Episode Description
In episode 3, hosts Amanda & Andrew are joined by Attend Behavior’s Dr. Stewart Pisecco and Alan FullBright to discuss the importance of family guidance and share how the Attend platform can help clinicians partner with parents and caregivers.
Link to Attend: https://www.attendbehavior.com/
Courses on Family Guidance by Dr. Karen Bearss: https://abacnj.com/
BlueSprig CEU Website: Use Promo Code “Podcast” to get 5$ off
https://bcbaceu.bluesprigautism.com/
Links to Attend courses on CEU website:
Foundations of Effective Family Guidance – Attend Behavior
Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) in Family Guidance – Attend Behavior
Strategies for Overcoming Barriers and Obstacles to Effective Family Guidance – A Panel Discussion
Full transcript
0:16 Andrew Blomstrom:
Hello everyone, this is Andrew Blomstrom along with Amanda Fullbright, and you are listening to ABA Unfiltered, where each episode we interview guests from around the world of ABA. Whether you’re a BCBA, RBT, or just interested in ABA, you are sure to pick up some actionable advice you can utilize on your journey. Now, without further ado, we would like to welcome our guests, Dr. Stewart Pisecco and Alan Fullbright. Why don’t you both start by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself and what interests you about the topic of family guidance? We’ll go ahead and start with you, Stewart.
0:49 Stewart Pisecco:
Thanks. Well, first of all, I want to thank you guys for having us on the podcast today. We’re excited to be able to join you guys and talk a little bit about this. Um as I said, my name’s Stewart Pisecco, a little bit about my background. I’m a child psychologist by training. I started my career at the University of Houston, where I was a faculty member for I stayed there about 12 years. And my research area has always been kids with different types of challenging behaviors, learning difficulties, things like that. And I’ve always my my interest from an academic perspective, you know, was based on the idea that we have a pretty good idea of what works. You know, the challenge a lot of times is how do we get what we know works implemented in a consistent way? Because that that’s always kind of where the challenge is when it when it comes to trying to get the outcomes that evidence-based practices promise. And so when I was at the university, I did a lot of research around what facilitated implementation, what challenged implementation, with a specific focus in the schools. And so I ended up starting an ed tech company that had a technology solution that made it easy for people in the schools to implement evidence-based practices, would collect data about outcomes, things like that. The name of that software was called Review 360. Uh, and we had a lot of fun working in schools and the special education. And that company ended up getting acquired by Pearson. And I was in their clinical assessment division for for about five or six years after that. And uh, but you know, while there, I always wanted to take what we had done in the schools and create a solution for families. Because as, you know, one of the things that we know is that the challenges in trying to get things implemented at home are kind of similar to what happens in the schools. So that’s that’s really kind of where my my interest and family guidance came from. You know, I have two kids of my own. And I don’t know if you guys have experienced this or not, but people would say, okay, well, now that you have kids, you know, all that behavior stuff you guys recommend all the time? Do you still think it works? And I’d say, yeah, it still works. But what I have a better appreciation for today as a parent is why parents struggle doing the things that we recommend to them. And so, right, because they’ve got competing demands, everyone’s you don’t have any time, they’re overwhelmed, they’re stressed out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that’s, you know, that’s kind of a little bit of a long-winded answer, but it’s really kind of a combination of, you know, my research interests, my experience with creating technology solutions before. And then also, you know, knowing that that I believe we can help take what we know works and translate it in a way that’s manageable for parents to see the benefits from the things that that we know can produce better outcomes.
3:44 Andrew Blomstrom:
Awesome. And Alan, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?
3:49 Alan Fullbright:
So uh I’m a BCDA. Been in the in the business for quite a while here with a pretty varied range of experiences. And and just as far as like my my passion for family guidance and why that’s important to me, is that just what I have seen be quite often like the missing point to a kid’s success. Like we see a lot of success in clinics and we see a lot of stuff happen uh you know in in our sessions, but it seems like really creating those long-lasting outcomes. Like Stewart was saying, is we’re missing that component that helps it move into the natural environment to kind of establish and stay there. Um, I just I uh feel like that’s really been my passion throughout my career. As as I’ve worked with different populations, different people I’ve ran into just where that was where I excelled and where I felt the most comfortable was working with whether it’s staff people or parents or whoever that may be, but that’s where I was most effective at getting uh uh training done and making them a little bit more comfortable and and educated about what they’re having to deal with. So that’s uh where I really fit into the family guidance part.
5:07 Andrew Blomstrom:
Yeah, family guidance is externally important to you know ensure that our the populations we serve are able to, as you guys mentioned, implement what we’re working on in our clinics or in the schools at the home, uh, which is extraordinarily important. Now, Stewart, you’ve been on the podcast before, but for our listeners that may not be familiar with attend behavior, if you don’t mind, tell us a little bit about what you do and what services you offer.
5:30 Stewart Pisecco:
Absolutely. Well, attend behavior is a uh child behavioral health platform that’s designed to enable the delivery of family guidance. And so attend really includes two parts to it. One is that there’s a mobile application for parents. And then the second is there’s a clinician portal that the clinicians will use uh to gain a little bit better insight into the parents’ learning experience, engagement process, outcomes they’re getting, things like that. So now attend itself, there really are three components to it. You know, one is when, and I will tell you just a quick story. As I was thinking about developing attend, I collected data from about a thousand parents. And I asked them questions like, you know, what worked for them, what didn’t work for them, what types of practices and strategies have they used? Um, and you know, interestingly enough, and I asked them one question, which was if you can recommend any strategy of all the strategies you’ve tried, if you could recommend one strategy to another parent who had a child like yours, what would it be? And parent training popped right to the top of the list, and uh, which is encouraging. Unfortunately, right, only about 20% of the sample actually had access to it. And so, you know, what when we started thinking about attend, that’s where I was like, okay, I want to really kind of focus in on parent training. And so attend, you know, the the next part was we wanted to make sure we had really good content, right? So that we could share parent, share with parents what it is we know works. Um, so in doing that, we were fortunate enough to connect with Dr. Karen Bears, who’s at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and she’s the lead author of the Ruby Parent Training Program for Disruptive Behavior for Families who have children with autism. So after after you know many discussions with Dr. Bears, uh, we were fortunate to really you know agree to work together, work with her on translating that program into a technology solution. So we the Ruby is published by Oxford University Press. We licensed the the the uh program for from them. And so, you know, obviously the first part of of the of attend is the content, right? So and it’s aligned to Ruby. So it includes you know 10 to 12 courses that really kind of focus on helping build principal understanding of why kids act the way they do, behavior, things like that, those core practices that we know lead to better behavior, and then how to teach skills and strategies. So the content is one part of it. Now, you know, one of the things that I’ll say a lot about behavior is that it’s kind of tricky. And what I mean by that is on the surface, it seems pretty straightforward, right? So if you explain the concept of reinforcement to a parent, uh, you know, positive reinforcement in particular, right? It seems pretty straightforward. People are familiar with it. Um, but where people struggle is when they try to implement those things for the first time. And that’s where the the under the ice, under the water, the iceberg kind of analogy, that’s where the complexity of behavior lives. So, yeah, okay, it makes sense. You know, I’m gonna identify a problem behavior or a positive behavior I want to promote, find a good reinforcer for the child, create some sort of schedule, and you know, resto magic, the kids’ behavior is turned around in a day, right? It doesn’t work that way. And so the second part of attend is really designed to, after a parent reads about a particular concept in the course, is to help them understand how to personalize the strategies that we talk about to match the needs of the child, right? So it helps ask some questions, basically is kind of creating a little plan for them. And then we talk to the parents about as we talk about strategies and techniques, when would be a good time to practice these things. And and so the technology then kind of serves as a bit of a coach, right? So we teach a strategy like catch them doing good. So we ask the parent when would be a good time to practice this? They tell us. Around that time, we push out notifications through the phone that says, hey, now’s a time to practice catch them doing good. Here’s what to be on the lookout for, here’s what to say when you see this happen. So the second part are all tools designed specifically to reduce the response effort of the parent and make it easy for them to really kind of have success with these approaches. And then the third component, obviously, is the ability to collect data, right? So the parents can go in and quickly and easily report incidents that are happening. We do a little check-in with them to see how the day is going. Uh, so so that’s the mobile solution for the parents. Um, the clinicians, as I said a minute ago, can log in and see one, are they completing the courses in the way we’d like for them to do? How are they doing on the quizzes? Are they demonstrating an understanding of the concepts? And three, you know, are they engaged, right? Are they using these tools? Are they building the plan out? And then four, um, yeah, how is a kid doing, right? How, how, what sort of outcomes are we getting? And there’s other communication tools and things like that, but that’s the in essence, you know, what we do with the channel.
10:57 Andrew Blomstrom:
Awesome. Yeah, I can imagine, especially as you mentioned, life finds a way to cause chaos. So I can imagine having that mobile application with all those push notifications could be very useful for families to kind of have those reminders that, hey, this is a great time to start implementing these things that we’ve talked about, um, you know, in your home.
11:16 Stewart Pisecco:
Well, you you know, it’s it’s funny, like, you know, everyone always talks about the content, and content is critical, but it’s supporting the parent in the use of these techniques, especially during the early learning process, that’s critical. And then, you know, of course, you can use all these tools after you’ve gone through the content to support the implementation. But I, you know, as you might guess, right? So I have my demo version set up on my phone. And uh one day, you know, my kids were bickering in the kitchen about something, and you know, I was can’t remember I was doing something, probably deal with a dog or something like that. And I got distracted and I turned back around, and my my catch em do a good notification popped up on my phone, and I looked over and the kids were cooperating. I was like, Hey, I really like how you guys are working together on this.
12:06 Alan Fullbright:
So they’re like, Shut up, dad.
12:10 Stewart Pisecco:
Exactly. But yeah, they’re teenagers and they wrong.
12:14 Alan Fullbright:
I think that’s the reinforcement they want, right? Give us some money. Yeah.
12:21 Stewart Pisecco:
Yeah. But yeah, the the push notifications, the coaching tips, things like that. Those are the things aside from the content the parents tell us they really appreciate it.
12:32 Amanda Fullbright:
Very cool. So shifting gears a little bit to talking about the dynamic or the relationship between a clinician and a family, building that relationship can be really tough for both parties at times. Why do you well, first of all, do you agree? And why do you think that is?
12:55 Alan Fullbright:
I would say that that’s like the biggest challenge that is happening out there, especially in the ABA world, because we tend to approach things a very cold and scientific way. And I think that’s the biggest advantage that something like a 10 gives a clinician that maybe is a little scared to work with a parent, is a little apprehensive about walking in there and trying to teach this parent, you know, they’re it’s probably 20 years their senior. And, you know, I’m gonna go talk to them. What do I talk to them about? Well, I can talk to them about 10 behaviors, and uh also gives that kind of platform and some structure to work into those sessions, and also really the prerequisite skills that matter the most there. So just having some common ground, just if if nothing else, a tin behavior has some common ground for them to find and start talking about and building some rapport over, even if you know they have some sort of glitch they have to deal with, right? Like at least there’s there’s got some some dialogue going between them, um to kick things off so that they can talk um and find just something to spend some time working together on, right? So I think that if there was one thing I could get out there is hey, that relationship is the most important part of your clinician-parent relationship, is actually being able to communicate together and and and maybe make a little joke that’s you know, professionally responsible. But um yeah, like I think that’s the key component that may be missing more than anything else, is that we’re humans first.
14:40 Stewart Pisecco:
You know, and I think kind of building on that, you know, when we collected some data asking clinicians, you know, what are some of the barriers they experience? You know, they report, um, you know, they feel like parents don’t follow through really well, right? So they talk about that a lot. They they will talk about how parents are difficult to engage a lot of times, and sometimes that parents don’t seem interested. You know, those are things that I think speak to um uh some of the things that we hear clinicians say and why what Alan just said is so critical, you know, because a lot of times it’s hey, we’re gonna jump right into this, and you need to really kind of establish that relationship with the parent, you know, make sure that we’re working on things that are parent directed, I think is the other part to that. And um, so it feels relevant to them. Then, you know, the I will say that one of the one of the things that has been remarkably similar to me from my experience with Review 360 was we saw pretty early that only 15% of the college educations around the country provide any sort of training for teachers in behavior, right? So, what that means is that most teachers, the only training they get when it comes to classroom management and behavior is on the job training. Now, what what we’ve seen, you know, what we know from the research literature in the ABA world is that you know, unfortunately, a lot of clinicians aren’t receiving training on how to work with parents in their training programs. And when I put on my old training director’s hat, you know, from the university, I understand it because got what depends on if you have a master’s degree or not, but just 20 some odd hours that you have to take someone through and you have a very compressed schedule. A lot of times it’s completely online. So it’s hard to work that into a pretty crowded curriculum. But I think, you know, yes, parents seem disinterested, not engaged. Um, clinicians sometimes are hesitant for the reasons that Alan talked about a moment ago. But I think the other thing is the training programs don’t do a good job necessarily of preparing clinicians to work with adults. They do a good job working with kids, right? So as a function of that, you know, clinicians don’t always have a clinical framework for how to engage parents or what we’re gonna do. And so they may sometimes approach it as if, you know, I’m gonna work with a parent as if I would my RBT, and this is what I’m gonna train them to do. And that doesn’t feel relevant always to a parent. So so that’s those are some of the things that we hear people talk about and some of the challenges that we see. Yeah.
17:20 Amanda Fullbright:
I I hear, you know, BCBA’s clinicians say they’re they’re disinterested, they’re disengaged. And I’m like, I promise you they’re interested in their child. It’s your job to help them, help them understand why this is relevant. And it’s your job to be interesting, it’s your job to engage them. If they’re not engaged, it’s your job to engage them because I promise you they’re interested in their job.
17:45 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah, that’s very true, man. The tendency for them to quickly just be like, um, they’re not engaged and throw their hands up is is concerning. It spend some time, think about their perspective. You know, I’m gonna get real, you know, act on this, but think about their perspective. What are they what are they doing in life? What matters to them, right? Like what’s most important to that parent and their relationship with their child. And let’s just ask them like, what do you want to work on instead of pushing what’s in our our treatment plan back out there to now y’all want you to teach them to match? Like, no, that doesn’t make any sense in in my real life. Like, let’s try to find a way that you know this matters for me and my kid and how to change our lives and reduce that stress level.
18:35 Stewart Pisecco:
Yeah, I think you know, the other thing you said before, Alan, that I think is true and worth noting is you know, whenever you’re learning, whenever you’re doing something that’s a little um unfamiliar, it’s not reinforcing, right? So it’s hard, it’s difficult. So if we think about the clinicians who maybe because of the age differences, maybe they don’t have kids, things like that. They haven’t held a whole lot of training opportunities, you know, working with parents, you know, may feel uncomfortable to them and not very reinforcing and a little intimidating. And so, you know, that’s where you know, I know like what you guys are doing in Blue Spring, even yeah, has always been there’s been a focus on family guidance and connecting with with parents, and also, you know, helping provide, you know, some frameworks, particularly for people that are early in their career, on how to engage people and how to work with them. So I think those are those are important points around all of this.
19:39 Amanda Fullbright:
I do think that you should honor the space that both parties are in, that they could be in this learning zone that is by nature uncomfortable. And to be uncomfortable in front in your job in front of your stakeholder, your biggest stakeholders, is a hard place to be. And I think we should honor that and help coach through those phases when when possible.
20:09 Alan Fullbright:
Oh, and you’re working with clinicians and you can say, it’s I I get it, like it’s not easy and it’s okay that you feel that way, but the parent is also there too. So let them be vulnerable, you be vulnerable, and say, Man, I’m a little bit nervous, but I’m gonna try to help you if you can just work with me and we’ll do our best to help your kid. Like, how would that feel great to me as a parent? Yeah. For them to to settle into that space.
20:37 Stewart Pisecco:
And the same, and the same is true for for clinical supervisors, right? Is to say to to the people they’re working with, what’s it like for you to work with parents, right? What’s your what’s that experience like for you? And and to let them kind of be able to, Amanda, to your point, kind of articulate, make it safe for them to articulate that, right? Because we know everyone feels that way. Everyone remembers, yeah, everyone remembers the first time you worked with a parent, right? It’s it may have been in graduate school, maybe soon afterwards. You may probably didn’t have kids. And there is a little bit of that imposter syndrome that floats around, like, oh, you know, I I desperately want to help this parent. At the same time, I don’t know if I can. And so there’s a lot of anxiety around it. So I think creating a safe space for the parent in the way that Alan’s describing is really important. But I think we can model that um as a from a clinical supervisor perspective with the people that we’re supervising, right? To let them know, hey, we’ve been there too, and it may feel uncomfortable. Um, but but here’s the things that we could do to kind of work past it.
21:38 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah. We kind of forget our ADA, right, when we’re working with the folks we’re supervising and and forget to realize, okay, this person has a set of behaviors. They may be uh engaging in some emotional avoidance behavior of working with this parent. What is that? See if we can get them talking about it and bring that up and and That puts you as that supervisor in that vulnerable spot again, right? Like we’ve got to figure this out together.
22:06 Stewart Pisecco:
Yeah, fundamentally they’re escaping from something, right? What is it? Right. Let’s talk about that. Experiential avoidance.
22:13 Amanda Fullbright:
So follow-up, let’s say that we have a listener who is a BCBA right now and is currently engaged in some relationships with parents that might not be the most productive or the best uh models of relationships. And because we all know it’s a lot easier to start fresh with the next one than to go back and repair the current one. But but we owe it to the family, our clients, and ourselves to to repair that relationship. What’s your advice?
22:48 Alan Fullbright:
Well, I mean, if you if you’ve been having it, it depends on where it is, right? Like that’s a very idiosyncratic answer for what what what you’ve done to this parent and how you’re gonna fix it. But figure out what it is, right? Like do some assessment of where you are right now. What how is our relationship? Does this parent want to make contact with me whenever you know we have to? If I, you know, if if I’m going to drop the kid off, do they want to talk for a minute? And can I just get on a phone call and start building some common ground, right? Like it’s it may not be an official, hey parent, I just want to start a relationship over, but it can be a phone call where you say, Hey, let’s talk for a minute and just start to build rapport again, start to pair a little bit. And I don’t want to say as far as going to make some behavioral contracting, but you can all you can say, hey, we really need to do this. This is for your kids. But let’s let’s see how we can work together and put the ball in their court, let them make some of the decisions. How do you think we should work into this? What works for you? What how could we approach this in a way that’s gonna really be meaningful? And I I think asking the question around how could we reduce your stress when it involves your child, that’s a game changer because then you you help that parent diffuse from the issues they’re having and they start to think, oh, those are this is what I’m here for, that’s what this is about, right? It’s if I can make it about reducing my stress and anxiety, it maybe switches the way they’re thinking about family audience in general.
24:32 Stewart Pisecco:
Yeah, I I think that’s I think that’s really important asking that question. If we could work on something together to help reduce your stress or to help promote some independence with your child so that you have one less demand, what would it be? Right. And then I think, you know, it’s I think that’s really an important point, Alan. I think the you know, I think the other thing, this is where I put my psychologist hat on a little bit, right? And where you have where you where you process the relationship a little bit. And um, but you know, I think you could you could ask, you know, you could what you you could do is frame it as, hey, you know, one of the things I like to do is is uh with the families that I’m working with is do check-ins, right? And I haven’t had an opportunity to do that as much with you as I’d like. Uh so why don’t we use some time to just do kind of a check-in? And what’s what has worked uh with so far, what has not worked, and how could we help, you know, so you know, meet your needs a little bit better than perhaps we have been. So I and that kind of pairs with that question that Alan asked, right? So I think I think that’s you know, that’s an important, you know, a point around trying to connect it. And and it it does take some vulnerability because you’ll hear things you don’t want to necessarily hear from from a parent, you know. And I remember I remember when I was in my supervision uh class in graduate school, we had to video ourselves doing therapy with our kids. And so I, you know, had my video all set up and I had this kid that I was working with, he’s real challenging. And so it was the first session, and I was pretty proud of the first session. So I you know, I showed it to my professor, and I I went to go turn off the tape, and I didn’t I didn’t turn it off quick enough. I didn’t even know what was on it after I left the room. But apparently, after I left the room, the dad said, So what do you think about this guy?
26:30 Alan Fullbright:
Some really clean feedback there, right?
26:34 Stewart Pisecco:
Right. Tell my professor’s like, oh, this is a good part. And the kid said, Well, he’s not a bug. I thought, oh, that’s good. So, you know, like sometimes, you know, creating opportunities to have those discussions with you about what you’re working on, where you know, I think are important.
27:00 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah, Stewart mentioned putting on the your your psychology hat. Like he often when we’re we meet with a lot of people, right, and have to talk with this relationship of psychologist and BCBA, which is is different, right? And and I’m a very like uh emotional favor sort of BCBA, and Stewart is a very behavioral sort of psychologist, so we work together very well in that way. But what is it, uh Stewart? Uh we’re we’re both reading from the same hymn.
27:30 Stewart Pisecco:
I yeah, I say we go to different churches, but read the same hymn.
27:33 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah, I was just singing the same song, a little different words.
27:37 Stewart Pisecco:
Yeah, exactly.
27:46 Amanda Fullbright:
All right, I want to shift gears into well, a little bit of shifting gears, but talking about um a little bit of what we were talking about earlier with with training opportunities. A lot of schools, you know, like you said, are not specifically training on family guidance and how to engage with families and in in those relationships. A lot of programs are online, so there’s not those practice opportunities. So you can read about it, you can maybe watch a video about it, you might listen to a podcast like this about it, but you haven’t gotten to practice it right. So, do you guys think you need a mentor in this area? And how does if like if a current listener right now is a current practitioner, behavior analyst out there, and maybe they’re solo, maybe they’re uh with a smaller company that that doesn’t have someone that can be their mentor, how how does someone seek mentorship in this area right now?
28:50 Alan Fullbright:
That’s the million-dollar question, right? Like because it’s not just family guidance that a lot of folks need that mentorship and that that kind of coaching in. But it may be the biggest uh area, but it’s certainly not the only one. So I I strive to put together training components that touch on things that I might provide mentorship that might kind of reach somebody at the point where they are, right? Like within putting together a building relationships training, for instance, or a how to structure your family guidance sessions. I try to build in in all of those relationships that I’ve had with different clinicians that came to me with issues, and I felt like I stepped into that mentorship role, which is very, very often, and maybe where some of the majority of my passion is is working with those clinicians and helping them get there. Like I try to take those pieces and and add them in a way that maybe hit the majority of those folks and those questions that I’ve had and helped them find a way. If they’re listening, maybe they can connect it into what happens when they’re wrong. I don’t know where you go though.
30:07 Stewart Pisecco:
I mean well, you know the um, you know, I would say um for it is tough to find a supervisor who can work with you if you don’t necessarily have someone that you know close by. But but I mean, I I think I think there are informal ways of doing that, you know, and finding have a mentor. There’s certainly a lot of um, you know, communities on Facebook and other places. And I think it’s you know, probably wouldn’t be that hard to start a little group for someone who’d be interested in maybe mentoring some people and uh create a little, you know, support uh uh network within social media to do that. Um there are online uh uh opportunities. Uh for example, Dr. Bears does do, she has like, I think it’s a four-pour part training series on Ruby specifically, but you know, it’s it’s it’s something that people can access online. And I can share the link to you if you guys wanted to to to share that out later on. But um, you know, that’s an opportunity. One of the nice things about something like that uh is that Dr. Bears, you know, she’ll say a lot, uh, you know, the content is one thing, right? Making sure we’re explaining to the content in ways that parents make sense to parents and connects with them. But what you really get out of those trainings a lot of times is she talks a lot about uh, you know, what to do when parents say things don’t work. Because that’s that’s where the magic is, right? Because it doesn’t work out of the box for every single situation. So so I think you know, part of it is getting equipped. That’s why a mentor is important, right? Is that you get equipped with some of that, what do I do when this happens, types of situations. And uh the lot the training, you know, that Dr. Barrett says it’s a four-part video series. Um, and it’s it’s a great training. So people are interested in investing some time in something, and I think it’s it’s really, really useful.
32:13 Alan Fullbright:
It really like at the at the very least gives you some troubleshooting when you’re having trouble pointers around this parent says this and and helping guide a clinician through saying, well, if that’s not working for you, what might work better? And here’s a way we can if that’s it, then let’s fit all this content and kind of tail helps you tailor what they’re gonna do in real life, right? Like, um, it’s definitely no substitute for having a a one-on-one person that’s really talking through your day-to-day, but it it’s it’s pretty awesome.
32:50 Stewart Pisecco:
So yeah, that the the name of that program I mentioned is uh ABAC Excellence and Continued Education. So you can go online and they have some on-demand training there.
33:01 Amanda Fullbright:
Um we’ll get a link from you and put it in the show notes here. Um I also I have found in the past, like if I’m gonna have a conversation that I’m I might not be sure how that’s gonna go, or or I just am a little anxious about it, that it’s good to role play with someone, even if it’s not a mentor per se, but even if it’s your spouse or your friend or a roommate to just say, Hey, can we can you role play this with me? And just the more you practice having those types of conversations, the the better it’s gonna feel in real life. Um, what do you guys think about that suggestion around family guidance specifically?
33:45 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah, I think especially if you could instruct the parent, the person on what kind of person the parent is, and maybe you could deliver, you know, draw some sort of response from that uh that they may make or not, and run through a couple. And even if you you put those scenarios in your head and were able to think about that, because at the end of it at the end of it, it’s thinking about the way that person would respond and taking their perspective, right? If you don’t have a mentor, you can at the very least learn to take a person’s perspective that you’re having issues with. Like, how do they think about that, right? And so maybe you’re just able to switch that around because I think often when you’re in that mentorship world and you’re helping a clinician figure that out and you’re mentoring them, what you’re really doing is talking them through finding their own answer to questions. And maybe if you’re able to teach them to figure that out and they’re able to do that a little bit to themselves, that generalizes to different places. Like, well, what would I want someone to do in this situation to get me to engage in in family guidance? What if I had this kid worked this job, had these relationship issues that I know that this person is having, and I had this kind of stress, what would I want my clinician to do for me? So maybe giving them the equipping them with that piece might be uh I’m not gonna say a substitute for mentorship because you know right, but you know it could help.
35:18 Stewart Pisecco:
You know, and I would be remiss without saying that, you know, Alan’s put together a lot of trainings for us on this. So, you know, for you know, one of the things one of the things that that I saw with the first technology company I had was a lot of times we think, okay, we’ll develop these solutions, we’ll work with people, develop it, figure out, we’ll put it out there, let them use it. Right. And that doesn’t work, right? So you can’t just throw technology at people and and let them go at it. Some people will do it, but most people struggle, need some help around it. So we’ve actually developed a lot of support training material around, you know, how to structure uh a family guidance session, how to build relationships, you know, how to go about planning for it. So it is like with attend, you know, we we know that that some of that work’s going to be needed. So I would be remiss without saying we Alan’s put together some great trainings around that. And and of course, there’s all that training available around ACT, which is which is you know, kind of the basis for those people will have on their skin too.
36:20 Amanda Fullbright:
Well, I I know like Blue Sprig works with attend behavior um for our listeners, transparency. Um, but you guys have been such a great help as perhaps informal or ad hoc uh mentors uh for our team in the area, this area of family guidance, using attend and and you know, not using attend, just in general relationship building, goal selection, things like that. Um you have helped us develop some some e-learning training, but also the customer service that y’all are able to offer to our team and jumping on meetings and and troubleshooting has been um worth its weight in gold, you know. So we really appreciate that.
37:07 Stewart Pisecco:
That’s kind of you to say. Yeah, well, we have a little love fest right now. We feel the same way about you guys. So you know, yeah, go ahead.
37:18 Amanda Fullbright:
The the training, uh there’s a couple of trainings that um I know that you guys have available for subscribers or or companies you’re working with, but they’re also available on our website, our CEU website as well. So there’s two of them on there, um, building relationships and then act in family guidance that Alan has done. So um we’ll put a link to those as well, um, as a link to attend as well.
37:44 Stewart Pisecco:
Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, we’re all trying to do the same thing, right? We’re all trying to improve outcomes for kids and help kids and help parents and families, you know, be able to to you know have the types of uh help their kids achieve their goals and dreams too. So we’re all coming at it for the same reason. And I think, you know, the the other side of that is we’ve been talking a lot about parents and engaging parents and all that, but you know, we’re you know, to some degree, one of the things that we realize with the time is you’ve got to help build clinical habits out of this stuff, right? And so, and a lot of times some clinicians will have those, you know, orientations, some may not. And so that’s you know, what’s really important to us is not just hey, you know, we love the technology, obviously we double we do, but it’s really the opportunity to work with the clinicians out there and and try to make an impact that way as well. So so that you know, we appreciate you saying that, Amanda, and I’ve love working with the team, but I think we get as much out of trying to help the practices move the needle in the way they want it moved as we do anything.
38:56 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah, we learn a lot about, and it’s not always just about the the mentoring and relationships. Sometimes we find things that are just buried within systems or inabilities to get things into workflow because there’s so much other things going on that we see, we’re like, well, don’t if it if it hurts when you do that, stop doing that, you know. And and and that’s a a big piece that we get to see too, that it really just makes people’s practices a little bit better. If we’re it and I, you know, I would say it changes everything, but I’m a little bit biased towards family guidance being the most important thing in the world, right? Because I eat, sleep, and breathe that, but uh it is like there’s no outcomes for the kid if you can’t get that to happen. You’ve got to get the real world environment changed, and the parent will become more engaged with other environments if they engage with yours, like because they’ll start to notice that they can get empowered to tell the kid’s teacher when they go to school, hey, don’t do that, that doesn’t work, and that changes another environment and this kind of domino effect of stuff out there.
40:04 Stewart Pisecco:
So yeah, yeah, you know, the other I think the other the other thing that I think we we started to recognize in the industry, you know, when I I told you I collected data from a lot of parents, right? So I collected data from a lot of parents. The other thing I did was I went and talked to healthcare executives, and um, I spent a lot of time meeting with executives from different health plans uh early on. And I asked them, where does parent training fit within your continuum of services? Right. And how do you prioritize or if you prioritize it at all? And it was, you know, it was interesting that consistently I kept hearing from from them a lot of the stuff that Alan just said, which is we realized that if we can’t get parents engaged and involved, we’re not gonna get the outcomes we want on the and so you know, a lot of them were forecasting that they’re gonna put more expectations around parent engagement and parent involvement. And um, you know, we know healthcare moves a little slow, right? So that’s gonna take time. But but you certainly see the the payers are starting to ask these questions. And you know, certain parents put incentives in place for better family guidance. And so I think, you know, we know we know clinically why we need to do this. And I think you’re we’re also gonna be hearing that same message more and more from the health plans.
41:35 Amanda Fullbright:
Yeah, we’ve seen that just in this last year, right? And and I would expect to see more and more and more of that. And I and I think that’s good. I think it’s good to do that.
41:45 Alan Fullbright:
We’ve got to reduce that the time that kids are spending in treatment. They can’t, you know, it’s not our job to to run a really fancy daycare. The the kid just comes to forever or or or up until they’re whatever age we accept, whether you’re doing early intervention and you’re ending that at eight, or if you know you’re gonna see kids at home and in the home environment until they’re 20, like that’s eventually gonna end. And they don’t want to pay for it forever. That’s expensive stuff. So the answer to being able to shorten that amount of treatment and make the kids more successful, just generally make outcomes better, is to get the other people in the environment equipped to reinforce the behaviors that we’re training. So that just makes sense, right? It’s just good ABA.
42:34 Amanda Fullbright:
Right. I mean, particularly when you think about um turnover, turnover of clinicians, natural attrition, turnover is is is big right now in many industries. Um that parent’s the consistent person in the equation.
42:52 Alan Fullbright:
They don’t turn over as often.
42:54 Amanda Fullbright:
They don’t turn over often. Yeah. Um well guys, before we start to edge on wrapping up, um, I do want to plug for our listeners that you can see um myself and and these two gentlemen, as well as Dr. Karen Bears, uh the lead author of Ruby, and uh Dr. Sharon Kerr in a panel at APBA coming up. So uh if you’re going to be attending APBA live uh in person or live streaming that, be sure to check out that presentation and get to hear more about uh thoughts on family guidance. So I want to plug that. Um, Andrew, are you ready to to do our questions of the week?
43:40 Andrew Blomstrom:
I am. I am ready for our questions of the week. Alan and Stewart, are you guys ready? I’ve been waiting for this the whole time. Awesome. We’ve got three questions for you. Two of them are the same for each of our guests. And then the third one is a wild card question, uh, which we’ve got a spinning wheel, and we will let the wheel kind of decide which question uh we will go down the road for you guys. So starting us, yeah, fate will decide. Um, first question for both of you, I guess, would just be tell us something you’ve learned lately. And it doesn’t need to be related to family guidance or ABA, just the last thing you guys have learned.
44:19 Alan Fullbright:
Man, that is that’s surprisingly hard to answer.
44:23 Amanda Fullbright:
So you’re you’re talking to two training professionals. So of course we’re gonna ask about what you have learned lately.
44:31 Unidentified Speaker:
Okay.
44:32 Stewart Pisecco:
Be sure to take your dog out at night. In fact, he has diarrhea.
44:39 Andrew Blomstrom:
That is a good lesson to learn. Not the best way to probably wake up in the morning either, Stewart. I would imagine.
44:48 Alan Fullbright:
Oh, I’m just gonna go with that. Tropical plants need a lot more water than you would really think that they do.
44:57 Andrew Blomstrom:
When you think you’ve had enough, double that.
44:59 Alan Fullbright:
Yeah, yeah, they really suck it up.
45:03 Andrew Blomstrom:
Awesome. And kind of uh along those same lines, let’s say you find yourself with an extra hour in your day. How do you spend it?
45:16 Stewart Pisecco:
Besides watching this podcast, besides besides watching this podcast, so you know, um do something you enjoy, you know, kind of unplug and do something you enjoy.
45:28 Amanda Fullbright:
Well, what is that, Stewart?
45:29 Stewart Pisecco:
For you for me, it’s reading, actually.
45:32 Alan Fullbright:
I was gonna say it would probably be reading, yeah. Yeah, I just unless it’s really nice outside, then it may just be sitting outside like reading, watching the day go by.
45:42 Stewart Pisecco:
I think for Alan it’s preparing barbecue.
45:45 Andrew Blomstrom:
I don’t think that usually is really morning barbecue. It is quite easy.
45:52 Amanda Fullbright:
We’re now two podcast episodes for two talking about Alan’s barbecue. Yes. The thing.
46:01 Stewart Pisecco:
I have his own podcast on that coming spring 2023.
46:10 Andrew Blomstrom:
All right, so for the last question for you guys, give me one second to get the wheel up here. Uh, Alan or Stewart, who would like to do the honors of deciding what question you would like asked?
46:24 Alan Fullbright:
Go ahead, Alan. What do you want to decide?
46:27 Andrew Blomstrom:
So, what’s gonna happen? I don’t know if you can see my screen now. There we go.
46:34 Alan Fullbright:
Oh, here we are.
46:36 Andrew Blomstrom:
So on the screen, uh, I’m gonna go ahead and hit the play button here. When you are ready, just go ahead and let me know to stop. Once you hit stop, I will go ahead and stop the wheel. And each one of these numbers is uh associated with a question I have in front of me. And that is the question that you guys will finish the podcast with. So I will go ahead and hit start, and whenever you are ready, go ahead and tell me to stop. Stop. All right. Question seven: what was your first job?
47:14 Alan Fullbright:
My very first job would have definitely been like a carpenter’s helper carrying tools around.
47:22 Stewart Pisecco:
I was a bus boy. I was a bus boy at the Kinsman restaurant in Grapevine, Texas.
47:30 Amanda Fullbright:
Is it still open?
47:32 Stewart Pisecco:
No, it’s not.
47:33 Amanda Fullbright:
Oh, I was going to suggest dinner. Yeah, not my fault. Well, excellent. Thank you both for playing Question of the Week and coming on to the podcast to talk about family guidance. I think we all agree that it is one of the most important things in our services that we’re offering right now. And I encourage everyone to learn something about family guidance. If you’re feeling a little shaky on it, um, go to the trainings that are offered at your conferences or or seek them out online. Um, and if you ever need any more suggestions, reach out to these guys. I’m sure that they would be glad to talk to you. Um, if you’re interested in checking out attend behavior, please go to where, Stewart?
48:25 Stewart Pisecco:
www.attendbehavior.com.
48:28 Amanda Fullbright:
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much.
48:31 Andrew Blomstrom:
Thank you guys for joining us.
48:34 Stewart Pisecco:
Bye bye. Thanks for having us.
48:37 Andrew Blomstrom:
If you or someone you know is looking for some CEUs, head over to https://bcbaceu.bluesprigautism.com/ and use the promo code podcast to get five dollars off any CEU in the catalog. A link to the site can be found below in the description. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.