Practically Supporting Your Childs Social Skills with Special Guest Miriam Campbell

Jackie Finneman is a 30-year family counselor turned parenting coach with more than 40,000 hours of working with children and families. She is thrilled to share behavioral strategies, supportive resources, and parenting stories from her own real-life personal and professional experiences. Parenting is a roller coaster, not a merry-go-round. We can deal with and overcome the behavior challenges within our home and set ourselves and our kids up for a successful ride.

Has your roller coaster derailed? No problem. Listen in to get you and your family back on track. All right, welcome back. No problem, parents. Today's episode is going to be super fun. We're talking all about SLP, speech and language pathology. We have another guest on who's an expert in this area, and we're going to talk about practically supporting your child's social skills and improving parenting skills while you're supporting your child. Let me just tell you a little bit of background about Miriam. Miriam Campbell is a trained speech language pathologist, social worker, and teacher. She provides virtual staff trainings and coaching to empower staff members to naturally integrate social emotional learning throughout the school day. The approach she developed, Skills for Connection, is a practical emotional language and cognitive approach that empowers and enables teachers and students to transform conflicts and challenges into learning opportunities. I am all about that here at No Problem Parenting. She's been training classrooms in the U.S. as well as therapists and parents internationally to use her Skills for Connection approach and her book, Bubble Double, can't wait to talk about that, to improve social and emotional development. Miriam also provides one-on-one parent and professional social emotional coaching,

and you can reach her at miriamatskillsforconnection.com. Well, welcome to the show, Miriam. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here. It's such an honor.

I am newer to the world of SLP. I think every kiddo should be, I don't know if it's evaluated or assessed from an early age because our communication can come out in behaviors if there's something going on and we're not addressing it. Right. It's so true. Very, very true. And very often that's actually why I started working as a speech therapist because I I wanted, my focus was always the behavior and on the connection and the relationship.

And I wanted to make sure that like parents and kids were, you know, felt equipped that they could have the empowerment of knowing what exactly should I do? What skill can I do to improve my relationships, to improve my communication, improve like all the different things that help build us as people. And so that was really why I went into the field initially was because I wanted like concrete things to be able to give kids, to give parents to improve their skills.

I love that. And so let's talk about some of those concrete things. Maybe describe or explain a little bit what parents need to know about speech and language. Okay. So everybody in the whole world is in the process of growth and development. And now everyone's starting place is a little bit different. So when we think about like improving our skills and I'm talking about improving like our language skills or improving our communication skills or problem solving skills, which, you know, is a cognitive skill, your speech language, you know, use of language.

Those are all skills that we have the capacity to work with and evolve. Like, think about your writing skills when you were in first grade versus your writing skills when you were in middle school versus your writing skills in college. The evolution of our skill development is a very natural process. Now, the more that our learning skills and the more we can grow, no matter where our starting point is.

Now, if we have a child who's not naturally picking up language or naturally picking up cognitive problem solving or understanding the other social skills like perspective taking, emotional regulation, sequencing, understanding how to retell an event, all the different things that they need to be able to communicate with us, their parents, then that's when we can give them concrete tools to teach them how we can actually learn new skills.

so like so let's say that we have a child who like can't tell us like oh what happened why he come out the bus and he has a bloody nose like what just happened and then he's like oh he beat me up now there's obviously more to that story most likely um so there's a first then next last but if a child doesn't have sequencing as a language construct then they can't really retell what happened what their experience was so what i do is i help support parents in helping teach kids about how do we retell a story what do we do first what do we do that what do we do next way that you last. And the way to do that is throughout your day, all day long, practicing using that format, practice using that. Okay. So first we're going to brush our teeth. Then we're going to eat breakfast and then we're going to, you know, put our bag on and we're going to wait outside for the bus or we're going to drive to school or we're going to walk to school, whatever it is. Okay. First you have math, then you have science class, then you have recess. And it's using that same terminology is going to teach them those language constructs that they need to be able to communicate with us. So when we give them those prompts of first, then next,

last, for example, this is just one construct. Then they're able to have like some type of framework in their mind to be able to communicate what happened. So like you can use this in a hundred different ways. Like, you know, one of my kids had a surgery. So like in order for them to prepare him for it, like I first would, you know, I drew out a thing and I said, first, We're going to be in the waiting room. Then we're going to change into the, you know, the hospital gown and sort of talking him through the process using that same terminology.

So these skills become life skills that are able to process everything. So depending on where the child's language breakdown is, that depends where we start to, you know, where the parents start to be able to give them those that support and that scaffolding. Does that make sense? It does.

And it makes sense to do this just with any child, right? As the, we're just, and like, just to make it sort of like the, the way it is or the way we communicate with them is first, we're going to do this and then we're going to do that. And then next is this thing. And then last we're going to blah, blah, blah.

So I think that can be just in our regular communication with our kids, regardless of how our kiddo is processing things in the moment. Right. A hundred percent. And the interesting thing is that really I started working when I was working as a therapist.

I was working regular at schools. I was also working in clinics primarily with kids on the spectrum. But what I found was when I transitioned to social work and I was working with more like classroom dynamics and things like that, it was the same skills that our kids who had an IEP and the kids who didn't have an IEP were still needed to engage with. So a child who has an IEP or struggling academically, that child might need a visual support for the first and next class, which could be like I have, you know, I have parents that I work with that I print out for them, you know, they'll have like on their refrigerator first and next lesson will just point.

So the child will learn the sequence. If they need more support, they'll actually draw it out. So that way they don't rely on the language construct. They're getting the support for the visual support.

So that's really important because we don't want our kids, let's say a child struggling with the language aspect, we don't want them to also miss out on the emotional support that language provides. We want them to have an understanding of their world, safety. We don't want them to have like the anxiety of like, okay, what's happening in my world, just because they're also struggling with language. now while we're doing that we actually are growing their language skills because they're seeing and understanding oh mom said um we're going to the graduation that word meant nothing to them and then they experienced graduation and mom reviewed it and then other graduates said oh this is a graduation and afterwards talked about oh when we went to the graduation that's how we learn new concepts so it ends up being like a very um uh like natural integrated way of learning language of learning social skills of learning how to interact with our environment and you know how to process our worlds which is really what we want for our kids yeah I love it so you could do this when you're going out to dinner you could do this when you know it's a child's first day of school or there's a field trip day at school or I mean just like anything that's first then next last is really a great yeah so many things that we find like I'll have parents that'll you know I'll be working with them and they'll say, my child's very inflexible.

Whenever they, you know, whatever they have to do, they have to be that way. Like I told them that, you know, Wednesday we go to grandma's and one Wednesday grandma couldn't pick them up and there's a complete meltdown. So the more that child understands their environment and understands the sequence in their environment, and this is just one construct, sequence is just one of the constructs, but this idea, then they're going to melt when something is not the way that they fit into whatever they understood, because they don't really understand their environment.

They're not really understanding the sequence of events of how their week works. So let's say they did understand one thing, like, oh, grandma was supposed to pick me up and the rest of the world feels chaotic. Then they're going to have a meltdown because like their one thing that they were holding on to for dear life is not something that's being upheld. So then like everything feels chaotic for them.

So then they have to be rigid. They have to hold on to, this is my seat. This is how we're supposed to have pasta for dinner. We're supposed, whatever the thing that they did understand in their mind.

So teaching these skills like actually helps with so many other emotional and social skills in general. I can think of kiddos that when a parent drops their child off at daycare and the kiddo doesn't want to stay, you know, that can be really hard. Now, usually we kind of all know the story. The daycare provider will say, if you just leave, we'll take care of it.

It'll be OK. They'll settle in. I can see how this would work for those kiddos, too, when parents are dropping off at daycare. do you summarize that then when you pick them up a hundred percent my my two-year-old has a really hard time or think you know thankfully he's doing a lot better but we definitely had to review and prep and have the discussion using the first and next class and that was actually what helps him feel safe because then he would check back and be like you're coming back right because that's what was so hard for him it's like oh you're leaving you're not coming back so helping him and coaching him through that like oh first we're gonna go to first we're gonna go to school then you're going to play and then mom is going to come back and get you and then we're going to play at home and then we're going to go to sleep you know obviously there's more in the day but simplifying it so he could then see the pattern like oh every day oh yesterday and then oh see I remember I picked you up first you were first mommy dropped you off then you played and then I picked you up and then I reviewed it with him he needed it for let's say a week or something for me to really practice that within every day before we went um and then afterwards and he got he's actually in a school where they don't speak English. So I, you know, trying to get the teacher to also practice that with them. Like when he, when I, when I leave, because as you said, like,

we don't want to like draw out the departure because the anxiety just is increasing, increasing, increasing and the hopefulness and maybe she won't leave. And then the death, oh, she left is very painful. So to, for her to coach him, she's coming back soon. First, he dropped you off.

now we're going to play and then she's coming back. And that helps it. That really helps support the process. I love it. I, my main thing is, uh, I had gone into speech therapy to do social emotional development. And then I was like, wait, instead of doing speech therapy and then accessing emotional development, I had done as for many years, um, I realized I want to just focus on social emotional development. So then I started training, um, teachers to do what I was doing in my therapy sessions to, to promote social emotional development and, um, created a framework so that way they would be able to easily integrate it because like teachers don't have any extra time in their day and like I would find like session I would drop the student off and I'd be like okay do this and they're like ah don't tell me another thing to do like no like uh so I created this actually supportive so like instead of it being like something that they had to do in their day like it was when they're telling their story anyways just remember to use first the next class for example that's one of the constructs like the construct to learn about you know how to deal with conflict how to deal with empathy how to build kindness all the different skills like that. We have like problem solving, how to develop flexible thinking, how to talk about cause and effect, how to talk about self-awareness, emotional identification, all the different things

that our kids need. So there's constructs that we can learn and teach our teachers. So I teach teachers how to do it, but then I actually discovered that parents are the best people to be doing this. And that's what I'm primarily supporting parents. I still do teacher trainings.

I still do staff trainings. But the main thing that I'm doing now is working with parents because I believe that like parents have such an incredible access to their kids to be able to really help them because they're with them in the grocery store when they're having a meltdown or when it's bath time and they're struggling. and when it's morning time and those are all opportunities to be able to teach skills so like instead of like the conflict between the two siblings that they both want the same thing being like oh my gosh let me pull my hair out or let me buy two of these toy but oh this is an opportunity to learn about perspective thinking this is an opportunity to learn about persuasion or to learn about uh you know how we can have a productive argument instead of just saying like hey like very often like we might feel ourselves like oh let me avoid conflict let's teach our kids how to healthfully deal with someone who has a different opinion or a different perspective how can we actually give them tools so they can grow into it instead of being like oh my way or the highway you know let me Facebook uh echo chamber world where if I don't like it then I don't ever have to see it again where I'm seeing only what I will actually teach them the skills to engage in real life relationships and they can actually deal with when they have conflicts with their siblings with their parents with their future spouses and families and bosses and

coworkers and neighbors, et cetera. Like that's to really empower them with real skills and all in the way, empowering our parents, because now our parents know what to do when they have a conflict with their child, et cetera. I love it. And you're turning problems into no problem.

And that's what I'm all about here at No Problem Parenting. I believe the same thing. It's the parent first. We know our kids best. We can get inundated with ideas, behavior mod stuff, you know, things that we should learn and try and we try all these things and sometimes they just don't work. And it's like, so really getting your coaching, you're meeting the parent where they're at, you're hearing their actual conversations, their actual interactions with their kids, and then you're helping them tweak and learn how to communicate in just a little bit different way and, and helping them understand how to do it, like in the actual moment, not just, you know, philosophically, or you're really hands-on even though it's virtual and, uh,

and helping parents walk through how to have those conversations with their kids. So I think that's awesome. I'm going to put the link for your coaching session. Um, you do a free consult just to let parents get to know you and see if this is a good fit. So we'll put that in the show notes, but before we go, I do want to talk about your social skills book called bubble double. So tell us about that. Okay. So bubble double is, was like a, I never thought I was never my plan to be an author. I just, the idea came to me and it was such a powerful idea. And I would work with my students and like, you just saw light bulbs going off, you know, one at a time. I was just like, Oh, I need to be sharing this. So it wasn't my plan, but I ended up writing this book to help kids understand how the rules of relationship actually help build connection. So instead of being something that's like punitive about like oh my gosh I have to conform to society which is people do not like um it's about oh I have to see the other and I am a self and I can connect with the other when I am engaging in these practices like asking about the other about you know showing the person that I'm interested by uh you know maintaining physical proximity uh trying to check in with them so seeing how they're experiencing their what they're feeling by checking on looking at their face to see what messages are they giving me with their face, learning how to stay on the

same topic. So that way you can actually have a conversation that is, you know, they know what they're thinking, you know, you're thinking, but it's not, it's not communicating unless we're on the same page. So how do you make that some, that same topic to discuss, to converse? So it's that why it's called bubble double is it's that both people have their own selves. They both are in their own space. And when we connect, when we're with another person, we sort of share the sacred space of a bubble double where we're um in this in this dynamic and I had really uh developed like I was working with mostly kids on the spectrum at the time and I would like you know teach a skill and they sort of like didn't know why it was important so it was very hard for them to like be motivated to use it because just like don't tell me another thing to do like why like don't give me another job um and so it was sort of this visual aid but and that was sort of that that was how it came about, but I didn't, I didn't realize that, you know, all kids could use it. At the time I really had intended it for that population, but I find that my kids use it. My friend's kids are using it all. You know, I get letters all the time from people who are saying like, oh my gosh,

my child now knows, like, they can't like jump on top of the baby because that's the baby's, you know, bubble and they're going to pop it or, you know, they can't, they have to be able to say hi to mommy in order to join us when I come, when they come into the room so they could join my bubble and talk to me so I know they're talking and before they leave they can't just run out of the house you have to say bye mommy or bye dad or whatever because I'm leaving this sacred space and just creates like a framework like a very positive fun bubbles you know I love it where we're engaging and we get to practice all these skills so it becomes like uh it's like really good to introduce these skills and it becomes like a common language when you ever want to like tell your child like you know that's a stranger you're a little bit too close in his bubble he's not connecting with you right now you need to move a little bit back he's in his own space he's in his own bubble space like he's not you're he's not someone that you are connecting with in this space it just it teaches that you could teach everything within this framework stranger danger etc so that was really my idea with the bubble double and I'm so grateful so many uh schools are using it and families are using it and it's just really special I absolutely love it it's Super cool. And I should have mentioned this at the beginning, but we actually met through Facebook.

I don't know if it was a real I saw of yours or something, but do you remember? I know that I remember like searching. I think I was like, oh, my gosh, you have so much in common. Like when I was reading about your philosophy, I was like, oh, yeah, this totally fits.

I know we need to team up. Right. So. So, yeah, you have a Facebook page.

I'm going to put all your links in the show notes so people can reach out. You would just have such great, practical, realistic tools and skills and things for parents to learn. and the teachers. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. It's really been great. Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show. Your support of the No Problem Parenting Podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families.