll be here and my job in their life is to interact with them in a way that helps support the development of, you know, x, y or Z, and I can do that through a game, I can do that through the way that I communicate, I can do that through our relationship. There's so many different ways we can do that, but I think it's just really important to sit in a state of curiosity and observation instead of judgment and like lack, like judging that they lack something.
Speaker 1:Yes, and part of it is, I think, I think, the reason. You know, if we think about, well, why are some students not picking up, not seeming to be picking up, these mental state verbs? And my personal theory is that often, when we have a student with learning and language differences, parents are given the feedback, the kind of instruction to simplify your language to your child, and I think that has certainly has validity. However, the way that we often do that is by removing the mental state verbs. We know that kids learn mental state verbs by hearing them, and so if I've been told, as a parent, to simplify my language, that means that instead of saying, oh my gosh, I just realized I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer. We have to stop at the store. I will say we have to stop at the store.
Speaker 2:You stop narrating all of that rich cognitive language Interesting.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly, and so I have removed my child's opportunity to hear those words. And so, conversely, what the studies show is that when we encourage parents to start feathering in this vocabulary, the magical part is that the student will begin to develop use of that vocabulary beyond the words we've been stimulating. So I was working with a young adult on this and his mother was working on mental state verbs with him because he really didn't use them. And he came into session one day and he said I really enjoyed my weekend. And I was like you know, I have all these alerts that go off when I hear a mental state verb. And I texted his mom and I said have you been using enjoyed? And she's a very reliable source. And she texted back right away no, did he say it? And I was like he sure did. He sure did say enjoyed. And he was glowing when he said it.
Speaker 1:It wasn't that he just said it, he had stepped into his life in a whole different way, with not just the word but the experiential knowledge of I enjoy my life. It was just, it was beautiful. And so we get that ripple effect. It won't just be the words that we're using that they will. It like opens the door. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:This is kind of reminding me I'm very into literacy I guess that's my like speech, language pathology niche and we do this to children's literature. If we want to simplify a book or like make make something easily readable or something, we'll take words out. So when we look at the page there are very few words on it. So we'll take a complicated sentence and we'll reduce it to three or four words so it's easy to read. But then what we do is that we've taken out a lot of the information in the text. So then that leaves the child to need to infer a lot about what's going on, which is actually a way more difficult cognitive skill to infer something. It's like, oh, like your example of going to the store.
Speaker 2:If you just suddenly say we need to go to the store and the child doesn't have all of that rich context, they're going to be confused and maybe frustrated because they thought they were going straight home and now we're stopping and they're not brought along in that thinking, that narration. So it definitely happens in our conversation. It also happens in literature and I think sometimes when we are talking about vocabulary exposure and developing someone's like language comprehension and you know their semantics and syntax and all that. We tend to think, oh, this student is struggling with reading, so I'm going to read.
Speaker 2:When I read out loud, I'm going to read very simple texts and I'm going to really like stay, you know, if they're reading at a first grade level, I'm going to. I'm going to just read other texts at a first grade level to them, when really we need to go far above their decoding, comprehension, right and talk and and and build out their whole linguistic world, and I think that's what you're calling us to. It's like, yeah, they're not doing these things. That doesn't mean we should like come to their level and simplify. We need to hold that. We need to create a model that that asks more of them and demonstrates and models that, and I think that's that's just a thing that I'm taking home from what you're saying right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just. I was just listening to a podcast and they were talking about reading stories at night and before bedtime. And it's not so much about the story that you're reading and the words on the page, but it's the the relationship and the story that you're reading and the words on the page, but it's the relationship and the questions that are evoked from the story that you could really dive into instead of going, because oftentimes us adults, especially if we were traditionally educated it's like we have a task. The task here is to read this story and to read these words on the page to my child. They start asking questions. We're like, nope, we got to get page to my child. They start asking questions. We're like, nope, we gotta get back to the story.
Speaker 3:No, but the beauty of when we're using games or books or stories with our kids is to allow, like to invite them in or allow them to invite us into their world. And especially this podcast in particular is about like, right before bedtime and right before the brain is going to rest and process all the things from the day. It's a really good time to do it at night, but I'm seeing that too. So when you said this child or this young adult enjoyed like. Where is he getting that from? Like, just relationships, just working on these things, becoming familiar with what that word is, because the mom didn't use that word. So where do you think he was getting that from?
Speaker 1:That's kind of. The big question is does working on mental state verbs in a discrete form open the mind to more recognition of experiential process? And that's kind of what I think is that because the way that the vocabulary grows and it's kind of you're opening the door on self-agency with words like decide, you know, I decided, like when another student you know would say I decided to have a pink lollipop last night for dessert, and it's with this like, and nobody was going to keep that lollipop away from me. You know that sense of awakening, almost. And I think your point is really well taken, Adrienne, about not assuming a limit in knowledge, and I think part of it is slowing down from our end. You know that desire to check the box, like you're saying book read, check. But allow for organic engagement to grow out of whatever the activity is. And that's what's so important when you're talking about social learning and kids working on social engagement is if you're too focused on what your particular plan or goal is for the session or for the class or for whatever you've got blinders on, Because what you really want is to see the little spark of organic engagement and let that grow, because that's what you want In a social group. I don't want to be in charge, because it's what I want is to do just enough so that the students kind of start taking off on their own. And I'm there to support and to step in when needed, and driven engagement, because so much of what a lot of the kids who I see get is adult driven engagement.
Speaker 1:I remember I had this high school group that at the beginning of last year I would leave them alone in the room. I'd go to the other room and I would say, okay, you guys are going to have conversation, and I would be listening and they would talk a little bit and then there would be that awkward silence and I did not go in and rescue them and they're like you know, do you think Anna's going to come in? No, I don't think she's coming in. Oh, wow, Well, did you see any movie? You know I saw you know whatever movie, and then they would be off again.
Speaker 1:It's that, knowing that things may feel awkward, I'm not sure what to do. But give me a minute to figure it out. Yeah, Because so often kids will figure it out. Kids will give us a little bit more If we ask a follow-up question. Challenge them, because our silence can send the message of I believe you know something that you're going to tell me, and I want to hear what the student has to say. I don't want to hear what I want to hear. I want to hear what they think, not what I think they could think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's such an important point and I just want, like every single Prenda MicroSchool guide, to listen to what you just said for the last five minutes. Like your job really is to do as little as possible, to like really let them sit in their own agency and their own self-efficacy. Because when we go in and we rescue kids and I'm not saying we should never help or assist or guide, but, um, as much as you can really let them act and solve that, solve their own problems, because that you're not always there with them and you're you're when you're showing them like look, I was here but I didn't do anything. You solved that problem, you figured that out. Then, when you're not there, they have such a greater sense of self-efficacy and confidence and that's going to bring their anxiety levels down, that's going to help their brain development so much. So, really, it's sometimes like what Adrian you're talking about, like that traditional education drive to like get the right answer, finish the task, like do the do the right thing.
Speaker 2:I think that makes those moments more difficult for us, right? Like when you're watching a child tie their shoe and they're struggling. It's like you're like I can tie the shoe, I can do the task, I can get the gold star, like that's the program we're running, right, you know. And so it's like it really has to not be about that in that moment and the script that I like to run that helps me kind of like talk myself off that ledge.
Speaker 2:When I feel that is, I just think about, like, where the cognitive load is landing, like if I go in and rescue, the cognitive load has come to me, right, and so I, my brain, is going to be, I'm using my skills and things like that. And when I watch a child struggle or when I watch a group of kids be awkward, and I could easily go in and like, like you know, prompt a conversation or get up and get some, get some language going in there, that would be not awkward. Um, I, I'm, I'm holding the cognitive load and whoever's holding. It's like if we go to the gym and I'm like, and you're lifting weights and I'm like, oh, that looks heavy for you, let me, let me lift it for you, it's like you're not at the gym, right, so we have to have this, this, um, when we're, when we're the coach at the gym, like the coach spots sometimes, yes, um, but the coach is not the one like lifting the weights, so it's just a really important mental shift.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we've been talking about games a lot and I made me think about this past year. My son goes to a learning pod and they do a lot of game time. They have about two different hours where they're just playing board games. And so the I had gone in and the coach had told me I had to put Monopoly away. I just, I just couldn't handle it, because a lot of the kids are neurodivergent and so watching them argue and especially role rules, can be really hard with kids with cognitive flexibility challenges, and so because we have to stick directly to the rules and monopoly is one of those games that are really really long and there's lots of rules, and so she put it in the closet and so I challenged her.
Speaker 3:I was like, why don't we bring it back out? What? What for you is so uncomfortable? You're not playing with them? Why are you so uncomfortable? They're figuring it out, they're getting loud. And then you keep mentioning the phrase social engagement, and this makes me think of the nervous system and our social engagement system, and so it's like also that having them access that higher sense of self and that prefrontal cortex and not get so trapped into the sympathetic, and so I can imagine watching a bunch of neurodivergent kids playing Monopoly. They're moving in between, you know, that sympathetic state and that ventral, vagal state which is the social engagement, and it can be really uncomfortable for the adults to just allow it to happen. But why do you think that is Like? What are some tools that parents and educators could use to be okay with their own discomfort but then also see like where you know, like Katie's saying, not take the cognitive load and allow the kids to take that on, because that's where the growth is going to happen.
Speaker 1:That's a great question and you know, I often present just on modifying games and how to use games, and so I have a couple of tips specific to Monopoly. One of them is to try Monopoly Deal, which is a card game of Monopoly.
Speaker 3:They play that as well. She replaced it with that. There's a card game of Monopoly. They play that as well. She replaced it with that.
Speaker 1:And what I, what you can. So here's the thing we do not have to play a game the way the directions tell us to. Well, tell these kids that no.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no, no. So if you know Monopoly deal, what I often will do is we say, okay, we're going to play for the first time. We're taking all the mean cards out. So in monopoly deal the mean cards are I forget what they're labeled, but there's. You know you can steal a monopoly. Steal a card. It's my birthday, you owe me $2 million, debt collector, all those questions. We take them out. We're not going to play with the mean cards today. Show me that you guys can play.
Speaker 1:You know we're going to learn the basic rules and then, bit by bit, we're going to feather in the mean cards and talk about previewing the game and saying, okay, so how are you going to feel if somebody steals your boardwalk and park place? What are you going to do about it when it happens? Here are visual support. I have feeling fixers that kind of are positive, self-talk, regulating tools that we put up that are visible to the students. So you have to preview the game and anticipate what will go wrong, Anticipate the feelings of discomfort that you're going to have and how are the students going to deal with them. So previewing is really important. Then you can play the game and then have your you know your post game. How did it go? Well, yeah, he took my boardwalk and I was actually okay with it. Great, Good for you. So, simplifying games. So we're not going from zero to 60 with the game and we're saying we're going to kind of inch our way into a game.
Speaker 1:Another game you know a lot of tabletop games now the instructions are 20 pages long. You don't have to use all those instructions. You can cut up directions and make cue cards. If you don't want to cut up the original directions, you can copy them and then cut up your copy and you make a little cue sheet. Or there's a fabulous game, it's pretty new Camel Up. It's a fabulous game. It's a camel racing game and two camels are racing in the wrong direction. It's hysterically funny. You're betting, but it's a very complicated game. You don't have to play it with all the complicated add-ons and cards and you can.
Speaker 1:Just, we have the power to simplify a game in whatever way we think will make it more successful. That allows students to be challenged by games, and when they're challenged by games, and when they're challenged by games, they're going to want to figure it out, and so then, when they're playing a game, they've got the social component, they've got the emotional regulation component, They've also got the cognitive component, whether it's remembering or deciding or choosing or negotiating or noticing. So they're kind of firing again on that trifecta of mental process, communication and relationships. And so it took me a while to realize I don't have to follow the rules of the game. Hello, I guess I'm a little rule follower, but as soon as I could let go of that, my kids were playing much more fun games.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but how do you get kids that struggle with flexibility to be okay, to let go of those rules? I was listening to a podcast you were on and you said you play this game where you change the rules every one minute. It gave me so much anxiety, not about myself, but thinking about my child, who really struggles with flexibility. I think it would be great, not about myself, but thinking about my child who really struggles with flexibility. I think it would be great, but I don't know that I again this discomfort that I have around helping him Is that game called Flux.
Speaker 1:I think I haven't played Flux actually in quite a few years. Flux is a great example. I think, again, it's in the prep. Flux is a great example, I think, again, it's in the prep. And so, in addition to the feeling fixers that are kind of thought bubbles that say I can handle this feeling, I'll win another time, that are visual they're not me telling the student that Because often when kids are upset, to say, oh, remember, it's just a game, will escalate the upset.
Speaker 1:Yes, that does not work. If we show it to them, then they can take it in that non-interpersonal connection. So I have and this is all on my website I have the feeling fixtures and a feeling tracker. So when kids are playing a game, everybody might have a sheet that has happy and then mad, sad and worried, one to five scale with little stickies, and they're going to show how they're feeling and we're all doing it. So it's not a bad thing, we're all just like oh.
Speaker 1:I might be saying, oh, my gosh, I got boardwalk, now I'm worried that someone's going to steal it, and they might say, well, anna, it's okay. Yeah, you're right, it's okay. So what you have to do is to recognize all the feelings of discomfort that are sparked by a good game. That's what makes a good game a good game is it gives us all these feelings. So there's a lot of potential there. But we have to bring in a lot of visual supports that will say to our students we're going to all handle this together. We're going to get through this feeling of boardwalk and you know, because you know what, we can always play again tomorrow. We can always say do we just want to trash the game right now? If we're playing, I often start kids on cooperative games rather than competitive games.
Speaker 3:Those are my favorite in this house.
Speaker 1:Cauldron Quest is fabulous. Cauldron Quest is fabulous. Cauldron Quest is one of the favorites and so really recognizing the feelings and making sure that you have clear conversations about the feelings that are involved in playing a game and I love that you said post-game to kind of talk about it, and then you'll find that kids will reflect back.
Speaker 3:Now I also know in your find that kids will reflect back. Now I also know in your practice that you will videotape or film them and they can watch it back. Is that something that parents and educators could use, or is that something that you would recommend just therapists do? Because I'm just trying to think if that would be helpful, like in my own home or the kids that I know that you know struggle to have self-awareness. Um, could that be a tool, or just talking about it might be more helpful.
Speaker 1:it's a it can be a definite mixed bag, because we don't want students feeling shamed, right or blamed or to it's, it's. You have to be very, very careful in how you do that you really want. If you want to film, you want to show what they did. That was great. Love that Rather than the other end, I think, because I certainly wouldn't want to see myself on video doing something I don't.
Speaker 3:But then that's still really great, because then they can recognize when they're doing something well, Because a lot of these kids too are very down on themselves or sometimes getting stuck into negative thinking patterns, and so by showing them when they did handle something well, I love that so much because it's like, oh, look how I handled that. And then we're building those neural pathways of doing that again. Instead of focusing on the deficits, we're focusing on the strengths, which I really like.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So I think that video review has to be done very, very carefully.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something that I just want to call out for a second is that, while the game is kind of like, when we play a game, we enter this like bubble of like quasi reality, right. It's like, okay, this isn't real life, but all of our feelings within that game are very real, right, and so we can get to experience all of those feelings, but in kind of this like safe bubble, where it's like we're not really having this conflict about something else outside of the game world, um, and I think that that's really healthy because it's like you get to practice, but all of the feelings are very real. My husband tells a story all the time. We play a lot of games in our house and some of us in our family handle defeat gracefully and some of us do not, and it does end up causing some strife in our family. But there's this story that I think just one of his friends told him this Uh, he, he grown up playing Monopoly with his grandma and his grandma always beat him and um, then, then he would like get sad, you know, and his grandma would always just say it all goes back in the box, and um, that was really powerful language for him.
Speaker 2:And then one day he beat his grandma and his grandma said congratulations, it all goes back in the box. And and to just like we have that kind of language in our family around, like this is a game, like it all goes back in the box and like our relationships and our, you know, everything is fine here in real life, even if we can have this like practice world of, like contention and competition, like we don't have to bring those things into our real um, into our real relationships, not that that's a fake relationship, but that it kind of works both ways. It's like, hey, remember in the game the other day when you felt really frustrated and then you forgave this person or you were able to use some positive mental talk to like kind of deescalate your feelings. Let's use that now in real life, right? So it's such a wonderful, wonderful tool.
Speaker 1:I just love this whole concept of using games in play and that spotlighting that you're just describing in a moment saying oh wow, right now, reminds me of when you were successful. I wonder if you could find a way to do that again now that Sarah Ward idea of same but different, you know, to help our students generalize.
Speaker 2:Love that Okay. So how can schools and educational programs integrate gaming into their curriculums effectively, and how can we do this as parents at home?
Speaker 1:Well, I think certainly opening up options to playing more games and looking at a game and thinking you know this is pretty complicated game, how could? What's the simplest way I can play this? How can I experiment with a new game? I think you know there are certain. There are certain games that and game makers that really like Peaceable Kingdom pretty much always has a really good game and to look at the real award-winning games and experiment with those. I think it's super important when schools have a lunch bunch or whatever they call it and they have game club or something like that, to make sure that how much are they looking at new games or how much are they still playing Hiho, cheerio and Uno, which, again, there's nothing wrong with those games. But there are games that are more interesting and a little bit perhaps more relevant, like Pyramid of the Penguin is a fabulous game.
Speaker 2:We're going to have to get your game list.
Speaker 3:Yes, do you have a game list?
Speaker 1:Yes, I have one on my website people can download. But also keep in mind to preview games like we were just talking about a few minutes ago. Before you play a game, maybe you historically already know what the tricky parts of this game are going to be. But again, to say, ok, so are we going to play for a certain amount of time? Do we want to put a time limit? Do we need to make sure that we have crunchy food available? How are we going to set up for success? Because we want activities to be successful. What we don't want is for everything to just fall apart, because then everyone's had a bad experience and no one's going to be back to that game for a while. How can we think ahead? Think about what do we know about this game or this situation? Let's try and patch some things up. Let's make sure it's not too hot in the family room when we're playing.
Speaker 3:So thinking about the sensory inputs too, because you said crunchy food and the temperature in the room. I never thought of those things and this is really helping me because we have a ton of games and I value them. However, with the cognitive inflexibility of one particular son of mine, it is not fun typically for anyone else in the family and it's not something where, oh, it all goes back in the box again. It's caused a lot of challenges to the point where I'm just afraid to play them because it hasn't been fun. So these tips I think previewing them, cutting up the rules and having them visual and have them out and then talking about it afterward I think is going to be really helpful and allow me to open up my game closet this week and start pulling some of the games back out and talking about, like, what has happened in the past and going, okay, this is probably going to come up, because it's come up multiple times, so what are we? What's our plan? I think that might be really helpful. So thank you so much for those tips.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. The other thing you might want to consider is also having students draw about how the game went, like can you draw a good time in the game and can you draw not so good time in the game? Because, again, that's creating a visual support and encouraging kids to show feelings in these sketches, to show their truth, because that may give you a lot more information than if they're just talking about it or if you're doing the talking, so everybody can sketch a picture of how did you think game night went.
Speaker 3:I love that we are starting to run out of time, but I also want to ask about winning and losing. We talked about some collaborative games, but winning feels good and our culture tells us that we want to win. I mean, look around, it's very competitive, but losing for some kids it's really, really hard. I read a blog post once that had said you know, ask that, especially if you're working with a young child or playing with a really young child, you know four or five, six ask the child, like do you think you're gonna be able to lose? If not, like why don't we work together and it's okay like we don't even like call it winning or losing. So I'm curious about your strategies around that.
Speaker 1:Well, one question, one point is if you're playing a collaborative game, you still might lose, right?
Speaker 3:But you're losing together, so that doesn't feel as you know. Well, they're losing too, so it's okay.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, right now I'm developing this new product called social scales, which are and you know, right now I'm developing this new product called Social Scales which are continuums, and one of the continuums that is in this product are continuums about competitiveness. And so, particularly with older kids, you know, if you develop a five-point scale and you could say so, where are you right now going into the game? How competitive are you feeling? Knowing this game? Okay, are you going to feel comfortable? Is that where you want to be? Do you think you could? Is that? Or do you think the game would go better if you could be less competitive and kind of have that conversation? No, I want to stay where I am, okay.
Speaker 1:So, if you're going to be that competitive, what do you think could happen? How are you going to handle it? You know we can always say to kids if we're playing, just the two of us, so do you want to stop? And really, you know, using that feeling tracker, how are you feeling? I'm really getting worried, okay, so let's manage your worry.
Speaker 1:One time I was playing life with a group and they all had their feeling trackers and one kid put his worry up to four and we're like whoa, let's take a break because Kyler is feeling a four on his worry. Kyler, what's going on? And he said I'm really worried that when I grow up someone's going to sue me for $500,000. And it's humorous. I mean, I'm in Marin County so it certainly could happen us. I mean, I'm in Marin County so it certainly could happen. But the thing is we talked him down and we realized that wasn't a worry for today and so part of it is if you can get students to really be thinking about, turn by turn, how am I feeling? Let's take a pause and we're going to see if we can get your worry down from a four to a three, because that's progress. So really build upping the feeling meter in the game. How much are you tracking how everybody's feeling?
Speaker 3:I love how much we learn from games. You said life. A famous story not famous, but in my husband's family is that he and his brother played life all the time when they were younger and his brother would sell him his kids. My husband wanted like 10 kids and his brother would like didn't want kids. And it's funny because they have more kids than we do. So it's really interesting. But I love how it really like opens up for a memories core memories Like there's. You know that gets brought up a lot and because it's just a really fond fun memory from childhood. So I love how much games can really help us learn and grow. So we are running out of time, so this is a question we ask all of our guests who is someone who has kindled your love of learning, curiosity, motivation or passion?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I would have to say my dad my dad had polio as a kid and was actually in Shriners Hospital in San Francisco for I think many, many months and I think as like a six-year-old, and I think that developed his patience. So he was an incredibly patient person and had a physical disability because of his polio, but he could always get a workaround. Always he had straps on straps and he, you know, he could, he really no challenge was too big for him and he had this Russian saying and kind of means. I've translated it to bit by bit, because he always believed that you could get somewhere if you just went bit by bit. And so I really believe that I believe that learning happens bit by bit and we have to respect that, that we can help our students get to where their lives will take them bit by bit.
Speaker 2:I love that my mom always said growing up she said yard by yard it's hard, inch by inch it's a cinch. And so that is when we're helping kids develop these mental processes and all these skills. Like that is a long harvest game where you know you really are looking at helping kids over decades sometimes, and so keeping that in mind for kids is helpful and for us as we progress. So how can listeners learn more about your work?
Speaker 1:I think the most direct route is probably to go to my website, socialtimeorg, and I have. They can sign up for my newsletter. I have a weekly newsletter. Follow me on Instagram. I think those are the best channels.
Speaker 2:Great, I love it. We'll definitely follow you on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Super.
Speaker 2:Okay, awesome. Well, thanks so much to Anna for coming. This has been such a great conversation.
Speaker 1:I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. It was wonderful to meet you. That's it for today. We hope you enjoyed this episode. I took so many notes. Yeah, I'm going to try some of these things, katie, when I play games. What about you? Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think doing the pre-chat about how we're going to handle this feeling when it comes up, I think that's going to be a game changer for my kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the post I never, ever thought, because I'm just so ready for the game to be done that I don't think oh, let's circle back and talk about why this was so difficult in playing.
Speaker 3:So I do think that might help us, though, to get that game out again. So I'm so happy that she kind of walked us through that, and I love that this can be applied really easily in a micro school or a learning pod or anywhere where they can play games, and hopefully in traditional classrooms too, they could pull out some board games, because there's so much learning and growth that can happen when playing. So if this episode was as helpful to you or more, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda Learn. If you have a question you would like for us to address on the podcast or on our social channels, all you need to do is email us at podcast at Prendacom. We would love to hear from you. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, the Sunday Spark.
Speaker 2:The Kindle Podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda is a company that makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the ideas that we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. If you want more information about becoming a Prenda guide, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and don't forget to keep kindling.
