There is one important word that we often completely forget to teach our students. Or maybe they know it but we don’t focus on teaching when and why they can use this word. This word is so critically important that if you or I didn’t have this word in our vocabulary we would be literally and figuratively lost in all aspects of our lives. This tiny little word can keep you safe, healthy, and protect you from things that may cause harm. If want to help our students grow into independent adults, we absolutely cannot forget about this word. It’s NO.
In our for our students to self-advocate, they need to learn to say no. They need to learn to refuse things they don’t like or want and ask people to stop something that is making them uncomfortable. If our kids go along with whatever anyone tells them, they will likely get taken advantage of later in life. We want our kids to learn to stand up for themselves and voice their opinions and needs.
The first thing you need to teach is that no is okay. Respect the no. If you ask them if they want to come play and they say no – that’s alright. Avoid phrasing things that aren’t optional as a question. Instead of “Do you want to go to lunch?” try “It’s time for lunch.” For going to lunch, there isn’t the option to say no. Take a lot of time practicing this skill. Offer un-preferred items and model for the student to say no. Ask yes no questions (check out this video tutorial on yes/no question teaching). The goal is quantity and diversity for these opportunities. You want to give a lot of different times to practice saying no, in a lot of different ways.
Once your student is readily saying no, you want to put some boundaries on this. Start with teaching a polite way to say no if the student has those skills. I am currently in the depths of trying to teach my toddler to change her snotty “no way” to “no thank you” and it’s no easy feat. But a polite no can function in more settings and is generally more appropriate. You now what to also start to teach that sometimes, even if you say (or think) no, you may still have to do it. This gets tricky really quickly because we get into the whole issue of self-advocacy and the multitude of complicated situations where someone’s no should have been respected and it wasn’t. Try some basic requests like “Do you want to sit by Johnny?” or “Can you help me with this?” and if the student says no, say, “Thank you for saying no, but I need you to do it anyways.”
So again, we are on a slippery slope because while we want to teach our kids that their no will be respected we are now going back on it and asking them to do something they have said no to. Tread carefully here and don’t push this to quickly. The goal will eventually be to teach our students to discriminate when something is optional or not optional and when someone pushing you to do something you don’t want to do is dangerous. But way before that, start to explain the why behind not accepting a no. If you ask your student to play chess with you and he said no, explain why you’d like him to. Respect the no but give all of the positive consequences that would come with a yes.
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2 Responses
As an autistic person and someone who believes firmly that the whole reason behind a no is often ignored, may I kindly suggest looking into the reason why someone might use that word in a place where they may be seen as needing to follow through with the task anyway? For example, there could be sensory, or bullying reasonss behind a child not wanting to sit next to Johny. There could be trauma-related triggers related to Johny, which could worsen PTSD symptoms, so common in autistics. The point I’m getting at here is that no often has a reason and solutions for addressing that reason need to be created (for lack of a better term) with the input of everybody, including, above all, the learner, even if they’re a child, that don’t involve more behaviorism aimed at extinction of the problem. If the child can’t sit next to johny because of sensory issues, move the seeting layout around. If they can’t sit next to him because of trauma related problems, address the trauma.
On a somewhat related point, you can figure out what the problem might be by listening to behavior, even if the child/learner doesn’t have an AAC solution which is where so many behavior therapies completely miss the mark or, in some cases like mine, worsen problems by ignoring them and treating their symptoms. It’s not enough to just teach no if no gets ignored and solutions aren’t sought which don’t include the input of the learner above all.
Absolutely! Thank you for sharing your perspective. That was noted at the bottom of this point but definitely could have been elaborated on more. The is a reason someone says no and we should never ignore that.