Group vs alone behavior

This blog post is a transcript of Episode 104 of my podcast/YouTube series. Because of that, it is not written to be grammatically/syntactically correct.

You can listen here and watch here.

Once upon a time, there were students who didn't recognize the difference between group behaviors and alone behaviors.

Some students talked about or did things that caused others to feel uncomfortable or even grossed out around them.

Other students didn't know what to do if something they knew was an alone behavior, like burping or farting out loud, happened to them on accident while they were in a group.

And then there were students who said they didn't care about how their actions affected others, because they didn't realize the long term consequences when it comes to things like relationships and employment.
I created the lesson I'm talking about on this episode for all of these students.

In this lesson, students learn that almost everything we do throughout the course of our day requires us to think about other people. We talk about why certain things fall under the category of alone behaviors, and what we can do if we need to engage in these behaviors in public, or if they happen to us on accident.

This episode covers lesson two in module one of the SC3 Academy program here at Starfish Social Club. Module One is all about the concept of identity and reputation. The goal is to help students understand what a reputation is, how it's formed, and why our reputation matters. On the checklist for this module, this lesson covers number three: Engages in behaviors that are considered socially inappropriate, and in parentheses I have nose picking, talking to themselves, complaining.

I want to share a story that highlights why this lesson is so important, because I think it's easy for students and for us as adults to think that a lot of these things don't really matter, and that sometimes we're being too nitpicky, or we're focusing on things that we shouldn't really be putting so much time and effort into.
Several years ago, I followed somebody on social media who ran a program designed to help parents of neurodivergent kids, specifically kids on the autism spectrum and a big emphasis on kids with anxiety. This person is both of those, on the autism spectrum and someone who struggles with anxiety. I remember one time I was watching a Q & A session that he was doing with people in in his world, in his audience, and a mom asked how she could best support her adult daughter who picked her nose in public.

Nose picking is actually not so uncommon of a behavior among a lot of the students I work with. It's something that I notice quite often, probably more than a lot of the other things that we're going to talk about in this lesson. This person's response to the parent's concern was, he asked her, "Does it bother your daughter that she does this, or does it just bother you? If it just bothers you, you probably need to let it go."

My immediate reaction to that was that things like picking our nose in public absolutely will affect this person's ability to get and keep employment, possibly get and keep relationships. If we just talk about the employment part of it, imagine any person in a customer-facing position who picks their nose in public. Imagine if this is the person bagging your groceries at the grocery store, or the person greeting you when you walk into your favorite retail store. If this is the person helping out at your gym, maybe it's your personal trainer at your gym, any position that you can think of, a teacher, if this is your child's third grade teacher, any position that you can think of where they are interacting with other people and they are picking their nose in public.

Number one, that's a hygiene issue. And number two, most people are grossed out by that. It's one of those things that people have pretty strong reactions to. So there's a good chance that one thing like that, that seems not that big of a deal to some people, can cause you to lose your job. Especially if you're working anywhere in an area where you need to practice good hygiene, where you need to keep your hands washed, where you're dealing with food, even touching other people. I don't want somebody touching me after they've had their fingers in their nose. Even at Starfish Social Club, for the students who come in person, I bring this up during game time. When I see a student picking their nose, I let them know that I'm not comfortable with them continuing to touch the pieces of the game that everyone else is also touching when they've had their fingers in their nose, and I request that they go to the bathroom and wash their hands.

Nose picking isn't the only one that this affects. We'll talk about that more in this episode as well. But it also makes people around them feel gross. I think nose picking is the biggest example I can think of, like the quickest way to gross out people around you by not even saying anything, is just picking your nose. One of my favorite authors when it comes to stories for neurodivergent kiddos has a story about a student who picks her nose in front of everybody else. She has a whole book about it because it is a really big deal, even though it's such a small behavior. It has significant social consequences.

That's why this lesson is so important to me. It is not at all about trying to regulate my students' behavior or trying to make them compliant with what's socially appropriate. The reality of what I teach is that my students can do whatever they want to. If they want to keep picking their nose, they can do that. I just need them to understand the social consequences of making that choice. And every time we have this lesson, students get to make that decision. They get to decide if they want to keep picking their nose knowing the social consequences that it has, or if they want to try to make that something they do in private. With that introduction, let's get into the lesson. Let's talk about what this looks like.

I start this lesson with our first poll of the day. For the polls, my students who attend in person, I designate certain parts of the room to certain answer choices. Last week in our in person group, one of the students asked if we could rotate which part of the room was for which answer. And I love that idea. I love it when they come up with new and creative ways to do things. And so we did. This corner is not always going to be yes. And for students who attend on Zoom, I can create polls on Zoom, and so that's how we do them there. The first poll is: How many people does it take to make a group?

How many people does it take to make a group? The first answer choice is usually two, the second answer choice is more than 10. And now I can get a little crazy with this if I want to and I can have a third answer choice be more than 50, more than 100, I can have as many options as I want. And then there's always an answer choice that is 'I'm not sure', because I always want students to know that it's okay to not be sure about something. Sometimes students feel a little bit of anxiety committing to an answer, and that's not what I'm trying to have them experience in the group. So 'I'm not sure' is always an answer when we do our polls.

A group is just more than one, so minimum of two people make up a group. Most students don't think of a group in terms of two people. They think of a group as a large number of people, so we talk about how it's just two people. This concept comes up multiple times throughout the 32 week program. This is the first time we talk about it, but it comes up multiple times. We talk about how, at Starfish if you're playing a game with one other person, you guys are a group. If you and dad are in the car going somewhere, you guys are a group. It's just two people. That's all it takes to make up a group.

I then have the students together as a group, we come up with a list of things that we typically do during an average week. For students who are in person I write it down, for students who are on Zoom I keep track of it in the chat. I type it into the chat as we talk about it. So this could be going to school, playing video games, having dinner with your family, walking your dog for students who have a dog, I want them to think of anything they can think of. For some students, it's things like going to scouts, going to church. It can even be things that don't apply to everybody, but it applies to you. I want them to think about as many things as they can. The goal is to have at least 10 things on our list, at least 10 things that we can think of that the average person would do during a typical week, usually thinking about kids since the majority of my students are kids.

I then ask them to identify the activities that require them to think about somebody else. This turns into about a 20- to 30-minute discussion. I'm not going to get into it here, I'm going to save it for the students that are in my program. It turns into about a 20- to 30-minute discussion, and the really cool part is that different people have different opinions about it. Sometimes someone will say, "Well, this activity, I don't have to think about anybody else." And some students will say, "Well, you do because of this." It's a really great way to gage everybody's level of social awareness.

We talk about for certain things, what is it about this activity that means we have to think about somebody else? And when it comes down to it, there are very few activities where we don't need to think about other people. That's our first activity. Like I said, that usually goes 20- to 30-minutes into this lesson because we're having a lively discussion about it as part of the group.

Once we establish that, once we have that conversation, which is actually pretty eye opening for a lot of students, we go into the next topic. So the concept of thinking about other people, for circle students, it's just not something they really think about. Even though they often are aware of other people, it's not something they explicitly think about. So circle students are pretty likely, when we start that activity, to say that there's a lot of activities on that list where they don't need to think about other people.

The same for triangle students. They aren't always as aware of the need to think about other people, and so triangle students also will often just not have a sense of social awareness at the beginning of this activity, but they pick up on it pretty quickly as we go through the things on our list. It's like an aha moment for circle and triangle students alike.

Square students tend to be hyper aware of other people, and so they often during this activity recognize all the situations where we do need to think about other people, because they tend to be hyper aware of other people.

As a side note to this, I personally tend to be hyper aware of other people. I think so much of it is because this is what I do. I will not cut people off in traffic, even if it means I need to exit when I wasn't wanting to exit, or I miss a turn. I try my best to not do things that will negatively affect other people. Not to the point where it's an issue for me, but I just don't want to negatively affect other people as much as I can possibly help it. A big thing for me is at the grocery store, the small number of people who recognize when they're in somebody else's way. Even out walking in public, the small number of people who recognize that walking is similar to driving, where if everybody stayed on the right side, we could all get where we're going a little bit easier. For those of us in the US. When I was on the other side of the world, it was really having to pay attention that okay, now I need to be on the left side of wherever it is that I'm going.

I think my goal is just to kind of help everybody function more smoothly together. How can we all function better in the grocery store? Everybody's staying on the right side of the path. Everybody not blocking things because they're looking through their phone or checking social media while they're grocery shopping, and now you're blocking the thing I'm trying to get to because you're not even paying attention. Things like the aisles in a grocery store are like side streets when you're driving, you don't get to come raring out of the aisle and think you have the right of way over people who are going straight on the end. I have all these, all these things for grocery shopping, which probably explains why I really dislike grocery shopping.

But my point is all the situations where it's expected and helpful to think about other people. The grocery store I think is a prime example. For those of us who are older and who drive, oh my gosh, driving is a prime example of the need to think about other people, that you can't just get behind your wheel and make whatever choices you want to make. So it's really just reinforcing this idea. Being in a classroom in school, whether you're elementary, middle school, high school, college, university, you're in a group of other people. Being in a group at Starfish social club, that's the whole point of this thing is we are learning about being part of a group. It's just such a huge consideration that so many of my students don't come into the program with an awareness of the concept of being in a group.

Obviously I'm a bit biased, but I think teaching social skills in a one-on-one setting is really difficult to generalize, and I don't think it has a lot of utility. I think not only does the student not have peers to practice with, they don't get anybody else's thoughts or feelings or opinions or experiences. And their partner is an adult, even if they are not an adult, and so we're taking away their opportunity to practice with peers. We're taking away their opportunity to give and receive social feedback to peers. We're taking away their opportunity to even be in a social environment with peers when they're learning social skills in a one-on-one setting. Unfortunately, that's how most programs are set up due to licensing requirements and insurance payments and things like that. But I think when it comes to social skills, it's a really awkward setup to try to support somebody with being social.

And so many of our students do well with adults to begin with, circle students tend to do amazing with adults. So do triangle students. And so we don't really get to even see what their challenges are around their peers, because they're not around their peers. So in those one-on-one environments, we're not even able to see what's going on.

In a group setting like at Starfish Social Club, I can see pretty quickly and pretty easily where a student is having a hard time when it comes to interacting with their peers. I can see if they're not joining group conversations, for example. I can see if they are trying to kind of dominate game time and have everybody play the way they want to play, or play what they want to play. I can see if they try to convince other kids to do what they want, even if those kids don't want to do that thing. I can see if they don't ever really make a choice in social situations. I can see if they hang back and wait for someone to explicitly invite them or include them instead of having the confidence and the knowledge to join on their own. All these things I can see very quickly because they're around other students of similar age. That was my tangent about that, about just the importance of teaching group dynamics in the environment that is a group.

Okay, so here are some of the things that we talk about once we get to the lesson part of this. We separate things that are alone behaviors. And the first thing in this category has to do with hygiene, basically anything that's considered hygiene. And we talk about, what does that word mean? A lot of words students have heard, but just because they've heard it doesn't mean they know what it means. And I don't ever want my students to be confused or to not know what we're talking about, because a lot of them will pretend like they do know even if they don't, and that's not what I want. I want them to know.

We talk about hygiene and I reference the word hygiene in the book Social Skills is Canceled in a funny way when it comes to Circle. We talk about how basically anything that's considered hygiene is an alone behavior: Putting on deodorant, brushing our hair, brushing our teeth, picking stuff out of our teeth, washing our face. These are all things that we do when we're by ourselves, usually at home in the bathroom. We could also do them at school in the bathroom, especially students who have braces and have to brush their teeth after lunch. Absolutely fine. We just do it in the bathroom.

I always think it's so interesting how we all handle and manage our own hair, but are grossed out by other people's hair. And I am absolutely with the group on this one, for some reason other people's hair is gross, and I just think that's so interesting, because we have no problem with our own hair. But brushing your hair even should not be something that students are doing in the classroom, because other people find your hair gross. They don't want it on their desk, they don't want it on the floor, they don't want it on them. So even brushing your hair is something that should be done when we're by ourselves, or at least in the bathroom.

We also talk about picking anything. Anything you can think of that somebody could pick, that's an alone behavior. Picking blemishes on our face, picking food out of our teeth, picking earwax out of our ears, picking our underwear out of our butts. And yes, I talk about this because that's real, and it's something that students in my program do without the awareness of how that causes other people to feel. I also have a lot of male students in my program who pick and shift their shorts and their underwear. Just being aware that that is an alone behavior. That's something that we can excuse ourselves and go to the bathroom to do.

It's always okay to need to pick your underwear out of your butt. It's always okay if you need to pick food out of your teeth. It's always okay if there's something on your arm or your face that's bothering you. We can excuse ourselves and go to the bathroom to take care of whatever it is that might be bothering us.

Personal story: For as long as I can remember, I have picked the skin on my lips. I cannot seem to stop doing it, like I said, since I was a kid, for as long as I can remember, that is something that I do. And it's not related to anxiety. I don't do it when I'm nervous or upset. It is purely physical. And so every two to three days when my last round of picking has started to grow back and I can feel it, I have to get it off. It physically bothers me. I've tried for years to stop doing it, and I just can't.

But I'm very aware to not do it in front of other people, because nobody wants to be having a conversation with me or sitting next to me in a group and I'm picking the skin off my lips. Nobody wants to see that. So I'm very conscientious about trying to do it when I'm by myself.

Another thing that falls into this category, obviously, we talked about picking noses, is biting your nails. This is such a common habit for everybody, not even just neurodivergent kiddos. The challenge with biting your nails is it's a hygiene issue. You have your nails, your fingers, in your mouth, and then you're doing whatever you're doing with your fingers after that. Similar to nose picking, if I see students that are biting their nails when we're doing something in a group like playing a game, I will ask them to go wash their hands. It's a hygiene issue. I don't care about what your nails look like or that you're biting them. I care that your fingers have been in your mouth and now you are touching other people or touching game pieces or whatever the case may be.

So all of these things are totally fine. I even tell the students that if you ever pay attention when you're in the car with your parents, look out the window if you're at a stoplight, stoplights are probably the best example, and look at the adults around you who are driving, and I bet you'll see somebody picking their nose. It is okay to pick your nose. We just do it when we're by ourselves. And in your car at a stoplight, isn't necessarily by yourself because people around you can see you, but there's nobody else in your vehicle, and nobody knows you. You know you can kind of make whatever decisions you want.

So you can absolutely do any of these things. None of them are wrong or bad. We just try to do them when we're by ourselves, as opposed to when we are around other people. So again, we can excuse ourselves and go to the bathroom. We can, if we're in school, go out into the hallway. If we're at home, we can go to our bedroom. Even if it's just for two seconds to pick at something or pull at something, it's totally fine. None of these things are bad or wrong, they're just things that we want to try to do when we're by ourselves. And ideally, everybody else is following the same example and doing these things when they're by themselves.

We also have pretty lengthy discussion about complaining. One of the reasons why neurodivergent kiddos are more likely to complain than other kiddos is that they don't recognize the impact it has on the people around them. They just don't always have the social awareness to know that, number one, complaining doesn't solve anything, and number two, it just makes everybody around you unhappy, miserable, uncomfortable. A lot of our kiddos just don't have the social awareness to recognize that. So complaining tends to be something that a lot of our kids struggle with, and so it's part of this lesson, it's part of this conversation.

I help students recognize how it makes other people feel when we complain about things. It doesn't mean you can't be unhappy. It doesn't mean you can't be miserable. It doesn't mean you can't think whatever it is that you're thinking. Not everything we think has to come out of our mouth in the form of words. Especially if everybody around you is also upset or uncomfortable or miserable, complaining just makes people not want to be around you.

We talk about the language that we use. We talk about cursing. Most students in Starfish don't like cursing, but I do sometimes have students who do. I even sometimes have older students that will curse, and I have to remind them that there are younger students at Starfish, and there are students who don't like cursing, even if they're not younger.

Just that social awareness to be mindful about the words that you use, the topics of conversation that you use when you're in a group. Sometimes I have older students who talk about dating, boyfriends and girlfriends, never anything explicit or inappropriate, I just ask them to recognize that that's not a topic of conversation that everybody in the group can have together, if we have students who are 11 and 12, for example. So just being aware of who is in the group with you.

Farting, burping, etc. All the students typically recognize that farting and burping are, number one, socially inappropriate to do on purpose, unless you're like six years old, which none of us are six years old. Once we get a little bit older, most people don't think that's funny anymore. Most people think it's gross. There's a smell to it. There's a sound to it. Most people think it's gross. The older we get, the more that's the case.
But we also recognize that they are natural bodily functions, and so we talk about how we can handle it if those things happen on accident, like they do to everybody. So I'll save that conversation for the students who are in the group as well. We talk about how can you respond or react if you accidentally fart in a group or accidentally burp out loud in a group. And then, of course, I reinforce it all throughout the year. We sometimes need a lot of reminders for that, especially kids who are a little bit younger and are still caught up in thinking other people think it's funny.

Which makes me think about: as a parent or a teacher, if you are laughing when somebody in your family or your classroom farts or burps out loud, please be aware that you are creating your child's sense of awareness around that. Our kiddos often do not distinguish between home social behaviors and out in the world social behaviors, so whatever you guys do at home, your kiddo is going to do not at home as well, because most of our students cannot distinguish across different environments. So I've had kiddos farting and burping out loud because at home it's funny. I've had kiddos cursing or telling raunchy jokes because at home it's funny. I've even had students call each other names that at home are silly nicknames, but in different environments are offensive. So just please be aware that your kiddo probably cannot distinguish between things that are funny at home but inappropriate outside of home. And unfortunately, that does mean that you might need to kind of adjust how you react and respond to things, or at the very least have a conversation with your kiddo about the difference between what's funny at home and what most other people wouldn't think is funny.

So those are all situations I've encountered. Like I said, cursing because they curse at home, which I don't care. I just want you to recognize that in a group, it's best to not curse unless you know that everybody in the group is okay with that. It's pretty hard to know whether everybody in a group is okay with that. So if you show up and you start cursing, you're going to find out that, especially in my groups, most students aren't okay with that. It does not matter to me if students curse or don't curse, especially when it's age appropriate, it doesn't matter to me at all. What does matter to me is their ability to recognize that not everybody wants to be around that. The same with telling raunchy jokes, farting and burping out loud, most people really don't want to be around that. So we need to be careful about what we reinforce.

That is about the end of the lesson. It's a really enjoyable, eye-opening lesson for a lot of the students, especially because we talk about things like burping and farting and cursing and picking your underwear out of your butt. I try to be really realistic with my students. There's not anything that I won't talk about, as long as it's appropriate for the ages of the students that we have. There's really not anything that's off limits, because I would much rather have conversations like this with me in our groups than have students ask kids at school about it or search for it on YouTube where who knows what's going to pop up. I would much rather us have these conversations in our group where students feel like they get the answers and the information they need, than to have them seek it out in other places where I don't know what kind of information they're going to get.

Okay, let's see what we're going to talk about next time, random number generator. It says fifteen. Fifteen would be module two, which is our module about awareness, and it would be the second to the last lesson, lesson seven in module two. This is a really amazing lesson that piggybacks on the lessons that came before it, one of which we've already covered on Social Skills is Canceled, so I'll reference back to that episode. It's about taking information about people that you know and using that information. So how can you remember things that you know about other people? How can you think about things that you know about other people in order to use that information to further your connections with people and to further your relationships and your engagement. That's what we'll talk about next time. I am glad you're here and I'll see you then you.