Love Hurts: Frenzied SLPs link up

The Frenzied SLP’s are linking up today with a topic of “love hurts.”  We all want the best for our students and clients-but sometimes along the way there are unintended bruises, collisions or other events that we didn’t expect when we were in grad school.

In case you wondered, I’m changing a lot of details of the story (name, age, location, dates etc). to protect my student’s confidentiality-but the actual sequence of events reported did happen.  

I was working with a student who had a history of bolting.  I felt like I had tried everything.  Death grip on the hand, social stories, visual schedules, behavior charts, reward charts, consequences, time outs.  I was a new clinician.  I felt like I had tried everything and there was something wrong with my student.  Something that maybe couldn’t be fixed by me.

There was one particular bad incident which made me really think it was not going to work out for the two of us.   This happened a few weeks before my wedding.  I don’t remember where we were, but the student bolted and she was heading towards the front exit of the building.  I knew that once she was outside-there was a busy parking lot followed by a busier street.  I needed to catch her-but I was still carrying my charting sheets and activity for the day-she was unencumbered and lightning fast.  I had almost reached her when she ran through the front doors  and was heading at breakneck speed into the parking lot.  This was not going to happen on my watch.  I pushed myself to go a little bit faster.

That’s when it happened.  She tripped over the curb and fell onto the street.  Suddenly, the issue was not whether I was going to catch and save her, but whether I was going to step on and-potentially flatten her.  There were a lot of options-veering left, veering right-but with Newton’s law acting against me, I chose flailing myself into the air in a pathetic attempt to dive bomb over her.

I missed the graceful tuck and roll or slow motioned leap ending up on my feet.  Instead I landed grazing my shoulder and part of my left cheek.  Did I mention that this was less than three weeks before my wedding?  I made a sound as the air left my body that was akin to a moose’s mating noise-according to the admin staff who heard me land through closed doors in their office.

An elderly onlooker looked horrified at my bruised and broken self and was attempting to pick up my papers when I saw the little girl start to get up and run-I looked at the woman and yelled “GET HER.”  As if this was a good option, but it got me into action and I was able to limp up and grab my student before they’d made another break for it.

I ended up with road rash across my shoulder and a little bit on my face.  I cried a lot after it happened after the adrenaline had worn off-and I thought of what we were paying our photographer-and what my photos would now look like.

As it turns out, three weeks was a long enough time to heal my bruises and cuts.  I got married and there were no visual scars (or if there were I had them photo shopped out and no longer remember them).

And I was able to move my thinking too.  Over time (it didn’t happen right away), I started to think more about the bolting behavior-and how I could stop it before it began.  It turned out to be a communication issue.  I realized that most of the time, she was trying to run to get to the gym area-which was an acceptable choice for me.  I paid attention to when she was typically bolting-and then stopped and prompted her to ask to go to the gym before that. Once I gave her an option for communication that worked, the bolting behavior (at least with me) stopped.

It was a pivotal moment in a few ways:

• First I’d learned that the importance of trying to prevent behaviors by teaching alternative options vs. consistently thinking about what to do AFTER a behavior.
• Second, I’d moved myself away from the idea of “I’ve tried everything,” to “I’ve tried a lot of things-what am I missing?” It helps to keep myself in a problem solving mode-even when faced with extremely challenging behaviors.   While I wish my clients would change their behaviors because I want/need them to, I’ve learned that I usually/always need to adjust my behaviors and reactions for actual change to occur.

Link up your #lovehurts moment and what you learned from it by linking up below or visiting the Frenzied SLP’s Facebook page.