0:00:05.3 Vicki Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vicki Brett.

0:00:08.9 Amanda Solohi: I'm Amanda Solohi. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:19.3 Vicki Brett: Each week, we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:26.6 Amanda Solohi: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the... Welcome back, friends.

0:00:34.4 Vicki Brett: Happy New Year.

0:00:35.7 Amanda Solohi: Happy New Year. I can't believe it. We made it.

0:00:38.4 Dr. Sykes: We made it.

0:00:39.3 Vicki Brett: Obviously, we always take a little bit of a break in December. We try to recharge. We are still working, and it's just a hectic time, right? You have that week off for Thanksgiving. Sometimes there's a hard adjustment to come back from such a long week off, and then it's like three weeks, and then it's two weeks off, right, for a lot of the kiddos.

0:00:59.3 Amanda Solohi: Lots of transitions for these kiddos, and among those are tons of parties and holiday activities and performances and...

0:01:08.9 Vicki Brett: Out-of-schedule things.

0:01:10.4 Amanda Solohi: Yes. Maybe people are on vacation. So, like, I feel like from the week before Thanksgiving to, like, right now, it's just dysregulation central.

0:01:20.0 Vicki Brett: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And what we are really excited to kind of jump in... Which I had told her before, like, selfishly, it just helps us more in our cases... Is that approach of having trauma-informed IEPs. And before the break, we had a wonderful discussion with Dr. Doug Bolton in terms of what is behavior, right? And we've had that conversation in varying degrees. But if we look at it as a skill deficit or that curiosity, and today's episode, we're going to dive in even more because at a certain point, that behavior may signal more, right? Do we need to dive into the mental health aspect? And we have our expert, Dr. Sykes, here today to kind of walk us through it, and we are so delighted. Dr. Sykes, can you please kind of give a little bit of an introduction of yourself and your background and your work?

0:02:24.9 Dr. Sykes: Absolutely. So I am Dr. Sykes. I am the founder of Nest Behavior Consulting and Nest Cares. I provide resources for mental health and special education through those platforms. We target mainly children who have a primary diagnosis of autism, and we can provide those services... ABA therapy... Through the insurance. We also work with our local school districts here in New York, specifically in Long Island, Nassau County, Suffolk County, where we do provide behavior consultation, FBAs, one-on-one support. Anything that is outlined as a behavioral need in a child's IEP, we can provide that service. So that is who we are in a nutshell at Nest Behavior Consulting. And I'm so happy to be here to talk about IEPs and having trauma-informed IEPs and getting educated, especially going into the new year. We just talked about all these vacations, these breaks, these schedule changes... Definitely affect how our kids are coming back to school. And it makes the conversation that much more important: what to look for, what to ask for, what to be ready for when you're walking into your IEP meetings.

0:03:37.2 Vicki Brett: Yeah. And I think that's such a, like, that signal, right? What is it that teams or parents can kind of look to make sure that the IEP team knows, "Okay, like, this behavior is now signaling something mental health for us"? In California, we would usually then request... Or we know the background of the child, and not say that the IEP team doesn't, but sometimes they just don't take it into consideration. And like, when behavior signals mental health, how can parents, teams, triage it without stigma, right? Because I think that that's also culturally, for a lot of different people, ingrained to, like, not talk about mental health.

0:04:25.3 Dr. Sykes: Yes, that's such a good question and such a complex question. The first part of it: you're asking how can we identify how the behaviors are triggering mental health, not just for the child but the family as a whole. And it's so important, and it's oftentimes always overlooked, right? So when you're preparing to go into your IEP meetings, you want to make sure that the language of the IEP is something that you understand. I know typically when you're going into IEP meetings, you're sitting at a table with your special education team, you're flipping through the page, and you're saying you're consenting, yes or no. Do you understand? Do you agree? And oftentimes, you just think this is a regular meeting. "I kind of understand, " so you say yes, you nod your head, you move on, meeting is over. You want to take those meetings a little bit more serious, right? You want to make sure that you're asking questions, that you fully understand what is written in the IEP, how you're supposed to receive your services. And then that is the opportunity to talk about the challenges that you're having at home. Many times we see that the IEP may be in-school-focused, where the school is providing services for school, school support. But how are we bridging the gap between home and school? How is what is happening at home transferring over to school? I'm sorry... Yeah, transferring over from home to school and vice versa. That's super important. You could have a child who is performing or exhibiting certain behaviors in different settings. So the behaviors that are happening in school may not look the same at home because the environment is different and the triggers are different. How are we beginning to analyze that and collect that data? So again, the IEP is a contractual agreement between the school district and the parent about the behavioral approaches and support that they're going to provide the family. If they are not aware of what is happening, if that is not a topic of discussion, we can't even begin to address that objectively. So I think it's really important for parents to be strong, to really understand what is happening in those meetings and the jargon in the IEP, and be confident to ask those questions and not be intimidated by that document or the environment.

0:06:38.9 Amanda Solohi: Or even just being willing to share information that maybe they don't think is relevant.

0:06:44.4 Dr. Sykes: Yes, that gets into the second piece of what you're saying: the cultural differences. And I come from a West Indian family. I'm from Jamaica, and we don't talk about mental health at all. So we're breaking those barriers, of course. And it's difficult. It's very difficult. It's hard to tell people, "Just go in there and just do it." We need to have community. So with Nest Cares, we're trying to bridge that gap and start to talk about these... Having these difficult conversations. And what I find that has been most helpful is getting other practitioners involved, whether it's your mental health counselor, your school counselor, your speech therapist, your occupational therapist... Getting these groups of people to really work together on a goal, not just looking at it separately but working together, speaking to each other, and educating the family. The parents should know, if nothing else, walk into these meetings or whomever is providing your service and ask yourself, "How can I manage if my provider is not there? What would I do if I don't have a technician? " And if you can't answer those questions, if you're finding gray areas, if you don't know, that's your starting point. Ask, "What should I do when the tantrum happens? " Don't just read a script or a response on a piece of paper. Do you know how to perform that response? Start there. Start asking yourself those questions, and then you'll find out, "Oh my God, I don't know how to engage in responding to tantrums. I don't know how to engage in responding to elopement behavior." So start there and start to get real about those behavioral responses and those treatments that are supposed to happen in response to a behavior.

0:08:29.1 Vicki Brett: Well, and I think that it's important to ask those questions to the team as well.

0:08:34.4 Dr. Sykes: Absolutely.

0:08:35.1 Vicki Brett: And get really granular with it, because you're not there. You don't know what it's going to look like when the child is taking their break and the aide is walking outside with them. Do you have a designated spot that you go to? Does the child want to go on the playground? How long has this been happening? What do you do if he decides to elope? What would happen if she didn't ask for the break and she just walked out? Because you'll find it's going to look different. We could write the best IEP, and it cannot be implemented. Absolutely. So I think that having the right people there to help you speak on that, right? And those providers can be the ones... Oftentimes, they're the ones really getting curious and asking those questions. They're taking the questions out of my mouth. But one of the things that we were really hoping to dive in with you as well is how are we turning even functional behavioral assessments into doable bits, right? Behavioral intervention plans. I know that's a loaded question, but I'm just like throwing it in there. But I think that that is something that administrators and teachers have experience with. But I feel like we want to always have that lens of being trauma-informed. And these FBAs sometimes are just so cookie-cutter. You can tell. They're not even talking about this kid.

0:10:04.3 Dr. Sykes: Exactly. And sometimes it is. It's easier for us, and we all have FBA templates as clinicians or professionals, whoever's writing the FBA... There's a template. It's very easy for me to just take the template, know very little about the child, and create something that's going to be efficient for this meeting tomorrow. And if you're not asking me any questions or challenging me, then it's approved, right? And it's also important to know that the person that's writing the FBA, whether it's your school counselor, your BCBA, or whomever, they may not be the ones performing it. So it has to be trained. Someone else is trained to execute, whether it's a paraprofessional, behavior technician, whoever is working with the child. So at the very minimum, I think the language in the FBA needs to be very clear. It needs to be... You got to get rid of all these jargons. What does it mean? The definition of a behavior has to be clear. My tantrum may look different from your tantrum, right? What does a tantrum look like? How can we identify that when it's happening? And then clearly, what do we do? I think also what we need to start seeing more at these meetings is data, right? You may have a teacher who says, "He's always disturbing my class." Well, how many times did he disturb the class this month? And how many times did he disturb the class last month?

0:11:23.9 Amanda Solohi: What does "always" mean?

0:11:25.5 Dr. Sykes: Exactly. And what did that disturbance look like? How long was it? What's the duration? What's the frequency? I think if we start to focus on being objective and looking at real-time data, the conversations are going to change. And you look at that data, you'll be able to support what you need, right? If you're seeing an increase in tantrums, why? Did you have a change? Was there a change in his seating? Was there a change in staffing? What happened?

0:11:52.9 Amanda Solohi: Yeah, I tell that to parents all the time when we're looking at BIPs and why we have the same BIP year after year and nothing changes. And I go, "That's a huge red flag." But I talk about... And I even have teams will ask me, "Why do you need a bunch of data? " And my first question is, "Well, why are you even asking me that? It's supposed to be part of your job." But even besides that, the idea... And I'll have teams that will say, "Oh, we shared information in the present levels." And the biggest thing I explain to parents is, if a teacher or a staff member is relaying information in an IEP, even if they took a few minutes before the IEP to write down the present levels, most of the time, they're thinking back in their memory. They're using their memory. And our memories are not perfect. They are flawed. And when we are thinking about something, we're probably going to think about the most eye-catching thing that happened, the most memorable, or the thing that most recently happened. We don't really... And I will tell you, I've had so many teams where they'll say, "Oh, this always happens, " or "This happens so often." And then I say, "Okay, go take data." And they come back and take data, and it's completely different. Because it's like, okay, if this student had this behavior yesterday and it's still fresh on your mind because it had an impact, you're going to maybe think it's happened all the time, but maybe it didn't. And your definition of "all the time" might be it happens once a week. But in reality, the problem is, if it happens once an hour, that's a huge difference.

0:13:20.9 Dr. Sykes: Huge. And it's a huge difference, and it requires different approaches, right?

0:13:27.4 Amanda Solohi: Absolutely.

0:13:28.4 Dr. Sykes: Plain and simple, behavior is behavior. We exhibit behaviors as educators, and children are exhibiting behaviors as students, right? So if you... If I'm working with a child and teachers... They have a hard time. You have a class of, let's say, 15 or more students. Some districts provide more support than others. They're doing the best that they can in their environment with the resources that they have, right? So if I'm always having a problem with one student, I have to have these long tantrums once a week for 30 minutes, I'm always going to have a negative report, right? Always. The report's never going to be good. And what does that say? How does the child feel? Do they feel like they're in a safe environment? Do they feel like they can express? Do they feel like they don't have to be triggered to have tantruming behavior because they're in an environment where they're receiving what they need in order to self-regulate, right? And that's when we start talking about having trauma-informed IEPs and FBAs. What I see happening is we're just trying to get through the day. And that just is not going to continue to work.

0:14:35.6 Vicki Brett: And I think that is so important to acknowledge as well. And that's usually our way of approaching IEP meetings is, "You need help. We're trying to get you that help, " right? Because what we'll see is the teacher will walk it back. "Oh, it's totally fine." And it's like, "Who told you not to ask for help? " Because that is what ends up happening. And then a couple months later, we're like moving the child into a more restrictive classroom because this teacher wasn't really real with us about the supports that were needed. And it really pains us when that happens because if we would have just gotten your... Yeah, that support would be helpful. You're like, you don't even have to... Like, we would have gotten it. And then this kid wouldn't have had to change and do a transition right into a more restrictive classroom or just even a different classroom with a teacher that's willing to try different...

0:15:35.2 Dr. Sykes: Right. And I totally agree with you. And I've had the opportunity to actually work in school districts and work one-on-one and develop classrooms. That's actually, like, one of my favorite things to do. And what I've learned being on both sides... Being in the classroom and being in the home... What I've learned is that I have to give grace to some of these teachers, because yes, you're absolutely right. You could have came in there and you could have been more honest, and you could have came in there and you could have let us really know what's happening. But realistically, if I have a classroom of 20 kids, I have very little support from my district or my school, whomever is... The special education department. How can I really come to these meetings prepared with information that you're going to need to move forward when I'm not getting the support that I need as the educator? So that's also a conversation. And I had to learn... If we get really deep about this, if we look at it as a bigger picture and not just the IEP, the district also has a budget. They have a budget. They have things that they can and cannot do. They have requirements for their educators about things they can and cannot share with families. If we're going to have a really serious conversation about this. And this is why data is so important, because when the parents come in, they're informed and they're requesting and demanding data instead of opinions, then I can have a conversation: is this district equipped to provide the services that my child needs? Or should we be looking into alternate placement in which the district needs to cover? That's a bigger conversation. And many times we don't even know how to navigate that conversation because we're not dealing with data. We're not dealing with facts. We're dealing with a lot of emotions from both sides, from the families and the educators. And it's not fair to the kid.

0:17:17.5 Amanda Solohi: No, it's not. And I've also seen, too, where, like, educators are actually providing a lot of individualized support, but it's not clearly documented in the IEP. It's not written. Or I've had teams be like, "Oh, well, that's just best practices." And it's like, "Okay, that's great and all, but that's best practices for you because you're doing best practices, but not all teachers do best practices or even know best practices." And so you have an IEP that's maybe working in some form. The kid then transitions to a new school or a new level, right, elementary to middle, middle to high school, or even just they move. And then the new team... And this is why I have teams that fight me on it. "Like, all these little things, let's just... Best practices, best practices." I go, "Yeah, but this kid might move to another school. You might have a new teacher. We don't know what tomorrow's going to show us." And especially if COVID, if the fires in California, if all of the natural disasters teach us anything, these kids could be moved. Teachers could be moved. And we need to make sure that everything that's happening, even if it's something that is being utilized for the whole class, needs to be in there. If we know for a fact it is integral in this child's emotional regulation or behavioral support. If it's important for that child, it needs to be written and explicit.

0:18:29.1 Dr. Sykes: Absolutely.

0:18:31.4 Vicki Brett: Right.

0:18:32.9 Dr. Sykes: I absolutely agree with that. And that's what I mean, like, these plans are too vague. Like, an FBA is a functional behavior assessment. It's only identifying what the behavior is. We're defining the behavior in an FBA. And then in a behavior plan, we're taking those behaviors and then we're implementing strategy. So many times you're just looking at an FBA. "Okay, great. Now I know what the behaviors are. How do I approach them? " Right. And then when you have your BIP, what happens after the meeting? Who's providing the training to the staff? Are they getting that? That should be discussed. Because you can have an eloquent FBA, an eloquent BIP. The meeting is great. And then everything just falls through the cracks. Because how is this being implemented? So maybe even ask to come in and observe the classroom, right? And again, transferring from home to school. What does it look like at home? Do you need at-home support? Having those conversations and demanding those services, I think, would be a good response to that issue that we're talking about here.

0:19:30.9 Vicki Brett: Yeah, I love that, that you discussed the home-school bridge, right? And that being a method that the teams should be promoting more because we want to see the behavior decrease across all settings. And yes, school is different than home and they could have outside providers, the same thing, but there are certain things that mimic, right, of task avoidance or elopement from being told that they needed to accomplish that, whatever. And I think that, yeah, the more that parents are able to kind of share and be receptive or even get curious... I sometimes have to tell my clients, "Look, I'm going to go to this IEP meeting and it's going to sound like I don't know anything because I'm asking all these questions, but there's a purpose behind the..." Yeah, there's a method behind the madness, right? But it's really just trying to hear from the team, like I said, get super granular. And the only way is to ask questions. And if you're like, "Vicki, I can't ask, I don't know what the right question"... Literally any question. "Oh, so this behavior is happening during art time. What are we going to do about that? How? " How would you... If it says that we have to do this, how are we going to get there, right? Because more likely than not, there are goals attached to the BIP that are in the IEP. And so we have progress reports that should be happening because if something's not working, you shouldn't have that situation that Amanda confronted with the same BIP for the last five years, right? Like, if we were really looking and having the fidelity of the data. Before we end, I wanted to just quickly turn... Like, what is one thing that you would want teams or parents... I know you've given a lot of information for teams, but is there one last thing that you would want an educator that's listening to this or administrator to take away when it comes to FBAs and BIPs?

0:21:33.9 Dr. Sykes: Well, for starters, we should never see the same BIP for five years, right? Like, that's a huge red flag. Why is it the same? Why is there nothing changing? For sure, I agree with you guys there. But especially for educators, those and just schools period, special education departments, the behavior consultants that you bring in... I don't know how California does it or every other state, but I know in New York, what we're trying to do, what I see a lot of public schools doing is they're reaching out to agencies like mine, like Nest Behavioral Consulting, and they're contracting with them to come in to provide that behavioral support, right? Because a special education degree and a behavioral background are two different things. Like, yes, we're targeting children and their educational needs, but creating the lesson plan and dealing with the behavior is two different approaches, right? So when the schools are bringing in behavior specialists to come in to target the behavior so they can deal with the educational piece, right? What I would suggest to those educators is to also ask for professional development, right? Professional development where we're not just focusing on the plans for the student, but we want to empower our educators on how to execute. In my experience, too, with working in public schools, you have the teachers' union, right? There's so many guidelines and supports for the teachers where they can decide whether they want to do something or not. Let's say you have a child who has severe physical aggression that may require a takedown of some sort.

0:23:05.3 Dr. Sykes: You have educators that they don't want to engage in that, because if, for whatever reason, the child gets hurt, there goes my career, right? You have students who need potty training. They don't know how to go to the bathroom by themselves. With the world that we live in, you have educators that'll say, "I don't want to go into the stall with this kid because what if they say that I touched them inappropriately while I'm performing this program? " So we need to start to get a little bit sensitive about that. We need to really start to educate our teachers and maybe working in partnership with the teachers' union so we have an understanding of what our children need. And I think when we establish that, we can then start to create more trauma-informed behavior plans. We can be a little bit more sensitive to sensory needs, just connecting with safety and having our kids feel comfortable so that they're responding to our educators better. And we're seeing those behaviors come down and we're seeing an increase in attentiveness to our educational strategies and approaches, whatever that may be in a classroom, whether it's art class, gym, whatever classroom. You want to see an increase in attention and capacity and a decrease in those behaviors. So we got to take a step back and ask ourselves, "What is it that we need to do in our environment to get there? " instead of just jumping right into the behavior plan and providing all these strategies that we have to struggle to execute.

0:24:27.8 Vicki Brett: Yeah, and I think that that's manageable, right? It can seem overwhelming, but once we kind of break it down, we chunk it, then it's something that parents can at least start the conversation, right?

0:24:41.4 Dr. Sykes: Yes.

0:24:41.9 Vicki Brett: And really... So Dr. Sykes, how can people reach out to you if they want more information about the work that you do?

0:24:48.9 Dr. Sykes: Yeah, so I actually have a website. It's www.desiriesykes.com. That's D-E-S-I-R-I-E-S-Y-K-E-S.com. From there, you'll see everything that I'm attached to, whether it's my nonprofit or my for-profit, which is Nest Behavior Consulting and Nest Cares. My mission is really to provide resources for mental health and special education, and my platforms are through Nest, providing those services specifically with children who have a primary diagnosis of autism through their insurance. And that's another thing that I wanted to say to your listeners is that when you get these services through your insurance, it's a medical need. When you get them through the school district, it's an educational need. That's why it's an IEP versus an autism diagnosis. However, it can be the same approach, and it can be very effective. A lot of families, they come to me, and they don't even know that their insurance covers this. They don't even know that. And I think that is so detrimental to our community, right? You can come through a company like mine, and we'll partner you with a virtual autism clinic where you can get the diagnosis because you will need a diagnosis to get the service through your insurance. And then you can have both. You can have your services through your insurance, get your parent training, get teamed up with the BCBA through your insurance, and start to ask them questions during your parent training session and let them prep you for the IEP while your insurance covers it, because this can get very pricey. So that's a nugget. It's a big one.

0:26:22.2 Amanda Solohi: And that's good for people to know now that we are in January, right? Our plans all start over, deductibles and everything. And so get going now so that you can verify services. And I do want to note there are oftentimes schools will try to defer parents to either medical diagnosis, medication, or even services. And one thing parents need to understand is that anything at home should be a supplement to the IEP. It should never be a replacement for it. So if your insurance is paying, you're receiving ABA, you're receiving OT, PT, whatever the service may be, a school team can never say, "Oh, well, you're getting it at home. You already get a lot of speech. We don't need to provide it." That's false, because home-based and school-based are two separate things, and students very well may need both.

0:27:10.6 Vicki Brett: Exactly right.

0:27:12.5 Dr. Sykes: And it's always important to remember, school is education, medical is the insurance. You don't even have to tell your school that you're getting it through your insurance. I know a lot of families, they don't give them that information because they're having a hard time. Realistically, not every parent has a great relationship with their district. Definitely encourage our families to try as best as they can to establish and foster good relationships. But you have a lot of families who it's just hard. So get your educational programs through your district, fight for what you need through the district as much as you can, and get that educational piece, and use your insurance to supplement that. It's a different approach. An IEP is looking at what behaviors are impeding on their ability to learn. Diagnosis is looking at the behaviors that are a complement or a direct reflect the diagnosis, which is autism. So it's a different approach, but kind of the same service.

0:28:09.8 Amanda Solohi: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we thank you so much for coming on today. We'll probably need to have you on. I'm already thinking about maybe even going through a sample BIP, because we talked a lot about things that can be improved. And so it might be a good idea. And we can even post it on social media and be like, "Here are the red marks of where we would change it." Because I think people learn in visuals and learn in real-world examples. So that might be a great topic for a part two.

0:28:37.3 Dr. Sykes: Yes, I would absolutely love that.

0:28:40.1 Vicki Brett: Thank you so much for your time. Listeners, we'll talk to you next week.

0:28:44.0 Amanda Solohi: Bye.

0:28:46.0 Vicki Brett: Bye.

0:28:45.4 Dr. Sykes: Bye. Happy New Year.