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Thinking Out Loud
March 8, 2011 by Lisa Freeman
Posted in•Social Thinking
We’ve been asking our parents to ‘think out loud’.
Some of our students don’t realize that we all have thoughts about each other. Just because we don’t discuss everything we notice or are thinking, doesn’t mean we haven’t noticed or aren’t having thoughts about what we noticed. So we’re asking parents to say what they are thinking aloud for their children to hear. If you were in the local diner and you noticed something was bothering the people next to you, you might be thinking: “I notice that those people are not happy. I see that they are looking around, they must want the waiter. Oh, Now the waiter is taking the food back. I wonder if he brought the wrong food or if there was something wrong with the food.”
We notice what other people are doing. “Did you see that man looking in the jewelry store window? I bet he’s looking for a present for his wife or girlfriend.” We notice what they are wearing. “Did you see the crazy hat that girl was wearing! She look like she’s ready to go skiing.” When our children are babies and toddlers we talk to them all time saying our thoughts out loud. “Do you hear that? Look its an airplane. Its up in the sky. I wonder where it’s going? Can you see the people on the plane?” After a while we stop doing it because we don’t think we need to point everything out anymore.
Our kids with social challenges don’t get the process we intuitively go through. We need to point it out to them. We are always thinking socially, we need to let our kids know that we are doing it and what it sounds like.
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