Miss Mary - Open [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]
The Class of 1994 held the first Crusader Knights in the Fall of 1993. It is a one-night, themed event for the men of UMHB. The competition includes a group opening number, short video-skits created by the participants showing their personality and talent, and the individuals walking in evening attire. The winner is dubbed Mr. Crusader Knight by the university president.
Miss Mary - Open [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]
Mary: You're listening to the Turn Autism Around Podcast Episode number 218. Today I am going to talk about video modeling and some other proven techniques used by Ms. Rachel and me in my over two decades of experience working with kids with autism and toddlers showing signs. These techniques can oftentimes get kids talking and open the floodgates to more language. Let's get to this solo episode all about video modeling and the use of other techniques.
Mary: Okay, so let's jump into the proven techniques to help kids with autism and toddlers showing signs that I use all the time, both live and I make videos and that Ms. Rachel's also using. So, first of all, to catch you up if you're out of the loop and don't know who Ms. Rachel is. Ms. Rachel I found on TikTok, as some of you know, I started TikTok in May of 2022. We're already nearing 40,000 followers there. So if you're on Tik Tok or want to be on Tik Tok, come follow me. And also Ms. Rachel, she's great there. Anyway, so Ms. Rachel, her real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso. She was a music teacher in New York City schools, and she has a son who was speech delayed and didn't say his first word until two years, eight months. She left her job and started doing videos and now she is on YouTube, I think is her biggest platform and she has 1 billion views on her videos. So she does short form videos on Tik Tok, but longer episodes, you know, half an hour or even an hour long episodes that are geared towards little kids under the age of four or five. So I wanted to go through some of the techniques she uses and also with her videos coming up, especially her shorter form videos on TikTok and Instagram. Ms. Rachel reminded me that back, back, back, way back 2010/2011, when I had private clients in the early intervention field, I made videos like Ms. Rachel's short videos and used some techniques in those videos and of course in Live when I'm working with a child or encouraging and teaching parents how to work with their own children who are either autistic or maybe showing signs or maybe just speech. Joy Because the same techniques really work as illustrated as I'm going to illustrate with Ms. Rachel and my videos. So I got started with video modeling, which is a proven technique that has lots of research to support it. When I was trying to teach my son Lucas how to greet people because what would happen was they would say hi to Lucas and he would repeat. Hi, Lucas. Now, way back when he was three and four and five and six, I wasn't a behavior analyst, so I had no idea how to fix any of this. But I stumbled upon the idea to get out an actual, like, camcorder, video recorder and VHS tapes and the whole nine yards. I mean, I'm really dating myself, but it is what it is. I mean, this was more than two decades ago. And what I did with the greeting problem was I'd have his three therapists that would come to our house every day. I had them one by one. I would record the first person's name. Her name was Nina. And so I would record her ringing the doorbell. We'd open the door, I'd have the camcorder going, and she would say, Hi, Lucas. And that's all she'd say. And then she'd walk in, and then I'd have therapist number two. His name was Shaun, and the doorbell would ring. I'd open the door, He'd say, Hi, Lucas. And then the third therapist, the same thing. And so that video, then I put on a VHS tape and I would play it for Lucas. And then as the therapist came in and said, Hi, Lucas. I would prompt Lucas to say hi, Nina. And from just that video, he was able to greet the person back and he was able to generalize that. So that's a good example. And now with iPhones and smartphones, I mean, you could make that kind of video very, very quickly. I've used this technique. I have a bonus video within my online courses that shows the technique being used. It doesn't have to be a doorbell. It doesn't have to be a door that could be coming in from the kitchen to the family room. It could be all different environments. But basically to teach kids how to wave, how to say the person's name when they greet for both hi and bye. So that was early on then when I became a behavior analyst and this is in if you have the book Turn Autism Around, which is my latest book, it's almost two years old now. It was published in 2021. And in the book on page 145 is the story of Kurt. I also did a video blog about Kurt, which we can link in the show notes here as well. But what happened with Kurt was his family moved from one location to another and I became his early intervention professional. And Kurt was two and a half at the time. He had had a lot of services that just weren't working. He was aggressive and self-injurious. He had moderate autism diagnosis and he had what I now call pop out words. He had words here and there. And as some of you know, if you've been following me for a long time, I have early learning materials in my book. I will talk about the earlier materials. And part of my programs usually involves potato head and through the use of potato head, saying Eyes, eyes, eyes. As I handed Kurt and other kids the eyes and he put the eyes and potato head through that. I was there for two hour sessions, and after about four months with Kurt, he would say ten words in those 2 hours. And I would have to really work hard to get those words. And I came to find out that the words that he was using were mostly body parts. So I was going to be away. I was going to Hawaii. It was over Christmas time. I was going to be away for a three week chunk of time. And as the behavior analysts and the in listening know that if a child doesn't become vocal, you know, within weeks or months, I mean good practices that you would start sign language. And we were trying to do sign language. We were trying to video me teaching Kurt some basic signs so that they could work on this and they could show the video to the other therapist. And what Kurt did was he ran around, got out of the seat, ran around and wanted to watch the video of me. And then I remembered how video modeling was just such a proven technique and that maybe we should try it. So I made two videos that day. We call them the Ms. Mary videos, and I had a bunch of my clients use the Ms. Mary videos. We are pulling them out of the vault and sharing with you today the Ms. Mary videos and the two that really worked for Kurt. Well, the two that we made that day were me singing Eyes Nose as I was pointing to my body parts, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, glasses. And then I said, Hi. Those were some of his pop out words. I also made a video. The therapist took a video of me standing there singing Head, shoulders, knees and toes. Get the idea. I asked Mom if she could put those two videos on Kurt's iPad, and I literally forgot all about it until I arrived back three weeks later. And I said hi, and Kurt said, High eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, glasses, hi. And I said, Oh my goodness, I forgot about the videos. But you obviously put them on his iPad because he had said that the body parts were in the exact order that I made them on that day, instead of getting ten words in 2 hours, I got 100 words in 2 hours. And we went on to put on some of Kurt's programs like Touch the Banana, and we'd have an adult hand going in and touching the banana. We put all of his programs on video and on his iPad. Not forever, but just to jump start his program. So for Kurt and some kids, they hyperfocus on the video. It gets rid of all distractions. And some of the techniques we're going to talk about are in this video and as well as in Ms. Rachel's videos, which are, you know, have a billion views. So let's go through a couple points and through these points I am going to show you and tell you how you can make your own videos and your own video modeling with the people, pets and things that your child or clients really like. So before we get into that, I do want to put kind of a disclaimer that the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend any screen time for kids under two, except for video chatting and then kids ages 2 to 5 years of age. They recommend less than one hour of screen time per day. So Ms. Rachel's videos and my videos from more than a decade ago, they are like video chats. In some ways they are like therapy on Zoom, which we all have all experienced. Now, if your child or clients. Received any therapy during COVID. And so I believe as long as you use screen time in small amounts and you use it to engage your child and really to increase skills, that is probably fine. I did do a video blog years ago, before COVID, way before COVID. On why I wouldn't stop screen time for kids with autism or toddlers showing signs, and we can link that in the show notes. This is kind of controversial, but I have found over the years with my own son, as well as all of my clients, that sometimes as a mom, you need some time where the child is safe and engaged, where you can, you know, switch a load of laundry. In some cases, the child is safe enough that you could run up and get a shower. You know, we all have experienced where, you know, even typically developing kids get too much screen time. And I would try to keep the screen time under an hour total per day, even for toddlers and preschoolers with autism. And I know that's hard. And whenever possible, I would try to engage it with your child, like watching Ms. Rachel for an hour with your child, doing the gestures, doing the hand motions, saying Mama with Ms. Rachel and really engaging your child during that time. Don't use it as, you know, put it on for an hour and let your young child sit there and watch alone. So try to keep screen time to an hour a day, maybe in smaller chunks, like 15 minute chunks or two minute chunks or up to a half an hour. But it's a lot of the time. And we know from the research that all kids, whether they have autism speech delay or they're typically developing in every way, need to be engaged most of their waking hours. And so when people say, well, is 20 hours baby therapy enough or 40 hours or what about 2 hours of speech therapy, 5 hours of speech therapy a week. Kids need to be engaged during most of their waking hours. That is about 100 hours a week. And that can sound extremely overwhelming. And I know it is. And that's their waking hours. So if you find that your child, whether they have autism or not, are watching, you know, four, five, 6 hours of screen time a day that includes TV, iPad, phone, any electronic device, I would seriously sit down and think about, you know, does your child need a babysitter, a nanny, a mommy's helper or an older sibling to engage? Do they need daycare or something structured? Do they need a special ed setting for part of the day? We need to keep our kids engaged. Okay. Let's get back to Kurt. So Kurt made a lot of progress, not just that day. He literally opened the floodgates to his language. And I created more videos than not just for Kurt. I could send the videos of me doing eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, and glasses to my other clients' parents. I could send those because Kurt wasn't in the videos. And no, no children were in the videos so I could share them as the Miz videos, so I could share the song villains and I could share those. I could share when I was at another client's house doing the ABC on the Magna Doodle. So they were reporting that, you know, it was just coming time to have, you know, smartphones and they were engaging their kid at the grocery store with the Ms. Mary videos and things like that. So I'm going to link the Ms. Mary videos in the show notes here. So just come to this podcast and get those show notes. 041b061a72