← The Autism Little Learners Podcast
The Autism Little Learners Podcast
Helping Kids Navigate Big Emotions with Calm, Connection, and Compassion with Sarah Habib
00:26:22
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- [00:03]
A
You guys, I am so excited to welcome Sarah to the podcast and I'm going to let her tell you all about herself. And I'm just so thrilled that I discovered her through one of her products. So, Sarah, welcome to the show and tell us who you are and what you do.
- [00:21]
B
Tara, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on your podcast and really excited to talk to people specifically who are interested in how kids with autism, kids who are neurodivergent, are learning and how we can help with that. My name is Sarah Habib. For those that don't know me, I am the founder of the Calm Caterpillar. Our mission is to equip kids with the skills to handle life's tough emotions, no matter where they are, whether they're at home or at school. Everything we teach, whether in a classroom or through our products in our home, is all about equipping kids with the skills to take with them on the go. Right? We want them to have them in this imaginary toolkit, and no matter where they are, they can get them out and they can use them. We started our program with Cincinnati Public Schools. Cincinnati Public Schools is a Title 1 school district here in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I live. They have a preschool program that serves 2,200 kids a week, and they have autism classrooms as well, in addition to inclusion and neurotypical classrooms. During the pandemic, we realized that we were providing a movement mindfulness program to a lot of these kids virtually. And we said to ourselves, wait a second, we've never tackled the home. And if we're not going to tackle the home, no matter what we do in school, we're not going to see the change that we're expecting. And so that is really the moment Comm. Caterpillar was born. We said, we're going to send home kits to families in Cincinnati Public Schools so that they can equip themselves with the same skills and the same materials that's inside the preschool classroom. So three years ago now, we sent home two, 200 calm corner kits to every single preschooler in Cincinnati Public School. All of those parents got a meditation cushion, a breathing ball, a parent guide, and a hand breathing poster. And on top of that, we texted them twice a week for the entire school year. Because you know what? When you hand parents or caregivers, grandparents who's ever at home, a book, it was a 15 page book. The likelihood that it's read is not always high. And so we said to ourselves, we need to meet people where they are and people are on their phones. So we said we're going to text them. We took the information in the book, we distilled it into 240 to 300 character texts and we sent them twice a week. We asked questions and we asked people to check in. We actually had an 86% response rate on parents responding to our texts from our program. So you know, my first takeaway for everyone here is like, for schools who are looking to communicate with parents, texting is the number one way to reach them. So we did that program and then we measured the success of those students behavior both pre and post. We saw a reduction in classroom disruptions and an increase in pro social skills based off the deca. Wow. So we know that when we create symmetry between what's going on in school and what's going on at home, which is one creating consistency where kids who are neurodivergent thrive as well as kids who are neurotypical thrive, we're creating consistency and then we're equipping caregivers with the skills to match structure around how to handle emotions in the same way a teacher is. We're again creating that consistency which allows children the opportunity to practice these skills at a much faster rate. We know through the motor learning theory model that we need to practice something a thousand times before it becomes cognitive. If we were only practicing at school, it would take us twice as long. So now we've doubled our dosage by allowing kids to practice at both home and school. We've equipped parents and caregivers with really important skills to help manage kids feelings. And we've created this consistency. So that is how the calm caterpillar started. Right. We were really focusing in on how we could create this consistency and use calm corner kits as a way to move the needle for classroom behavior. From that we created some weighted soft blush. Right. We moved into call me the caterpillar, which is our weighted soft plush that goes around your neck just like this. And oh my gosh, that's so sensory soothing because it's lightly weighted. And what's really special about Call me is we wanted to create the same physical feel as a breathing ball. So it has an inner elastic core.
- [04:50]
A
Oh.
- [04:52]
B
Literally mimics a breathing ball, which I don't have on me. I apologize. But so it's creating that same feeling because you know, when we talk about breathing and preschool students in particular, it's kind of a tough concept. What even is your breath? What is breathing? And I personally find that a breathing ball is one of the most effective ways to show kids what a breath looks like, how it feels in your body. So we said to ourselves, great, calming is working really well. But we were getting all this feedback because we teach five core breathing techniques in classrooms to both caregivers and educators that kids need tactile, hands on, fully immersive ways to practice this nebulous thing called breathing. And that is how and why we created Bloomy. So Bloomy really was born from, from some autism teachers telling us that kids who were neurod divergent needed a different way to do flower and candle that they couldn't visualize flower and candle, that maybe some of the way neurotypical kids were. So what we do here is we smell the flower, we push the flower through, the flame pops up and we blow it out. And what's great is we combined a fidget tool, right? You're able to use your hand, you're able to fidget and, and you're also able to incorporate a breathing technique. And so we have found that in both neurotypical and neurodivergent classrooms, especially for kids, I would say 18 months to 10 years old, this is changing the game when it comes to learning how to use a breathing technique. What's also special about it is if it were in a calm corner in your home, is that it doesn't require parental help once you have the strength to push this through. Right? An 18 month old can't be using this in the same way. Still really effective to teach it to them, right? Because they understand smelling a flower and blowing out a candle. Right? So you can be teaching the breathing technique. But once a child can begin to do this on its own, that's when we notice that we're reducing disruptions and everything we want to do is equip kids with the skills to do this on their own. Right? Because eventually we're all become adults and we have to learn how to manage our feelings. And so we think, especially when this is in a component in a classroom and a child can self select to go use the tool, change how they're feeling and rejoin the class. We have allowed that teacher to continue teaching. We've equipped that child with the skills to manage their feelings on their own. It's a win win all around. And the same thing applies at home.
- [07:15]
A
I love this Sarah, because that tool, the Bloomy is what helped me find you. And I was so curious, like what else does she have? Because this was so perfect for, like you said, the kids that a lot of times we'll put our finger up. Okay. Smell the flower, blow out the candle. And it's a great concept, but that makes it even more concrete, more fun. And you can hold something anytime our students can hold something, it's super wonderful. And I think the great thing, like you said about using something like this at school and at home, it creates a predictable routine. And I talk about predictable routines with my members all the time. That's how we create independence. That's how we reduce, I think, some of those behaviors. You create a predictable routine, and it just becomes automatic instead of having to talk them through and teach things. So if they've learned how to use the bloomie and they see one in a calming corner, they could pick it up and start just doing it on their own. Because it's the predictable routine 100%.
- [08:26]
B
And then for some kids, both neurotypical and neurodivergent, right. After doing this a thousand times, if they didn't have access it, they're still then able to begin to recall, wait a second, what's that thing I do? Can I begin to use my imagination? Right. And we want to help kids. Sometimes you need a tool at first in order to be able to do it on your own independently. So I don't want to lose sight of that. Right. Because I hope that when this kid is 12 years old and they're feeling something really intense, that they remember how to use this, even if it's not in their pocket.
- [08:57]
A
That's a great point. Really great point. Oh, my gosh. I'm just so impressed by everything you've done, starting out with helping Cincinnati public Schools and then expanding and finding these other tools. And I can't wait to dive in and learn even more, because I didn't know that your weighted caterpillar could also stretch. So that's. That's another huge one. Because anytime we can involve body movement, I feel like. And then those little weighted things, like in my classroom when I was at the early childhood level for 10 years, anything that was slightly weighted, that they could be on their lap or on their shoulders, was really popular. Bigger weighted blankets are great, but not at group time or circle time. It has to be. And then those. They're going to be attracted to them based on what they.
- [09:52]
B
100%.
- [09:53]
A
Yeah.
- [09:53]
B
Yeah.
- [09:53]
A
This was.
- [09:54]
B
By the way, I just didn't know if you knew about Rory. So Rory is special in that. So. Right. So call me. Has that inter elastic horn stretches? Rory? We did a voice box because we were again thinking about how can we reduce disruption in classroom. How can we give kids the skills to do something on their own? So Rory actually guides you through lion's breath. You. So the first time he roars.
- [10:27]
A
All right, for those of you that are not watching this on YouTube and seeing what Sarah's doing, if you're listening on the podcast, she's listening to what she pressed a button. And what is the lion telling you to do?
- [10:39]
B
The lion tells you to take a big deep breath in and then roar out. It goes when, if you're feeling mad or sad, taking a big breath and then roar out your breath. And again, we talk about creating things for kids to latch onto. This is so effective at helping kids learn how to do this breathing technique. Right? Because one, they're being guided with the voice, they have some lightweight around their neck, they're feeling safe, and then they're able to practice this breathing technique that is also about fun, right? Because if we can't make breathing fun, kids are not going to want to do it. Right? And so everything we think about is, how can we make make this fun? How can we make this interactive so that kids can learn to use these techniques in day to day life?
- [11:23]
A
And I think an important point that I've learned over the years from occupational therapists that I've worked with is that a lot of these techniques you don't teach in the moment. You don't teach when kids are dysregulated. You teach it in a fun, proactive way. When everyone is like, at an optimal learning level and their body's calm, that's great.
- [11:44]
B
I'd love to expand upon that. We use a watered down version of pbis, right, to talk about this. So when we train caregivers and teachers, the first thing we do is we put up a stoplight and we say, green, yellow, red. If a child is in a emotional state or in a meltdown, what do you think that equates to on a stoplight? Red. Right. Meaning is this a good time to practice breathing with a child? Absolutely not. Right. And so we want to teach the caregiver and the educator to use that stoplight for themselves. I start every single one of my trainings with this question. How do you feel when somebody asks you to calm down?
- [12:20]
A
Horrible. You get.
- [12:23]
B
How many educators, myself included, how many parents, myself included, have ever asked a kid to calm down?
- [12:28]
A
All the time, in some form.
- [12:31]
B
In some form. In some form, right? Whether you're saying those words exactly, or you're like, take a deep breath. Right? So that means the same thing when a kid's in a red emotional state. Right? Meaning in a full meltdown. And so we talk a lot about how the motor learning theory model tells us, right, those thousand reps for something to become cognitive. But does that mean when they're upset? Absolutely not. So you do need to find that time when kids are in a calm state. They can be having lots of fun, but it has to be a pleasant, happy thing in order for us to be able to count it towards learning this skill. And on top of it, we need teachers, educators, caregivers to not ask the question, can you calm down right now? Because we all know how that makes us feel.
- [13:15]
A
That's a super good point. And I think what you're kind of talking. Well, first of all, I love that you mentioned that the green, yellow, red is not for the kids, it's for the adults. Okay. But that's a great visual way for adults to kind of remember it. A little cue for us. And then I love how, as you were talking, it reminded me of co regulation. We have to start with co regulation. We're modeling, we're showing. And if you're really using co regulation, you're not going to be telling a child to calm down. You're going to be supporting them. If they don't want you nearby, you can be on the ground at their level, a little further away, just modeling calm and being a calm presence near them.
- [14:03]
B
I totally agree. And you know, one of the things I talk a lot about in my training is that as an educator, how often do you actually sit in your own calm corner in a classroom? And I ask educators this all the time. And one, educators are doing too much with not enough time and not enough support. So. And now I want to add something to their already long list. But the next time an educator is upset, imagine if they sat in the calm corner. They modeled a breathing technique in the environment that we want kids to do it in. Right? Kids need modeling. And the same goes, by the way, for parents and caregivers. We need caregivers to model these same techniques at home. Right. If I get really upset as a parent and I go sit down in my calm corner, and then I practice a breathing technique and I show my daughter how that's supposed to work. That is very different than just also talking about it. So I think one of the most important forms of co regulation is also modeling behavior. And then on top of that, I want to teach a breathing technique that we do a lot. It's called buddy breathing. I do find that for some neurodivergent kids, it can require physical touch. So it is not for all. There is a way to use it with a poster. So to remove physical touch. I'll grab that in a second. We're going to pretend this white hand, for those of you watching on video, is not my hand. That's why I created this. So it's different visual. This is my hand and this is my friend's hand. And we take hand breathing, which is our core breathing technique, and we combine it to do it with somebody else. So I would take my finger and I would trace the fingers on my friend's hand. And we're going to do it all now together. We trace up and we breathe in. And then as we trace down, we breathe out. So I would take.
- [15:52]
A
I love it.
- [15:52]
B
So simple. And then you would take. Now this other hand would come to my hand and now they would do it on my hand. So they're tracing my fingers. And we're taking breaths together. So for a neurotypical kid, this can work really well because it's not only co regulation, it's breathing together and it incorporates physical touch. A neurodivergent kid, this is how we modify it. I'm going to grab a poster and on this poster there is a hand that we use for hand breathing. So we would ask a neurodivergent kid sometimes to use a pencil or a pen and to trace on somebody else's hand or on a poster of a hand. How to do the breathing technique here. One of the things that we really love to do is actually have kids cut out hands, decorate them and tape them to their desk. Because then they can do tracing of another hand on their own desk or can visualize it using a pen or a pencil.
- [16:50]
A
I love that. And Sarah, I think one way, I just think of my young students who have very deep interests in certain things. Like they could decorate with things they love, like Paw Patrol characters or Coco Melon characters. They could glue on little.
- [17:08]
B
Right. They can make it about them. Right. It's almost like a way to like, share your sense of self through this project. It's something we really like to do with classrooms. Very effective.
- [17:19]
A
I love it. I love it. Oh, these ideas are so, so awesome. And you know, we talked about Bloomy. We talked about the, the weighted calm caterpillar. What does. When you're talking about your kits, do you sell those? Can people buy them? What do those look like?
- [17:36]
B
Sure. So we sell our kits with either a Call me or Rory. So call me being the caterpillar. Rory being the lion, we do not sell any kits with Bloomy. That is an add on. But all of our kits come with a meditation cushion which you can see here, a breathing ball which you can see here to practice taking deep breaths. And either a classroom guide, which includes our supplementary curriculum to be embedded into classrooms, or a parent guide, which I will show you here. And this is a parent caregiver guide. It takes the teacher one and really just change it for how to implement at home versus in a school setting, but still follows the same evidence based curriculum inside that guideline for caregivers and parents. And then it can include a variety of posters and books. And we have the opportunity for people to like, kind of customize what it is they're looking for. A lot of schools that we work with, they decide exactly what goes into their kit.
- [18:42]
A
I love this because it can go. A kit like this can go to any class. So you've probably heard Sarah say a lot today, neurotypical or neurodivergent, this isn't just for autistic kids. This is for anybody. And actually some of the things that you're doing, you're like, we might have to modify this to, you know, limit touch if there's a neurodivergent child that doesn't like to be touched. And so you kind of have this built in, being able to modify and adjust if needed. And when Sarah and I were talking prior to hitting record here, we talked about some special work that she did in Uvalde. Uvalde, did you say it right? Yeah, Texas, after the school shooting. Can you tell us about that for sure?
- [19:32]
B
We had the opportunity this January to go to Uvalde and meet with all the guidance counselors in the Uvalde school district. We talked with them about how they were implementing different techniques into classrooms to manage emotions. And one of the things that we were able to do was provide calm corner kits for their schools, for their classrooms. Not all schools across the United States have calm corners in their classrooms. And that's something we really want to help change. So we were able to give them calm corner kits and then equip their guidance counselors and their teachers with the skills to begin implementing this. Because when we think about where Calm Caterpillar started and then the kids in Uvalde, the one thing that comes to mind is adverse childhood experiences.
- [20:23]
A
Yeah.
- [20:23]
B
And ACEs, which is, you know, has become more common in the educational world than I ever could have imagined, is really the thing we're trying to combat. Right. Aces lead to chronic Stress aversion of cortisol bath that really can equate to time off of your life expectancy. And one of the only ways to mitigate adverse childhood experiences is to do chronic stress prevention, which is mindfulness, which is breathing, which is learning to manage your emotions and your feelings. And so I am a firm believer that we need to incorporate mindfulness into all areas of our education because there are kids who are experiencing ACEs, whether it's in Uvalde or somewhere else every day. And mindfulness is easy to implement. When done correctly, it is always available to you because you always have your breath. And it is the one thing that sustains us all day long. Without our breath, we don't exist. And so it's really important to remember. Right. I always try to remind myself, we are trying to combat adverse childhood experiences. We are trying to mitigate those effects. And the kids in Uvalde are people who we think of who are really struggling with adverse childhood experiences. And how can we help them?
- [21:41]
A
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. We learned about that at the early childhood level at the last district I worked in. And if someone doesn't know what you're talking about, I think you kind of explained it. But can you explain it in a nutshell? And we can link something in the show notes to get more information if.
- [22:03]
B
People don't know for sure. So Adverse childhood. Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. It's a. It's a way to identify what someone's past has contributed to their current state. An ace, or one of the individual experiences each represent a point, and it's a screening tool we use to identify how many adverse childhood experiences somebody has. For example, having an ACE score of 3 or more is actually equal to 10 years off of your expected life. So Kaiser Permanente led the longest longitudinal study in the United States on ACEs. So we should link that in this so people can look up about aces. An example of aces could be living with an alcoholic parent, a child, a parent who is in incarcerated, home insecurity, food insecurity, abuse, physical, sexual experiencing, mass casualty, a mass shooting event. I think divorce is also considered an adverse childhood experience. Smoking, living with a smoker is an adverse childhood experience. The whole list is available in the study. And it has become very common here in Cincinnati, in particular for us, for the schools to be conducting ACE screens on a lot of the students. And so we do always take that lens. There's a really great organization here called the Joining Forces for Children. It's out of Cincinnati Children's Hospital, which is the number one children's hospital in America, actually. And it's all about combating the effect of ACEs in our local community. And so that is why we were really taught to bring that lens to our work. So very grateful for the people at Joining Forces who really have brought that to the forefront of the conversation here in Cincinnati. And honestly, I've been traveling around the country speaking this year, and I would say everywhere I go, everybody knows what aces are. And that really just speaks to how important they are to understand so we can combat this issue.
- [24:09]
A
Well, that makes me think too of how many autistic adults now have shared that compliance based methods to teach them when they were younger were traumatic. And to keep that in mind when a lot of us talk about compassion over compliance, especially when it comes to challenging behavior and things like that. So, you know, that could in the future come into play as part of the aces. The other thing I wanted to say is just thank you so much for your work in Uvalde because I think the nation's heart was broken again when that school shooting happened. And just really important work. And thanks for being there in the aftermath to help take care of these kids and. And like you're saying with the aces, try to mitigate and help the long term effects that can come out of situations like that. The trauma.
- [25:09]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:11]
A
It had to have been hard.
- [25:12]
B
Yes, definitely there.
- [25:13]
A
But yeah. So. Oh, is there anything I'm missing about what you have to offer? You work a lot with Head Start. You work with school districts. Let's say someone said, oh my gosh, I would love to work with Sarah and get a calming kit in my classroom or district. At the district level, maybe. How would they get a hold of you?
- [25:40]
B
That's a great question, Tara. So you can either fill out a form on our website, the calm caterpillar.com you can contact us through our website, but I'll also share my email address on this podcast. It's Sarah the comcatapillar. Com. If you have a question or want to understand more, feel free to reach out to me. We work with schools every day all across the country and I'd love to hear what you're up to and how you might need help.
- [26:05]
A
I love this, Sarah. Oh, thank you so much for being on the podcast and I can't wait to work with you more in the future because you're offering such an important and awesome service. So thank you.
- [26:19]
B
Thank you, Tara. I really appreciate it.