There is No Such Thing as a Bad Boy

Dr. Pat Friman Author

04/11/2023 Added

83 Plays

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2023 Conference Session

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[00:00:00.764]You did the introduction.
[00:00:03.570]Good morning, everyone.
[00:00:04.860]Good morning, I'm Pat Friman.
[00:00:11.880]Pleasure to be in front of a live audience.
[00:00:16.230]I've spoken to thousands of people over the past few years,
[00:00:19.710]I haven't seen any of them.
[00:00:22.350]I'm not even sure they're tuned in.
[00:00:24.210]So it's a pleasure to be in front of the live audience,
[00:00:26.220]and it's an honor and a privilege
[00:00:29.220]to be in front of this audience.
[00:00:30.690]And I'm gonna make it clear why I said that
[00:00:32.610]as I go along here.
[00:00:34.080]I have an intention for this presentation,
[00:00:35.940]I hope to make good on this intention.
[00:00:39.090]Can you hear me okay?
[00:00:40.290]Yeah, okay.
[00:00:42.750]They're getting you up a little bit.
[00:00:44.657]Should I start over again?
[00:00:46.350]No, I can hear that now, I can hear myself now.
[00:00:49.830]Anyway, my intention will sound a little schmaltzy,
[00:00:55.170]but I'll make good on it.
[00:00:56.430]My intention ultimately is to put you in touch
[00:00:58.500]with the value, the significance,
[00:00:59.940]and the periodic magnificence
[00:01:01.350]of what you do day in and day out.
[00:01:04.530]But let me start with some limitations.
[00:01:10.260]So I think it's best to surprise people
[00:01:11.910]rather than disappoint them,
[00:01:13.744]and so I always do what I can to lower expectations
[00:01:15.720]before I get to started talking.
[00:01:18.000]So I have some limitations.
[00:01:19.110]One is I'm not a parent.
[00:01:21.480]I never have been, and I'm never going to be.
[00:01:25.297]And there are a lot of reasons for that.
[00:01:26.130]One is, well, no one would have sex with me.
[00:01:29.929](attendees laughing)
[00:01:30.810]So that seemed to be a pretty big obstacle.
[00:01:34.500]Another is I don't wanna mess up any of my theories
[00:01:36.930]with real facts.
[00:01:39.090]Children have a tendency to generate facts.
[00:01:41.910]Another is I don't like to touch poop.
[00:01:45.990]And as I understand it, that's a big part of the job.
[00:01:48.600]And I don't like the regurgitated contents
[00:01:53.670]of a human stomach to get anywhere near me or get on me.
[00:01:57.600]And as I understand it,
[00:01:59.550]young children like to share what they've already eaten,
[00:02:01.620]especially infants, what they've already eaten
[00:02:03.120]with their parents,
[00:02:03.953]especially when their parents are dressed up.
[00:02:06.690]And parents make this palatable by calling it spit up.
[00:02:11.010]But we're talking about the regurgitated contents
[00:02:13.380]of a human stomach.
[00:02:14.213]And there's really only one word for that, and that's puke.
[00:02:18.420]And I don't think I'm the only one in this room
[00:02:20.430]that would say, I don't like people puking on me.
[00:02:24.780]I have other limitations.
[00:02:25.950]One is I don't work with persons on the spectrum.
[00:02:28.950]I never have and I probably never will.
[00:02:32.880]So why on earth would people run this conference,
[00:02:35.940]invite a speaker to be a keynote speaker
[00:02:39.270]when he doesn't have any children,
[00:02:41.370]and he doesn't work for persons on the spectrum
[00:02:43.050]when the conference itself is devoted to the spectrum,
[00:02:45.480]and a big part of it is focused on children?
[00:02:49.350]Well, Annette was pretty drunk when she called, so I-
[00:02:51.721](attendees laughing)
[00:02:54.330]I'm kidding here.
[00:02:55.590]I do this a lot actually.
[00:02:56.820]I've been the keynote speaker
[00:02:58.380]for the National Autism Conference a couple of times.
[00:03:02.670]I'm on the board that is a large autism program
[00:03:05.370]in the Midwest.
[00:03:06.660]And I presented autism conferences frequently.
[00:03:08.790]But I don't present about autism,
[00:03:10.470]and I don't necessarily present on prescriptive treatment,
[00:03:13.230]although I'm gonna do some breakout sessions
[00:03:15.960]on prescriptive treatment later today.
[00:03:18.120]I present general ideas
[00:03:19.620]and then I advocate for the people doing your work.
[00:03:21.750]And that's what I'm doing here today.
[00:03:23.640]So let me start off with an obscenity.
[00:03:26.310]And I don't mean a word, or a phrase, or an image,
[00:03:28.560]or a video, a state of affairs.
[00:03:33.000]In this culture, if you can persuade a large group of people
[00:03:38.460]to be angry,
[00:03:42.180]and then you can blame the source of that anger
[00:03:44.160]on another group, particularly a minority group,
[00:03:48.360]well, you can get a lot of political power.
[00:03:50.220]And if you can do it frequently,
[00:03:51.210]you can go right to the top.
[00:03:53.400]If you can buy businesses and sell off half the assets,
[00:03:58.080]fire half the staff,
[00:03:59.160]and then sell the business for a profit,
[00:04:00.660]go right to the top.
[00:04:02.100]If you can spew vitriol and hatred regarding an outgroup
[00:04:05.580]into the airwaves articulately, you can go right to the top.
[00:04:09.030]If you can make movies suffuse with prurient sexuality
[00:04:11.820]and gratuitous violence, you can go right to the top.
[00:04:14.950]But when you do what you do, when you serve people in need,
[00:04:18.840]you don't go anywhere.
[00:04:21.810]The culture at large doesn't really value the work
[00:04:24.870]that you do, the lives that you live.
[00:04:26.370]I mean, they give it lip service.
[00:04:27.510]They will have a fundraiser here and there.
[00:04:29.610]They'll volunteer from time to time,
[00:04:30.990]maybe donate from time to time,
[00:04:32.700]but they don't ultimately value what you do
[00:04:36.690]and the way you live.
[00:04:39.180]How can you say that?
[00:04:40.350]Well, I have lots of reasons.
[00:04:43.920]One is of all the really exciting, thrilling movies
[00:04:48.480]and television series made about your work,
[00:04:52.320]what's your favorite?
[00:04:55.950]I can't think of any either.
[00:04:58.590]If they were gonna make a movie about what you do,
[00:05:01.080]who would they choose to star?
[00:05:02.430]Would they choose George Clooney or Brad Pitt?
[00:05:05.370]Would they choose Beyonce or Margot Robbie?
[00:05:08.121](Pat scoffs)
[00:05:09.180]There isn't an agent in the entire world
[00:05:10.770]that would ever waste star power like that
[00:05:13.860]on what they perceive to be ordinary occupations like yours.
[00:05:20.640]If you are telling people that you don't know,
[00:05:23.490]you've just met maybe somebody on an airplane what you do,
[00:05:26.220]what do you do?
[00:05:27.053]Well, I work with persons on the spectrum
[00:05:28.600]where I live with and raise persons on the spectrum.
[00:05:31.110]What are they likely to say?
[00:05:34.020]Well, very frequently they'll say,
[00:05:35.047]"Oh, oh, I bet that's very rewarding what you do."
[00:05:40.345]Yeah, they don't say that to stockbrokers.
[00:05:42.545]They don't say that to investment bankers.
[00:05:44.288]They don't say that to orthopedic surgeons.
[00:05:46.315]They don't say that to stars of stage and screen.
[00:05:48.585]They don't say that to professional athletes.
[00:05:50.489]"What do you do for a living?"
[00:05:51.322]"I'm a movie star."
[00:05:52.342]"Oh, oh, I bet that's very rewarding what you do."
[00:05:55.410]No, they say it to us.
[00:05:56.730]Why? Because they know we're not well-compensated.
[00:05:59.490]They know we're not well-recognized.
[00:06:00.930]So hey, must be rewarding.
[00:06:04.440]Or follow the money.
[00:06:06.330]Money is like an X-ray or CAT scan, or MRI,
[00:06:11.430]or PET scan for value.
[00:06:14.220]It reveals what people really think is of value.
[00:06:17.160]So in this culture,
[00:06:19.290]mediocre professional athletes make way more money
[00:06:22.470]than absolutely excellent teachers, and special ed teachers,
[00:06:25.410]and service-oriented workers.
[00:06:28.980]Movies made from Marvel Comic Books make hundreds
[00:06:34.230]or thousands times more money
[00:06:35.730]than educational documentaries focused on the kind of work
[00:06:38.130]that you do or just the education in general.
[00:06:41.130]Why is that?
[00:06:42.690]Well, it's because this culture values sports
[00:06:46.380]and entertainment vastly more than it does education
[00:06:49.050]and service.
[00:06:52.620]Just a bad news really.
[00:06:56.460]But you could flip it and make it good news.
[00:06:59.700]They're not gonna do it for you.
[00:07:02.850]They're not gonna supply the value
[00:07:04.380]that you probably desperately want.
[00:07:06.690]It can't come from them.
[00:07:09.728]It has to come from you.
[00:07:11.760]And even if they did, even if they had like Academy Awards
[00:07:15.240]for the kind of work that you do, or Emmy Awards,
[00:07:17.280]or the same level like as of success
[00:07:20.040]like a national championship,
[00:07:22.380]or even the ordinary indicators of value in our culture.
[00:07:27.150]The second home, the Louis Vuitton bag,
[00:07:30.128]the title, the zip code that you live in,
[00:07:33.270]the salary that you have, the context that you have,
[00:07:36.810]the clubs that you belong to.
[00:07:39.300]Those are indicators of value or symbols of value.
[00:07:43.980]They don't give people that have them the experience
[00:07:46.680]of value.
[00:07:48.690]It can't come from outside, it can't come from them,
[00:07:52.710]and it certainly can't come from symbols.
[00:07:56.490]Assuming that those kinds of symbols
[00:07:58.170]are gonna give a person a sense of value,
[00:08:00.570]it'd be like going into a restaurant.
[00:08:02.490]They hand you the menu, you eat it,
[00:08:04.950]then you tell the waiter you're still hungry.
[00:08:06.450]And he says, "Of course, you're still hungry.
[00:08:07.740]That wasn't food. That was a symbol of food."
[00:08:12.900]So the case I wanna make
[00:08:13.890]is that if you want to have that internal experience
[00:08:17.070]of value, it has to come from you.
[00:08:20.400]And it has to be the result of you recognizing
[00:08:23.010]that you are doing or being something
[00:08:25.440]that's of value to you.
[00:08:27.330]It doesn't matter if it's of value to others.
[00:08:29.580]It has to be of value to you.
[00:08:32.160]You have to see it and experience it.
[00:08:34.830]And so here's my ultimate intention today.
[00:08:38.400]My ultimate intention today
[00:08:39.930]is to have you see you the way I see you.
[00:08:44.580]I'll say that again.
[00:08:45.570]It's to have you adopt a point of view about you
[00:08:48.930]that I have about you.
[00:08:50.310]And my point of view about you
[00:08:51.810]is based on a couple of things that you do
[00:08:53.849]and a couple of things that you are.
[00:08:56.010]And I want to draw your attention to those things
[00:08:57.960]so you can see them for yourselves
[00:08:59.580]and then possibly stand where I stand
[00:09:01.590]and look at you the same way I look at you.
[00:09:03.870]So let's talk about what you do.
[00:09:06.480]In fact, let's talk about what you don't do.
[00:09:09.210]Talk about what you don't do.
[00:09:10.740]You're not designing doomsday machines,
[00:09:13.710]you're not selling weaponry, you're not monetizing hate,
[00:09:17.430]violence, lost, embarrassment, risk taking.
[00:09:20.130]You're not buying something for a dollar
[00:09:22.380]and selling it to people that can't afford it for two,
[00:09:24.570]you're not selling people stuff they don't want, don't need,
[00:09:27.000]can't afford it, that's bad for them.
[00:09:28.380]You're not pandering to base human desires.
[00:09:31.020]What are you doing?
[00:09:33.090]When you're living with and/or serving persons
[00:09:34.980]on the spectrum,
[00:09:35.813]you're living with and/or serving persons in need.
[00:09:37.860]That's what you're doing.
[00:09:39.150]That's certainly worth your attention.
[00:09:42.420]Here's something else you're doing.
[00:09:43.497]And you may not know you're doing these things, but you are.
[00:09:47.700]You're representing an idea.
[00:09:50.550]You may not even know you're representing this idea,
[00:09:52.620]but it's represented in your work.
[00:09:55.380]It's the most powerful idea ever invented by mankind
[00:09:58.080]for understanding, knowing, and approaching human behavior
[00:10:01.020]when it's a problem.
[00:10:02.940]It turns everything human beings have known
[00:10:04.770]about problem behavior completely on its head.
[00:10:06.780]It takes 10,000 years of practice.
[00:10:10.950]It turns it on its head when it comes to problem behavior
[00:10:13.560]because it attributes the source
[00:10:15.870]of the cause of the problem,
[00:10:17.520]not to the misbehaving person, him or herself,
[00:10:21.330]but to what has happened to the person
[00:10:22.830]over the course of their life up to the exhibition
[00:10:24.720]of the problem.
[00:10:25.680]So it seeks not to fix the blame.
[00:10:28.650]It seeks to fix the problem instead.
[00:10:31.110]And this idea originated right here in Nebraska.
[00:10:36.600]This revolutionary idea originated right here in Nebraska.
[00:10:39.510]The turn of the 20th century.
[00:10:41.220]A young priest came to Omaha, Nebraska,
[00:10:43.890]Father Edward J. Flanagan.
[00:10:45.720]At that time, Omaha, like most major metropolitan areas
[00:10:49.290]in the country had a heavy population of orphan boys.
[00:10:52.140]The result of the Spanish flu and economic conditions.
[00:10:55.212]The orphan girls were taken up by the Christian charities,
[00:10:58.020]but the orphan boys were left to fend for themselves.
[00:11:00.150]They had nothing.
[00:11:01.410]They had no money, no food, no clothes, no education,
[00:11:04.560]no skills, no family.
[00:11:06.090]They were practically feral.
[00:11:08.760]And human beings then are just like human beings now.
[00:11:11.430]They feared
[00:11:12.780]and tried to reject anything they don't understand.
[00:11:15.660]And so they thought of these boys as bad.
[00:11:18.480]These bad specimens, bad boys.
[00:11:22.320]Father Flanagan took a huge chance,
[00:11:24.810]invited a few of them to live with him.
[00:11:27.780]Then he got up on his soapbox, and he said to the world,
[00:11:31.267]"There's no such thing as a bad boy,
[00:11:33.270]only bad environment, bad modeling, and bad teaching."
[00:11:35.910]In other words, bad circumstances.
[00:11:37.470]These are boys doing a lot of bad things have happened.
[00:11:39.690]And as a result, they've learned to do bad things
[00:11:41.700]just to survive.
[00:11:42.533]And what we're gonna do now
[00:11:43.830]is we're gonna do good things for them,
[00:11:45.150]we're gonna teach them to do good things to survive,
[00:11:46.830]and that's what started happening then,
[00:11:48.638]and it continues to happen to this very day in Omaha
[00:11:51.330]and across the country.
[00:11:54.390]Coincidentally, at the same time,
[00:11:56.850]a young scientist came to Harvard,
[00:11:59.400]and he wrote his first book.
[00:12:00.510]His name was Burrhus Skinner.
[00:12:02.400]And the first book was called "The Behavior of Organisms,"
[00:12:04.710]and he made a case that behavior itself
[00:12:07.080]was a suitable subject for science
[00:12:08.700]because it was so responsive to environmental conditions.
[00:12:12.630]And so these two men dovetailed their idea
[00:12:16.740]into this powerful approach to human behavior
[00:12:19.260]that we have now.
[00:12:20.280]And everything this way of thinking touches improves.
[00:12:23.550]Everything this way of thinking touches improves.
[00:12:25.560]It's done more for people that reside
[00:12:27.150]in one tail of the normal distribution,
[00:12:28.950]persons with neural developmental differences
[00:12:31.020]than any idea ever invented by mankind,
[00:12:33.090]brought them out of the dark ages they've lived in
[00:12:34.950]for millennia out and under the bright lights
[00:12:36.990]that shine on your life and my life.
[00:12:39.270]It's emptied to human warehouses in this country.
[00:12:41.850]The institutions where we used to house persons
[00:12:44.190]with neural developmental differences.
[00:12:47.370]People used to go into these institutions
[00:12:49.790]and see people living there engaged
[00:12:51.960]in very weird patterns of behavior throughout the day,
[00:12:54.450]what we used to call institutional behavior.
[00:12:56.370]Then they think believers say,
[00:12:57.427]"Well, this is where they belong.
[00:12:59.460]They're engaged in institutional behavior all day.
[00:13:01.350]They probably should be put in an institution."
[00:13:03.810]But people end up with this new way of thinking came along
[00:13:05.760]and said, "No, that's not right.
[00:13:07.230]That is not right.
[00:13:08.490]The reason that they're engaged in institutional behavior
[00:13:10.830]is because they're in an institution.
[00:13:12.750]Get them out of the institution
[00:13:14.100]into more normalized circumstances,
[00:13:15.990]they'll start exhibiting more normalized behavior,"
[00:13:17.790]which is exactly what happened.
[00:13:19.693]And I saw that firsthand
[00:13:21.300]'cause I used to work in an institution.
[00:13:23.610]One of those old timey institutions.
[00:13:26.430]Boulder River School and Hospital in Boulder, Montana
[00:13:29.160]had over a thousand residents.
[00:13:31.410]And it was rife with controversy.
[00:13:33.090]Allegations of abuse, allegations of sexual assault,
[00:13:37.230]accidental death,
[00:13:39.420]undertreatment, underserving, underfeeding.
[00:13:43.500]I was a direct care aid.
[00:13:45.540]I was on the job just three or four days,
[00:13:47.340]and I saw something really interesting happen
[00:13:49.290]in the cottage.
[00:13:50.123]I was in a cottage that served high-functioning adult men.
[00:13:53.790]There was a man over to my right,
[00:13:55.140]and he was rocking and flapping,
[00:13:56.460]and there was a whole lot of rocking and flapping going on
[00:13:58.620]in that cottage because the staff didn't spend much time
[00:14:01.860]with the residents.
[00:14:02.693]So the residents were left to stimulate themselves.
[00:14:06.990]On my left, another resident was coming up fast
[00:14:09.570]with a very earnest look on his face.
[00:14:11.250]And he went right over to the guy
[00:14:12.450]that was rocking and flapping,
[00:14:13.500]balled up his fist and hit him right in the face unprovoked.
[00:14:17.730]And what happened next was staff rushed over to the scene.
[00:14:21.240]Did they go to the victim?
[00:14:22.800]No, they went to the aggressor.
[00:14:25.050]His name was Jim.
[00:14:25.890]And they started talking to Jim in very sympathetic tones.
[00:14:28.117]"Jim, Jim, what's going on?
[00:14:31.890]Why'd you hit him?
[00:14:33.960]Is something bothering you?"
[00:14:35.040]And then they hustled into the Holy of Holies,
[00:14:37.440]the staff lounge.
[00:14:39.060]Residents weren't allowed in the staff lounge.
[00:14:41.040]They sat him down, they got him a cup of coffee.
[00:14:43.560]He took a drink of his coffee and then asked for sugar.
[00:14:46.890]So they sugared his coffee.
[00:14:48.480]Residents were not allowed to drink coffee
[00:14:50.340]other than breakfast and lunch.
[00:14:51.960]But here he is in the staff lounge drinking sugared coffee.
[00:14:54.900]How did he get there?
[00:14:56.220]By hitting somebody in the face.
[00:14:58.590]Well, at that time, Montana,
[00:15:03.570]like all the states across the country,
[00:15:05.520]hired a squadron of people,
[00:15:07.770]a profession that I'd never heard of before
[00:15:10.410]to come into the institution
[00:15:12.150]and do adaptive behavior training
[00:15:13.740]to get residents out of institutions
[00:15:15.390]in the community settings.
[00:15:16.860]They hired a squadron of these professionals.
[00:15:18.813]They were called behavior analysts.
[00:15:22.050]I'd never heard of that before.
[00:15:23.190]I didn't know that was a job.
[00:15:24.810]And they had master's degrees or PhDs.
[00:15:27.600]And so there was one in every cottage,
[00:15:30.210]and they met on a regular basis.
[00:15:31.620]So I brought this scenario to them,
[00:15:33.510]and they problem solved it and came up with a solution
[00:15:36.101]involving treatment components I'd never heard of before.
[00:15:39.420]Overcorrection, positive practice,
[00:15:41.160]restitution response cost, they assembled it all together,
[00:15:44.460]and here's the program they came up with.
[00:15:46.110]The next time Jim hits somebody,
[00:15:48.720]he's gonna go to the victim.
[00:15:50.220]He's gonna take care of the victim,
[00:15:51.690]and then that victim
[00:15:52.680]is going to become his indentured servant for 24 hours,
[00:15:55.890]which means he's gonna surrender all his candy
[00:15:57.600]to the victim.
[00:15:58.433]He's gonna stay by the victim's side throughout the day
[00:16:00.270]and protect him from other residents.
[00:16:01.860]He's gonna make the victim's bed,
[00:16:03.120]he's gonna sit by the victim during meals,
[00:16:05.580]and he's gonna surrender anything
[00:16:06.600]from his tray the victim wants,
[00:16:07.890]and he's gonna take the victim's tray back to the kitchen.
[00:16:10.200]This is the program.
[00:16:12.210]So Jim hit one more time.
[00:16:14.130]The program was implemented, and he never hit again.
[00:16:17.610]He became kind of an auxiliary staff member.
[00:16:21.090]Now, I didn't know anything about this idea
[00:16:23.400]that I mentioned back then,
[00:16:25.230]which is revealing behavior as a function of circumstances,
[00:16:29.160]identifying the function of behavior.
[00:16:31.380]But it's very clear to me now
[00:16:33.570]that the function of Jim's hitting was staff attention.
[00:16:36.180]And once a very rich source of staff attention was available
[00:16:39.047]for another pattern of behavior,
[00:16:40.680]that's the way his behavior went, became a model resident.
[00:16:47.301]So my point is everything this way
[00:16:50.190]of thinking touches improves.
[00:16:51.300]I'll give you a more colloquially example.
[00:16:53.846]I've used it before, so some of you may have heard it.
[00:16:56.970]Imagine that you're late for work one morning,
[00:16:59.760]and you're in a big hurry,
[00:17:00.720]and you come up to a busy intersection,
[00:17:02.910]and the light's red, but you feel lucky
[00:17:04.470]'cause there's only one car in front of you.
[00:17:07.302]And then the light turns green,
[00:17:08.430]but the car in front of you doesn't budge, just sits there.
[00:17:11.730]And you look up there,
[00:17:12.563]and you see there's a woman in the driver's seat,
[00:17:14.460]but she's not looking out the front window of her car,
[00:17:16.650]she's looking into the backseat of her car,
[00:17:18.870]so she doesn't know the light's green.
[00:17:20.940]So the light gradually turns yellow and red,
[00:17:22.920]and you sit through a whole 'nother revolution.
[00:17:25.320]Then it turns green again.
[00:17:27.030]The car still doesn't budge.
[00:17:28.740]She's still messing around in the backseat.
[00:17:30.420]She doesn't know the light's green,
[00:17:31.590]you honk your horn, she takes no notice of you,
[00:17:34.053]then the light turns yellow and red.
[00:17:36.660]Maybe you get out of your car
[00:17:37.710]'cause you're so irritated and frustrated,
[00:17:39.240]you wanna find out what's going on.
[00:17:40.440]You go up to her car and knock on the window,
[00:17:41.940]she looks up you, tears in her eyes,
[00:17:44.340]and then you peer into the backseat,
[00:17:46.650]and back there is a baby and it's turning blue.
[00:17:49.290]And in that instant, in that instant,
[00:17:52.560]all the frustration, irritation, and anger, and hurry
[00:17:55.500]that you might have been in would disappear.
[00:17:57.960]What would take its place is compassion
[00:17:59.700]and desire to help that baby and that mother.
[00:18:02.460]That's a function of seeing the circumstances.
[00:18:05.700]There's an old saying,
[00:18:07.950]to know all is to forgive all.
[00:18:12.510]It's just that we don't know.
[00:18:14.880]We can't always know what those circumstances are.
[00:18:17.220]Once they come to light, however,
[00:18:19.410]we take a much more benign view of what we're seeing.
[00:18:22.770]So my point here is I'm trying to emphasize something
[00:18:25.680]that you do.
[00:18:27.210]And one of the things that you do
[00:18:28.560]is you represent this way of thinking in the world
[00:18:31.110]whether you know it or not.
[00:18:32.580]Just by the behavior programs that you implement,
[00:18:35.460]you are representing this idea in the world,
[00:18:37.440]and a lot of you are going a lot farther than that.
[00:18:40.050]So that's something that you do.
[00:18:42.480]That has value, that has significance.
[00:18:47.040]You might even have magnificence.
[00:18:49.680]Something else that you do that you might not know
[00:18:51.060]that you do.
[00:18:52.440]You are diminishing the role
[00:18:53.850]of the vertical arrangement of children
[00:18:56.970]in favor of the horizontal segmentation of children.
[00:18:59.910]Now to reveal what I mean by that,
[00:19:02.040]I'm gonna talk about Howard Moskowitz and food
[00:19:05.460]'cause Howard Moskowitz,
[00:19:06.540]a guy you probably never heard of before,
[00:19:08.280]has touched all of your lives.
[00:19:10.680]That is if you eat food.
[00:19:14.100]Years ago, the Prego spaghetti company
[00:19:16.710]hired Howard Moskowitz
[00:19:18.570]because Ragu was taking over market share from Prego.
[00:19:24.180]And at that time,
[00:19:25.440]there were just two spaghetti sauce companies,
[00:19:27.510]and there were only two types of sauce
[00:19:29.190]because food back then was vertically arranged.
[00:19:32.280]They would test food and come up with the food,
[00:19:35.370]and that would be what they'd put on the shelf,
[00:19:37.050]and there'd always just be one.
[00:19:38.670]And so there was one kind of spaghetti sauce
[00:19:40.278]from Prego, one from Ragu.
[00:19:43.170]And Ragu was taking market share from Prego.
[00:19:46.080]So Howard's assignment was to find the sauce
[00:19:50.190]that would take market share back from Ragu.
[00:19:52.200]In other words, the ideal sauce, the perfect sauce.
[00:19:56.130]And so what he did was he made up a whole bunch
[00:19:58.290]of different kinds of sauce.
[00:19:59.820]Thick, thin, chunky, spicy, garlicy,
[00:20:02.520]hot, mild, moderate.
[00:20:04.530]And he had thousands of people sample these sauces
[00:20:07.650]and rate their preferences,
[00:20:09.150]and his assumption that was that one would prevail
[00:20:13.200]as of the perfect sauce.
[00:20:16.050]And that's not what happened.
[00:20:18.660]Several of the sauces were the sauces.
[00:20:23.280]And instead of being vertically arranged,
[00:20:26.100]they were horizontally segmented.
[00:20:29.010]And the one at the far left was just as acceptable to people
[00:20:32.520]as the one in the middle and the one on the far right.
[00:20:35.640]So now when you go into a grocery store,
[00:20:38.340]and you go to the spaghetti sauce section,
[00:20:40.402]you have a whole bunch of different kinds of spaghetti sauce
[00:20:43.380]that's down the Howard Moskowitz.
[00:20:44.760]But that's not just true with spaghetti sauce,
[00:20:46.590]that's true with all foods.
[00:20:48.030]He affected everything that we buy in a grocery store.
[00:20:51.416]The reason that you have Grey Poupon Mustard,
[00:20:54.390]if you have it, is because of Howard Moskowitz.
[00:20:57.240]So what he did, he didn't diversify food,
[00:21:01.650]he diversified access to food.
[00:21:05.610]Prego as a producer, they produce spaghetti sauce.
[00:21:09.330]There's another producer.
[00:21:11.430]Now you can call this producer the forces of nature,
[00:21:15.720]or you can call this producer God, whatever your choice.
[00:21:21.420]Nature, God, whatever your choice is, is a producer.
[00:21:27.690]And one of the things nature or God produces is children.
[00:21:31.290]And until very recently,
[00:21:34.320]until very recently, until people like you got involved
[00:21:38.220]with these children,
[00:21:40.290]they had been vertically arranged,
[00:21:43.350]and the child at the top got the most resources
[00:21:45.660]was the most accepted, most valued, most participatory,
[00:21:50.190]and as you went down that vertical arrangement
[00:21:52.530]all the way to the bottom,
[00:21:53.910]the children there got virtually nothing
[00:21:55.950]except for institutionalization.
[00:21:59.370]But now, as a result of the kind of work that you do,
[00:22:02.520]the children are being horizontally segmented,
[00:22:05.100]so the child that was formally way at the bottom
[00:22:07.230]with that vertical arrangement is out here at the left
[00:22:09.780]at the same level of participation, acceptance, and value
[00:22:12.960]as the child in the middle and the child in the right.
[00:22:15.540]This is a horizontal segmentation of children.
[00:22:18.510]You're diversifying not children,
[00:22:20.130]you're diversifying access to children.
[00:22:24.510]Now I ask you, does that not have value?
[00:22:29.520]Is that not significant?
[00:22:32.280]Is that not magnificent?
[00:22:37.080]So those are some things that you're doing.
[00:22:42.150]Let me say a little bit about what I think you are.
[00:22:48.600]I'll use anecdotes.
[00:22:50.790]So I used to, still do actually from time to time,
[00:22:55.440]watch Sunday morning preachers.
[00:22:57.810]Not necessarily for the religious message,
[00:22:59.460]although it's often good, but for how they do it.
[00:23:03.300]How do they do it?
[00:23:04.560]I mean, they keep audiences enthrall for hours.
[00:23:09.210]They don't have any slides, they don't have any notes.
[00:23:13.020]They just walk back and forth and talk,
[00:23:14.580]and people are riveted to their message.
[00:23:16.230]How do they do that?
[00:23:17.487]And so one Sunday morning I tuned in,
[00:23:19.980]there's a very large church,
[00:23:21.060]probably a thousand people in the church,
[00:23:22.650]and the preacher's way up in a podium.
[00:23:24.750]And on the banister in front of him is a glass of water.
[00:23:27.390]And this preacher is preaching about courage.
[00:23:29.910]This is his theme.
[00:23:31.920]But there was something really, really off about all this.
[00:23:34.800]I wasn't even sure to take it seriously for a few moments
[00:23:38.880]because this is how he was preaching.
[00:23:41.079]"What, what I wanna talk, talk to you about today
[00:23:45.510]is courage.
[00:23:47.310]This is, this is our theme."
[00:23:50.217]I'm like, "What is going on here?"
[00:23:51.990]But there must be something going on
[00:23:53.490]because the audience is riveted to this guy
[00:23:56.010]and gradually he reveals it
[00:23:57.390]because he says, I'm not gonna mimic his voice anymore.
[00:24:01.290]I'm gonna talk in an ordinary voice.
[00:24:03.480]He didn't, he talked like that through the whole thing.
[00:24:06.120]So he said, "When I preach, my throat gets dry.
[00:24:11.430]I have cerebral palsy.
[00:24:13.920]I have a glass of water here, I need a drink,
[00:24:16.110]so I can preach more, but I can't hold the glass
[00:24:18.780]because I have cerebral palsy.
[00:24:20.670]Can you help me?"
[00:24:26.280]That's what he got, nothing.
[00:24:29.220]Oil painting.
[00:24:30.600]Nobody moved a muscle.
[00:24:32.550]He says it again, "When I preach, my throat gets dry.
[00:24:36.360]I need to have a little water so I can preach some more,
[00:24:38.910]but I can't hold the glass.
[00:24:40.530]Can you help me?"
[00:24:42.210]Nothing. Nobody moves a muscle.
[00:24:45.697]And he does it a third time.
[00:24:47.070]Way in the back, the guy gets up out of his chair,
[00:24:50.580]walks all the way to the front
[00:24:52.470]around the band, up on the stairs, up to the banister,
[00:24:55.410]gets the glass, holds it to the preacher's mouth.
[00:24:57.510]He drinks greedily, water runs down the side of his mouth.
[00:25:00.420]He sets the glass back down, he nods gratitude to the man.
[00:25:04.950]Then he turns audience,
[00:25:06.240]and he says, "Courage comes in lots of forms."
[00:25:10.830]I'm like, "Whoa, whoa."
[00:25:14.580]That was something just the way he conveyed that message.
[00:25:18.780]But that's not my point here.
[00:25:21.750]I'm talking about what you are.
[00:25:24.990]You're that guy.
[00:25:28.320]That's how I see you.
[00:25:30.690]That situation would make you very uncomfortable,
[00:25:33.330]and you'd want to help that guy out.
[00:25:36.300]You wouldn't just sit there.
[00:25:38.610]This is how I see you.
[00:25:40.650]You'd want to help because helping is what you do,
[00:25:44.520]helping is what you are.
[00:25:46.440]It's part of your being, part of your oncology.
[00:25:48.900]This is my point, this is my view of you.
[00:25:52.140]I'll give you another example.
[00:25:53.160]A long time ago, 10 years ago,
[00:25:56.820]four young boys, 12 years old,
[00:25:58.440]went on a hike south of Great Falls, Montana.
[00:26:01.200]They got about a mile and a half out of town.
[00:26:03.570]They're standing up on a big ridge overlooking a hill,
[00:26:05.689]and one of them got a little faint, wobbled, and then fell.
[00:26:09.690]Rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill.
[00:26:12.450]The three boys were shocked by that.
[00:26:14.220]And they climbed down to see to his fate.
[00:26:15.990]He was all scratched up, but that's not what spooked them.
[00:26:18.720]What spooked them was the shape of his body
[00:26:20.460]and what it was doing.
[00:26:21.540]It was all rigid.
[00:26:22.830]His fists were clenched, his eyes had rolled up in his head,
[00:26:25.350]foam was coming out of his mouth,
[00:26:26.880]and he was thrashing back and forth.
[00:26:29.340]And they'd never seen anything like that before.
[00:26:31.290]They thought he was dying.
[00:26:32.970]And they were terrified,
[00:26:34.170]and they wanted to get as far from that scene
[00:26:35.880]as they possibly could.
[00:26:37.770]And two of them did.
[00:26:40.590]Two of them did.
[00:26:41.582]Two of them ran away, ran back into town,
[00:26:43.770]leaving the third boy and the afflicted boy.
[00:26:46.827]And the third boy was just as terrified as the other two
[00:26:49.950]and wanted to run away just as badly as they did,
[00:26:52.020]but something called this boy
[00:26:55.920]and had him want to help.
[00:26:59.580]He didn't know how, he didn't know why,
[00:27:01.050]didn't know what to do, but he was called to help,
[00:27:03.210]so he stayed to do it.
[00:27:04.830]So he got down on the ground, got the kids head in his lap,
[00:27:07.200]stroked his hair, talked to him gently.
[00:27:09.450]And after, a while he kind of came around, groggy,
[00:27:12.150]got him up on his feet and half carried him into town,
[00:27:14.790]stopped at a house on the edge of town, knocked on the door.
[00:27:17.100]A woman came to the door,
[00:27:18.630]he explained their plight, she invited them in,
[00:27:20.490]laid the afflicted boy in the couch,
[00:27:21.584]and then theorized with the third boy
[00:27:23.580]that possibly the boy had epilepsy.
[00:27:26.100]Never heard of it before.
[00:27:27.870]They called the boy's parents, and the theory was correct.
[00:27:30.060]He hadn't taken his medication that day
[00:27:31.650]and everything turned out fine.
[00:27:35.760]Why am I telling you that story?
[00:27:39.420]Remember what I'm doing here,
[00:27:40.650]I'm talking about what you are.
[00:27:43.440]You're the third boy.
[00:27:46.050]You're the third boy.
[00:27:48.360]You'd want to help even if you didn't know how.
[00:27:52.200]This is something that you're made of.
[00:27:56.280]It's not something that you're just doing.
[00:27:58.500]It's something that you are.
[00:28:02.160]Why are you here today?
[00:28:06.060]What are you doing here?
[00:28:09.750]You're here to find out how to help.
[00:28:12.420]You're taking these two days out of your life
[00:28:14.730]to sit in this room and rooms like this on the off chance
[00:28:18.060]that you might hear a speaker tell you something
[00:28:19.980]that you can take and use.
[00:28:21.180]Use for what? To help.
[00:28:22.830]Help who? People in need.
[00:28:26.070]If you get a better job,
[00:28:27.270]one that pays four times what you make now
[00:28:29.100]for half the hours, you'd probably take it.
[00:28:30.580]You'd be a fool not to.
[00:28:32.670]But there'd be a caveat.
[00:28:34.350]You can have this job, you're gonna make all this money,
[00:28:36.570]and do this very little work,
[00:28:37.950]but there's no opportunity whatsoever to help in any way.
[00:28:42.540]Before long, you'd be very, very unsatisfied in that job.
[00:28:46.350]And you start to think,
[00:28:47.183]I'm gonna stay in the job long enough to get enough money
[00:28:49.620]so I can quit because I don't really value what I'm doing.
[00:28:53.130]If it doesn't have a helping component,
[00:28:55.020]it's not gonna be of great interest to you.
[00:28:56.147]You're not gonna get that sense of value and significance.
[00:28:59.430]You're not gonna get that sense of fulfillment
[00:29:01.050]and satisfaction that comes to you
[00:29:03.240]from the kind of work that you do.
[00:29:06.030]Anyway, so my point is here's some things that you do,
[00:29:09.870]here's some things that you are,
[00:29:12.151]and these are things you might consider.
[00:29:14.940]And in considering them,
[00:29:16.140]they can give you that sense of internal value
[00:29:18.720]that's not available externally,
[00:29:20.160]but it's available internally,
[00:29:21.510]and it's a function of what you are,
[00:29:23.340]which is like translated into what you do.
[00:29:27.690]Something else you should know.
[00:29:28.590]I can do this all day.
[00:29:31.740]I just did two examples of each of those.
[00:29:33.390]I could stand up here,
[00:29:34.230]and do what I'm doing right now all day.
[00:29:35.490]I don't have that kind of time,
[00:29:36.480]you probably don't have that kind of patience.
[00:29:39.978]So let me talk a little bit
[00:29:44.670]about the power of the idea.
[00:29:47.310]I only have a couple of examples
[00:29:48.600]'cause I don't have that much time.
[00:29:51.330]So
[00:29:55.809]I'm a tremendous advocate for this idea,
[00:29:59.159]and I have a romantic fantasy about it.
[00:30:01.227]And in this fantasy, I'm in front of a firing squad,
[00:30:05.430]and they make me some offers.
[00:30:08.100]They tell me if I'll recant and say the idea is crap,
[00:30:10.800]came out of the back end of a bull,
[00:30:13.410]well, they'll let me live.
[00:30:14.370]Well, I turned down that offer.
[00:30:16.890]They offer me a blindfold.
[00:30:18.054]No, I turned down that offer.
[00:30:20.070]They offer me a cigarette.
[00:30:22.680]Well, I take the cigarette.
[00:30:23.670]What difference is it gonna make?
[00:30:24.660]Besides my mom's not there,
[00:30:26.040]and besides, I've always thought
[00:30:28.020]that whole lung cancer scare was overblown.
[00:30:31.440]What they're wondering about though
[00:30:32.490]is how can this guy be so cool, calm, and collected
[00:30:35.340]in the face of death?
[00:30:37.470]And the reason I'm so relaxed
[00:30:38.880]is because I have a firing squad pass.
[00:30:43.980]And with this firing squad pass, I'm allowed one wish.
[00:30:46.890]Any wish I want, well, I'm gonna wish to live.
[00:30:49.470]And so that's why I'm so cool, calm, and collected.
[00:30:52.120]Now, inside that romantic fantasy
[00:30:55.440]is a behavioral perspective derived from the idea
[00:30:58.260]that's very powerful and broadly applicable.
[00:31:01.140]I don't know if you spotted it or not.
[00:31:03.540]I'll give the behavioral analyst in the crowd an example.
[00:31:06.930]If you integrate a DRA, a differential reinforcement
[00:31:10.170]of alternative behavior program with escape extinction,
[00:31:13.410]you don't get an extinction burst.
[00:31:17.790]I'll give you a colloquial example.
[00:31:19.590]If you put a person in an unpleasant set of circumstances,
[00:31:22.410]an aversive set of circumstances, and you allow them one,
[00:31:25.410]just one executable option involving appropriate behavior
[00:31:30.150]with exit properties
[00:31:31.980]or negative reinforcement properties, if you prefer,
[00:31:35.100]the probability of resistance goes down to zero.
[00:31:38.520]So all across this great country of ours,
[00:31:40.560]well-meaning parents placed their young children
[00:31:44.250]in extended extinction programs lasting as long as 10 hours.
[00:31:49.530]And not only are all the things the child likes to do put
[00:31:51.780]on extinction, light itself is put on extinction.
[00:31:55.710]Can you imagine an institutional review board
[00:31:57.870]ever approving a program like that?
[00:32:00.390]But see these parents, they don't call it extinction.
[00:32:03.330]They call it bedtime.
[00:32:05.580]And bedtime is an extinction procedure.
[00:32:07.830]And as a result, there's an enormous amount of resistance
[00:32:10.170]to bedtime.
[00:32:11.190]So all across this great country of ours,
[00:32:13.140]up to 30% of typically developing children,
[00:32:15.540]up to 40% of children on the spectrum
[00:32:18.000]will show up in their pediatrician's office
[00:32:19.740]with complaints about resistance to bedtime.
[00:32:21.990]And the primary forms of treatment supplied
[00:32:23.940]by the pediatrician are number one, medication,
[00:32:26.670]number two, just ignore that,
[00:32:28.527]and number three, family bed.
[00:32:30.660]And all of these are attended by problems of their own.
[00:32:33.540]But we have a treatment derived from the idea
[00:32:35.610]that's much more powerful.
[00:32:36.720]And we take a page from the firing squad pass book,
[00:32:39.660]and we give the child a bedtime pass
[00:32:41.730]when they're laying in bed,
[00:32:43.050]and they can use that pass for any wish they want
[00:32:45.360]throughout the entire night.
[00:32:46.740]They can go out and find their parents like nomads,
[00:32:49.650]or they can summon them like servants,
[00:32:51.447]and they make their wish, the wish is granted,
[00:32:53.850]and back the bed they go.
[00:32:55.197]And what does our research tell us,
[00:32:56.730]which we've done an abundant amount of?
[00:32:58.680]It tells us that the probability of resistance
[00:33:00.600]to bedtime goes way, way down.
[00:33:03.210]And that a large percentage of kids
[00:33:04.740]don't even use their pass.
[00:33:05.820]They hang onto it.
[00:33:07.440]Well, why would they do that?
[00:33:09.602]I don't know.
[00:33:10.435]Maybe they're laying in bed thinking,
[00:33:11.540]"Phew, sure, hate to have the bogeyman come
[00:33:14.097]and not have my pass."
[00:33:18.420]All across this great country of ours,
[00:33:20.580]parents of older children place their older children
[00:33:24.990]in extended extinction programs lasting as long as a month.
[00:33:29.400]A month.
[00:33:31.129]Can you imagine an institutional review board approving
[00:33:34.620]an extinction program that would last a month?
[00:33:37.860]See, the parents, they don't call it extinction.
[00:33:40.110]They call it grounding.
[00:33:42.000]It's time-based grounding.
[00:33:44.550]And in the time-based grounding protocol,
[00:33:46.860]they do not allow their children an executable option
[00:33:51.330]involving appropriate behavior
[00:33:53.040]with exit properties or negative reinforcement properties.
[00:33:56.160]But that leaves open all kinds of inappropriate behavior
[00:34:00.210]with exit properties or negative reinforcement properties.
[00:34:02.880]So what are the kinds of things that we see?
[00:34:04.980]Well, sometimes the kid just becomes so obnoxious,
[00:34:08.670]parents just give in.
[00:34:10.470]Or the kid always starts emitting self-harm statements,
[00:34:14.040]and the parents think they've gone too far,
[00:34:15.840]and they give in.
[00:34:17.010]Or the kids are as good as gold all week,
[00:34:19.560]lulling their parents and into a false sense of security,
[00:34:22.110]and then they sneak out on Saturday night.
[00:34:25.050]So what's our alternative?
[00:34:28.200]Well, we allow the children executable options
[00:34:32.280]involving appropriate behavior with exit properties
[00:34:35.580]or negative reinforcement properties called jobs,
[00:34:39.000]job-based grounding.
[00:34:40.620]And the number of jobs is determined
[00:34:42.360]by the gravity of the offense.
[00:34:44.250]The fate is now entirely in the children's hands.
[00:34:47.280]They have a choice.
[00:34:48.870]And when they have that choice,
[00:34:51.330]it reduces all their resistance.
[00:34:53.340]And this is what I'm pointing to here.
[00:34:55.380]This is a powerful dimension of the idea
[00:34:59.220]is supplying people that are gonna be put
[00:35:02.160]in aversive sets of circumstances a choice
[00:35:04.530]to not be there at least for a little while.
[00:35:07.800]And people in the behavioral analytic field,
[00:35:10.020]Greg Hanley and Jen Austin, the two, others
[00:35:13.440]are showing that when you have treatment programs,
[00:35:15.990]the kids don't necessarily like to be in.
[00:35:17.630]If you allow them a choice not to be in it for a while,
[00:35:20.760]they're much more likely to participate.
[00:35:24.870]So I'm just making a recommendation
[00:35:28.350]where possible, when you are putting somebody
[00:35:32.370]in an unpleasant situation,
[00:35:33.780]if you can give them a choice,
[00:35:35.550]they're much more likely or much less likely
[00:35:37.710]to resist that situation.
[00:35:39.510]Oh, that's a derivative of the idea.
[00:35:45.030]Another
[00:35:51.030]involves, I'm gonna use a technical term,
[00:35:54.990]compound reinforcers.
[00:35:57.690]What the behavioral research shows
[00:36:00.630]is that compound reinforcers are far more effective,
[00:36:03.660]far more powerful than reinforcers that are, or rewards
[00:36:07.740]that are just composed of one component.
[00:36:09.180]Now I discovered this for myself.
[00:36:13.140]I was, I don't know, kind of an expert
[00:36:15.660]in an area called thumb sucking.
[00:36:18.510]I'd published more papers on thumbs sucking probably
[00:36:20.550]at that time than anybody on the planet.
[00:36:22.410]Not because I'm such a spectacular researcher,
[00:36:25.530]but because nobody cared about thumbs sucking except for me.
[00:36:29.700]So I had a treatment for thumbs sucking.
[00:36:31.680]Anyway, I'm up on the neonatal intensive care unit,
[00:36:36.060]the University of Nebraska Med School,
[00:36:38.250]working with a preemie that has a rumination problem.
[00:36:42.420]But there's also a kid up there,
[00:36:45.603]he looks like a giant, this kid.
[00:36:48.090]He's like a Brobdingnagian
[00:36:49.140]in a field full of little Pushons.
[00:36:51.210]He's got this condition called
[00:36:52.560]bronchopulmonary dysplasia.
[00:36:54.930]And these kids have to stay up on the NICU
[00:36:56.850]until they can learn to breathe on their own,
[00:36:58.590]until they can learn to suck on their own.
[00:37:00.930]And so they can end up on the NICU for a long time.
[00:37:04.170]You know, a lot of the kids up there weigh two pounds.
[00:37:06.810]This kid was two years old, he looks like a giant.
[00:37:09.600]And the nurses
[00:37:14.040]were trying to teach him how to suck,
[00:37:16.440]so they hit on a method.
[00:37:17.850]They coated a pacifier with honey,
[00:37:20.550]and he got attached to the pacifier.
[00:37:22.950]So he'd have it in his mouth good part of the day,
[00:37:25.350]and he'd fall asleep with it in his mouth.
[00:37:28.110]But when he'd fall asleep, it would fall out of his mouth.
[00:37:32.040]And then when he woke up, it was in the crib somewhere.
[00:37:35.700]But see, these kids with BPD, they're spoiled.
[00:37:40.200]They're absolutely spoiled.
[00:37:41.580]They have a staff, a large, large staff
[00:37:44.970]of the most highly trained people on the planet,
[00:37:47.686]neonatologists, and the nurses,
[00:37:52.530]and the other aides on the floor
[00:37:53.970]are all part of their staff.
[00:37:55.560]And so when that pacifier would fall out of his mouth,
[00:37:59.940]and he wanted it back, he wouldn't reach for it,
[00:38:02.580]he would summon his staff.
[00:38:04.818]How would he summon his staff when he can't talk?
[00:38:07.740]Well, he was wired up to all kinds of machinery,
[00:38:10.530]all of which was life-giving.
[00:38:13.170]And he just unplugged some of it,
[00:38:14.610]which instantly triggered what they called a gang page.
[00:38:18.090]You might know of that as code blue.
[00:38:20.940]That means everybody that's on the faculty
[00:38:23.950]who's on the floor goes.
[00:38:26.400]I'm on the faculty, so I have to go.
[00:38:29.883]So I rush in there.
[00:38:32.247]But I'm a psychologist, so I feel like an idiot.
[00:38:36.180]You know, I'm ready
[00:38:37.013]to take a lifesaving reliability estimate if necessary.
[00:38:41.310]If they need some kind of a coefficient, I'm their man.
[00:38:46.740]In other words, I felt like an idiot.
[00:38:48.630]But on this particular occasion,
[00:38:51.240]the attending was on the floor,
[00:38:52.650]and apparently this has been a chronic problem.
[00:38:54.960]So the room's crowded, he comes in,
[00:38:56.490]and he said, "I've said this before,
[00:38:57.990]this is a behavior problem."
[00:39:01.890]Now everybody's looking at me.
[00:39:02.723]And I'm, "That's right, that's right.
[00:39:06.030]Step aside, I got this."
[00:39:10.167]And I look at it, I immediately look at it
[00:39:12.150]like a mother of 12.
[00:39:13.110]I've learned to look at things like a mother of 12
[00:39:15.120]'cause mothers of 12 know everything.
[00:39:17.370]They have to solve every problem
[00:39:18.690]that you can conceive of
[00:39:19.710]and a lot of problems you can't even conceive of.
[00:39:22.740]So practical.
[00:39:24.240]Like my best friend in Montana was one of 12,
[00:39:28.320]Grandma Rice with his mother.
[00:39:29.940]She raised 12 children.
[00:39:31.590]She also ran an in-home daycare, very large, for 25 years.
[00:39:36.870]There was a little indentation on her couch.
[00:39:38.760]I sat there one day and Charlie said, "Don't sit there.
[00:39:41.730]Grandma'll change ya."
[00:39:43.350]So apparently that indentation
[00:39:45.510]was where she had changed the diapers
[00:39:47.070]for thousands of children.
[00:39:49.110]Anyway, so I'm looking at this like a mother of 12,
[00:39:51.180]and immediately the solution occurs to me.
[00:39:53.250]Tie surgical gown cloth onto the pacifier
[00:39:56.910]or surgical instrument cloth onto the pacifier,
[00:39:59.610]have multiple of those, and make it easy for him to find it,
[00:40:02.070]which he did, and it worked out fine.
[00:40:04.530]And he became attached to that cloth,
[00:40:06.810]and he would suck the pacifier at the same time.
[00:40:08.733]Then he decide that's enough on the pacifier.
[00:40:11.190]So they take the pacifier away,
[00:40:12.600]he still attached to the cloth
[00:40:13.740]because now he's found his thumb.
[00:40:16.020]So I've saw it occur in real time.
[00:40:18.840]Like know about Linus syndrome from the cartoon "Peanuts,"
[00:40:23.250]but how does that occur?
[00:40:26.070]I saw it happen in real time.
[00:40:28.707]And so I tried to play with it a little bit.
[00:40:30.900]I took the cloth, he stop sucking his thumb.
[00:40:33.300]I give him back the cloth, he sucks his thumb.
[00:40:34.890]Take the cloth, stop sucking them.
[00:40:36.630]Give him back the cloth.
[00:40:37.860]Oh, these two go together, interesting.
[00:40:40.165]And about that same time, I had some clients,
[00:40:44.070]two and three years old that were pulling out their hair.
[00:40:46.500]They called this trichotillomania.
[00:40:48.780]And the literature on that problem at that time
[00:40:51.240]was full of psycho whatsit mumbo jumbo
[00:40:54.030]was mostly psychoanalytic.
[00:40:55.590]Like this was a sublimated form of masturbation,
[00:41:00.870]that kind of thing.
[00:41:01.890]Or this is seriously pathologic,
[00:41:04.140]and it has a very guarded prognosis, that kind of thing.
[00:41:07.932]And I'm looking at these kids,
[00:41:09.120]they're two and three years old.
[00:41:10.200]I can't think of them, you know, sublimating masturbation,
[00:41:12.990]and they don't look like they're pathological to me,
[00:41:15.420]but they are pulling their hair and sucking their thumb.
[00:41:18.690]And I'm a thumb sucking guy.
[00:41:20.010]I don't know how to treat the hair pulling,
[00:41:22.170]but I know how to treat the thumb sucking, so I do that.
[00:41:24.330]They stop pulling their hair.
[00:41:26.970]So these two go together, maybe the same way the cloth
[00:41:30.344]and the thumb went for the kid with BPD.
[00:41:33.570]So I got a big group of kids that all had an object
[00:41:36.510]like wool of some sort, a blanket, or a piece of satin,
[00:41:39.210]or a little doll, and they sucked their thumb
[00:41:41.340]at the same time.
[00:41:42.810]The title of the paper that I wrote,
[00:41:44.257]It was What Would Happen to Linus's Blanket
[00:41:47.070]if His Thumb Sucking were Treated?
[00:41:49.500]And the answer was he would ditch it.
[00:41:52.650]I went the other way with a kid, again, showing
[00:41:54.690]that if you take the object, they stop sucking their thumb.
[00:41:57.360]So what I saw was these two things go together,
[00:42:00.344]and they have a synergistic relationship,
[00:42:03.180]which means that their overall effect
[00:42:05.100]is greater than the sum of their parts.
[00:42:06.930]You take either one of them away,
[00:42:08.010]it's not that good anymore.
[00:42:09.420]And then I began to see there's all kinds
[00:42:10.800]of behaviors like that in our repertoire.
[00:42:14.100]So here's one that I say
[00:42:18.360]is largely a contributor to the reason that we're all here.
[00:42:22.380]Hugging and kissing.
[00:42:25.020]And hugging and kissing is a pretty good combination.
[00:42:27.630]I think you'll agree to that.
[00:42:31.080]But let's take hugging out of the equation.
[00:42:33.210]Remove the hugging.
[00:42:34.800]Now what have we got?
[00:42:36.270]Well, we got kissing, but it looks like this.
[00:42:39.358](Pat smacking lips)
[00:42:43.140]I mean that's not bad,
[00:42:45.720]but I'm not gonna let it threaten my marriage.
[00:42:50.160]Or dancing, moving your shoulders and your hips.
[00:42:54.120]You know.
[00:42:58.380]Take the hips out.
[00:43:00.180]Now what do you got?
[00:43:03.480]I just don't think I'm gonna go downtown to do this.
[00:43:08.280]The point I'm making here is you can go both ways with this.
[00:43:12.360]One is if you wanna magnify the reinforcing potency
[00:43:15.990]over some kind of a consequence,
[00:43:18.300]and the consequence you have isn't doing it for you,
[00:43:20.820]add some things into it that magnifies its effect.
[00:43:24.630]Or if you're troubled by a behavior
[00:43:26.760]that you can't seem to eliminate or reduce,
[00:43:29.430]it has some kinds of consequences
[00:43:31.410]that it generates, some kinds of functions,
[00:43:33.450]look at that function and take a few pieces out of it
[00:43:36.240]and see if it doesn't decrease in power.
[00:43:38.790]Anyway, all I'm really doing here
[00:43:41.070]is just, and I could do this all day.
[00:43:43.680]Demonstration after demonstration after demonstration
[00:43:46.260]of the power of the idea.
[00:43:47.490]I'm just throwing it out there.
[00:43:51.759]But I want to go back to something that you do
[00:43:55.350]before I leave the stage.
[00:44:00.600]In my career, I did a lot of developmental assessments.
[00:44:04.650]That's never good.
[00:44:05.850]People asking for a developmental assessment,
[00:44:07.650]that means they're seeing something.
[00:44:09.180]They're seeing something that's there
[00:44:10.770]that shouldn't be there
[00:44:11.970]or something that's not there should be there.
[00:44:14.010]They ask people to do the assessment,
[00:44:15.300]and we find something typically.
[00:44:17.288]And every once in a while,
[00:44:18.780]but all too often what we find is severe or profound,
[00:44:23.910]meaning a severe or a profound disability.
[00:44:26.760]And when you find that, now you got to tell the parents.
[00:44:29.370]They're not prepared for that.
[00:44:31.230]I mean, they knew something was off,
[00:44:32.640]but they didn't think it was that far off.
[00:44:34.560]Then you got to tell them.
[00:44:36.270]And you don't sugarcoat that.
[00:44:38.640]Offer them platitudes to make it go down better.
[00:44:41.340]You know it's God's will,
[00:44:42.480]or it's gonna turn out for the best,
[00:44:43.770]or tell them heartwarming stories
[00:44:45.420]about Down syndrome or Pierre Robin sequence, no.
[00:44:48.930]You got to tell them the truth,
[00:44:49.950]and you have to give them a little hope.
[00:44:53.400]I always had something to tell them.
[00:44:57.540]I always had something to tell them.
[00:45:00.240]I told them about you.
[00:45:03.090]I told them you'd be there.
[00:45:05.430]Not you, in particular,
[00:45:07.140]but people like you would be there.
[00:45:08.970]A community like the one you have
[00:45:10.800]and the service oriented professionals
[00:45:12.300]like the ones that you are would be there for them.
[00:45:14.520]I tell them if you had a typically developing child
[00:45:17.016]with ordinary problems, you'd be on your own.
[00:45:19.620]But you have a child with special needs,
[00:45:21.480]and there are very special people in this world
[00:45:23.790]who form communities to be supportive of people like you
[00:45:26.760]and who provide services for those that your son
[00:45:29.340]or daughter needs.
[00:45:30.480]You'll never be alone in this.
[00:45:33.660]That's you.
[00:45:35.280]This is what I see.
[00:45:39.210]And you got to get her across the river
[00:45:40.800]if it's the mother or the father,
[00:45:42.330]got to get them across the river.
[00:45:44.130]Got to get them across the river.
[00:45:45.390]What river?
[00:45:46.223]The river of doubt that just opened up in their lives,
[00:45:48.210]and they're on the wrong side of it.
[00:45:50.430]What's on that side?
[00:45:51.951]They have no idea what to do.
[00:45:54.570]They don't know who to call, how to be, what to think,
[00:45:56.490]how life's gonna go on, how to be with their child.
[00:46:02.580]They don't know any of that.
[00:46:03.810]They're blasted.
[00:46:06.600]You got to get them across the river.
[00:46:09.690]And what's on the other side?
[00:46:11.970]On the other side of the river, they know what to do.
[00:46:14.250]They know how to teach, they know how to think,
[00:46:15.750]they know who to call, they know where to go, what to be.
[00:46:18.360]And where, on the wrong side of the river,
[00:46:20.520]it was probably the worst day of their life.
[00:46:22.500]On the other side of the river, everything's changed.
[00:46:25.740]Everything's changed.
[00:46:27.630]'Cause there's something about living
[00:46:30.510]with raising and serving a person
[00:46:33.420]with developmental disabilities that's vastly different
[00:46:37.590]and calls for way more
[00:46:40.530]than serving a typically developing child,
[00:46:43.050]especially if the child is pretty well-behaved.
[00:46:45.900]I don't wanna downplay the profound responsibility
[00:46:49.020]that's involved in raising a child,
[00:46:50.520]but if a child is pretty well-behaved
[00:46:52.020]and kind of self-motivated,
[00:46:53.580]a parent can take their eye off the ball for a while,
[00:46:55.410]nothing bad happens.
[00:46:58.350]But you have a child with a disability,
[00:46:59.880]you can't take your eye off the ball ever.
[00:47:04.680]And it's always difficult.
[00:47:06.900]It's never easy.
[00:47:09.150]And that sounds bad, but it isn't bad
[00:47:11.070]because it adds to the quality of a person's life
[00:47:13.350]because the person doing it is alive and has to be alive
[00:47:16.500]and experiencing moment to moment
[00:47:17.910]in ways that people that have it easier don't have to.
[00:47:22.050]And they're called to be something
[00:47:23.790]that they wouldn't narrowly have been called to be.
[00:47:25.860]I'm telling 'em myself.
[00:47:28.399]I'm telling 'em myself.
[00:47:31.470]I was up in Canada giving a workshop
[00:47:33.420]for parents of children on the autism spectrum.
[00:47:36.150]And before I was getting ready to go on the stage,
[00:47:38.220]my host told me that these parents,
[00:47:39.810]some of them anyway, are gonna seem angry and frustrated,
[00:47:41.940]not with you, but because up there,
[00:47:44.400]services were free at the time,
[00:47:45.840]and there was a long waiting list.
[00:47:46.950]They're on it, they're not getting any services.
[00:47:48.540]And they said one of them tends to be pretty hard
[00:47:50.910]on speakers, but we don't think she's gonna come today.
[00:47:54.300]So I'm up putting my microphone on my lapel
[00:47:58.470]and one of the hosts jumps up there
[00:47:59.670]and goes, "Pink sweater, pink sweater on your left."
[00:48:03.480]Okay, she's there.
[00:48:04.860]All right, so I caution the audience,
[00:48:06.870]please hold your questions until the break.
[00:48:09.240]I'm two minutes in, the pink sweater arm shoots
[00:48:10.980]into the air.
[00:48:11.813]She asks me a question about her children.
[00:48:13.020]Doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about.
[00:48:15.094]I'm thinking she's selfish.
[00:48:16.830]You know, I think she's just rude and selfish.
[00:48:21.600]But I answered her question graciously.
[00:48:23.970]I again question the audience,
[00:48:25.110]please hold your question until the break.
[00:48:26.490]A few more minutes.
[00:48:27.330]Another pink sweater arm shoots in the air, same thing.
[00:48:30.480]Kind of a non-sequitur question,
[00:48:31.770]has to do with her kids, not my topic.
[00:48:34.440]I answered graciously.
[00:48:35.580]I do it a third time, but then there's a fourth time.
[00:48:38.307]And I lost my patience, and I answered sarcastically
[00:48:40.860]and dismissively.
[00:48:41.693]Everybody laughed, and she left at the break.
[00:48:46.050]I asked about her, subsequently.
[00:48:50.550]She was a single mother.
[00:48:53.730]A single mother is a sacred human being.
[00:48:58.320]Nobody knows how difficult the life of a single mother is
[00:49:00.870]except for other single mothers.
[00:49:02.610]It's the hardest thing she'll ever do in her entire life.
[00:49:04.770]And one thing that makes it hard
[00:49:05.910]is nobody knows and nobody cares.
[00:49:08.130]She's just a mother.
[00:49:10.140]But she has to be careful with everything that she does,
[00:49:12.330]including her romantic possibilities
[00:49:14.160]in favor of her children during the best years of her life.
[00:49:18.090]That's a single mother.
[00:49:19.110]She was one of those.
[00:49:20.490]And she had two children, both severely impaired
[00:49:24.120]on the autism spectrum, and she's not getting any services.
[00:49:28.200]So the only shot she's got to get some services,
[00:49:30.360]come to these workshops,
[00:49:31.590]try to get something out of the speaker.
[00:49:33.090]That's what she was doing.
[00:49:33.960]That's not rude, and that's not selfish.
[00:49:39.510]She was willing to look bad
[00:49:40.800]in front of hundreds of people just to get something
[00:49:44.100]for her kids.
[00:49:47.220]I didn't see that.
[00:49:50.760]But here's my point.
[00:49:54.240]Her children brought that out in her.
[00:49:57.030]That kind of advocacy was there waiting to be born,
[00:50:00.690]but it wasn't activated until her children shown up.
[00:50:04.860]That's the right side of the river.
[00:50:08.340]So my point again is you got to get them across the river,
[00:50:11.950]but who gets them over there?
[00:50:15.150]Who ferries them across the river to that side?
[00:50:20.070]That's you.
[00:50:22.350]That's what you do.
[00:50:23.910]That's what you are, that's what you're part of.
[00:50:28.920]Does that not have value?
[00:50:32.010]Is that not significant?
[00:50:34.470]Is that not magnificent?
[00:50:40.890]I want you to see you the way I see you.
[00:50:44.820]And that's what I see.
[00:50:46.560]I want you to have the point of view about you that I do.
[00:50:49.740]And that's the point of view that I have.
[00:50:53.700]So I wanna thank you.
[00:50:56.430]Not for your attention.
[00:50:58.530]I wanna thank you for what you are
[00:51:03.450]and what you do.
[00:51:04.890]Good morning.
[00:51:06.859](attendees applauding)
[00:51:20.563]♪ I'm working hard, you're working too ♪
[00:51:24.058]♪ We do it every day ♪
[00:51:28.325]♪ For every minute I have to work ♪
[00:51:32.558]♪ I need a minute of play ♪
[00:51:36.748]♪ Day in, day out, all week long ♪
[00:51:40.783]♪ Things go better with rock ♪
[00:51:45.478]♪ The only time I turn it down ♪
[00:51:49.685]♪ Is when I'm sleepin' it off ♪
[00:51:53.876]♪ Turn up the radio ♪
[00:51:58.066]♪ I need the music, gimme some more ♪
[00:52:02.070]♪ Turn up the radio ♪
[00:52:06.508]♪ I want to feel it, got to gimme some more ♪
[00:52:10.864](energetic rock music)
[00:52:14.229]♪ Now listen ♪
[00:52:15.588]♪ I wanna shake, I wanna dance ♪
[00:52:19.533]♪ So count it off, one, two, three ♪
[00:52:23.944]♪ I feel the beat, I'm in a trance ♪
[00:52:28.236]♪ No better place to be ♪
[00:52:32.317]♪ Daytime, nighttime, anytime ♪
[00:52:36.796]♪ Things go better with rock ♪
[00:52:41.037]♪ I'm going 24 hours a day ♪
[00:52:45.399]♪ I can't seem to stop ♪
[00:52:49.538]♪ Turn up the radio ♪
[00:52:53.694]♪ I need the music, gimme some more ♪
[00:52:57.783]♪ Turn up the radio ♪
[00:53:01.965]♪ I wanna feel it, got to gimme some more ♪
[00:53:06.368]♪ Turn up the radio ♪
[00:53:10.508]♪ I wanna feel it, got to gimme some more ♪
[00:53:15.696](energetic rock music continues)

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There is No Such Thing as a Bad Boy

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