A practitioner recently asked me about the fact that she could get her 5 and 6 year olds to use the social thinking vocabulary, but they still weren't changing their behavior. Does this mean that they can't really learn to change their behavior?

It seems fitting this time of year to explore what the "gift of giving" means. Our free markets would like us to believe this relates to the act of buying merchandise for others; that this is what we define as the best form of a "present". However, the unspoken expectation is not in the gift itself, but in the delight we have giving a gift that makes someone feel good...and the gift need not be of materialistic.

Social thinking is wrapped around holiday celebrations. An article that ran in my local newspaper this week spoke about how careful we have to be about the "clever" advertising of "sales". What is stated is not necessarily to be believed. Consumers beware. For example, a popular chain store advertised "free $25.00 in shopping" but the fine print expressed that this was only if you first spent $100.00. Another store said "25% off the entire store" in large print, but the fine print said "on any purchases over $300.00."

In our society "read the fine print" means: know the deal is never quite as good in reality as it sounds on the surface.

"That has nothing to do with me!" is a common thought, if not an expressed concern, of many of our students. Students with social learning challenges have unique weaknesses in perspective taking when compared to their like IQ peer group.

Perspective taking weaknesses come in many different sizes (see my article, "The Perspective Taking Spectrum"), but one common trait I have noticed is that for all of our students they need to explore lessons that are directly related to their own experiences. I call this "Inside Out Teaching."

I work closely with two colleagues, Stephanie Madrigal (primary author of Superflex: A Social Thinking Superhero Curriculum) and Dr. Pamela Crooke (co-author of You Are You a Social Detective). We now comprise the social thinking team that continues to create new ways to understand and teach about social learning. All three of us travel and give workshops, work in our Social Thinking Clinic in San Jose, CA, and create products to inform the public about what we have learned. While we are not technically doing research, we are constantly creating and testing our theories with our student and adult clients.

Thinking about thinking; this has become a focused aspect of my life. Fascinating to watch people think and then see how they respond to those thoughts. The presidential debates are a perfect case in point. Everyone in the audience was well dressed and well behaved, but I can't imagine there was a single person listening to the debate who did not have some irritated or even angry thought based on what was being said (or not said!). Even the candidates who were slinging mud (very subtly) at each other stayed composed; smirking when criticized but not showing sadness or obvious anger. How did everyone in that room learn such social self-control? From the audience to the candidates, from the pundits to the camera operators, no one yelled out "enough already; we can't stand to hear another put-down!", but that doesn't mean that most people didn't think that!