Myth 1: Buying a Program Will Stop Bullying (Part 1 of 3)



By Kathleen Keelan



“Bullying is not the issue this year. Get a program in place and move on.” –Administrator, 2012

The very complex issue of bullying cannot be solved by just purchasing a bullying prevention program. Period.

Schools and school districts want the bullying to end, so they have been known to call in the rodeo clowns, movie producers, and cartoon characters. Unfortunately, because of the intricacies of the power dynamic of all stakeholders, the bullying issue cannot easily be handled by any one solution.

Our knowledge of the issue is growing every day. Our understanding of how to stop the phenomenon is slowing improving. One thing we know for sure: it’s not an easy fix.

One instance I was involved in comes to mind. A wealthy private school had an extensive program against bullying, complete with assemblies, posters, and speakers. The teachers were given tokens that they could hand out to the kids when they behaved in such a way that they were not bullying one another. In one case, a student was bullied. The one who bullied him also felt bullied. Both students’ parents hired a lawyer. There was a restraining order awarded so the two could not be in contact with each other. The principal was completely dumbfounded as to how the situation got to this point, considering he had done so much to avoid bullying in the first place. The principal was not prepared to deal with the complexities of the power issues, the community, and the culture of the building.

Like that particular principal, teachers and school officials often feel at rest when they invest in a bullying prevention program, but their job is far from done. Sadly, when it comes to bullying, they can never really let their guard down until they work on the larger and stickier issue—the culture of the building.

People often ask me what they can do about the culture once it is set. Through my experience I believe there are a few things. To begin to curb bullying, we must work on the immediate interactions between the individuals in a school setting, engage the bystanders, and not rely on programs to fix the problem.

The culture that doesn’t tolerate, encourage, ignore, or placidly condone through silence is a culture that will not allow bullying to take place. A culture where the kids do not see the adults bully each other or other students is a culture that doesn’t encourage bullying. A culture where the kids don’t see adults who are trying to gain power for themselves in inappropriate ways is a culture where bullying will not be tolerated.

Rather than depending on a formal bullying program, adults need to set an example. If they see someone being mistreated, they need to respond immediately, even if it is a colleague or another adult who is doing the bullying. If they see a child being mistreated, they need to intervene quickly.

The mantra in the hallway, the bus, and the classroom must be: “We don’t treat each other that way here.”

Adults who witness an episode of bullying should:

• Stop it with a quick response

• Educate and be clear about behavior that is disrespectful; saying you are “just kidding” does not make it better

Myth 3: Bullying is a problem for youth that everyone outgrows (Part 3 of 3)

Myth 2: Adults Know What They Are Doing When It Comes to Bullying Prevention (Part 2 of 3)

By Kathleen Keelan

Often, due to our overreactions or underreactions, well-meaning adults do not understand the complexities that children face when it comes to bullying situations. By trying to apply adult solutions to children’s problems, they make the situation worse.

In spite of our best efforts, most adults generally do not know how to deal effectively with bullying situations. Sadly, this includes the very people who need to understand the dynamic most, including teachers, administrators, counselors, parents, superintendents, paraprofessionals, and bus drivers, to name a few.

Then there are the TV producers, investigative reporters, researchers, movie makers, movie stars, public service announcement producers, pop singers, and talk show hosts, who are also trying to help solve the bullying issues of our youth and usually coming up short.

Lastly, we have the more well-informed but less connected researchers and college professors, who have studies and surveys and graphs, but fall short of producing real answers for real kids in real situations.  

Attempts to address the problem through movies, studies, one-day school assemblies, policies, legislation, surveys, and conferences don’t really help the children for a number of reasons.

A perfect example is one-day assemblies aimed at giving kids the opportunity to let others in their class know about some hardships they have experienced. One-day assemblies that “challenge” children to stop bullying one another are generally effective for the rest of that day. This type of oversimplification of the issue is what frustrates children who are in the trenches of bullying.

Take antibullying programs that reward kids for what we consider “standing up for others.” Students may perceive earning these “rewards” as attempts to buddy up with teachers and other adults in the building to win their approval. As a result, the kids who buddy up with the adults may lose social collateral with their peers. Thus, there is a disincentive to “stand up for others” the next time a bullying situation occurs.

Another example: the public service announcement campaign that asks kids to wait out the frustration they may be experiencing at school because eventually things will “get better.” Many celebrities have lent their clout to the “It Gets Better” effort. Some children may have benefited from this message, but I feel that it is a message of false hope and can be misleading. It also gets adults off the hook in terms of making the environment better for kids.

I feel strongly that kids who are teased for issues such as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) identity—who have been the target of this message—should not have to wait for things to get better at school. If there is a hint of this type of prejudice and we, as adults, are aware of it, then relying on messages that make promises of relief in the future is really morally reprehensible.

How Can We Really Help?

Where do we go wrong? In virtually all situations we are guilty of overreacting or underreacting. Remember, it is very difficult for children to come to an adult and ask for help when they believe they are being bullied. If the adult brushes it off, it can be devastating. Conversely, when we completely overreact by doing something like pulling a child from a particular school due to bullying, we are also doing the child a disfavor.

It is important to be aware of exactly what constitutes “bullying.” The research Dr. Dan Olweus did in the 1980s is still an excellent guide, which has helped me in this field many times. Dr. Olweus began his research in 1983 in northern Norway, where three adolescent boys died by suicide. The act was most likely a consequence of severe bullying by peers, prompting the county’s Ministry of Education to initiate a national campaign against bullying in schools.

Dr. Olweus, considered the “pioneer,” crafted the following definition, which is still widely used today:

"A person is being bullied when he or she is exposed repeatedly over time to negative action on the part of one of more persons. Negative action is when a person intentionally inflicts injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, through words, or in other ways.”  

If we look closely at the definition, we can see it has elements that can help adults avoid overreacting or underreacting to bullying. Bullying is not just about one person having the power; it is also about the victim not wanting the particular type of interaction to take place.

More time spent with children and less time spent on statistics is one solution to reducing bullying. Our reactions and our attempts to deal with the problem are often to benefit ourselves, to make us feel like we are doing something. However, unless we actually talk with the children, we may be making things worse.

Adults’ knee-jerk reactions, albeit understandable, do not always help reduce bullying in schools. It would behoove us as adults to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out exactly the best way to approach a specific bullying situation in order to actually help a child.

Kathleen Keelan has dedicated her career to preventing bullying by working as a teacher, therapist, presenter, and expert witness in bullying cases. She has been conducting bullying prevention workshops in schools since the late ’90s and also conducts classes and webinars throughout the United States.

By Dr. Shirley Patterson
There are numerous approaches to early childhood education. Most, if not all, have a goal of enhancing school readiness, and the approach individual teachers use will most likely depend on their philosophical position on early learning.

Our views related to the purpose of a curriculum and the approaches we use can be envisioned on a continuum (Soler & Miller, 2003), with one end being child-directed input and the other more adult-directed input. The curriculum may become the object of discussion when different views or philosophies are expressed. What is the appropriate content and context for early learning in the classroom?  How will the curriculum be delivered?

Our vision for early childhood education is expressed through the curriculum we implement. I believe that high-quality, intentional curriculum can increase the achievement of children, particularly children from low-income homes (Klein & Knitzer, 2006).

What is an early childhood (EC) curriculum? Can you define your concept of a curriculum? Simple question—not so simple answer. If you ask this question to 10 people in the EC teaching profession, you might get 10 different answers. Some will say it is a framework for learning. Some will say it is a group of activities for children. Some will say it is a scope and sequence of goals/objectives. Is it any of these? Is it all of these? Does it matter that we can define it? I believe it does.

A lack of clarity in the definition leads to a lack of conceptualization of what an early childhood curriculum should be. For the teacher who arms her/himself with all the tools possible to provide the best instructional environment for young children, the curriculum is at the core of the program.

According to a 2009 joint position paper of the National Association for the Education of Young Children  (NAEYC) and the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS-SDE), “Curriculum is an organized framework that delineates the content children are to learn, the processes through which children achieve the identified curricular goals, what teachers do to help children achieve these goals, and the context in which teaching and learning occur.”

Here are three other definitions of curriculum:

• “Planned and guided learning experiences and intended outcomes, formulated through the systematic reconstruction of knowledge and experiences under the auspices of the school, for the learners’ continuous and willful growth in personal social competence” (Tanner, 1980)

• “A written document that systematically describes goals planned, objectives, content, learning activities, evaluation procedures and so forth” (Pratt, 1980)

• “All of the experiences that individual learners have in a program of education whose purpose is to achieve broad goals and related specific objectives, which is planned in terms of a framework of theory and research or past and present professional practice” (Hass, 1987)

By Nancy Hennessy
I wonder how many of you conjured up images of yourself diagramming written sentences as you read the title of this blog. Some of you may have even cringed a bit (a hint of grammar sometimes has that effect).

I vividly recall Sister Marie Edwina’s class and the innumerable sentences I diagrammed for English (the term language arts had yet to be coined). Assured of a good grade, this task  was high on my list of academic favorites. However, unlike the author of Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and the Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, I missed the point. Kitty Burns Florey (2006) got it, explaining “… once they were laid open, all their secrets explored—those sentences could be comprehended.”

While diagramming itself may not play an essential role in your instruction, its goal—building an understanding of how parts of a sentence contribute to meaning—should.

The Importance of the Sentence

The sentence lies at the heart of communicating thought and meaning, whether you are the writer or the reader. The rules of our language, syntax AKA grammar, allow for the creation of an infinite number of sentences that serve as the “worker bees of text” (Scott, 2004). The relationship that exists between syntax and semantics cannot be overlooked as educators work at developing students’ reading and writing proficiency. Even the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with a bit of detective work and inference, acknowledge a role for sentences in writing and comprehension.

Connections to Writing

We, as teachers, recognize that writing proficiency is dependent on multiple processes and skills, and that the translation of ideas into syntactically correct form is central to conveying intended meaning. The nitty gritty aspects of parts of speech, the notorious sentence fragments, and the nuances of the simple, compound, and complex sentence are all too familiar to those who teach students how to write.

We have also had experiences with the havoc a sloppy sentence can wreak on the meaning of a composition. Many of us have worked with good writers who “know how to think about word order and its relationship with the ideas they are trying to express” (Scott, 2004). We also know struggling writers who often have difficulty using different syntactical structures to express relationships among words within and between sentences. An increasing emphasis on writing proficiency, including a student’s ability to express understanding of reading, should prompt us to explicitly teach students how to translate thoughts and ideas into sentences.

Connections to Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension similarly demands the integration of multiple processes and skills, many of which overlap with writing. One critical component of language processing, necessary for constructing meaning, is the interpretation of sentences. As readers recognize and retrieve the meaning of individual words, they also need to “work out the syntactic structure and sense of the sentence” (Cain, 2010).

As teachers, we have worked with “good readers” who know how to “work with the words” within sentences to identify the ideas and then, to integrate them to make sense of the text. We have also witnessed an inability to do so in some of our students. While the focus of comprehension is often on the text, we need reminders that “sentences one by one communicate the ideas that eventually add up to gist” of a text (Scott, 2004).

Reading comprehension instruction often overlooks sentence comprehension. Kate Cain (2012) tells us the foundation for discourse comprehension rests on an understanding of word and sentence meaning and, when flawed, can be a potential source of comprehension difficulties. While we understand how word meaning (semantics) contributes directly to comprehension, similarly recognizing the role of syntactical structures (parts of speech, phrases, clauses, types of sentences, and cohesive ties) is essential.

Some may be cringing again as I connect syntax (AKA grammar) to comprehension. Rest assured, I am not an advocate for teaching students syntax from a “mechanical” or “memorization” perspective. Rather, I advocate that educators consider how to integrate semantics and syntax instruction by considering respective contributions to meaning. For example, I would not teach parts of speech and their role in sentences without connecting their function to meaning. We know that nouns are “namers,” but they also answer the questions “who or what.”

So, let’s revisit the idea of diagramming sentences.  This, along with other explicit sentence-based activities—such as sentence combining and anagrams—can be used to foster sentence composition and comprehension, but only if we, as teachers, are clear on the purpose: to facilitate the student’s ability to extract and construct meaning. The bottom line is that sentence instruction should always focus on how syntax is used as a vehicle for conveying meaning.

One more thing …

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that both writing and reading proficiency require much more than developing the ability to construct and comprehend sentences. At the same time, I hope that I have conveyed that sentences are the busy bees of text, have been underappreciated, and require attention—particularly as you design and deliver comprehension instruction.

Nancy Hennessy, M.Ed., LDT-C, is an educational consultant and past president of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). She is also an experienced teacher and administrator. While in public schools, Hennessy provided leadership in the development of innovative programming for special needs students, a statewide revision of special education code, and an award-winning professional development initiative. She is an international presenter, national LETRS trainer, and coauthor of LETRS Module 6: Digging for Meaning: Teaching Text Comprehension (Second Edition) with Dr. Louisa Moats.

References:

Burns Florey, K. (2006). Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and the Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. Boston, MA: Harcourt Publishers.

Cain, K. (2012). Reading Development and Difficulties. United Kingdom: John Wiley Publishers

Scott, C. (2004). Syntactic contributions to literacy development. In C. Stone, E. Silliman, B. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.) Handbook of Language and Literacy: Development  & Disorders (pp. 340-362). New York: Guilford Press.

By Michelle George
About two years ago I was busily teaching a seventh grade English class. We were working on a writing assignment that I had every hope would be engaging, instructive, and maybe even fun. I was wrong.

One of my male students was particularly annoyed. As I was walking around the room, checking progress and encouraging my young writers, this reluctant scrivener brought me back to reality by muttering, “Real men don’t write or read.” Of course I was quick to inform him that they certainly do. In fact, many of the most famous and influential writers in the world have been men. He looked scornfully up at me and quipped, “Yeah, but they’re all dead.”

I didn’t have much to say to that, and for a good week or two afterward I kept mulling that conversation over in my mind. This future man truly believed that the written word was just “women’s work,” with no true value in his world. What to do?

After a few days of ruminating, I came up with an idea. I would assemble a group of muscle-bound, sweaty “real men” who actually do read. I knew a few … several, in fact. And I thought they might be willing to come and share their literary passion with my students. But as I looked over my class, I quickly realized that many of my students would never become that stereotypical “real man.” My class was composed of an array of fascinating characters. I had the bookish, the artistic, the athletic, the ladies’ man, the comedian … every type of boy imaginable. This reality made my search much more interesting.

Starting that year, I took the cold, gray month of February and labeled it “Real Men Read Month.” I invite all sorts of men, from all walks of life, to come into my classroom and share their passion for reading. We set aside each Wednesday of the month for classroom visits.

In January, I work with my students to write appropriate questions for the visitors and practice the seemingly archaic skills of a good audience. When the visitors come, we sit back and enjoy. So far we’ve had readers of fantasy, nonfiction fanatics, history buffs, self-taught experts, young poets, and novelists.

The best part is that, not only do my young students realize that real men do, in fact, read, but my “real men” also discover that junior high students really are rather intelligent and pleasant after all. Now that’s a great way to warm up a February.

Michelle S. George is a language arts middle school teacher in Orofino, Idaho. She has a B.A. in English and secondary certification in English, reading, and journalism. Michelle has been teaching seventh and eighth grade for 20 years, and still loves going to school—as a teacher and a student. She has published a variety of lesson plans and written several award-winning grants.

By Dr. J. Ron Nelson
One of the greatest impediments to improving academic instruction for students with behavioral challenges is the fact that teachers tend to focus more attention on behavior management than instruction. The assumption is that instruction cannot occur unless student behavior is under control. The end result is that so much teacher attention is devoted to management of disruptive behavior that instruction is not afforded much time or careful attention by teachers.

Research has shown that teacher attention to management increases relative to the level of disruptive behavior exhibited by students. In other words, the more students exhibit disruptive behavior, the less likely they are to receive instruction from their teachers. Teachers fall into the trap of focusing too much attention on management because students with behavioral challenges are likely to display coercive interaction patterns that lead to lowered curricular demands and limited instruction.

Coercive interaction patterns are thought to develop as follows. Parents unknowingly reinforce their children’s coercive behavior (disruptive behavior used to control the behavior of others) by nagging, scolding, and yelling when their child misbehaves. This behavior initiates a coercive interaction pattern with the child. The child continues to misbehave despite the parent’s threats of punitive measures until the parent eventually reaches an exhaustion point, failing to follow through with threatened punitive measures. Because the parent backs down and fails to discipline the child adequately, children become aware that if they continue to misbehave they can shape parental (and other adult) behavior for their own benefit.

This awareness, developed in the home, is used by students to direct teachers away from instruction. The sequence of teacher instruction followed by student disruptive behavior results in teachers lowering their overall curriculum demands and limiting the amount of instruction they provide to students with challenging behavior. The end result is an overemphasis by teachers on behavior management versus instruction.

If teachers are to improve academic outcomes for students with challenging behavior, they must resist lowering their curricular demands and limiting the amount of instruction they provide to students. Teachers will find that students with challenging behavior respond best to explicit teaching, making it easier to maintain curricular demands and instruction. Students with challenging behavior exhibit more task engagement and less disruptive behavior when teachers use explicit teaching methods.

Explicit instruction is an unambiguous and direct approach to teaching with an emphasis on providing students a clear statement about what is to be learned, proceeding in small steps with concrete and varied examples, checking for student understanding, and achieving active and successful participation of students.

J. Ron Nelson, Ph.D., is an associate research professor and codirector of the Center for At-Risk Children’s Services at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Dr. Nelson received the 2000 Distinguished Initial Career Research Award from the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and the 1999 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research from Arizona State University. Dr. Nelson’s instructional programs include: eMeasures for Vocabulary Growth, The Multiple Meaning Vocabulary Program, Early Vocabulary Connections, and Stepping Stones to Literacy. He was also a contributing author to LETRS for Early Childhood Educators.

By Anne M. Beninghof
What does special education look like to you? Over the past several months I have had the opportunity to ask this question of educators around the country. It usually goes like this …

A group of special education teachers and administrators are seated in a conference room, facing a blank whiteboard. I am standing at the board, dry-erase marker in hand.

Me: What does special education look like?

Group: (Silence)

Me: If you were to walk into a co-taught classroom, what would you see happening that would indicate special education was occurring? 

Group: (Silence)

Me: Think of it this way. What might the special education teacher be adding to the classroom experience that would be special?

Someone: Maybe a graphic organizer.

Someone else: Maybe working with a small group.

Group: (Silence)

Imagine if this scenario were to play out in one of your school’s conference rooms? Would it be different? As a special education teacher and consultant, I believe that it is imperative that we are able to describe what special education looks like. If we, as a group of educators, can’t describe it, how can we be sure we are providing it?

Former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when referring to pornography, declined to define it but instead famously said, “I know it when I see it.” I feel this way sometimes about special education. But it is not enough to say, “I know it when I see it.” This too easily becomes a cop-out for providing less than “special” services to students.

The federal definition of special education provides the following guidance:

“Specially designed instruction means adapting, as appropriate to the needs of an eligible child under Part B of the IDEA, the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction to address the unique needs of the child that result from the child’s disability and to ensure access of the child to the general curriculum, so that the child can meet the educational standards within the jurisdiction of the public agency that apply to all children.” (emphasis added)

Does a graphic organizer fit this definition? It might. Does small-group instruction fall under this description? It could. But aren’t these two things fairly common in general education classrooms in the 21^st century? What else should we expect to see in a co-taught classroom that would be evidence that special education is taking place? My list would include things like:

• Detailed task analyses

• Extensive visual cues

• Individualized behavior management plans

• Specific retention and study strategies

• Intentional, thoughtful use of language for understanding

• Multiple opportunities for accurate rehearsal

• Format changes to pre-printed worksheets and tests

• Tools for focusing attention

• Adaptive technology

• Accessible furniture and classroom environments (lighting, sound, layout)

Guest Teacher Blogger - Winner of the 2012 Sopris Learning Blog Contest!

By Michelle George

I remember vaguely my semester before student teaching. I had recently graduated with a B.A. in English, and had returned to earn my teaching certification. I had figured, “How hard could it be?” I’d substitute taught before  my return to college, and it seemed pretty simple.

That is, until the day I took over my own classroom. That’s about when that “deer in the headlights” look entered my eyes. At that time, I didn’t have an inkling of all the things I didn’t know. Twenty years later, I’m starting to understand the depth of my ignorance. I can easily think of at least five truths I wish I knew back when I had no idea how much I didn’t know.

Number Five: Kids don’t read the books.

I walked into the classroom with the confidence of the newly educated. A college graduate is a lot like a new convert. We are often fervent, confident, and blissfully ignorant. I was sure that all of those bright-eyed students were waiting expectantly for me to fill their yearning minds with newly minted knowledge.

Unfortunately, those yearning cherubs didn’t take any of those college classes and had no innate desire to soak up the knowledge I had ready for them. I remember my perfectly designed lesson plan on symbols. While it worked with many of the kids, I had no plan for the kid in the back who came to school mad and tired and yearning for a lot of things that were not in my lesson plan. It was tough for me to realize that my students aren’t always ready to learn.

Number Four: Research really matters.

Even though some kids aren’t in tune with the latest trends in education, research-based strategies are worth investigating. The key is to look for the meta-research: the analyses that look at several large studies and reveal consistent positive results for specific teaching strategies.

It isn’t enough to say that a veteran teacher has been diagramming sentences for 30 years. Just because it was good enough for our parents doesn’t mean it’s good teaching. Reading current literature and taking classes is a good way to learn what data has shown to be successful with the majority of students. Best practices can help us use our class time to the greatest effect for the largest number of students. 

Number Three: What you say matters.

I have a colleague who is adamant that sarcasm builds rapport with students. “They love it,” she often says. Some kids may, but others might carry the sting of your words with them for years. I recently talked to an adult friend of mine who still tears up when she recalls a casual critique of her creative ability by a respected teacher. Twenty years later, and she is still mortified. Even though we are “just teachers,” what we say can have lasting effects on our students. I consider that both exciting and terrifying.

Number Two: What you think matters.

Even more convincing is the research discussed by Marzano and others concerning teacher expectations. Coined as the “Pygmalion effect,” telling teachers that some students were more “gifted” than others changed teacher behavior and consequently changed student success. Henry Ford wasn’t kidding when he said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t … you’re right.” The key is truly believing that every student in your classroom is capable of remarkable things.

Number One: Every child is, or should be, somebody’s most precious child.

It was probably my fourth year teaching before I finally discovered this most important truth. I was nearly through the first night of parent/teacher conferences when a tall, reserved gentleman came into my room. He quietly sat down and introduced himself as Cindy’s dad.

Cindy was one of those shy, obedient students who sat in the back of the class and never made much noise. She wasn’t a stellar student, and she wasn’t a problem child. It was easy to miss when she was absent, as she demanded so little attention. That is exactly what made her father’s visit so poignant. To him, Cindy was the light of the world. She was his most precious person, and he expected the same attention for her from me. And he was right. She deserved that attention. Every child in your classroom is someone’s most precious child. It’s important when we are harried and hurried by the loudest and the brightest to remember just that.

So now, 20 years later, I can reflect on what I have learned and be grateful for the children and the mentors who have shared their wisdom with me. I’m even more intrepid to discover what more I don’t yet know in the years to come.

Michelle S. George is a language arts middle school teacher in Orofino, Idaho. She has a B.A. in English and secondary certification in English, reading, and journalism. Michelle has been teaching seventh and eighth grade for 20 years, and still loves going to school—as a teacher and a student. She has published a variety of lesson plans and written several award-winning grants.

By Dr. Steven Richfield
Opposite-sex relationships among older teens with Asperger’s syndrome present both opportunities for growth and areas of special challenge. Parents experience understandable concern about how events will unfold considering the complexities involved.

The use of social media, potential for near-constant contact through texting, and implications of physical affection raise parental angst and teenage expectation. But there are ways to provide sensitive navigational assistance to adolescents with Asperger’s.

Unabashed directness about the details of relationships plants the seeds for teens with Asperger’s to discuss issues with openness. When parents model a comfortable attitude when addressing kissing, mutual dependency, possessiveness, sex, and other awkward topics, the adolescent will find it easier to do the same. Use opportunities when watching TV and movies to label various dating behaviors. Expand upon the themes portrayed by asking questions and offering information that may lead to their questions.

Keep in mind that teens are likely unaware of what they don’t know, and therefore don’t know what questions to ask. By explaining how, as with most things in life, there is much to learn about dating, the discussion can flow like an educational exercise rather than a judgmental one.

Emphasize the importance of building a “firm friendship foundation” that can support the heavy emotions that can be triggered within opposite-sex relationships. Provide a specific timetable, such as a few months, for such a foundation to build and give examples of how opportunities to display trust and reliability are all part of that period. Following through on plans, showing kindness, expressing interest, and positively dealing with disappointment are some of the “foundation tests” upon which to elaborate.

Pinpoint the pitfalls to watch out for, especially as they relate to Asperger’s syndrome. The tendency to become overly preoccupied, misunderstand meanings, and jump to negative conclusions can easily be triggered within the emotionally charged interactions of dating. Reassure the teen that, by being on watch for these developments, he or she can prevent them from causing unnecessary pain or disappointment. Emphasize the need to suspend a reaction when these or other dating challenges are activated.

Stress the need for teens with Asperger’s to select a “dating coach,” preferably a parent, whom they are willing to turn to in order to review relevant details within their relationship. Explain that the purpose is to ensure that circumstances remain on an emotionally healthy and socially appropriate course. Use these discussions to deepen the teen’s knowledge about the importance of balance, role of give-and-take, degrees of self-disclosure, and levels of trust and intimacy. Tie these factors to situations that arise so that the teen develops his or her own relationship compass.

Dr. Steven Richfield is an author and psychologist in Plymouth Meeting, PA. He has developed a child-friendly, self-control/social skills-building program called Parent Coaching Cards. He can be contacted at director@parentcoachcards.com or 610-238-4450. To learn more, visit www.parentcoachcards.com.