Episode 35-A Framework to Identify Hidden Needs to Make a BIG Impact
Focusing on the wrong IEP goals can put your child back YEARS and cause tons of behavior problems and create frustration for your child, you, and the school team. Don't overlook something that's right under your nose-basic needs. We discuss Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how to use this simple framework to prioritize your child's needs!
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Beth [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Elevate Your Advocacy Podcast. Today, I’m so excited to bring you a framework for how to decide if what you’re advocating for actually has nothing to do with academics and choosing the things that your child needs outside of just academic support. So stick with me. Today, we’re talking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Beth [00:00:25] Hi there. Welcome to the Elevate your advocacy podcast. If you are a parent of a child with a disability in the United States, this is exactly the podcast you’ve been looking for. I’m Beth Liesenfeld an occupational therapist who has participated in over 400 IEP meetings for all ages from two and a half to 21 years old, with all the different case managers and parents I’ve worked with. I started to notice some parents had approaches that inspired the school team to rise up and support their child, which resulted in a more effective and supportive IEP plan. After feeling lost and finding support in an online course for my own parenting journey, I got to thinking that there must be a great, easily accessible resource for parents to teach them the amazing strategies I saw working so well in the school setting. When I couldn’t find anything even remotely close to what I was looking for, I decided to find a way to share what I’d seen parents do in all of those meetings, but also find out more from the experts and other parents. Thus, parent friendly OT was born. At parent friendly OT we believe that every child deserves an informed adult advocate to speak up for them. We also believe that every parent has the capacity to be that advocate. They just need some guidance to know how to do it. Don’t forget to snag your free parent IEP get started pack at parentfriendlyot.com/pack Just one little disclaimer that while I occasionally have lawyers on his guests, I myself am an occupational therapist and not a lawyer, and I don’t give legal advice on the podcast or in any of my online trainings. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.
Beth [00:02:00] Hey, there and welcome to the podcast today, just like I said in the intro, we’re talking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and if this is something that is new to you, I totally have your back. I’m going to explain what it is. But if you’re familiar with it, I’m really excited to take this kind of theory and this visual and explain how you can really get to the bottom of what your kid actually needs in school. That’s going to impact their learning so much more than even direct instruction for the learning.
Beth [00:02:34] So first of all, you’ve heard me talk about sleep right? I want you to think about the last time that you weren’t able to sleep well and how you functioned the next day or. For me, it’s always like the second day after I don’t sleep well and that I’m pretty much non-functional. And maybe that’s you today. Or maybe it’s you when you think about the newborn stage when you were just first a parent and you got up every two hours. But my 18 month old still isn’t a great sleeper, and I know a lot of you guys have children who aren’t great sleepers either. I started to notice really a couple of months ago being really explicit about how I am when I do not sleep. Number one. I eat all of the junk food all of the time. Typically, I try to eat really healthy. I eat vegetables. I snack on fruits, that kind of thing. But when I’m tired, I go straight for the junk food. The other thing that I do is I get really negative thoughts. I get in a rut of blaming my husband for things that aren’t really his fault. I fly off the handle more often. I’m just not the person that I want to be. I’m capable of pretending like I’m happy, but I’m just not genuinely happy because I’m in a negative mood and I am tired. Do you relate a little bit?
Beth [00:04:04] Now I want you to think about your child, right? What happens when they’re hungry? What happens when they can’t sleep? It’s going to impact everything in their life, right? And it’s especially going to impact their learning, which essentially is their occupation or their job of life is school when their school age kid, right? But they often can’t tell us and be self-aware to say I’m tired or I’m hungry. And a lot of our non speaking kids don’t yet have those skills to really tell us what they need, even if they did know right? And I’m a full blown adult here in my mid to late 30s. It took me until a couple of months ago to really realize how I am if I have not been sleeping well, It took me a year of not sleeping well to really figure it out. So how can we expect our kids to really know what they need, That’s where this Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes in, because this is a good guide for us to kind of go through the checklist and to figure out if there’s something that we’re missing that should be obvious that we overlooked and really that needs to be addressed. So when you look at an IEP, you know the grand plan where you determine goals and objectives, when you’re looking at goal and goal progress, I want you to pay attention to that stuff, of course. But I also want you to realize that sometimes you have to prioritize other things that aren’t directly related to standards or learning and really prioritize the health and well-being of your child. Just like everybody tells you to take care of yourself. Care first, because then it makes it harder to be a caregiver if you’re not taking care of yourself. Now, I know that this is super hard, especially when you don’t have additional supports, right? But we’re going to talk about the additional supports that are available in the schools for this kind of thing, because even if you can’t directly impact it in the home environment because you’re trying to keep the wheels on, there are supports that you can ask for in the IEP, and you can communicate with your team that these are more of an emphasis than the learning, and the learning will come if they are in a good state to learn. Does that make sense? OK, so let’s go into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there is a visual and a link to another visual for Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs Pyramid in the show notes, so you can find the show notes at www.parentfriendlyot.com/podcast. This is episode thirty seven. If you’re listening to it leader. The latest podcast is at the top, so if you’re listening to it like right as that comes out, it’ll be at the top of the list, but if you need to search it, it’s number 37. So you can look at this visual, but I can also explain it here too.
Beth [00:07:06] I want you to imagine a pyramid, and it really reminds me I might be dating myself a little bit, but it reminds me of the food pyramid. So it’s got these striations or layers from the bottom to the top, and then there’s a little point at the top right. So there’s way more surface area in the bottom section because it’s the base of the pyramid and it’s more important, right? So let’s go through the layers of this pyramid and then we’ll get into how it relates to advocacy. So at the bottom of the pyramid are the things that I kind of was hinting at before. So sleep, food, warmth, clothing, breathing and shelter. These are the physiological needs that we all have to have met before we can move up to the next level. I want to say that, yes, this is a hierarchy, and some people might argue that it’s not like this linear thing, right? Of course, if we are tired, we can still learn something like it doesn’t have to be totally in this order. But the theory is that if we address these really basic needs, that the next level in the pyramid is going to be easier for us to obtain. It’s going to be easier for us to access. It’s going to be easier for us to obtain. So if you have, say, a child with autism, you know that your child very often probably statistically has poor sleep. You’ve probably tried everything under the sun. And it still might not be great, right? Their brains just work differently than ours, and so it’s not necessarily the same sleep pattern as we’re used to. Also, if they’re hungry. They might have to ask for that in certain ways, it might be a different food schedule that they’re on, but hangry is a thing for a reason. We’re not OK if we are hungry. The warmth and clothing and shelter thing. If you are finding that you don’t have resources for this, I really want you to feel comfortable reaching out to the district because often there’s a social worker or there’s a counselor that has resources through the school district. They have funding they partner with organizations in order to provide these things. So again, I encourage you if your school is really focused on the learning aspect, but some of these physiological needs aren’t met in your child, then I want to encourage you to advocate for these things. And yes, it’s not a direct IEP need, but it does affect their learning and it does affect who they are as a person. We never want to look at our kids as learning machines that aren’t human first.So this is a way of getting resources and access to sleep, food, warmth, clothing, breathing, and shelter. The one thing that might come up in an IEP is the sleep part, because if somebody doesn’t sleep well at night, they might need a nap. Or if you have a child that has cerebral palsy or a genetic disorder or another disorder, that fatigue is the big concern you might have to write in is an accommodation that they get a nap for 20 minutes in the afternoon. They might have to have quiet time or a nap built into their schedule to maintain their ability to learn so these are all considerations that we really should look at when we’re looking at learning and what’s a barrier that’s interrupting that learning.
Beth [00:10:55] So let’s look at the next level up. So physiological needs are at the bottom of the pyramid and we’re going to go up a level. So this is the safety and security level. So this is health, employment, property, family and social ability. So of course, if your child is missing a lot of school because they have a lot of appointments or maybe they get sick really often that is going to impact their ability to learn. And if you haven’t figured it out by now, like the learning is at the very tip top of this pyramid. So we’ve got two more levels and then we’re there. So if your child is having these health interruptions, you might have to look for accommodating their learning in some other way to compensate for this health. I have seen, especially during the COVID times, I’ve seen teachers try to send work home. I’ve seen teachers and families really focused on the learning part when the health wasn’t intact. And that might be OK if we’re like in that bored stage of being sick, right? We’re like stuck in a bed for a while. We can’t move very well. We are bored and we need something to do, and that might be totally fine to learn something, right? That might be totally OK and manageable. But again, if you’re like semi acute phase and there’s really a flare up, they’re exhausted. There’s some other barrier that I really want you to really think about. Is the learning more important right now or is the health important right now?
Beth [00:12:34] Now, obviously, employment is more for us adults, but like I said, school is the child’s occupation. So I see this happen sometimes where some programs, especially programs from out of state like I’ve seen a couple of from back east or the south that have come to us that if they’re in a very restrictive program like a program where they don’t get out into the general education classroom very often, then there’s not really this job that fits them well. They don’t have tasks that really fit their ability. And so they’re not being challenged. You can also see this with kids with ADHD, kids who are autistic and very smart. You know, academically wise, they might not be challenged by what they’re doing, right? So you want to make sure that it’s a just right fit, that they have something where they feel self-worth and they feel like they’re learning something. And they’re I mean, because all of us really want to learn things where you’re innately curious as humans, right? And then family and social ability. So I recently went to a fundraiser for Casa, which is court appointed special advocates, and this addresses that. Family advocate, if that’s missing, so that’s something that you can look into, if you know of a family where a child doesn’t have an advocate themselves. I’m looking at how to partner with them because I think it’s really, really cool.
Beth [00:14:11] And social ability. So this is, you know, we talked about easy devices a couple of weeks ago with Courtney on the show, and I want to encourage you to go back and listen to that if you haven’t. One of the underlying we didn’t explicitly talk about it, but one of the underlying human rights that is very common in the industry right now is just that everybody needs some sort of system to communicate, whether that is gestures, whether that’s American sign language, it’s assistive technology in the form of pictures or devices. The general argument is to have a more robust system, which means that they aren’t just limited by the pictures in the book that they have more control, more interaction, more ability to express their wants and needs, and their thoughts. And so that’s really important, and we see this with a lot of autistic individuals that behaviors come out, guys, if you cannot talk or if you cannot communicate what you need, it’s incredibly frustrating. And so if this need isn’t met in that IEP, this is something that I feel like a lot of behavior. People will look at this behavior and try to figure out the root of the behavior. And a lot of times it’s not that they’re not able to communicate what they want or need to anybody else. So I really want you to use this. If you’re having some behaviors, this is a great framework to look at to try to figure out what could be happening, right?
Beth [00:15:38] So let’s move on to the middle section of this pyramid. So we had physiological needs at the bottom. Safety and security were next Love and belonging are next. And this is friendship, family, intimacy, and a sense of connection. And I love our paraprofessionals for this one because I do really feel like a good paraprofessional, really loves their child, that they’re working with. That they’re working with. They see them as a person. They want to encourage them and support them. They see them. They listen to their stories. They want to feel connected to the kids that they’re supporting. And I think a lot of teachers do this as well. I think they have a lot more to do as a teacher. Paraprofessionals have the gift of time and really being committed to a smaller group of kids. Sometimes they’re running crazy and that does happen. But I do feel like to be a paraprofessional in the schools to be a good one,y.ou have to have some sense of wanting to network to connect and support that child. So incredibly important. Again, if you’re feeling like your child is either reporting that they’re alone at school or they are upset because friends are making fun of them, these can all be barriers to learning. We really want to address these in the IEP. Services for this might be that they have a check in check out system with a counselor or their special education teacher so that they have that check in in the morning. Did you eat breakfast? How was your night last night? That connection that somebody cares and somebody is listening and then that check out at the end of the day, how did your day go? What was the highlight? What was the drawback? What can we do differently tomorrow? Can I help you fix anything? That sense of connection in that somebody cares is really important?
Beth [00:17:40] When you go into the IEP, there might be services from a counselor. There might be some social emotional services that get provided by the special education teacher for friendship or whatever that looks like. There are things that you can do within the IEP that you might need to advocate on that level as well.
Beth [00:18:01] OK, let’s bump up to the self-esteem level, and this one is confidence, achievement, respect for others, and the need to be a unique individual. This one is really important, I think, especially in our kids and the red flag for me and where I get a little cringy feeling is when we are talking about children with ADHD or ADD in the schools. If you’re new to me, this might be a new concept. But if you’ve been around, you’ve probably heard me say this at least a couple of times. But it it’s worth saying again, for sure. I think that the basis of all of these issues with the IEPs is because our school systems have not been updated for a very, very, very long time. I do not think that they fit our lifestyle. I think they were built when we were. agrarian and most of the country is not agrarian anymore. I love breaks for kids. I’m an occupational therapist. I love breaks, but I think that we could do it in a different way. So if you’re thinking about how you would design schools, how would you design schools? Because I would definitely change that schedule. I would have a two week break here and there, but I wouldn’t have this humungous break in the summer, you know, and I wouldn’t have it so that it’s so rigid of a system but I think that nobody higher up, no politician is really going to tackle and change the whole entire school system. We’re kind of stuck a little bit with what we have.
Beth [00:19:42] What I see happening with kids with ADHD or ADHDers is that this system is the opposite of what they need, right? They need to be encouraged to follow their interests and autistic individuals as well. Sometimes that structure is good for them and then sometimes it’s terrible and it just depends on the situation in the school and the kid, obviously. When you have a group of students trying to pay attention to one teacher, and no matter how amazing that teacher is, if it is hard for the ADHDer to focus in that kind of environment, we need to change something. I do think that parents have more control than they think they do in most cases to really advocate for the breaks, to advocate for the specialized learning or maybe special projects that they get to do. So I think when we see some of this respect for others or behaviors, again, this need to be a unique individual and school very much tries to get us to act the same way so that we can get through our day. And I see. When kids with ADHD get into like third, fourth, fifth grade, and if they’re really, truly struggling, they start to say, Why am I different from everybody else? Why is that so easy for everybody to sit and pay attention when I literally cannot do it? And they start getting their self-esteem bumped down? And I hate seeing this, so I wouldn’t say that I have a stance on medication. I will never tell you about medication. That’s totally a medical decision that you have. But all I’m doing is I’m saying that the system is broken, and I think that parents are going to be the solution to this by advocating within the team for their kid. Find out what accommodations are going to work best in that environment. Figure out if there’s a school of choice nearby that does more hands on projects or more small group work instead of Big Work Group. You know your kid best and it’s going to be a trial and error process. But really, this gets interrupted a lot, especially for neurodivergent kids. So I see this a lot being the last thing on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at the very top of the pyramid is self-actualization. So this is morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance, experience, purpose, meaning, and inner potential. And essentially, this is learning, right?
Beth [00:22:28] It’s the openness to be learning in is feeling comfortable in all of the other layers and who they are as a person, their unique individual, they have something to share. That’s new. They have their physiological needs met. They have love and belonging, and they have self-esteem enough to learn. Now again, is this like a strict hierarchy where I think if you don’t have enough food, you’re not going to feel safe and secure? I mean, it’s probably a big part of that, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t learn something at the tip-top rate. But if you look at how these layers are in the pyramid, those physiological needs are the base rate. So when you’re thinking about your child’s IEP and when you’re thinking about the barriers that they’re experiencing to access to education as it is set up right now, which I feel is wrong and needs to be changed. But when they’re encountering these barriers, I want you to be really solution focused and say, Oh, when you talked about the social ability that it acquired, we don’t have that worked out yet. We don’t have that address in the IEP. I want you to start your advocacy efforts there. And if you’re like, Oh my gosh, I have 10 things that I want to emphasize in this next IEP, I want to encourage you to pick two and the further down on the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs meaning like if there’s a physiological need, I want you to focus more on that physiological need at the bottom of the pyramid, then the learning and percentiles in math at the very top of the pyramid. Does that make sense because you’re going to make more impact, a bigger impact and you’re going to indirectly impact learning in a good way if you start at the bottom of this pyramid and you advocate for those things first.
Beth [00:24:22] Now, if your kid is feeling secure, they have a staff member that they attach with. They are connected. They feel love and belonging there. Then guess what? Those behaviors are going to decrease, which might be the interruption in their accessing the classroom, right? And the learning is going to increase. Now I say that like, it’s a simple thing. We know that we’re more complicated than that and we’re humans. So it might be more complicated than that. But I hope that looking at this as a framework really helps you figure out if there’s something bigger that you need to advocate for more than just the right learning and instruction or the right reading instruction.
Beth [00:25:04] Another thing I just wanted to mention is that sometimes, you know, if you have that IEP meeting or if you call another IEP meeting to really change some things around and get some supports in place that other IEP goals, like the learning goals, might not be addressed that quarter, or you might need to request another IEP meeting to figure it out, to request more services, that kind of thing. And it can feel really nerve-wracking because you’re like, We’re losing time, we’re losing time. They need to learn. But really, in the long run, if they are more supported, they are going to do the best that they can. When you go up in the hierarchy of the pyramid.
Beth [00:25:46] My favorite quote is from Dr. Ross Greene, one of my favorite quotes, I guess, and that is kids do well when they can. And I want to expand that as well. Many people have to. People do well when they can. I don’t want you to beat yourself up by missing that. They need to figure out sleep first before your child can learn in school. I mean, once we know, then we can do things and we can change things, so we definitely don’t want you to feel guilty. If there’s something that you might have missed. And just to say, like when you’re living it and you’re so close to it. It’s so hard to pick these pieces apart. I hope this visual and if you’re driving or something, then you have the visual in your head of this pyramid. I hope this helps you really break it down and be like, check, check, check, circle that one. We need to come back to that one, right? Because I know when I don’t sleep well, I get into this like getting up with Gabe every two hours, you know if he’s sick or whatever. And I just automatically get up because when you’re tired and you’re that close to it and you just have fires to put out, you don’t even think about what you’re doing. And sometimes you get into bad habits, not because you want to, but because it’s just what’s easiest in the moment and you’re just trying to make it through the day. Definitely check out the visual that’s on the show notes again, those are at www.parentfriendlyot.com/podcast This is episode thirty seven. I definitely want you to check those out. And while you’re there, download any freebie that you think is applicable to your situation.
Beth [00:27:31] Please let me know if this is helpful. I would love to hear your feedback in your review of the podcast. Please share this podcast episode with anybody that you know that might benefit from it. If you’re in a parent group or if you’re in a Facebook group of support, I would absolutely appreciate you sharing the podcast. I put a lot of effort into it. I listened to you guys. I definitely try to pay attention to what is most important in your lives and what would maybe help you in kind of making these huge decisions that you’re faced with every single day. Thank you so much for listening. I know your time is so valuable, and I hope you got a lot of value out. Thank you so much again for spending time with me, and I’ll see you next week. Same time. Same place. Thanks so much.
Talk soon!
Beth
“The anticipation is worse than the actual event” Susie More.