PARENTING WITH IMPACT PODCAST
How to Help 2e Kids with Social Skills and Bullying with Elizabeth Smith (podcast#263)
Social struggles are not just about making friends. For many neurodivergent and 2e or “twice exceptional” kids, misunderstood social cues, complex peer dynamics, and hurt feelings can quickly turn into conflict or isolation. In this episode, Elizabeth Smith unpacks what is really happening beneath these interactions and how parents can guide their kids through them with greater clarity and understanding. Dive in to learn how you can help your child navigate social situations, respond confidently to teasing, and feel like they truly belong with peers. Take a quiz to find out what kind of a parent you are. How to Help 2e Kids with Social Skills and Bullying with Elizabeth Smith Amazon Music | iHeart | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Youtube Elizabeth, a New York City-based social coach, has a deep-rooted passion for empowering 2e and profoundly gifted children. Her journey into social coaching was personal: she was working as a physician assistant in psychiatry when her own 2e child needed support. Elizabeth discovered the evidence-based PEERS program from UCLA’s Semel Institute. After obtaining certification, Elizabeth conducted further research into best practices for affirming neurotypes and strategies to avoid masking and forced behavior. This developed into her own strengths-based approach, utilizing empathy, acceptance, and current research to empower children to meet their own goals. Elizabeth Smith So what I do is, well, I do several things. The first thing that I do is kids in crisis. So I get a phone call from a parent. My kid is in crisis. My kid is being bullied. My kid has no friends. Every kid in my kid’s grade was invited to something and my child was excluded. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Help. Elizabeth Smith So there’s that crisis, very focused thing sometimes there. Elaine Taylor-Klaus What age are we talking about? Elizabeth Smith Mostly this is middle school and early high school. Sometimes it’s third grade and up, but the third grade to middle high school is usually when kids are figuring out their social skills and social strategies. And so that’s usually the window. I’ll work with anyone who wants to work. I don’t turn them off, but that is the general window where parents are reaching. So yeah, the crisis thing. There’s the, my kid misses every single social cue. He has no idea or she has no idea what’s happening. It’s unclear that they even understand how social structures work. There’s, my parents say my kid has terrible manners. There’s that one or that they’re rude, but I think they’re just being honest. That happens a lot. And then the last one is I can’t find any actual peers for my kid. One of the things that we talk about a lot is finding intellectual peers. master who does a Dungeons and Dragons section, or I’ll do a social section and then I have a fantastically gifted pottery instructor who will do pottery with the kids. So it’s an exceptionally good experience. I hire just amazing people to work with the kids directly, so they’re getting really the best Dungeons and Dragons session they could get, the best pottery session they could get, and social skills on top of that. And when I’d like to clarify, when we say skills, I do not mean acting neurotypical. I mean understanding the structures that people in this world use and learning how to use them in ways that serve you. I’m not teaching kids that they need to be neurotypical or act neurotypical. I’m helping them understand what those structures are and how they can interface with that in a way that serves them. Elaine Taylor-Klaus So that’s a really important caveat. It’s not just a little caveat, right? It’s a big one. I was actually just at a conference recently where somebody was doing a presentation on some incredible research about language bias and accent bias in particular. And when I spoke with her afterwards, she was a keynote, and she talked about being diagnosed as an adult on the spectrum and realizing how much of her work came from watching and observing how people performed in the world as a way to learn when and how to perform. It wasn’t changing who she was. It was knowing when she chose to behave in a certain way. So will you speak to that a little bit more? Because what you just said is really important for people to understand, whether it’s ADHD or autism. What you’re really saying is not asking people to mask, but to understand what might be perceived in the world as something others can understand. So speak to that a little bit. Elizabeth Smith So we start fundamentally with compassionate self-understanding. This is who I am. This is how I show up in the world. This is how much social battery I have. This is the resource that I have left over after a day of school. So we talk about who we are, and every kid is different. The kids get a huge kick when I say if I’m out for more than five hours with more than five people, I need to come home and just lie down on my floor. That’s what I have to do. That’s my social battery. So we talk about our social battery and then we talk about neurotypical systems. In the neurodivergent world, hierarchies tend to be based on knowledge or length of time in something. It tends to be a fairly measurable thing. In the neurotypical world, it’s very, very different. Especially in middle school, there are very specific hierarchical roles that take place, and conversation and interactions are based on changing your location in these hierarchies. If you don’t know that, then you may think that teasing actually reflects on you. Teasing doesn’t necessarily reflect on you. It’s an effort to move up the hierarchy. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Well, give some examples or explain that a little bit more, because I think I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t want us to lose anybody. What you just said is really complicated. As you were saying that, I’m thinking about Queen Bees and Wannabes. Elizabeth Smith Queen Bees and Wannabes by Roslyn Wiseman. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Who is my cousin, actually. So you’d think I’d remember the book. Elizabeth Smith Oh really? That’s so fun. That came out in 2002 and then there have been updates since then. So there are essentially three kinds of communication that kids receive. The first one is social feedback that carries an implicit request. This is the kid in the elevator who’s very loud and everyone says, “Too loud,” all at the same time. That is social feedback. That is normal and should be expected. Then there’s teasing. Teasing can go from friendly teasing to mean-spirited teasing, and we talk about how to recognize where something is on that scale. Then if teasing is repeated, especially across a power differential, then we think of that as bullying. So those are the three different kinds of communication that we get that we need to have a social reaction to. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I remember when my kids got into middle school, the teasing sounded so mean to me. It took me a while to understand that this was just how they were communicating and that it really wasn’t mean or bullying. But you said if it’s repeated across a power differential. So what makes something a power differential? Elizabeth Smith Usually it’s someone who has more friends. Sometimes it’s someone who has more family social clout. Someone who has some sort of resource that the other child does not have. These things can be kind of nebulous. It could be a kid having more Pokémon than someone else. One way to level that playing field is to print nonofficial, non-monetary Pokémon cards so the game becomes about strategy instead of finances. Elaine Taylor-Klaus That will only work if your kid has a social group that buys into those rules. Elizabeth Smith Yes, absolutely. If your kid is one of the more resourced kids in that group, they can help make it equitable. But if they are the lowest resourced kid, they usually can’t shift the rules on their own. Elaine Taylor-Klaus In the world of neurodiverse kids, sometimes our kids are the ones getting bullied, and sometimes they’re the ones doing the bullying. Elizabeth Smith Yes. Elaine Taylor-Klaus How is this different in that realm? Elizabeth Smith Often, when our kids are doing the bullying, it’s not necessarily with the intention to move up the hierarchy. It is often because they perceive an issue with injustice or they feel someone else doesn’t have as much information but is acting like they’re in charge. They feel a need to correct that. If we can help them realize that the only person they can control is themselves and that peers are going to be who they are, then they’re less likely to fall into that role. For neurodivergent kids, a lot of bullying is about control. It’s about trying to make the world make sense. It’s not usually intentional. Most kids don’t wake up wanting to hurt someone. They’re trying to create a world that feels logical to them. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I’m remembering when my eldest child was in third grade and we had this wild dynamic where my kid was being bullied by another kid, and those were the two really neurodivergent kids in the class. Elizabeth Smith Yes. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Those girls at the time. Yes. And so we ended up starting a mother-daughter group to try to help these kids be in relationship with each other because it was very clear that neither of them really knew how. And so the social dynamic was really coming from a lack of social skill, not from a desire to hurt. Elizabeth Smith Exactly. Exactly. And a lot of times, neurodivergent kids can be a year or two years, or even three years behind where their neurotypical peers are socially. And so when that happens, you really do have to facilitate that catch-up in very deliberate ways. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Well, and in this case, they were the same age, but one was twice the size of the other. Elizabeth Smith Oh, right. Elaine Taylor-Klaus One was this really big, tall kid and the other was this tiny little scrawny kid, and so that compounded the dynamic. Let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back. Elaine Taylor-Klaus And we’re talking about social dynamics in 2e kids, basically. Where do we want to go with this conversation, Elizabeth? We’re speaking here to parents and providers of complex kids. What is it important for them to understand? You’ve talked about the three kinds of communication, right? Social feedback, teasing… Elizabeth Smith The third is bullying. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yes, I want to make sure I caught that right. What’s important for adults to know at this point? Where do we go from here? Elizabeth Smith What if we talk about teasing specifically? Because I feel like getting a handle on how to address teasing can prevent a lot of bullying. So does that sound like a good next step? Okay. So what usually happens in teasing, we’ve talked about all the social hierarchies, right? At the bottom of the social hierarchy is usually someone called a target, and so the target is teased, and depending on the response, you may move up the hierarchy. So what we need to do is teach kids how to react when they are teased because it allows them to maintain their status where they are in the hierarchy. What neurotypical kids do is offer what’s called a snappy comeback. It’s one word, two words, three words. It’s not an address. It’s very fast, like “Seriously,” “Whatever,” or just “What?” It’s an immediate response, and I have my kids carry these around in tiny little folded-up pieces of paper in their back pocket, literally in their back pocket, so they have it there all the time. And if they come back like that, sort of mirroring the tone, that helps. Friendly teasing stays friendly, and if it’s mean-spirited teasing and they match the hardness of the tone, that will shut it down. Now, if it’s gone all the way to bullying, that is not sufficient. They’ll have to do it multiple times, and parents, I have a very specific advice list for actually addressing bullying. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Elizabeth Smith Yes, yes. So pick a tone and tell me my shoes are ugly. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Your shoes are ugly. Elizabeth Smith Seriously. Right. But if you said it differently, I would match that tone. So I’ve matched your tone, and kids do have to practice this. This is not something that comes intuitively for most neurodivergent individuals. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Well, it’s funny because I’m thinking back to that mother-daughter group. One of the exercises I did with them, and this is going back a lot of years, was about tone because kids really need to be taught tone. Elizabeth Smith Yes. Elaine Taylor-Klaus And parents, we don’t really realize when we are using tone. We did this exercise where the kids were mimicking, and the expression I gave them was, “Please put your backpack on the table.” I’d throw out a tone, and they’d say it in different ways. The parents were sitting there cringing. They began to hear how they were talking to their kids and didn’t realize it. Elizabeth Smith Guilty. Guilty. Elaine Taylor-Klaus We all are. It was so enlightening, and so you’re actually helping kids hear how they sound and begin to be able to reflect it. Elizabeth Smith Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Beautiful. OK, now let’s talk about bullying. Elizabeth Smith OK, so with bullying, it has been going on over time. It is repeated teasing across a power differential. If there are threats involved, that needs to be taken directly to the first authority, whether it’s the teacher or the dean of the school, or depending on the level of the threats, even the police. But if it is just repeated teasing, it is worth it for the parent, not the child, to quietly record the day, the time, where they were, what was said, and what the child did. Because when you go into a school and say, “My kid is being teased,” every kid is being teased. Teasing is normal. That’s how these kids relate. But if you have a list of the specific aggressions that were stated, how frequently and how often they occurred, and the impact it has on your child, you are far more likely to make progress. It may also help if you bring another adult, a coach, a tutor, someone with you to bear witness to how the administration handles the situation. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Do you mean being in conversation with another adult or provider so that someone is witnessing you, or do you mean having someone go with you to the school? Elizabeth Smith Go with you to the school at times, especially if it has gotten to this level and you’ve reported it and there’s been no resolution. Kids can be horrifically mean online or even in person. I’ve had families say they were going to talk to an attorney about defamation or slander when it has escalated that far. These are older teenagers, not middle schoolers. When it gets to the point of destroying a child’s reputation, that is when you absolutely have to act. And if you have a record, it’s not just, “I feel this way about what’s happening to my child,” it’s, “These are the facts documented.” Elaine Taylor-Klaus Two questions come to mind here. One is, what if the kid is being bullied by an adult? Elizabeth Smith Elaine Taylor-Klaus So that’s super helpful because there’s another podcast episode where we’re talking about this issue as well, so I’ll make sure to link to that. For those of you listening, the other question I have is we’ve had a number of experiences over the years where kids, really complex kids, typically on the spectrum with ADHD and other issues, move into high school years where their vulnerability to their peers puts them in a position where they’re not just getting bullied, but they’re being used by the bullies as pawns to enact all kinds of bad behavior so that then they’re the ones getting in trouble. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I suspect this is not just in our community, I suspect this is more universal. Elizabeth Smith Yes. So if I needed to do an immediate intervention for that, I would have the child step out of whatever role that was. If it’s theater, then they don’t do the next round of theater. So they take a break, they disrupt it, and sometimes they just take a week off and say, “I’m taking this week out,” so they can strategize. Adults often see this. They may not know what to do about it. A lot of the administrators I’ve worked with have said, “I’ve seen this repeatedly, but I don’t know how to handle it. Thank you for coming in and telling us how to handle it.” So stepping out, stepping away, disrupting that pattern is key. And then when someone says, “Go tell so-and-so that they’re…” whatever it is, the response becomes, “I’m not doing that.” You role model with them a way to just say no. Elaine Taylor-Klaus What if they’re afraid that will lose them the social capital of wanting to be part of this group? Elizabeth Smith It might. In that instance, we talk about why you want to be part of this group. What are you gaining from being here? How does this serve you now, and how does this serve you long term? Elaine Taylor-Klaus Elizabeth Smith Absolutely correct. The only person we can control is ourselves, and until your child decides this is something they want to do, change is unlikely. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah, totally get it. Elizabeth, this is a fascinating conversation. I hate to have to bring it to a close, but we do have to start wrapping up. For those of you listening, if you want to find out more about Elizabeth’s resources, you can go to twoekidscoaching.com. It’s going to be in the show notes. There are classes, contact information, and resources about neuro-informed support. There are classes directly for 2e kids. She works directly with kids as well as parents, so twoekidscoaching.com has great resources there. Thank you for this work. It’s powerful. Before we wrap the conversation, is there anything we haven’t talked about that you think would be really helpful for our audience, or is there something you want to go back and highlight? Elizabeth Smith I think one of the most important things that we can do for our kids socially is to have a vision. What are our family’s values, and then what is the social environment that centers around that? If your family values are a warm and connected community, then you yourself are going to need to be part of a warm and connected community, and you’ll be part of creating that. A lot of the time we send our kids out into the world and say, “Middle school is hard,” but we don’t offer them anything beyond that. Middle school is hard, and this is the system these kids are using. You can always invite other kids into your home because kids one-on-one don’t tend to taunt and tease and be as mean as they can be in a group. When you set your family up to be part of a community, to offer belonging, inclusion, and warmth, and when you talk about this openly, including your own friendships, you model what healthy connection looks like. Elizabeth Smith This would be the child’s grandmother, right? When you talk about this, when you model this, when you have a vision for this, it creates goodness not only for your child, but also for the five or six or 10, however many kids end up in the radius of your community and your warmth. And it can be about anything. It can be about robotics, it can be about board games, it can be about music, it can be whatever your child’s area of passion or interest is. You can create that. Now, we don’t all have the same resources to do this. We don’t all have the same time to do this. But if there’s one of us that can take this on and say, “Hey guys, I wanna do this and I can’t do this part, this part, this part, or this part. Does anyone have bandwidth for that part?” then we all come together and create a space where there’s belonging, inclusion, and community. Then these kids have a vision for what it looks like to be part of something like that. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Beautiful. And what I wanna acknowledge for people is that very often we get a lot of messages when we have complex kids. We get messages from the schools that say, “Stay out of it. These kids are old enough. Let them do it on their own.” And when you’re talking about complex kids, when you’re talking about 2e kids, they are 3 to 5 years behind their peers in some aspects of their development. They’re usually intellectually very well ahead of their peers, but socially very often behind. And so they really do need us to be engaged more actively for a longer period of time than you might with their neurotypical peers. I really wanna highlight that as well in what you’re saying. There’s permission not to control, not to overstep, but to help your kids create a social construct or environment around them to support them in being in relationship with their peers. I have a 28-year-old daughter who will still sometimes say, “Mom, does this text sound OK?” because that social piece is complicated and they really need the feedback and the help to feel safe in creating their own community. Elizabeth Smith Yes. And when they say, “Mom, I’ve got this,” you can step back and see what plays out. And don’t let it get to the point of explosion before you say something, but you can step back and observe. Elaine Taylor-Klaus This is where one of the frameworks we teach is to move from director to collaborator and then from collaborator to supporter. So we collaborate with them until they’re ready to take the reins, and then we move into a support role and support them in taking the lead. That process can be really powerful here. Sometimes you’re gonna go back into collaboration and then back into support, and that’s the dance you want to be doing with your kids. Elizabeth Smith Absolutely. Yes. Elaine Taylor-Klaus This is a delightful conversation. Thank you. Do you have a favorite quote or motto you wanna share before we wrap today? Elizabeth Smith There’s two things that I keep on the wall behind my desk. The first one is my child’s writing that says, “My mom is a barrel of monkeys,” which reminds me not to take myself quite so seriously. And then Kendra Adachi has a quote: “What can I do now to make my life easier later?” That sense of ease, the sense of caring for myself, and the deliberateness of planning ahead and asking what kind of life I want to create. Those are my two. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I love it. “What can I do now to make my life easier later?” I love that. And “my mom is a barrel of monkeys,” that just reminds you it’s not that serious. Elizabeth Smith It’s OK. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I used to have a substitute teacher who would say, “Don’t take life too seriously. You won’t get through it alive.” Elizabeth Smith True. Also true. We’re all gonna make mistakes and we’re all gonna be OK. Elaine Taylor-Klaus All right. So once again, our guest is Elizabeth Smith. You can find out more about her resources at twoekidscoaching.com. Elizabeth, thank you for being here. Thank you for doing really important, powerful work in the world. I learned a lot from you today, so thank you for that. Elizabeth Smith Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here. Elaine Taylor-Klaus To those of you listening, check in with yourself for a second. What were you paying attention to? What got your attention in this conversation? What’s the insight you’re taking away? What’s the gem you wanna bring forward into your life this week, and how might you do that? And as always, thanks for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, you make an extraordinary difference. See you next time. Take a quiz to find out what kind of a parent you are.
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