Making the invisible visible with Carrie Bonnett

You can listen to this week's episode HERE or watch it on YouTube HERE.

In this week's podcast episode with Carrie Bonnett, we talk about the importance of self-advocacy, giving everything a home, and making the invisible visible.

To Carrie, this relates to executive functioning tasks. To me, this relates to helping my students identify and recognize how the invisible social world really works.

I had two conversations with new students this week that really highlighted the importance of making the invisible visible:

The first conversation was with a middle school student who came to see me for 1/1 support. He did not want to be there, and the first thing he said when I greeted him was, "I'm just waiting for this to be over." 

I am always up for a challenge, so I dove right in.

By the end of our session, he had identified that it wasn't his unique hobby that was causing other kids to pick on him, it was his reputation. (Note: while someone's reputation is never a justifiable excuse for them to be picked on, it is at least an explanation for why it's happening.)

This kiddo also figured out what he was doing that was giving him a reputation for being annoying. He has been going out of his way to try to hide his amazing hobby, thinking it would cause kids to stop picking on him. I helped him see the invisible truth behind the treatment and now he's much more open to receiving feedback regarding how he interacts with other kids.

The second conversation was with an elementary student who is joining me via Zoom in a couple of weeks for my group program. At first, he refused to talk to me. When his mom would try to tell me what was going on, he would yell and have a big reaction. At one point she said he was melting down in the background. 

By the end of our session, he was telling me that his two goals in life were to make friends and to improve his rock climbing. He was also showing me some of the very creative pictures he has created. 

Why the significant change? He has social anxiety and thinks other kids don't like him. I explained to him the number one way he could figure out if other kids like him and want to play with him, which reinforced that kids like him! I made one invisible thing more visible to him, and it completely changed his perception of himself and of our conversation.

I encourage you to check out this week's episode with Carrie for strategies on helping your kiddo (or you!) make the invisible visible, and lots of other helpful solutions for organizing our brains and our homes.

Here's a soundbite from the episode: 

So what executive function skills are are the skills, the brain skills that help us get stuff done. That's how I like to describe it, like the short version. And I often like to say that the key to being successful at this thing called 'executive function’ is to make the invisible visible. So there is so much in a student's life, or an adult’s, that is invisible, right? Like expectations are invisible. Time is invisible. Yes. Months, years, invisible. All this stuff. Chores, invisible. And so one of the things that I just was talking to this high school student about just moments ago was this idea of just keeping it in your face.

Listen to the podcast episode.

Watch on YouTube.

You can find Carrie at www.CarrieBonnett.com