Declarative Language Handbook: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Kids with Social Learning Challenges Feel Competent, Connected, and Understood

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Here are some of the benefits of using declarative language, including some example. There's likely more than what I cover below, but it will give you a taste of what you can expect.

See the positives– whilst supporting our children’s challenges, try not to lose sight of their many positive qualities. Phraseology and tone: subtle adaptations to our language and tone can benefit our children greatly. Using declarative language (statements, comments or observations), or rephrasing things to talk about an object rather than a person, and even simple things like starting rather than ending requests with the word ‘please’ can all make a big difference. For instance, when getting ready for school you might say “The clothes are on the bed, I’m happy to help” and then walk away, rather than “You need to get dressed now”; or if your child hasn’t had a drink all day you might just place the drink alongside them and say “Here’s a drink”. Similarly phrases such as “ I wonder whether …” and “ Let’s see if …” and including words that suggest an element of choice, such as “maybe we could …” or “a possible idea could be ….” or “I’m not sure if …” all reduce the perception of demands. Likewise it’s helpful to avoid trigger words like “no”, “don’t” or “can’t”– you can convey the same message using different terminology (e.g. “I’m afraid it’s not possible right now”) and if possible also explain the reason and offer alternatives whilst delivering the message (e.g. “I’m afraid it’s not possible to go to the park right now because there’s a storm, but we can try this afternoon when the forecast is better and in the meantime would you like to bake a cake or watch a film?”). Please see the very practical Declarative Language Handbook for more information and ideas. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I love your community and I’m just really grateful to be a part of it. Using humour/novelty: humour is a great way to make everyone feel more relaxed and to help reduce the perception of demands; and novelty (provided the change in direction feels like a bonus/benefit for the child) can also work well.Yeah, that’s great. Would you share with listeners where they can connect with you? You mentioned your blog, I’m gonna have a link to the one exchange at a time post that you mentioned, but anywhere that listeners can connect with you and engage. Focus on the long term objective of building a child’s ability to cope rather than short term compliance. It can be helpful to understand why more traditional parenting approaches – such as rewards/praise/sanctions – don’t tend to be effective in PDA households. Yeah, I mean, as you’re explaining that, it’s clear, like an imperative just shuts learning down, it prioritizes our needs over everything else. And I think what you’re seeing, too, there’s a lot of things happening to integrate, to become a more flexible thinker to start noticing, to tuning and more to the environment to problem solving, multi step thing. So there’s a lot involved here, and it’s not necessarily going to be an observable change. Again, it’s not an overnight thing. What would quote unquote, realistic expectations be like? How does this play out over time, what would we hope to see in a child or an adolescent, that we’re really actively focusing on using this communication style with?

Be clear and precise whilst being indirect – for example “I wonder if you could help me. I need four blue cups, from that cupboard, to be put on the table in the kitchen”. Intolerance of uncertainty – our children may struggle with all the ‘what ifs’ of life, not knowing how things might ‘pan out’, what might be expected of them, where a situation might lead, when a situation might end and whether they will be able to cope with whatever may come along. This book was written to teach you how making small shifts in your language and speaking style will produce important results. You will stop telling kids what to do and instead thoughtfully give them information to help them make important discoveries in the moment. These moments build resilience, flexibility, and positive relationships over time. Models gestalts/scripts that gestalt language processorscan easily use and mitigate (e.g., "Let's go to the park!" instead of "Do you want to go to the park?") Training 1: Declarative Language: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Individuals with Social Learning Differences Feel Competent, Connected and UnderstoodAllow extra processing time so that your child can make sense of what you have said and have time to think about how to respond – it can be helpful to count to 5 in your head following a statement or request. Agreeing non-negotiable boundaries – these will vary from household to household and from child to child. For some, the barest minimum of non-negotiable boundaries (such as basic health and safety requirements or those relating to their siblings) may be needed when anxiety is very high, but they may be increased over time. Sharing clear reasons for these boundaries, and agreeing on them together as a family, can help our children to adhere to them. Enforcing these boundaries without exacerbating things may require the use of other helpful approaches (please see next section on reducing the perception of demands). The author does a nice job putting on display concepts such as episodic memory development for children, situational awareness, patience in light of children slowly attaining concepts, framing language for children in declaratives (perhaps the obvious one) and the associated benefits, and allowing children to explore their environment/ be stewards of their own learning about the world around them. Her writing style is basic, but to the point. As such, it’s a nice light read but nothing to write home about grammatically/ you won’t be swept away by CS Lewis-level “quotables”. The theories and examples are very similar to other strong parenting works I would recommend slightly ahead of this one (although this is a nice supplement); (1) The Whole Brain Child by Siegel and Bryson and (2) Montessori Toddler by Davies. With my own children, I teach social observation skills primarily via direct questions, contrary to the advice in this book. E.g.: Balancing tolerance and demands – a child’s ability to cope with demands will vary from day to day and from hour to hour, so try to control the ‘input’ of demands accordingly (remembering that demands are many and varied) and build in plenty of ‘downtime’ to give space for anxiety to lessen and tolerance levels to replenish.

I recommend that parents trying the advice in this book tread very carefully. While imperative language may invite conflict, declarative language can just as easily invite frustration. If your goal is to prompt observation of the child's surroundings without expecting a specific outcome, you'll be fine. If you expect your child to guess that they need to stand in line or clean up their room based on vague comments, you might be sorely disappointed. Declarative Language Handbook: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Kids with Social Learning Challenges Feel Competent, Connected and Understood by Linda K. Murphy Sensory overload – our children’s heightened sensory perception can also contribute to anxiety, overload and avoidance (please listen to our webinar about PDA & sensory processing for more detail). Declarative Language Handbook: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Kids with Social Learning Challenges Feel Competent, Connected, and Understood by Linda K. MurphyBe inventive by linking activities to your child’s special interests or by using role play (e.g. your child could be the teacher for the day and teach her/his toys a social story or how to act in certain social situations) or by making a poster together that will tell other children how to behave. Yeah, well, any group of learners that are neurodivergent, I would say, like if we could use that, I’ve heard that it’s, although this wasn’t my intention, I’ve heard a lot from the PDA community that it’s very supportive and effective there. I think it’s really supportive with individuals who have diagnoses of ADHD, autism, twice exceptional nonverbal learning disability, oh, and executive function difficulties, like I think it also can come into play there. And now also neurotypical learners also respond really well to this style of communicating. And I think the thing about it is, one of the most important things is it puts it on us, the teacher, the caregiver, the therapist, to just own our own communication, and really think about how to share information with this learner in a way that they can receive it. So that’s why it can really be powerful for all learners, because we’re adjusting our communication to present it in a way that’s inviting, that’s positive, that’s guiding, that’s supportive. And that provides them the information that they really need in that moment. Like that. It’s good for everybody. But I also have heard that too, a lot of I’ve heard it’s just been really helpful as a general parenting book, even for parents and caregivers who are not in the same world that It sounds wonderful. And I can imagine listeners being like, oh, my god, how am I going to do all of those things? How am I going to stay present when I’m being triggered and know the right thing to say and respond and be nimble enough to know that the kid I’m talking to today has different things going on than the kid I talked to yesterday? So just as a way to invite parents to be open to this and not putting that pressure on themselves? What would you say to a parent who, who’s curious and wants to kind of play with this or start experimenting with declarative language, but are feeling overwhelmed by the expectations of how they do it? Yeah, so and I know I say this a lot in the book and and articles that I write, but just on the ground level, it’s commenting, and just really getting in the habit of commenting, rather than asking questions, and rather than placing a demand, which would be an imperative. So there’s a lot of ways that you can talk in a declarative way. You can get really complex depending on the developmental level and the readiness of the learner that you’re working with. Or you can keep it simple and easy. For younger learners. I think in natural development caregivers do speak declaratively, with their babies, with their infants, with their toddlers, with their young kids. So it’s a natural speaking style, even as language emerges. But on that very basic level, it’s just commenting. And again, the complexity of your comment is going to vary on many things. It’s going to vary based on your learner. It’s going to vary based on the context. But anybody can do it. You don’t need to memorize anything. The biggest part is being aware of your own communication, and start to notice when you’re commenting versus asking a question, or placing a demand. our students become more aware of their own learning style, strengths and vulnerabilities and as a result, are better able to self-advocate

Model behaviours or apply demands to yourself (with no expectation that your child will follow suit) – for instance, you might say “I’m feeling really stressed right now so I’m going to lie down in a quiet room and listen to some whale songs to help me to calm down”. Yeah, and the other thing I think all of this creates is very much a partnership, where we are the guide, and the learner is open to our guidance. And once you have that anyone can learn anything as long as both people are in that mindset. I think where learning gets hard is when maybe the teacher is not guiding but directing. So it leaves less space for the learner, or where the learner is shut down to learning for various reasons, learning stops then. So when you use this style, you know, we are thoughtfully guiding, but our learner becomes open to that guidance, and that’s just a really important part of it. Common language and communication styles that place demands on kids that we may not be aware of (including questions)speaking about them in positive terms to other people e.g. “Millie has an amazing imagination, she always thinks of really good games to play” or “Luke really makes me laugh, he’s such good fun to be with.” Demands make kid feel inadequate. But declarative language empowers them to feel competent, understand the world better, develop self-awareness, and self-advocate.”** When I heard that Linda Murphy was writing "Declarative Language Handbook", a hallmark of RDI, I knew that our Autism and Communication worlds were about to be influenced by the cutting edge thinking of a truly remarkable expert in the field. What I wasn't prepared for were the crisp, practical, useful guidelines that will make this the most important book on the shelf of clinicians and parents."