Season 3, Episode 1: Programming for Mental Health Issues During Covid for Families, Schools and Students with Guest Chris Abildgaard

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the podcast. Let's talk sped law, a podcast dedicated to discussing special education rights of children with disabilities. I'm your host and special education attorney. Jeff forte. Now let's talk sped law.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Hi everyone. And welcome to another episode of let's talk sped law today's program is entitled programming for mental health issues during COVID for families, schools, and students. And it's such a timely topic to be, to be discussing this. At this time, president Biden is just about to take office and the Connecticut state department of education commissioner Miguel Cardona is going to be taking over as the us department of education secretary. And one of their goals within the first hundred days is to be reopening schools across our country. So here to talk about programming for mental health issues during COVID, uh, I have none other than Chris Apple guard. Chris Apple guard is the owner and the director of the social learning center in Connecticut. It located in Cheshire and Chris Apple guard has been private private practice for over 15 years. He's a nationally certified school psychologist, a board certified national counselor, and a licensed professional counselor with a specialization in working with children that are on the autism spectrum. In addition, he has a master's and 60 year degree in school psychology, and he earned his graduate certification from the university of Massachusetts Lowell and behavior interventions in autism. Chris is currently pursuing his doctorate degree in education in school, psychology from, uh, Loyola university, uh, in Chicago. And he is spending a massive amount of time on continuing to grow the, uh, uh, the branch of the social learning center. There's currently a six month waiting list just to go and see him. He is definitely a man that you want to get onto your calendar if you're certainly interested in getting his needs. I know that a lot of my clients work with Chris, Chris, welcome to the show,

Speaker 3: 2:28

Jeff, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and thank you for that beautiful introduction.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Yeah, you bet. And, uh, Chris's website, social learning center.org, social learning center.org. So Chris, you know, right off the gate, I want to ask you about what your seeing right now in the groups and the counseling that you're doing, right. Are you, are you doing them remotely? Are you doing them in person and how is that going right now?

Speaker 3: 2:56

Um, you know, a good, good question, Jeff. So when this, when everything hit in March, uh, we moved fairly quickly and moved, um, about 95% of our clients to tele-health. So, uh, all of our individual clients and all of our groups shifted, um, at that point. Um, and it was a tough transition as a tough transition for us as the adults and the clinicians and, uh, of course for our families and the clients. But, um, I have to say to you over, over the time since we've been doing this, um, our, our it's been, it's been remarkable to watch our clients and our families. Um, and, and the one thing I wanted to share with you, Jeff, is that I am seeing a lot of families and kids just develop that resiliency to this resiliency has been a topic we've been talking about. And, and how do you develop resiliency, especially during a time like this, um, and perseverance, and it's amazing and, and UN are people struggling right now? Absolutely. We all are, you know, as, as clinicians, as a father, as a parent, you know, I'm watching my three kids too. Um, but it's been challenging, but, uh, people have, um, stuck with it and they stuck with the counseling. Um, and it's been interesting. I've been sharing with my staff and going over some numbers recently and some data. And during this time we've actually had the least amount of cancellations that then we've ever had. Wow. Um, and of course, some of it is convenience, right. But the other piece is that parents right now are really seeing that, um, there's that need and their child signs on when they it's time for them to see their clinician and they do their work and then they sign off. And so it's, it's, it's been a real blessing that we've been able to, um, work and, and, and, uh, continue our work with families and schools. Um, but it certainly has posed some challenges.

Speaker 2: 5:00

You know, Chris, one of the things that I love about the social learning center is you kind of have like this three prong approach to, to all of the families and the children that you serve. Um, and you know, that is with providing counseling to the, to the child directly, um, parent, child counseling, and then also working with the school team, um, in a clinical, an advocacy role to ensure that the child's, um, supports are being across their entire day, not only within the community and home environment, but also in school. And can you talk about that? Can you talk about how you get involved with a, uh, a child's school team?

Speaker 3: 5:51

Um, a quick story, a quick story, if you don't mind. Um, I, I graduated, uh, after I graduated my undergrad, I came back home here to Connecticut and I had the chance to work at the Yale child study center and their autism clinic. And, um, it was, it was one of the, by far the most, uh, impactful, most rewarding, uh, parts of my life, my professional life. I got to work with some of the best, uh, brains in the field of autism. Um, but I knew right away that I also wanted to work with kids and students and families. And, and I didn't necessarily want to just go into research as many of my colleagues at Yale were going to be going to do. And that's why I, at first, initially went into school psychology, um, which I'm still a practicing school psychologist today. Um, so the, the, the, the integration between the work and the clinic, um, what we do with families and schools in my opinion, has to happen if, if, if progress is understanding the student and child, um, is going to happen, um, if we don't have that kind of continuum of services and that collaboration piece, we're going to have one hand saying something totally different than the other. And it actually only impacts the student in a negative way. So for me, and my philosophy is always in my philosophy for that kind of three-pronged approach. Um, the school is a vital, uh, piece to things, um, and, and helping educators understand where the student might be coming from. And, and, and Jeff, I have to say during this time, during this time period, I've been working with a lot of wonderful districts, wonderful districts, and I'm seeing a lot of teachers do some wonderful things, very creative things, but continuing to talk about priorities. And, and, and I've been talking to parents about priorities too, and, and what I'm seeing in the clinical setting right now, I've priorities since COVID has hit, may have shifted, and they really have shifted to thinking about that social, emotional piece of our students. Um, I believe, um, that of course schools have the academic, um, responsibility to continue to help students grow academically, but even more so right now, the longterm effects Jeff of one social emotional functioning is in my opinion, more critical that we continue to work with students and teachers and administrators and parents to understand how the social emotional piece it's really impacting a student's ability to access their cognitive potential.

Speaker 4: 8:48

Right.

Speaker 3: 8:51

What I think about a lot of parents, even myself included, uh,

Speaker 2: 8:56

You know, where your child has been either going, uh, distance learning, you know, full time and not necessarily because of the child, but maybe there's a multi-generational family and grandparents are living home or whatever the case may be or hybrid, which, you know, the hours are reduced by, by way of school day. And now we're about to, you know, shift we're now back away from the holidays we're off holiday break, we're going to be getting into more in school learning, just the sheer stamina and the transition for all of our kids. How, how are you preparing the children that you serve for that, for that shift?

Speaker 3: 9:44

I think that's a really good question because stamina, um, I look at stamina from, from a couple of ways we have, uh, physical stamina. So even just the fact, uh, my son had to spend some time on remote learning, um, for a little bit, um, he was able to get up and move and kind of be a little more free with his body when he needed to go take a break when you're in a classroom setting, especially now during COVID times, some of that tends to be restricted. You know, you have kind of designated times when you can move, you know, so that is something we've been talking about is how do you get your body ready to, um, do this? Um, and then you have the emotional stamina and the emotional stamina is just as important as the physical stamina, because now we're going to be expecting kids to sit through a typical school day. And a lot of my older students, my, my older clients will say to me, um, I'm not so worried about catching COVID in the schools. What I am thinking about is the student next to me, who else has have they been around? And that increases their anxiety. And when they increase their anxiety, they are not taking in the information as readily as, as if that anybody would lower. So we're doing a lot of work with students on, you know, how do we stay focused on the task at hand? Where do we put those thoughts? You know, how do we, how can we train ourselves to do some self-talk or, uh, make a note on a sticky, um, to kind of keep those thoughts at Bay for a little bit, until we have the opportunity to talk to that safe person or our counselor in school, or a counselor out outside of school about some of those worries or fears. Um, but also Jeff, we've been working with families because, uh, I dunno if this is the case in your home, Jeff, or, or, and other others listening, um, kids feed off our own kids feed off our anxiety as parents. And I always share that from a personal perspective. You know, when we get anxious about things, when we're talking a lot about things at home, even our young ones, our kindergartners, our first graders, they pick up on some of those things that we are worried about for them. So how do we, how do we figure out how to kind of, kind of control all of that and, and have a way to vent and express our own anxiety at the appropriate time. So I've been talking to a lot of parents about, Hey, you need to also express your anxieties and fears, but we've got to figure out the best time to do that. And with home,

Speaker 2: 12:33

Right. You know, one thing that I love about your center, Chris, is that when a parent asks to get you involved with the school team, you know, 99.99, 9% of the time, the school team is welcoming you at the door. And, uh, unlike, you know, a, you know, typical child advocate role, like the traditional child advocate role, or the traditional parents, special education attorney role, you're coming in as kind of an intermediary and working to resolve any potential issue before it really kind of snowballs. And, you know, I wanted to kind of get under the hood of a bit with that. Um, you know, how have you been able to kind of reset the relationships with the, with the families that serve in the school setting?

Speaker 3: 13:37

Um, I have to say the adjust is because of my mother. My mom was a teacher second grade teacher for over 36 years. And I remember my mom coming home and, uh, she taught in the public schools and my mom would share stories and, and, uh, talk about education, um, and talk. And so I got to see, I got to see the teacher, I got to see the teacher through my mom's eyes, um, in the classroom was through my mom's eyes. And, you know, I don't, I don't talk about this a lot, Jeff, um, but, but that growing up with my mom and hearing her stories and how passionate she was about education, um, I believe gave me just a little bit of an insight into not only the world of education, but with teachers experience. Um, I have been so fortunate to work with so many great districts and teachers. And, um, I do believe, especially during this time, teachers want to do what's what's in the best interest of the child. Um, I think I have, um, this ability, Jeff, to hear what they are saying and kind of, uh, understand the teacher education world, but also be able to bring in some tips and some ideas that are doable for teachers and educators. A lot of times, chef and I have so many colleagues out here in Connecticut and nationally that do some great work. Um, one piece of feedback I get is they get these big reports with lots of recommendations and those are over. Those are overwhelming. What I try to do with schools when I go in is I try to help them prioritize and I try to help families prioritize, Hey, listen, we might have a list of 12 recommendations and maybe, you know what, maybe we have to get to all 12 recommendations, but we're not getting all 12 recommendations this month, right? What is that? What is our priority to help our students help our clients access the curriculum to the best of their ability today now, you know, um, what are the short-term goals that we really want to see him or her achieve? Um, and I think that helps because I'm not, I'm not putting so much on them at one time. Right.

Speaker 2: 16:11

You know, I, I, I agree with you on that and I have to commend your mom on, on instilling that, uh, that moral compass into you, you know, besides your mom being a teacher that there's, that cliche that remember your mother was always your first teacher and, um, uh, it, it, it, it definitely shows, um, you know, so I wanted to ask you about the evaluations that you and your center do now. So, you know, I know that obviously your, your, your patients can, uh, come and see you through their health insurance and so forth. But oftentimes lawyers are asked, well, you know, can I get an educational evaluation covered by insurance? And it gets kind of foggy because there are certain educational assessments that are not covered by insurance. And then parents need to prepare themselves to either seek that payment through the school district process, or they have to pay for that themselves. And could you kind of unbundle that for us? What evaluations are you often called upon to do by parents, by districts? Um, and how do you kind of separate out the two

Speaker 3: 17:30

Oh, good question. Um, and, and honestly, it's been interesting because we've been getting more requests for evaluations from families recently. Um, and as I reflect back on those that are coming for evaluations parents right now are also seeing whether it be through remote learning, you know, trying to educate the child at home. Um, you know, the attentional issues, you know, some of the processing, uh, issues, uh, some working memory issues. So, um, we're having quite a few families come and ask about evaluations to look at, you know, a child's cognitive ability. I typically do two types of evaluations, Jeff. Um, the first one is kind of your standard psychoeducational evaluation. You know, that we'll look at a child's cognitive abilities, we'll look at a child's achievement abilities and probably something behavior rating scales, you know, to kind of just get a nice picture of where the child is, the second type of evaluation that I do. Um, and it really is near and dear to my heart is, uh, what we call a social cognitive assessment. And that's where, unlike what you might typically find, like in a, from a school setting who just might do some behavior rating scales to look at social skills. What we try to do is take a deeper look at their social cognitive abilities. So not only what skills do they have Jeff, but how is it that they're translating their skills into real life? How are they translating their skills into their language abilities, right. Um, how are they using executive function skills, right? To, uh, to, to again, navigate those social competencies. Um, and that is a lot of fun for me to do the social piece. Um, because a lot of times, Jeff, as you know, with many of the clients, you have, you can have a very bright individual that high IQ number. Um, but when they get into a social situation, when they get into a larger classroom, when they get into a work environment, their ability to access their social competencies completes, you know, for a variety of different reasons. Um, and that's the part I like to tease out the why. Um, and I actually have a lot of schools that come to me and ask me to take a closer look at a student's social profile, um, to help with some of those IEP goals and objectives and transition planning.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Right, right. Yeah. And that, that right there is going to be so crucial when on a, on a scale basis, our kids start going back to school is that social, pragmatic component piece that the zoom and Google meet classroom is just not, you know, it's lacking in that, that Facebook conversation. And then coupled with, when we do go back on a larger scale and we have to wear masks, the training and the goals and objectives that are implemented in the appropriateness of wearing the mask, but also how to pick up on facial recognition features when you're having your mascot. Right,

Speaker 3: 20:50

Right, right. Absolutely. It's hard, you know? And, um, so for the evaluation piece, like, I'll let you know we're doing an evaluation right now with a young woman. Uh, some of the evaluation will be done in the office and then some will be done like you and I are doing right now over zoom, so we can be without the mask and I'm able to watch, and we're able to set up some different social scenarios and conversational topics. So I can see how she's responding to some of the things I'm saying, you know, is she able to read my expression? You know? So having that, the ability to do it in both ways, I think it's really important when you're thinking about assessment, especially for social, uh, for, for social competencies.

Speaker 2: 21:33

Right. Right. So, you know, onto another topic, a lot of kids that are home right now in some way or another are most certainly being supported by a parent or a guardian or a grandparent, um, a sibling, um, with just how to navigate the school day remotely. And when we get back into the rhythm of, of more in-person schooling, uh, we're going to have some executive functioning challenges. Right. And how are you preparing for that, um, with your families, with your kids, with, with your patients, your children, and, and with schools, you know, even kids without IEP, frankly, are going to be able to benefit from some executive functioning processes within schools.

Speaker 3: 22:31

Absolutely. So, um, for this, to answer this question, I'm actually working with several districts right now in my, what we're working on is, uh, as a plan, I have some districts working on templates. I have some districts working on like PowerPoint presentations. Okay. So literally, um, how do we help students understand the expectation? And some of those, you know, either there'll be social rules, um, um, routines and blank, their routines of the classroom. I need my clients to know those things ahead of time. I need other students to know those things ahead of time. So they could start painting a mental picture of what things might look like. Jeff, we have some students that have never seen their classroom yet this year. So the throat to think we're going to sell them back into the classroom, you know, come March, April is extremely daunting and you're going to see anxiety goes through the roof. But if we can work with schools now to be proactive, let's go get those things out to parents and students now, you know, so I'm kind of coming at it from, you know, we're working with several in our area to do some of that proactive work at all grade levels, um, to send some of this information out to families. Um, and then we're going to be doing things like virtual tours of the classrooms for some of my clients. I've never seen their class classroom. Um, more teacher meets and expectations how the, um, I'm working with one client now, Jeff, and we've created a document about like, um, expectations online expectations in the classroom so they can see the difference. So they know the difference. Um, preparing students for those things is going to be critical so they can start to think about it and process it and ask the questions they need to ask ahead of time doing those types of proactive things. Jeff will definitely decrease some of the anxieties students and families are going to have when they start to go back.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Yeah. I mean, this is such a huge emerging topic, Chris. Um, and I have to tell you, I think your answer right there with one of the most proactive responses that I've heard yet from clinicians, um, it is coming right. We're, we're getting ready to go back to school on a large scale here. And our, our kids aren't used to having the stamina for that type of, of durational day. And they're going to have some anxiety and issues about it. And some challenges we don't necessarily know fully what their education baseline is, or if they're even ready, if their education access ready yet. So the, the, the, the topic of what we're talking about today is so timely because we're needing to address their mental health issues first, the academic access ready.

Speaker 3: 25:40

Yes. And I think along that topic, the other thing I wanted to share Jeff with preparing to get students back to school, um, I also see a huge need, and I think this is not being talked about enough. We need to do more to support our teachers and having their students come back to the classroom setting because our teachers and our teachers mental health, when they have those students back in, um, over the past, uh, six, seven years, Jeff pre COVID, I've seen this huge shift in emphasis on academics, even at our preschool level, even at a preschool level, you know, the idea of play and play time, and, um, is really diminished. When I think about when I was in school, Jeff, you know, the emphasis was on play up until like second, third grade. We were playing, you know, figure and learning how to play. Now, when you look at preschoolers and the academic readiness that we're putting on their little brains and tack, taxing their brains with all these executive functioning expectations is immense. Now teachers are having students come back to their classrooms with the expectations that almost we're supposed to pick back up where we left off and just, I want to say, and I, I, and people agree and disagree with me. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen because we got to, like you said, focus on establishing an emotional baseline back to school so that they, students and teachers are ready to start learning and teaching once again. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 27:29

It absolutely does. You know, it, it makes me wonder, you know, an absolutely we need to be giving kudos to our, to our teachers, our kids, teachers, and their teams or school psychologists. Absolutely. Um, I mean, it takes a village, right. Makes me wonder though, if we're ready, meaning, do we have enough players and professionals within our school teams to handle the volume of mental health fidelity and mental health supports? Even for our neuro-typical kids that are going to be, you know, more or less going back to school on a more full-time basis. Um, and the role of the school psychologist and social worker is going to really skyrocket, right.

Speaker 3: 28:26

Um, this is not a secret. We know that here in Connecticut, um, we are a lacking, there is a lack of mental health providers in schools. Um, I can't tell you how many emails. I get a day, Jeff, from different school districts asking me if I'm interested to come and be a school psychologist in their district. They have so many openings here in Connecticut, uh, and across the country, the shortage of mental health providers in schools across the country is a great concern. Um, because then it falls on other folks who are trying to do the best they can to pick up those pieces. Um, it also tends to fall on the families, some of which, uh, you know, may have insurance, some of which don't, you know, I think the other thing that this whole thing has taught have taught us from a mental health perspective is looking at equity of mental health services. And, and how has that all translated into what we're talking about today? You know, unfortunately there's a huge, you know, inequity when it comes to access to health services, uh, both in schools and out in our communities. Right. I am hoping, I am hoping that this will show, like you were talking about the start of our interview. We're having some changes in the coming weeks, as I think they're going to be positive changes, um, and the push for more mental health providers in schools. Um, from what I understand, it's going to be a significant, um, goal of our new educational commissioner.

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, you know, one of the things that a lot of your clients and patients go to see you on is your social cognitive groups. And, you know, now more than ever, because kids haven't really been in, uh, social situations, whether they're contrived scenario based to implement social pragmatic language skills, or, um, you know, kind of impromptu, can you talk about how, uh, how the, how strong the foundation is with your social learning center with, with social thinking? And can you, can you break down the methodology behind that for parents that might not be able to be finding that type of private support for their kid?

Speaker 3: 31:10

Sure, sure. So, um, I was so fortunate enough back in 2007, 2008, um, uh, at the time I was working for another practice and I was asked by my boss, he said to me, well, you're a school psychologist, so you should know how to run a social group. Um, go run a social skills group. And he gave me four clients. Um, and, and just, they were all at different, um, different cognitive abilities, different language, abilities, different ages, but he kinda wanted me to group them all together. And I knew I couldn't do that. And at the time back then there were just starting to come out with some nice curriculum and, um, more, uh, social, uh, philosophies on how to teach, uh, to this area. And I picked up a book, uh, by a speech pathologist who's out in California and her name is Michelle winter. Uh, and Michelle created the philosophies of the curriculum, social thinking. Um, if you're not aware of it, definitely check out her website. She has a ton of great information, free articles about social thinking. And, um, it really made sense to me, Jeff, it made sense to me because we went deeper from not just teaching the social skill, but about teaching the where and the when and the why we use social skills. And that why piece, especially for many of our higher functioning individuals is so important. You know, why do we give eye contact? You know, why do we make small talk? I hate making small talk, you know, um, why do we have to scan the room as we're entering? What does that teach us? You know, so talking about those social nuances, what I call those social competencies is what we really kind of have made our groups about. So when I talk about our, our groups, I talk about, we don't necessarily teach social skills here. We teach social competencies because the thing I am very big on Jeff is that I believe your social context drives your social behavior, classic example, Jeff, and I'm sure you hear about this all the time in your work. Um, uh, a student has a substitute teacher in the classroom. When you have a substitute teacher, it changes the entire dynamic and the climate of that context. And then just some of our clients might get really rigid and stuck because now all of a sudden he or she look, is looking around the room and they see other students acting out and acting up and they get upset and they get mad. And Jeff, I had one client that just totally lost it and had this big, big behavior and this outburst. Right. But what did the school do? What the school did is unfortunately they said, Oh, wait a minute. He's now a behavior issue. And it's a behavioral problem. Right? And so they call in all these other reinforcements, they call him the BCPA. And I said, hold on, wait, let's think about the context that changed. Right? What we learned is he wasn't picking up on why the social rules may have changed a bit. That's a social cognitive issue that might be an emotional regulation issue. It's not just a behavioral issue. So, um, back in 2010, uh, Michelle and I did this little article and that if it's funny, Jeff, it's one of these articles that, um, I get asked about even now about how to integrate, um, behavioral principles with, you know, the cognitive behavioral therapy with social thinking to help people understand that sometimes just behaviors are a result of the context in which we're in, and that we're, maybe we're misreading the context. Maybe we're misreading those social expectations. So in our groups, and when we work with families in school districts, that is kind of what we're trying to help them understand. It's about the social behaviors within certain contexts. It's about, they actually have decent social skills. Maybe they just don't know when to use them. Right. And I think that's what tends to make some of our groups a little bit different. Um, we also talk about executive functioning. You know, Jeff, I, I will share with our listeners, I've had a chance to be in meetings with Jeff and Jeff is an amazing attorney. Uh, but that's the thing though, when you're in these meetings, just sometimes you have to know when to bite your tongue and wait, right? You got to pick up on those cues of the room and what's happening around you, right? So that's an executive function skill. That's the ability to inhibit yourself, to stop yourself and wait for the right opportunity. So the other piece of our groups and the other piece that I really have been talking about, especially for the past five, six years, is how do executive functioning skills impact one's social abilities? So we do a lot of work on executive function.

Speaker 2: 36:41

You were mentioning too about kind of a, uh, a behavior issue. That's not really an underlying behavior challenge, zero to 60 in, in a second. And, um, you know, w we we've been involved in some of those cases where, you know, understandably to the school district's defense, I suppose they want to implement it. They want to get an FBA. They want to get a behavior support plan. They want to get, um, you know, uh, timeouts and everything when really kind of the first step is, well, you know, do we have any deescalation strategies in the child's day? Do we have, do we, do we have any opportunities to acknowledge that there could be an issue? And is the team trained from someone like yourself to implement deescalation strategies first, before we kind of tighten up and go into this kind of red alert mode,

Speaker 3: 37:43

Right? Yes. I agree with you. And sometimes Jeff, what I've found is when I'm working in schools, when I'm called in to work with a team or a student in a school, one of those, one of those, sometimes one of the best deescalation strategies is to validate how that student must've been feeling at that time. You know, so when I got called into to work with this student that had that big reaction, the first thing I said to him is seeing all those students act up in that class that must have made you really. That must have major, pretty anxious, didn't it? And they looked at many as like, yeah, aha. So now what I did though, is I got him understanding, I'm trying to understand him, Jeff. And so many of my young adults have said me, Chris, I went through school thinking that none of my teachers understood me. They might've known what I'm good at. They might not have known that, you know, I liked such-and-such, but understanding a student, I think, again, it's one of the pest deescalation strategies. It's one of the best proactive strategies, you know, it's making yourself human and, and, and allowing them to see that, Hey, you're on the same page with them.

Speaker 2: 39:07

Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's, uh, I recently had the pleasure of meeting, um, the author and, uh, uh, founder of this program called simplicity parenting. Um, um, his name is, uh, uh, John, let me see, where, where is his name here? His name, his name is, well, I'm going to look up his name in a minute, but he came up with like, there's kind of three disciplinary types. There's the governor, the Gardner and the guide. And what you're really kind of talking about with validating a child's, uh, um, uh, concerns is, you know, the guide, right. And that, that is a huge deescalation, um, strategy that a gentleman named, uh, Kim, John Payne, he's, he's actually from Australia, uh, talks about. Um, and, and you're, you're, you're, you're, you're right there with the kids that you're doing this with. Um, yeah. So, you know, w we've covered so much today. Crap. Um, I, I wanna, I wanna thank you for being on the show. I mean, first of all, I got to have you back on, you know, in six months to see where we're at with things. Once we, once we kind of roll schools out more, but we've touched on so many mental health supports that are out there, um, for, for families, for children, for schools, I know you're incredibly busy and you have a six month waiting list here, but, but how can families in Connecticut get in touch with you?

Speaker 3: 40:52

Oh, you know, a good question. So you already talked about our website, you know, a head to our website, uh, and you can certainly, uh, drop us a note. Um, you know, I would love to talk to as many people as I could, you know, abs absolutely. Um, we certainly have our different, uh, you know, social media, you know, and where we post certain things. We have our Facebook page and our Instagram page. Um, I do want to Jeff just really quickly, um, make, mention to two great online magazines that I'm happy to be a part of. And, and I write for, um, autism parenting magazine, uh, which has been around for many, many years. Um, uh, so you will see some of my articles there and this brand new magazine that just kicked off, um, a few weeks ago online, um, entitled exceptional needs today. And what I really like about this, uh, magazine is it, it covers, um, all different types of, um, needs that students, people, adults might, might find themselves, uh, you know, up against. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm grateful to have a chance to write for them as well. Um, so, um, definitely out there, you know, please feel free to give me a call, drop me an email, you know? Um, and again, just, I thank you for having me on, um, just one last thing, just to remind people as we head into the coming weeks and the months, um, parents, educators, um, be present, be present for your kids, be present for your students. Um, they're going to need us, make sure you're taking time for yourself. You know, Jeff, uh, I didn't talk about self care. I don't know about, I don't know about you, but I'm not so good at it, but we got it. We got to think about self-care because if we are not good and if we're not in a good space for our, our kids and our students and our clients, Jeff, we're not going to be doing the work we should be doing with them. You know, so as we head into these, um, upcoming months, you know, be aware that our kids are gonna need us and we have to take care of ourselves,

Speaker 2: 43:09

Chris Apple guard, uh, owner of social learning center@sociallearningcenter.org. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you such a great conversation. I can't wait to, uh, get the downloads going on this podcast and to our viewers that are out there happy new year. This is our first episode of 2020. Uh, the podcast has grown it's now in all 50 States, we have over 6,000 downloads and we're just continuing to grow. So thank you all for listening and stay tuned for another episode of led talks, bed log.