It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like, Overstimulation: Holiday ABA with Mike and Dan, Part II

ABA on Tap presents 'Holiday ABA with Mike and Dan,' (Part 2 of 2)

Get ready to navigate family gatherings with ease! In this episode, Mike and Dan are unwrapping the essential conversations so the surprises are all about cheer.

Priming is the name of the game--talking with kids and family members before big events, covering topics from managing sensory overload and food expectations (balance, not control!) to setting boundaries and dealing with tricky relatives. The idea is  ensuring your kids and family members feel prepared, supported, and less stressed for a smoother, happier family time for everyone! 

What You'll Learn:

• Setting the Scene: How to prepare kids for crowds, noise, and new environments.
• Food Talk: Shifting from restriction to body trust around holiday treats.
• Boundary Basics: Teaching kids to say "no" and manage unwanted attention.
• Handling Awkward Questions: Scripts for dealing with intrusive questions from family.
• Managing Expectations: Discussing gifts, attention, and potential conflicts.
• Escape Plans: Creating a signal for when they need a break.

Find the full article used in this episode at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/conversations-with-kids-before-holiday-gatherings_l_691b9820e4b0b8c5ce7298c7

Happy Holidays! And Always Analyze Responsibly.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to ABA on TAC, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best-tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, and this is part two of Holiday ABA. Moving on three. Oh, we're going to spend some time on this one. Now, I thought, here I thought at the beginning of this, oh, we'll get through this article in an hour. We'll be okay. We'll we'll make this one hour long episode of ABA on tap.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

We'll get through the first three in an hour.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

We're at the 15-minute mark. And the next three will be our number two. So either you guys are getting two episodes on this one or you're going to get one long one so that it gets all in before the holidays. We'll see. But yeah, we're we're at number three on the list and plenty more to talk about. So we won't hold ourselves to the two-episode mark. We'll just talk as long as we can before uh we exhaust ourselves. We got we have a whole other topic to do to record the day, Dan. So we got to save our voices. And I'm already coughing. So I I know that we're gonna talk about this in terms of the holiday context, and then there's gonna be a lot of treatment-oriented practices that are gonna come up in this discussion with a little program we like to run called greetings. And I think this is gonna be very appropriate for all of those levels of application. So the subheading here is let them know they have options for greeting people, and that they can say no to hugs unless it's your Mexican grandmother. I'm kidding. But go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

So I have a question because I come from my dad's side's mainly Italian. Oh man That's not really an option. You've you gotta get the kisses and stuff like that. So so talk to me. How do we uh how do we navigate that?

SPEAKER_04 2:35

That's a great question. You're gonna have to tell me how you navigate. You just you just took it. You just took the kisses.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Well, I the most of the Italian side of the family was in New York and I was in California, so I didn't really but had I been there, I would have probably had to take the the kisses and the hugs. No. That's that's tricky though, because I mean I was being a little facetious. No, it's good. People might, and this goes back to the priming other people ahead of time, people might take it as rude if they go in for a hug and and that's not delivered, and that's kind of pulled back on. So what what are your thoughts? Talk to me, Mike.

SPEAKER_04 3:08

Well, we're gonna go back to the previous point. How did you prime the adults to prepare for this? And then secondly, I'm gonna say, can you preserve the tradition with a slight variation? So most of those kisses on both sides of the face most of the time are air kisses anyway. Can they they blow kisses? Can you preserve the tradition while still respecting your child's limits? Depending on what their feelings are, whether or not they're neurodivergent or neurotypical. Yes. It can be taken as rude, and I think that the only way to work on that is ahead of time. Yes. And saying, Mom, dad, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, Johnny's not going to go for that. You know? You just and we need to be respectful of that. Now, I know you want to greet him. I know you want to do the kisses. Can you blow the kisses toward him? Can you wait till later to see if Johnny warms up and once the you know that that baseline once he returns to baseline given all the commotion, can we try again? Right? How can we do it in such a way that we can respect the tradition as well as respect the child's limits?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah. It's that that whole thing that we just talked about earlier. It's the violation of our expectations, or it's more so as a adult, what we would assume it's that lack of theory of mind. So when I go to give Johnny a hug and Johnny pulls away, I if I did that to somebody, I would be being rude. So now I'm gonna attribute that and I'm gonna say, Johnny's being rude. Maybe Johnny isn't being rude. Maybe Johnny just has some sensory stuff Johnny needs to work out. Maybe Johnny doesn't know what you're gonna do. So just because we would be doing it, meaning a certain intention, has no meaning that the other person's doing it. So I think the first thing is is to check our own expectations and to understand that not everybody does things for the same reason we do. Most importantly is what you said is the priming of the expectations to both the adults and the kids. So for the adults, like you said, letting them know. And then for Johnny, if you can work on a greeting that's gonna be appropriate. Johnny, do you like hugs from everybody? If not, are we gonna do fist pump? Are we gonna do high fives? So if Johnny can initiate that, that might seem a little less rude to the other person. Again, it's not necessarily Johnny's responsibility, but that's gonna get out in front of things. If Johnny can go up and immediately do a fist bump or a high five or whatever it is, maybe Johnny wants hugs. That priming and that expectation from both parties.

SPEAKER_04 5:40

The subheading hits it nicely. Let them know that they can say no to hugs. Now, in order for them to say no to hugs, the adult would have to do what? Honor that. Or and ask them before, hey Johnny, can I give you a hug? No, you're not ready for that? Cool, buddy. It's good to see you. That's it. Now there's no rudeness there. Now there's full agreement. Now, yes, maybe the little tradition of the two kisses didn't get honored. I understand that. Can you try again later with Johnny? Now, I'm gonna take you in a little time in a little time machine back to a hot tub time machine? That'd be fun. Um, back to a time when you were in and around center-based services, and you walk in, and there's an RBT that sees you as a supervisor, and they go, Hey, hey Johnny, look, it's Dan. And then you go over to Johnny, you go, Hey Johnny, what's up? And Johnny doesn't do anything. What does RBT do immediately?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

RBT andor a parent immediately prompt Johnny. It it happened two days ago when I was visiting actually an old client who was staying with like his his friend who was like five. I said something, his friend didn't respond, his nephew or whatever didn't respond, and he was like, Hey, say hi to Dan. Immediately prompted.

SPEAKER_04 6:57

And say hi to Dan, and we're gonna prompt you until you say hi to Dan. Because that's a nice and natural interaction, isn't it? We just both of both you and I just went through the whole BLS CPR training. They talk about closed loop communication. I'm gonna go the other direction in this case, open loop communication. You're gonna say hi to Johnny, and if Johnny doesn't say hi back, you're gonna try again later. Yep. You're gonna let Johnny know that you see him when you see him, when it's appropriate to see him. It doesn't matter if Johnny waves back. If Johnny looks at you, that might be their greeting. But the idea, my recommendation, suggestion here is don't get stuck on that closed-looped, overprompted greeting piece.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

We're not in the military.

SPEAKER_04 7:40

We know that the child is already overwhelmed. So if they give any semblance of a greeting, take it. If they don't, it's not the end of the world, folks. It's no reason to get stuck here.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Yeah, certainly no reason to start calling Johnny rude or to start correcting his parents. So I'm gonna suggest open loop communication. Say hi to Johnny. Johnny didn't say hi back. Hey, try again later. Yeah. And then when Johnny does say hi back, be ready for what's next.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I remember we were in a in our old office a while ago. I think you were there with me, and this was actually a teenager that was very verbal. He didn't talk a lot, but he was he had all the words. And I remember I said hi to him, and I don't think he responded. And his mom was there and was like, say, say hi to Dan or something like that. And I was like, No, no, no, no, I got it. It's my job to be interesting, it's my job to try to get him to say hi. So then I started talking to him about cars, and I don't remember if he responded right away. If he didn't respond, I was gonna leave it alone. I think I did at the time, and then later during the group, I started talking about cars and he opened up. But I shouldn't have the expectation on somebody else that they're gonna immediately respond to me and that they're being rude if they don't, because I would be being rude if I did it.

SPEAKER_04 8:54

Well, I mean, think about all the things we do in and around that situation to make the point again that we now see as corrective so appropriate, but it actually ends up making a mess of the interaction. Yep. So, yes, the idea that I say hi, somebody doesn't respond, my greeting, okay. That is awkward socially. The idea that I say hi, they don't respond to my greeting, and now get overprompted by 12 people until they say hi. I'm gonna pick the no greeting condition. Yeah. Try again later. Because at some point there's gonna be one antecedent, I say hi, to the behavior of them returning the hi to the consequence of a now closed loop greeting. Yep. That we're going for the idea that we think that it's a better line of behavior to have somebody not answer and then be overprompted by 12 people to be corrected, and that now seems the norm. I disagree.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yep. Yeah. I think something's interesting when we talk about hugs too. That again, I'm gonna try to break this down behaviorally, that a hug is, you know, some level of physical contract amongst introductions, right? And maybe there's not even, like you said, most times with families, they don't say, Can I hug you? They just come up and oh, Johnny, and give you a hug. A lot of these individuals that we're working with, we might actually be trying to teach not to have physical introductive communication because they might be doing what we would call hitting, which then gets put into aggression or something like that, as their introduction. They might go up and push people or something like that. Again, not trying to be rude. That's their version of a hug. So maybe we've been talking to them about quiet hands or things like that. How confusing is that when everybody comes up with unquiet hands and then we get mad at them for not accepting the thing that we're trying to teach them to not do? That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 10:45

That could be really confusing. That is that is awesome. And again, it comes down to priming, it comes down to iterations. How many times do I have to go through these circumstances to realize that hands on are okay here, and then hands quiet hands meant something different contextually? And yes, throughout that entire time as a child, maybe a bit more challenging for a neurodivergent child, we're trying to sort out. They're trying to sort out all those differences, all those permutations. It's okay here, it's not okay there. Uh, it's okay to high five and fist bump, but otherwise it's not okay to be that forceful with my hands. Yeah, there's a lot to figure out there, and it it's a matter of priming, experiencing, getting consequences that are reinforcing and punishing in that general definition of punishment, so that you're doing certain things at certain times and not doing them at other times.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, I really like you know, you have a great statement. It's not this or that, or yes or no, it's this and that, right? It's all about differentiation. So you even talked about it with even if we want to call it hitting earlier, is hitting bad? Well, sometimes it's all about context, right? It talks here about this normalizes body boundaries and choice. Yeah, we might also be working on personal space with our kiddos. And now, if everybody's violating their personal space, that might be really confusing with them as well. So, again, we know and we would say, well, this is their family. Okay, we understand that. We're the adults, and maybe they understand that this is mom and this is dad or this is grandmom, but do they understand what that means? And have you talked about the differentiation of who can touch you and how they can touch you? There's a lot of nuance to that that might be really, really confusing to this individual and actually really counterintuitive if we're reprimanding them for something we're teaching them on the back end.

SPEAKER_04 12:30

That's a great point. That's a that's a really good point. So much to sort through, so much to learn in these moments based on the variations. And again, to your point, who better than family, given the the context of our conversation, to be able to honor these variations and these differences, right? So oftentimes out of concern as family members, well, well, that's not the way the real world's gonna treat them, and they need to be disciplined. Absolutely. And then who better than family to understand that such that we might take uh some of the variations, some of the alternative approaches to make Johnny as comfortable as possible so that everybody enjoys themselves, so that uh Johnny's mom and dad don't have to feel those challenges. They feel the group, the family being supportive. Hey, it's not just mom and dad that can take Johnny elsewhere. If Johnny can go outside with grandma or grandpa, why not? Why not then divide and conquer, knowing that it's you know, it takes a village, is the old saying. And in this case, it's you know, you've got a a village-sized family, perfect opportunity for everybody to start embracing and for Johnny to start saying, Hey, you do that for me too, just like my mom and dad do. So now you're a trusted individual, and the more trust you can cultivate, I know that's not a word we use behaviorally very often, but the more trust you can cultivate, that's a motivating operation. That's a setting event.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 13:48

You're now telling Johnny that he can be at ease amongst many different people in different settings. What do we call that again? Generalization. Generalization. Yeah. So you know, again, we're always very linear with good reason and good logic and behavior. And then you and I are discussing much more open-ended parameters here that are also at play.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

This is a great opportunity, depending on, again, we're trying to look for real life trials to work on community helpers or to work on more so circles of friendship and talk about, like you said, trust or feeling safe. So maybe during your priming as you walk there, who's gonna be there? Oh, Aunt Sue's gonna be there. Aunt Sue might have a new boyfriend. So maybe there's people that this person's familiar with, people they're not familiar with, who do you feel safe with? Who do you not feel safe with? Who can come up and give you a hug? Who can't? These can all be discussions as well as again, depending on your child's ability to reciprocate that back, as well as rather than a lecture, a discussion of what behaviors you can do with this person. So if this person's a stranger and I don't know them, but I'm in a safe environment, can I let them hug me or not? And now we're having some more discussions, some more nuanced things, which these can really lead to that learning and growth.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

And then what if Johnny says, hey, how come Aunt Sue always has new boyfriends? We're not gonna talk about that today, Johnny. I'm not sure. Aunt Sue. But where's my oh, I don't my my bedum test is too far away today. But we don't have our usual aboard. The the Reptile Studio is getting a little bit of a facelift, a little bit of redecorating. So my console's a little far from me. That's okay. Are we good with this subheading? Can we can we go to the next one? Anything else we want to say? This was a good one. We're thinking, we're thinking boundaries and choice.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I think we've I think we've uh we've covered that.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

Okay, saying no to hugs, finding alternative ways to do the greeting, uh, teaching family members about open-ended communication, meaning you might say hi to Johnny 12 times. You had to do that. I do have one thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

So it's just kind of wrapping up and reiterating something you were saying. So in ABA, we look at behavior as a product of the environment, right? And we are all going to be this child's environment. And we don't expect the behavior to change before the environment changes. So if we're gonna teach this child, we gotta teach the environment how to respond first. And you made a great analysis there of who better to do this than family. Everything's gonna be a teaching experience, everything is a learning experience, whether we want it to happen or not. Something happened. Did we have a good result, or did we not have a good result? And if we did have a good result, well, let's keep doing it. If we didn't have a good result, it's not on Johnny to change. It's on us to change first. Thank you for saying that. And this can be learning experiences. And who better to be patient with family, to be patient with Johnny than family? So this is a great opportunity. I don't expect a stranger on the street to give Johnny 15 times of coming up and saying hi before there's reciprocity there. That stranger, they're done. But grandma, that's family. Grandma should be able to give Johnny 15 times before Johnny warms up. That's a great opportunity to teach family to do that.

SPEAKER_04 16:58

Can you start your priming conversation with family just like you mentioned right now? The idea that at the end of the day, folks, we are the A's and C's. Maybe you're not using that language. We like to use it behaviorally, but we are the A's and C's. I talk to parents about this all the time. If Johnny had a little panel that I could unscrew in the back of his, you know, on his back and I could just push some buttons, the behave buttons, I would do that. I would do that. It would be a lot easier process. But it doesn't. I have to manipulate A's and C's for a young child who comprises and and designates most of their A's and C's, the adults around them. Yep. Okay. Man, if if the if there's anything you can impart to your family members to empower them to say, let's not, you know, outside of Johnny spilling the whole dinner table, which hopefully you're monitoring closely enough to avoid, it's really up to the rest of us to ensure that we're doing things in a way that supports Johnny's better holiday behavior, better behavior in general. That's a great point, sir. I think we'll we'll close there. Yep. All right. Number four. Oh, we talk a lot about food preferences, food sensitivity, limited diets and menus of food, uh, you know, choices of food that a lot of our clients and kids and families we work with encounter. And then now you've got the holiday. You've got the holiday with talking about restricted menus. Holiday is a great example of a restricted menu. You're expected to eat certain things at certain times based on tradition. And Johnny may or may not like the cranberry mold. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Good old cranberry sauce.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

Yeah, yeah, what's what's what's what to do, right? So the subheading here is help them say both yes and no to the foods they're offered. And I'm gonna go as far as saying this might this isn't very concrete, but this might also be a quick lesson in you can say yes a little bit, please, and then not necessarily have to touch it on your plate as long as grandma doesn't see that you threw it away.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Yeah, it it makes me think about I don't know how many people I talked to heard talking or talked about about Thanksgiving about turkey, and you know, kind of the general consensus is turkey's not that great of a meat, and there's various ways that the American public has figured out trying to make it better. I guess deep frying is kind of the new way that people do it, but it's all about branding. It's all about people agree that turkey is a lot of work to make okay. It would be, you know, chicken would probably be a lot less work to be equally as good, or steak or things like that. So, you know, we do things sometimes because it's tradition, knowing that it might not be the best, the best option. Our kids don't necessarily have that trend tradition. So thinking about that, and I know you've even you we talked about that right before this podcast about talking about what other options are there? Can we have steak on Thanksgiving? Can we have steak on Christmas? We actually did that.

SPEAKER_04 19:58

Oh, we're going to.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah. We did that for Thanksgiving. And you know what the most popular thing was? The steak over the the turkey. Would people have had the turkey? Probably. How weird would it have been for adults to tell other adults you need to have the turkey? That would have been really weird. So just you know, thinking about the diversity and and there's a lot of culture with with holidays and things like that that certainly we want our kids to partake in, but sometimes at the end of the day, we just want to eat what tastes good.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

Yeah. And you made the point earlier. If that means that Johnny's gonna have a fair amount of treats and cookies because that's what they're eating, and those things are available, you can try to establish your contingencies, and then you also go in knowing that Johnny may not be eating these things. I like the juxtaposition or kind of uh you you the way you described it. We often put certain expectations, we enforce certain expectations on our kids with good reason. And then let's think about it this way. What if Johnny was a full-grown adult saying, No, I don't eat turkey? Would we treat them the same way we treat Johnny? Well, you need to have turkey, it's Thanksgiving, you need to have turkey. No, we leave it alone. We let them have their own autonomy and volition.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yep. But just because Johnny might not have the ability to communicate it appropriately, we're gonna treat it totally differently.

SPEAKER_04 21:19

Yeah, so that might be a good piece of uh advice or good suggestion. Treat Johnny as though he were an adult that's just talking about their preferences. I like this, I don't like this, and let Johnny eat whatever he's gonna eat, and then otherwise let Johnny's parents deal with it. Yeah. And please try not to add to any of the tension or emotion.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

It talks about here about rehearsing responses, so that goes back up into the priming piece about what your child can say if your child does have the language to be able to communicate this. I I think about I I actually heard it in a in a poker video recently, and you you know I I still like to get in the poker streets from now and then. The the guy was saying one question that you should always ask yourself is what if? So what if What if I do this? How will my opponent react? What if I do that? How will my opponent react? And so often we get an autopilot and poker is this is my hand, this is what I do. And he's like, Well, that might be the right thing in a vacuum, but you first want to ask yourself, what if? And I think that's a thing that you all as parents and you know, maybe grandparents won't need to ask yourself is what if I push this turkey on this child? How are they probably gonna react? And I know we like to think that, oh, they're gonna eat it. Think about it, honestly. How are they probably gonna react? Maybe they will. Maybe they're gonna have a meltdown. What's more important to me as grandma right now, or aunt or parent or whoever? Is it more important that my child doesn't have a meltdown, or more important that my child tries this turkey? I can't answer that, but I think you want to really be asking yourself a lot of what if questions. What if I do this? What if I do that? What's gonna likely be the response? Be real with yourself and then think about which response you're more willing to tolerate.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

As a parent, you just made me think the idea that I see Johnny getting offered turkey by grandma. Johnny saying no, it's gonna become an issue. Hey, mom, I'll take that. I'll take it for Johnny, put it on my plate. Hey, Johnny, come here. If you want to try it, you can have it later. How do you become the solution? How do you resolve the conflict in that moment so that things can move forward? And then Johnny can try turkey or not try turkey. He's got a whole lifetime ahead of him to figure that out. And I'm sure there's plenty of people in the world or in the United States that don't eat turkey at Thanksgiving for whatever reason. So I'm again that's that's a that's a really good point you're making there in terms of how do you just find the solution to close that interaction and not get stuck on that refusal.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

And a good thing too when we're talking about foods, and it's just a general reminder that I said earlier, is know what your hills to die on are. You know, we've talked about the 80-20 rule, following through 80% of the time, maybe giving in 10 or 20% of the time. Maybe at Christmas it's 50-50, maybe it's 2080. I I don't know what it is, but know what your hills to die on are because what you don't want to do is set up contingencies of okay, Johnny, well, before you have to have a cookie, just two bites of turkey, and then now you're an hour in, Johnny hasn't had these two bites of turkey, and now you got to figure out what you're gonna do in that situation. Maybe you just take it easy on yourself and say, I'm gonna try to get Johnny to eat turkey, and not set such stringent contingencies because certainly you can even go back on stringent contingencies, but once you set it, that becomes even trickier. So rather than making these stringent contingencies of first two bites of turkey, then dessert, of Johnny, can we try some of the turkey? All right, well, maybe we just have dessert and then I represent this a little bit later. But careful with being real stringent with stuff because no parent ever says two bites of turkey, then dessert, thinking that in 30 minutes I'm gonna be giving dessert without the turkey, even though the last 15 times we've said it, they haven't tried the turkey. Be real with yourself, cut yourself some slack so that you can have a good experience as well.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

Can they be concurrent? You know, the idea can you build behavioral momentum? Can you give a slight bit of dessert just to make sure Johnny's putting something in his mouth? Yeah. Can then you shift gears? Can you have Johnny offer you a bite of that dessert while you offer them a bite of turkey from your plate? There's a million different ways to get around this. Somewhere in this article, and I'm not sure if we've already passed it, but they talk about the possible agitation and maybe hyperactivity that comes with eating too many treats and how that might be a thing. I want to challenge everybody out there. And I even challenge ourselves because I haven't looked it up recently. But I think to date, there has never been an empirically validated study that actually links sugar intake with hyperactivity in kids. So if I'm wrong, anybody listening out there, please look it up. Please send us the link. I'm gonna have to look it up after we're done recording here. And I'm gonna credit that to I'm wondering if he's still around, one of my professors, San Diego State, Mr. Larry, Dr. Larry Fenson. He is the person that taught me that. And I tried to defy him and tried to prove him wrong. And at that point in time, now quite a few years ago, never found an empirically validated study that made that link. So don't worry too much about that. Don't necessarily don't overstuff Johnny with treats, but don't be worrying about too much sugar and hyperactivity because scientifically speaking, I don't think there's a correlation. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah, no, I think we've uh we fit that one pretty good. The the food piece, we talked about it in the beginning. I forgot it was number four, so got a little spoiler alert before we got to it.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

Oh yeah, so we've got wait four. Five and six. All right, we're doing great on time. Let me see. I before we close that one out, I did like some of the suggestions that had that they had here. So uh in terms of rehearsing responses with your kids and saying yes or no to foods. So when grandpa insists you try something new, you can say no thank you, maybe later, or take a tiny bite if you're curious. Okay. The no thank yous go a long way because it's hard to look at a kid who just said no thank you and call them rude despite them not giving in to your better intent. If someone offers you dessert before dinner, you can ask, Can I check with my grown-up first? And we'll decide together. Okay. Again, a nice way to put it to teach Johnny to maybe take a pause and then figure out what their next course of action is going to be. When you're not sure what your body wants, you can say, I'll take a little to see if I like it, or I'm full right now, thank you. And I had alluded to that too. The idea that you can tell your child, ask for a little bit, and then unless nobody's looking, you can be done with it. Nice theory of my own lesson, right? Nobody sees you throw it away, then as far as they know, it's in your belly. There you go. We're good. All right. Moving on, sir, and you're right, we've alluded to this already, and this is probably the most important, I'm gonna say the most important subheading of this article. The idea that you can divide and conquer, you can lean on the village, the rest of the family, to just give Johnny a break. The way it's being pitched here contextually is removing them from that environment for a little bit, which I think makes a lot of sense. But in the general overview of what we're discussing today, give Johnny a break is a beautiful slogan. It's a beautiful mantra. Cut Johnny some slack, cut yourself some slack. It's the holidays. We all overeat, we all eat too much sugar, too many treats, we all worry too much about what we're wearing, what we're dressed, what we're gonna say, who's gonna say what. Give yourselves a break and then give Johnny a break. And if that means environmentally, uh in terms of the circumstantial, the the situation, yeah, take them outside to play. Get them away from the commotion. Go let them quote unquote stim for a little while, because that's usually some level of self-soothing or self-regulation that's happening there. Give them some privacy if they need to do that. If the rest of your family isn't okay with that behavior, then give them privacy. If the rest of the family can be open to that behavior, let them do it. Yep, let them be themselves in that moment. But break doesn't just mean removing, although I think that's what we're talking about here, and that's a very important piece is go somewhere else, have mom or dad take them somewhere else, grandma or grandpa, is there an older cousin, somebody that can remove Johnny for a little bit and just let Johnny be themselves, let Johnny not feel the tension, the pressure of the holiday. And then overall, let's let's cut ourselves a break.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah, I mean there's even times where I'm sure there's times with you, Mike. There's definitely times where I've been at parties where I've just like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom, not because I have to go to the bathroom, but I just primarily administrative meetings that I do that. Yeah, it's true. That's your office, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:35

I I I really need to go to the restroom, I'll be right back.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Man, it's been a while. Mike's Mike's been there, but there's times where sometimes we get overstimulated. We have the right ways of coping with that. Whether it's maybe how many of us just go on our phone for a little bit, and that's kind of like a break in in the area that we're in. We're done talking with people, we're just zoning out on our phone for a little bit. But you know, Johnny, he's the center of attention. Everybody wants to say hi. Sometimes Johnny's probably just like, man, I can I just get a minute. So this is a great thing to talk about during the timing and priming, excuse me. In fact, probably one of the most important things to prime is Johnny. If you're feeling a little bit energized or you feel like you need a break, where can you go? What are we gonna do to allow for Johnny to take a break? Can we go to another bedroom? Do you want to come back to the car for a little bit? Sometimes, you know, our proverbial energy meter, I think about it, you know, from like Street Fighter or something like that, your life meter gets knocked down so far. Yeah, that's Mortal Kombat. Oh, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

But sometimes we need to re-up our life bar. And same thing, we know how to do it. Johnny probably doesn't know how to do it. So Johnny's gonna need some assistance to do it, and priming is a great way to start with that.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Let me pitch a scenario to you. Okay. Okay. Is it better to restrict Johnny from his tablet and his headphones or to have Johnny sit in the midst of everybody with his tablet and his headphones? Ooh. And now there's variations to that. So there's that one right answer. It's probably different scenarios. But talking about giving Johnny a break, sometimes that's gonna involve these preferred stimuli. And it's hard for our kids these days to get away from that tablet. You mentioned the phone, we're stuck to our phones, right? We might we know how to shift our our attention from okay, I'm I'm listening to you, I'm looking at my phone at the same time. We've gotten used to those breaks in conversation, but somehow that's gonna be prohibited and forbidden for Johnny. Oh, he's being rude, he's always on his tablet. That's why he's acting that way. We're gonna see a lot of criticism, but I'm gonna answer for myself. I might let Johnny be in the midst, or maybe Johnny's in a bedroom by himself, chilling out, but maybe they're in the midst of the commotion, now able to check out because visually and and from an auditory perspective, they're able to take that break.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, gotta re-up his life bar. I think for Johnny, it probably doesn't matter in theory whether he's amongst the group with his tablet and his headphones or farther away. But what is gonna change is if he's amongst the group, I think other people are gonna feel again some kind of way, I guess is the way to way to say that. And they're going to either feel like Johnny needs to be off his tablet and headphones or be rude or go constantly try to interact with Johnny. So again, it's the environment. It's not necessarily what he's doing, it's what other people around him are perceiving it as.

SPEAKER_04 32:18

So I'll talk to those other family members who may perceive Johnny as being rude or you know, withdrawn on his tablet. Can you use that stimulus to make a connection with Johnny? Is there anything on that screen, if Johnny permits or is receptive to it, that you can intermittently point to? Oh, yeah, I know that. Oh, wait, what's that guy called? Oh, cool. Oh, look, they just hit each other, you know, they just crashed into each other. Uh-huh, that's funny. Is there something funny on the screen that I can laugh now? You don't have to get Johnny's attention. Johnny's listening. Right? And then that might create the overture of the antecedent to then Johnny coming up to you and saying, Hey, you paid some attention. And now I'm throwing it back at you, right? So that's kind of something I would say too, is you know, I've made the bad dad joke here. They call these iPads. Can you make it a Wii pad? Is there any way that I can share that with you, knowing that we're back to the greetings? Just because you said something to Johnny doesn't mean he's going to respond right away. Give it some time. But the more you try to interact with Johnny, I guarantee you you're going to get something back at some point. And you better be ready as the adult at that point to then carry forth with that interaction.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

It's funny because I talked about earlier about lecturing. Kids often come from a parental instinct of resolving conflict. But I think in that situation it's very interesting because what a lot of parents will do in that situation is come in and say, You see Uncle Sam saying hi. Johnny, put your phone down, look at Uncle Sam, say hi, which is just almost contributing to the conflict rather than educating the other person of Yeah. Can you just give Johnny a minute? Or maybe as the parent, the best thing you can do to advocate for your child is to take them away. Because you know that your family with the best intention, there's no malice here. Right. But your family is just not going to be able to leave Johnny alone to the extent that's gonna refill his life bar. So maybe for the parent, the best thing you can do is to advocate, and one of you take Johnny to the car while the other one of you mingle and then you switch off, or then maybe Johnny's you know energy meters back up, and he can come, you can do like a you know, five minute here and ten minutes there kind of thing. Doesn't have to be so structured, but that can be a great way for you to limit conflict and limit conflict and advocate for your child.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Limiting conflict, giving yourself a break from that. So aunt, uncle, grandma, and grandpa are giving you this lecture on the best, most traditional discipline that Johnny is now violating. It's not the time to counter, it's the time to go. I understand that you're coming from the best place as a family member. Yes, I feel criticized as a parent right now, but can you stop yourself to say, I know that deep down inside you're coming from a really good place and you care for my child, otherwise you wouldn't be so worked up about this. Easier said than done. I can preach this all day on ABA on tap, and then I've got to walk into my family gathering where you know, someone I believe who I believe to be a very well-adjusted four-year-old is ultimately gonna do something like a four-year-old. And there's gonna be some edge-wise comment about, oh, she must always get what she wants. Or in that moment, can I then go, Yeah, I can see how that looks that way to them. I don't think that's the case, and I know that they're coming from a good place, and that if that was what was actually happening, and that my child is spoiled because they always she always gets what she wants, then that family member's critique would be very well placed and very well intended. And it's no less well intended right now, just because I disagree with it.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Yep, that's just a theory of mind breakdown, right? Your family's struggling to understand Genevieve's mental state, and then you would uh in some ways are struggling to understand that family member's. So it's just a big theory of mind breakdown.

SPEAKER_04 35:51

And it's a perfect uh recipe for conflict. Yep, and that's not the time. Again, conflict politics and uh conflict over kids' behavior. Not what you want to do at holiday time.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

So I think for the year end review, we might have to do a review of your holiday party to see how many of these things you did and how that went.

SPEAKER_04 36:07

Yeah, that that that might make us lose a lot of credibility. No, I you know what, that might be a really good idea. We'll see. I'll have to take some data or I'll have some stories for sure. Maybe one oh I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Maybe one practical thing you can do to allow for the break. Let's say the break is in the car or something like that to get somebody away is maybe you don't bring in all the Christmas presents, or you leave some reason for you to at some point go back to your car. So it's not like you just step out and say, Okay, I need to go to the car, and everybody's like, that's gonna we Oh, I I left some gifts in my my car. Uh Johnny, Johnny and I are gonna go get those gifts. We'll be right back. Some reason for you to do that. Not that it really matters, that's just gonna be for you if you care how much other people might judge you for your actions. I know some people uh take that harder than others.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Super practical tip you gave there, too, in terms of the gifts or all the stimuli. Maybe some of those don't need to come out right away. Not just to give you an excuse to go back out, but to lower the temperature and the environment for Johnny or for anybody else, knowing that if you keep using the example of Johnny maybe wanting gifts that aren't for him, well, let's not break those out or have them under the tree until we're actually going to be opening them. And then that might drive the uh the conversation or the circumstance a little bit better for everybody. So really practical tip there you gave on two fronts in terms of give yourself a good excuse to go outside or to leave the room, uh, other than just Johnny. And then, yeah, can you limit the stimuli, the holiday-oriented stimuli, the excitement? Can you parse it out in a way that helps your child, helps the rest of the family keep the temperature nice and even?

SPEAKER_01 37:39

That's such a great point, right? Because you're mitigating two variables there. Number one, you're mitigating the initial overstimulation of there's 500 things here and sounds and lights and so much going on. And you're also mitigating the potential satiation of I've played with everything, now I'm bored and I want to go home. If you can kind of slowly integrate them into the situation, I think that's a great suggestion. Maybe if you don't leave a package in the car, maybe you say, Oh, I gotta run to the store. We're gonna go grab something, and you take Johnny on a little trip to the store or something like that. Some reason for you to leave the situation so you all can just kind of regroup and then put yourself back in the situation.

SPEAKER_04 38:15

There's always a need for more ice. I I uh did we run out of ice? I gotta get some ice. We gotta get some ice. You know, there's always something you can go to. Nella ice made a song about that. And then you don't even you can go, you could pretend to go, and then ah, they were fresh out. Two beds, you know. Again, you're giving yourself that out, that excuse, so that it's not always I'm gonna take Johnny away because they're not behaving the way everybody's expecting them to right now. Yeah, that's that's not a bad reason to do that, but to your practical point, you know, to be pragmatic, the more you say that, the more that sticks. So the idea that you don't always have to announce it. You don't have to, you just you take care of Johnny, you help them regulate, you bring Johnny back in, you divide and conquer, you spread the uh love throughout the family. Can somebody else take Johnny out now? Do we have to leave a little bit early? Maybe that's the case. Do we have to get there a little bit late? Is that something that we can prime our family members about? Absolutely it is. Can we have a room ready for Johnny? Because Johnny's tablet charged. All the things that we're talking about that are gonna allow us or potentiate that idea of a break at some point when not just Johnny, but any of us are overwhelmed with the commotion, the sights, the sounds, the smells, you know, the people, all the motion.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

And maybe you do that check-in ahead of time with the priming. Maybe you tell Johnny, okay, we're gonna be there for 90 minutes. Then we're all as a family, we're gonna go to a different room, we're gonna come back to the car and we're gonna do a check-in. Do we all want to stay here or do we all want to leave? Like that could be another thing that you could do. Because, like you're saying, do we come a little late, leave a little early? An hour and a half of success is gonna be a whole lot better than an hour and 32 minutes that the last two minutes leads to failure, because that's what Johnny's gonna remember. That's what you're gonna remember, and that's what you're gonna take home as the family. As a matter of, I mean, that's you're gonna leave that now. Everybody's frustrated. Now you've left that environment, but you're gonna take that environment to your house now or the next place that you're going because you're frustrated, Johnny's frustrated, and now Christmas isn't fun anymore.

SPEAKER_04 40:15

So, unless you've got more to say on that, I think that was a perfect segue to our final point here, according to this article. You made a very poignant statement there at the end. What is it you want to remember? What are you gonna come away with? Is it those last two minutes where Johnny had a meltdown, or was it the other three hours and 58 minutes where Johnny kept it together, right? Remember those last two. Well, that's and unfortunately, that's what we end up doing as humans and as family members at holidays. But the last subheading here is ditch the perfectionism and focus on connection. I believe in ABA we call this differential reinforcement. What are we placing our focus on, right? Is it those last two minutes or is it the other four hours where everything was just fine and kids were kids, and yes, there were mishaps. But yeah, to your point, we sometimes end up focusing on that, and then we use that uh very definitive language. Johnny always has trouble at family gatherings. That's let me just make the general suggestion. I'll pass it to you after that. As a family member, don't do that. Please don't do that. Certainly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And do focus on the rest of it. I mean, throughout that four-hour gathering or however long it was, I'm sure Johnny sat quietly for at least 30 seconds. Can you focus on that? Or was Johnny really just running amok that entire time? It may seem that way because that's what we're anticipating. That's unfortunately what we've also primed for. Yep. So it's a real mind trick to try and maintain. I'll say it again, I can preach this all day, and then I have to find myself as a parent in that circumstance.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Yeah, the the always and the never. That's that's always my favorite. We would get that a lot when we would do the initial assessment when we'd ask about following instructions, right? How often does your child follow instructions? Zero percent of the time. Really? Zero percent of the time, or do you just not remember the 98% of the time they do?

SPEAKER_04 42:14

Even our assessments are written in that language. Yep. Never, sometimes always. Yeah. Right? Zero, one, or two. Which what score is it?

SPEAKER_01 42:23

And that's actually kind of interesting because I don't think any of us follow instructions all the time. I know I don't.

SPEAKER_04 42:28

When it gets taken from a developmental scale, we won't go too far into this. But yeah, I mean, again, to our point here is we do use that definitive language. And in terms of focusing on the connection over the perfectionism, this is something that just it's part of the human condition. We are going to look at those things that we need to correct. We're gonna leave well enough alone. I know I, you know, you know, I like to use that phrase. We're gonna forget about everything else that went right just because something went wrong. So, how can we prime our family members, prepare ourselves to not fall into that habit?

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Yeah, I think this goes back to number, I think it was three, where we saw talked about instead of lecturing, you know, create those discussions. I think that's a great way rather than I'm telling you you need to go to this unfamiliar environment and this is what you need to do. Let's create some discussions. But also that the connection, at the end of the day, that's that's probably why we are going to these holiday parties or holiday parties to I guess that's the right term. Gathering family gatherings. Family gatherings would be a better term, is to have a connection with the family. Yeah, that's exactly why we're doing it. And I think a lot of times family perceive connection as vocal interaction. So we're all sitting around, we're talking about things, we're interacting. I'm asking you a question, the the latency, as we would call it, and your response is very low. That is what connection is because if I'm connecting with somebody, that's what my connection looks like. But we have to understand that again, everyone is different and there's shaping involved. So maybe Johnny doesn't ever go out. So maybe what we expect for him is. He just sits on the couch with his iPad the whole time, and that's his first step of building connection. Yeah. But we can't expect to go to zero from a zero to a hundred and have that be successful. We got to go from zero to ten. So we have to first define what connection is. And maybe connection is just physical proximity. Johnny is in the area and that's it. He can't he can't respond if he's not in the area. Let's have him just successfully be in the area. After we can do that a little while, maybe successfully be in the area without his headphones on, but he's still got the iPad. Then maybe without the iPad, but he's not expected to interact. Then maybe he says hi and he can go play with the iPad. We're slowly building that up. And that's connection. Yeah. And that's his connection as well, because so often we're focused on what we think the connection should be. We totally lose sight of the person that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

There's a reciprocity that as family members, for example, we want to establish with kids, for example. And coming in with the notion that that may not be established immediately. That as the adult, you might be putting out a lot of attempts to communicate, and Johnny may not respond. Can't how do we encourage those adults around us to keep trying? We talk a lot about contingent imitation and linguistic mapping on ABA on tap clinically and and and in in practice. I love to use that a lot. Why? Because it gets kids to notice me and it also gives a feeling of, in a sense, wow, this guy's not going away. And if I'm cautious and attentive and I'm observant, inevitably I'm gonna say something during my linguistic mapping or my contingent imitation that's gonna make Johnny look at me. And then once I get that contact, that that shifting of his gaze toward me, that's a whole new ball game, right? Yep. And try not to overdo it, you know, once every five minutes, every ten minutes. Again, be observant. Try to find something poignant, put yourself in a child's mind at their level. If you can approach them and get into a line of sight in some way so that it's very clear your attempt to communicate with them, and then don't be offended if there's no response. And I that would be sort of my wrap up there without ending the episode here. But that's what we're talking about. Is if you really want to make if you're really concerned as a family member and you're trying to focus on connection, that would be my recipe for the holiday connection is don't give up, keep trying. Yep. Think of your family member and the challenges that they face day to day. You don't want those to come up today. If you can help ameliorate, lessen the load for them today, even if Johnny's on his worst behavior, whatever that you know translates or manifests as for the family. The idea is how do we focus on that connection knowing that, yeah, maybe I disagree with my family members' approach to discipline. Today's not the day to talk about that. This gathering, this holiday season, that's not we're not gonna fix it today. We're not gonna address it today. We're just gonna make sure that everybody is within reason as comfortable as possible. So nobody's gonna have to bend over backwards for somebody else's comfort, but we're all gonna be very, very attentive, very observant, and very cautious about ensuring that everybody is as comfortable as possible. And yeah, that might center around Johnny, and that's okay. Yep. I mean, what a what a better time to focus on kids, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

No, I I love it. And you you talked about, you know, that you're not going away, but it also comes, it's not like a pressuring way. No, no, that's you're kind of in and out, right? Like, and I've seen you do it. That's why it's I wanted to highlight that because that could be misconstrued, and that could actually be counterproductive. And I think the reason that you are so successful with that is it doesn't necessarily come from like an ego place, it doesn't come from a you need to do this. Right. And you know, it's one of my favorite things that we talk about in Pro Act, replacing you language to I language because saying you need is actually aggressive communication. And I think vocal, you know, we I think we think a hundred a hundred times faster, or we say things in our head ten to a hundred times faster than we say them out loud. So I'm not even saying that somebody says this out loud, but I'm saying this is the mental perspective that a lot of people have is Johnny needs to say hi to me. And once I say that in my head, now it becomes a Johnny thing. Yeah. Where I think what you're saying in your head is what can I do to get Johnny to say hi to me? You're doing the same thing, maybe the same action, but in your head is gonna leave you down a totally different road based on what your skinner will call it subvocal speech is getting you to look at that situation.

SPEAKER_04 48:40

Let's think about what that means in general, right? How many times, just in terms of small talk? Hey Dan, how you doing? Oh, I'm good. You may have had the worst morning, you may have had the worst week, you're in crisis, you have you're having health issues. Oh, I'm good, I'm good. It's almost meaningless.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

It's so weird. I've been trying to think about that because how are you doing? Everybody says good. They could have the worst day in the world, and it's almost weird to not say that, right? It's always how's it going? Good.

SPEAKER_04 49:09

So to your point, I think when we do that with kids, or at least for my personal or you know, approach and practice, I I I love the way you conceptualized it because it's it's not my goal or my objective for Johnny to say hi back. It's my goal and objective for Johnny to notice me and to feel comfortable around me. Now, if that happens, I'm pretty sure Johnny's gonna say hi at some point.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Love that.

SPEAKER_04 49:33

And then when Johnny says hi, again, I gotta be ready to be attentive. Because a lot of times, if we to your point, if you focus so much on that one behavior, you're gonna be so focused on it that I guarantee you're probably gonna miss it when it happens. And then you will have wasted all your time trying to elicit or evoke a behavior which you're otherwise gonna put under extinction.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

You use the word comfortable, safe might be another word, safe, safe, secure.

SPEAKER_04 49:58

The idea, and and the idea that you're constant too. Yes. This wow, this guy keeps this guy keeps offering chances to interact. He keeps commenting on what I'm doing, he keeps demonstrating things that might be interesting to me. Again, we're we're we're building that rapport, we're pairing. We kick those words around a lot, they're very important, and then I I really love the way you you expanded on that definition because it is it is up to the adult to create the circumstance to make the child feel secure, and then those behaviors, whether desired or undesired, from a social significance perspective, begin to manifest and begin to come out, and then we have a chance to shape something.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Love it. Yeah, nobody's ever felt safe around somebody because that person said that they're safe, right? In fact, that's actually counterproductive. Or if you if you go too far, you're trying to get them to feel comfortable around you. That's gonna make him feel less comfortable around you, right? So I think that's really awesome that you highlight that. I want to share a personal anecdote, and then we do have to circle back to the dancing snowflake that you said you were gonna talk about at the end of the day. That'll be our clothes. That'll be our close. So, like I said, I'm an only child. It was just my mom and I for a long time, and and her parents. So my holiday festivities were always very, very limited. It was me and my mom, and then me and my mom and her parents, and it always kind of focused around me. My domestic partners from a family of I think she has seven or eight siblings. So, and now since they live in San Diego, we usually go to her place for Thanksgiving and Christmas if we're around. Usually we're gone for one of them. We were there for Thanksgiving. Very different than anything I've experienced. I didn't grow up with that. But what's interesting is can when we talk about connection, and it's something that I kind of laugh about, and I still try to work out in my head, is that a lot of them are teenagers now, and what family dinners consist of for them is everybody's just kind of on their phone, like not even really interacting. Like Thanksgiving, it was like the guys were watching football, and maybe some of us were like interacting around football. Then a lot of times the the moms and and the ladies are doing more actually, you know, around the table traditional, and the kids are just kind of running all over the place. And I always just find it funny when we go to these interactions. A lot of times we'll go to round table pizzas where they do their birthdays and stuff like that, and everybody's literally just sitting on their phone. Yeah. And I'm like, why did everyone drive they live out in the boonies, an hour to say hi and then sit on their phone for two hours when they could have done that? Is that what connection is? But again, that that I guess circumvents my idea of what connection is, but maybe that's their connection. So it's just interesting when we're talking about building this connection, also think about what that means because what I think it means is very different than what clearly her family thinks that means and what connection consists of.

SPEAKER_04 52:46

So the answer is you send Johnny to round table pizza with Jan with his tablet and his headphones, and he's gonna fail. He will write in. They might be texting each other. Did you ever think of that? Yeah. So they we can't even talk in person anymore. We just have to be in the same room, yep, but texting each other or sending each other messages on social media.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

Yep. Yeah, tick tocking.

SPEAKER_04 53:05

Man, that is too funny. Okay. So, Dan, you were right. I was wrong. I did not think we could make this a full conversation, and we did. I am glad for that. Now, you wanted me to tell a story. I I do. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

I've given my anecdote. So I gave a random reference earlier about a dancing snowflake.

SPEAKER_04 53:25

You wanna you wanna talk about that a little bit? Oh man, this is I love this one, right? The you you love to say the mind of a four-year-old. So we went to see Santa last weekend. Uh, it's now become a family tradition with my older kids too, so we've got the photos to prove it. And luckily, my daughter is not afraid of Santa, and she's never been. I know a lot of kids are afraid of Santa. I mean, it fits right into our discussion today. It's okay if you're afraid of Santa, just don't force the issue and get one of those cool pictures where your child's crying on Santa's lap. Santa does exist. I have one of those, yeah. I have one of those for my middle child.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

So you have one with Mila?

SPEAKER_04 53:59

Yeah, oh yeah, she's running away. She's like, she's literally running into the camera screaming. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

You you have okay, I need to see that.

SPEAKER_04 54:06

I'll have to I'll have to dig it up. It's okay. Yeah. So we went to Santa, and uh, you know, my daughter was so what are you gonna ask Santa for? And first of all, this was kind of cool. She's like, Well, I can't tell you. It's between me and Santa. So my wife my wife and I are like, Well, you're gonna we're gonna have to overhear it, otherwise, you know, that's gonna that's gonna blow the whole cover. Because if you tell Santa and not us, how are we gonna deliver for Santa?

SPEAKER_01 54:30

But Santa brings the gifts, not you.

SPEAKER_04 54:32

So she's got this idea of Santa, and it's a grand idea, including magical notion of you know, questions like, so how does Santa get to all the kids on one night? You know, and so I've made bad jokes like well, Santa uses some Amazon now, you know, he sends them ahead of time, whatever. I've made no Papa No, Santa gives all the gifts to the kids and they make all the gifts, and okay. So we get to the moment, and Santa says, Well, what do you want me to bring you for Christmas? So, you know, my wife and I are kind of leaning in, like, yeah, we need to hear what's going on. And she says, A dancing snowflake. So we're like, okay, and even Santa, you know, mall Santa's kind of take it aback, like, what's this kid? Oh, yeah, well, I'll get you one of those, sure, you know. Ho, ho, ho. And we're like, dancing snowflakes. So we start probing. Oh, did you see one of those? Like, where did you get that dancing snowflake? She's like, No, I've never seen one of those, but I just figured Santa could make it.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

It has to do ballet, right?

SPEAKER_04 55:28

It's a dancing snowflake. It's something that does ballet, right? So we are, if anybody out there knows of a dancing snowflake that does ballet lamp or light, please contact us. Can't say I'd be on top of Gmail immediately. But her whole line of reasoning, Dan, is was to to ask Santa for something that she hadn't otherwise seen anywhere. Because, all right, Santa, step up. Let's see, can you actually make this happen? The mind of a four-year-old man. So I've got to make it happen somehow. We'll see. I did find a floating jellyfish lamp. Okay. And clearly not a snowflake. So I'll have to see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

I think you can find one out there. I just I remember there was an interesting episode of Brain Games where they showed like a bus to a like a three-year-old, and they were like, What is this? And they were like, It could have been it could be a UFO, it could be the sun, it could be a million, and they showed it to adults, and they're like, It's a bus. So I think maybe our mind is, you know, we gotta expand our mind a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 56:31

Floating jellyfish might work. Maybe I get the floating jellyfish and I add some snowflakes to it. Do jellyfish live in Arctic waters? Probably. See, I'm stuck with my adult brain here. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, Dan, Mr. Dan, we made it happen. I'm glad to provide some new content to our listeners out there as we wrap up the year. I we can't thank you enough out there. You guys have really made this worthwhile. It's cool to see the metrics on our different platforms and realize that there's a fair amount of you out there listening and to wake up on Sunday mornings and see that there's already downloads that have happened as I was sleeping, as you were sleeping.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

We hit a big number this year. We'll talk about it next year.

SPEAKER_04 57:13

Yeah, we'll talk about it during the year in review. Big, big things happening for ABA on tap. Shall we say, a lot of cool things brewing here for the tap. And it's uh we owe it all to you guys out there for your support, for your feedback. People like Jen Stevens out in uh Kentucky. Shout out to Jen. Shout out to Jennifer, people that have really made an effort to connect with us on social media, people whose faces we've never seen, who've we've never been in the same room with yet, we have a lot of affection for, who really support our quest here, our objective, ABA on top. So what a perfect time to send warm holiday wishes and greetings to you out there and to say thank you. Thank you so much. And we'll see. We'll see if this is our last set of episodes for the season or we squeeze in one more. I think given that we did the two hours here, we might give ourselves a break and come back with our banger in the beginning of the year. We'll see. But yeah, thank you so much out there, Mr. Dan. If you anything you want to say.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Thank you so much. Have a happy holiday, and I hope you all get your dancing snowflake that does ballet for Christmas.

SPEAKER_04 58:18

Oh man, the fresher, the fresher. So, ditch the perfectionism, focus on connection.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

And always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_04 58:27

Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Cheers. Always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

ABA on tab is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.