Using the 5 Why’s to Foster a Growth Mindset - Ep. 74
Has it ever come to you in a startling, clear as a bell moment, that one of you clients has totally missed, skipped, and never even approached a skill they need in order to master the skill you’re trying to teach?
Do you have a client who:
- struggles with curiosity
- lacks complex language development
- has a very narrow range of interests
If so, it’s worth exploring whether they went through the development stage of asking “why?”
This episode explores how to approach teaching “why?” with a school age client, and the many benefits that come with asking “why?” Here are just a few:
- Increase complex language
- Increase precision in language
- Increase variety of subjects a client can converse about
- Increase Depth of Knowledge
- Improve problem solving
- Develop a growth mindset
Check out the Free Resource Library on thespeechumbrella.com/free for a freebie that goes with teaching “why?”
--- Useful Links ---
Real Changes in Spoken Language with Sketch and Speak
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Transcript
Denise: Welcome to the Speech Umbrella, this show that explores simple but powerful therapy techniques for optimal outcomes. I'm Denise Stratton, a pediatric speech language pathologist of 30 plus years. I'm closer to the end of my career than the beginning, and along the way, I've worked long and hard to become a better therapist. Join me as we explore the many topics that fall under our umbrellas as SLPs. I want to make your journey smoother. I found the best therapy comes from employing simple techniques with a generous helping of mindfulness.
Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 74 of the Speech Umbrella. Don't you love it when a plan comes together? Just last week, I was able to refer a parent to a previous podcast called Home Practice for the Final Stages of Speech Therapy. That's episode 71, by the way. It's just 16 minutes long, and it explains everything a parent needs to know about their role and their child's role in carryover of articulation goals and how to be supportive without going down the road of constant reminding.
It was a great time saver for me, but more importantly, this parent didn't feel like her concerns weren't being addressed because I didn't have time to talk to her and explain it fully. The whole reason I recorded that podcast was because I rarely have the luxury to take the time to explain everything I want to say about carryover when a parent asks me, because that's usually about three minutes before our session ends.
I know it can save you time too if you have artic clients, so give it a listen if you haven't caught episode 71 yet. Now, onto today's topic. I'm calling this Using the 5 Why's to Foster a Growth Mindset. I'm going to describe just one client of mine and the approach I took with him, but I believe you'll see ways to apply this information to many clients.
I'm tempted to call it inquiring minds want to know, but unfortunately that title has been Taken. An inquiring mind does help with the growth mindset, though. The question I'm answering today is, how do I help clients with a very narrow range of conversation topics broaden their horizon. These clients may very well be on the autism spectrum, and they may love their selected topics and never want to leave them.
The follow-up question to that question is, why does it even matter as long as they're talking? Should I even try and broaden their horizon? Here's what we'll cover today as I answer those two question. I'm gonna give you a snapshot of my client's communication. We're going to talk about the syntax development milestones around why, what are the five why's, what I did in therapy, what the outcome was, and as I talk about the outcome it will become pretty obvious why broadening his horizon mattered. What will you gain from today's podcast? A strategy for working on spoken or written communication while fostering a growth mindset. They come together a package deal, and those package deals are always my favorite strategies.
The client I'm talking about today was around eight or nine years old at the time. He is on the autism spectrum. With spoken language, he needed some intervention for grammar and expressing complex ideas. Here's the thing, he actually could learn the rules of language really quickly when I had his attention, but he wasn't interested in talking about subjects outside of a certain set of characters that he knew from TV or videos, and he only wanted to play out certain scenarios with those characters. Because those scenarios lacked complexity, he did not get a lot of practice using complex language. And he tended to use an advanced kind of echolalia, repeating what he had heard the character say.
And you might say, well, all children do that. They repeat what they hear movie characters say, and you'd be right. But the thing is typically developing children will adjust what they say to fit the situation. And they can change the words a little bit if they need to, but he didn't do that. And when we ventured into complex language, a lot of things he said would be confusing to the listener because he was repeating a script that didn't fit the situation.
And here's the hard part for a clinician, he didn't seem to care. Repairing communication was not a thing he liked to do. We can put three exclamation points after that. As you might guess, his play skills and imagination were also underdeveloped. But I'm saving the topic of play skills for a later podcast. I only mentioned it here because it's really important to think about the whole child with our clients and how each part affects the other parts.
All of these behaviors and attitudes I just described affected his accuracy when he was retelling a story or telling it about facts like expository information. He actually had a really good memory. In fact, probably could be classified in the gifted area as far as his memory goes, but he was careless with the details. He wasn't motivated to be accurate because most stories or expository text outside of his favorite scenarios just weren't interesting to him. As I was trying to figure out a way to reach him, it occurred to me that he had probably never gone through the why stage, the typically developing preschoolers experience, and up to that point, the only time I had heard him ask why was to protest a rule or a routine in the clinic and not to learn information.
As far as I could see, not asking why resulted in these things. He had surface comprehension of some subjects, but he quickly glossed over new material. He didn't engage with new information and so therefore he lacked depth of knowledge, and I believed if he could become interested in even one or two real world subject areas and develop a depth of knowledge about them, his future would hold so many more opportunities as far as jobs and independence.
Plus, it would help him develop more complex language and the discipline of being accurate. Recently I was listening to a podcast with Mike Rowe and the author Jack Carr said something that really struck me. He said, precision in language reflects precision in thought, which is one of the best explanations for the importance of language therapy that I have ever heard, and I'm gonna be using that over and over again.
Believe me, precision in language reflects precision in thought. Now that you have a snapshot of this client, I want to take a moment and do a quick review of language developmental milestones and development of the word why. Children start asking why around two to three years old, and we all know it can be incessant, which we should celebrate.
It's a wonderful thing when a child asks why. It shows curiosity about the world. It's interesting to look at the other expressive and receptive milestones that develop around the same time. So a child who is around two to three years old has a word for almost everything. These are obviously typically developing children.
They talk about things that are not in the room. They use words like in, on, and under. They use two or three words to talk about things and ask for things. They put three words together to talk about things. They understand opposites like stop and go, big and little, and up and down. They can follow two part directions, like get the spoon and put it on the table, and they understand new words quickly.
You can see children don't necessarily have fully developed grammar when they start asking why. So it actually comes in pretty early. That's something to pay attention to. When our clients get to two or three words, think about it, are they asking why? I especially wanna pay attention to this in the future with my clients who are on the autism spectrum.
So even though my client was well past the two to three word stage, when I first saw him, I had never before thought to examine his use of why to learn and to gain information. Obviously at eight or nine years old, he wasn't going to learn to ask why like a preschooler. I had to think of a workaround, and I decided to work on curiosity and depth of knowledge, adapting an approach called the five Why's.
Here's a little background on the five why's. Sakichi Toyota was a Japanese industrialist, inventor, and founder of Toyota Industries. He developed the five why's technique. It became really popular in the seventies, and Toyota still uses it to solve problems today. It's a really simple method. When a problem occurs, you drill down to the root cause by asking why five times. Then, when a countermeasure becomes apparent you follow it through to prevent the issue from reoccurring. So here's what I did. I adapted this method to help him gain knowledge and not be satisfied with surface answers.
But first, I showed him a YouTube video of a toddler asking why many, many times throughout her day, and he thought that was so funny, and we played a game where we asked each other why up to five times just to get him comfortable with it and get him to buy into the idea. And I just explained we wouldn't go beyond five why's because then our answers just got too silly. Next. I told him he was going to become a reporter and investigate different subjects, and I told him, good reporters ask why. They want to know why.
Now, I needed to select a couple of subjects for him to choose from because just asking him, Hey, what do you wanna learn about today? Would've been way too broad for him. And he might even said nothing. So instead I phrased it like, would you like to learn about this or this? And even with his very limited range of interest, I was able to come up with topics that at least he didn't reject outright.
For example, he loved his Crocs. He wore them rain or shine, summer, winter, and he was just a little bit obsessed about Crocs. Turns out there's an interesting history around Crocs and he enjoyed playing with a box of magnets I have. So magnets was another topic he explored. When he chose a topic, we didn't dive into it that day. I needed some time to find material on the topic, but once that material was found, therapy planning was really very simple. The whole discovery and reporting process on his part could take three to four weeks, and so because of that, I didn't feel that my initial gathering information on the topic was too onerous or took too much prep time.
Let me walk you through what the process looks like. We choose a topic maybe with a little bit of guidance from the therapist. The therapist finds some expository text on the subject and then the therapist asks a leading question, such as, do you know, which leads the client to answer no, I don't know why. The therapist answers. The client makes a note based on that answer, and these are not complete sentences at this point. The client is just writing notes enough to remember, so you could incorporate the sketch and speak method here that I talk about in episode 72. You're making just enough notes to remember. After that, you just rinse and repeat until enough material has been gathered for an article.
It's totally your clinician judgment here, based on the client's capability, how much do you want them to write? His articles were maybe five sentences max, especially at the beginning. Then the client uses the notes they made to say or write the report and as they go, check for accuracy. Remember we're going for precision in language and precision in thought, somewhat like the sketch and speak method.
He needed to practice his sentences that he made from his notes until they were accurate, and then he wrote them. And then when it was all done, he practiced giving the report. And here's where we had fun. I had him play reporter. We covered TP tubes with construction paper for a little mic, gave him a reporter name tag. I videoed him. He could share it with his family. This is the big win. So I wanted to make it rewarding because he worked really, really hard on this. And as time went on, he didn't need as many leading questions to ask why, which is great. In case you're wondering, here's how one of our question exchanges might have gone.
So here's me, do you know why Crocs were invented? He says no, why? I say they were invented to be worn on boats. And he says why? And I say, because they're waterproof. And he asks, why are they waterproof? And my answer is because they're made of a special foam. And then I ask, do you know why they're called Crocs?
And he says no, why? Then I say, because you can wear them on land or sea. So they're like crocodiles. That's why they named them Crocs. And then I give him this little bit of information, all Crocs have 13 holes, and he asks, why? And I say, to let the air in. And he asks why? And I say, so your feet won't get stinky. And he says, why? And me, because no one likes stinky feet. So you see all that information that he just gathers as he asks why? And it's really simple because he knows all he has to do is ask why, and then make a note on the answer. Here's some ideas to make this workable in a variety of situations. You might want to select and list categories that could naturally fit into why questions as you find the material, and then you could just point to a category and suggest that they ask about it.
I really loved having him include a personal statement at the end of the report about why he found it interesting, what it meant to him. It was so interesting to me that this was pretty hard for him. This was really hard for him. He had some kind of mental block about making a personal statement about why that topic was important or interesting.
Now, not every question has to be why, since this is a combination of fact finding and explanation, and that would just be too restrictive, right? Just make sure some of them are why questions, because this is going to help the most with complex language and growth mindset. You might wanna use a newspaper template for the final draft if they're going to write it out.
The reason for this is it looks like the real deal to them. A finished, polished product they can be proud of, they can take it home. Now, I chose to have my client write his report because I knew he could. The persistence he learned while writing entire reports was really, really helpful. He learned he could do hard things.
And by the way, you can download a news article template in my free resource library that's at thespeechumbrella.com/free. If writing fatigue is an issue, as it was with my client, you can do what I did. I would say, okay, let's craft your first sentence from your notes and I'll write it out for you. Now it's your turn to write. And he would write and then I would write, and then he would write, and eventually he asked, on his own, can I write more? So he started writing more on his own. Eventually, by the end, he was writing the whole report himself. Just remember, writing is an optional step. You might choose to just focus on spoken language and that's fine, in which case, they would just use their notes to deliver their report.
Besides working on these reports, on this expository information, take time to play the why game with each other about anything and everything. This is your chance to channel the inner preschooler and aim to plant the curiosity seed in your client. So asking them why too is important. It's a back and forth game, and you just see how deep you can go.
Can you really get to the five why's? So what was the outcome of the five why's? As I cover them, it'll become obvious to you why broadening his horizons made a big difference to him. I've got six outcomes here. Number one. more complex language. You can see how getting answers to why questions naturally leads to the creation of complex sentences.
So for example, Crocs have 13 holes, so your feet don't get stinky or crocs or waterproof because they're made of a special foam. It just naturally leads to using a cause and effect word in there. Answering why just naturally leads to using conjunctions, you know I love conjunctions. Number two, precision in language leading to precision in thought, and caring about accuracy. The third outcome, he was able to talk about more things. What a relief. I was really, really getting tired of those video scenarios. So he decreased his script in his non generative language as he could talk about more things that didn't have a script that came with it. Outcome number four, getting below the surface on topics and encouraging a depth of knowledge.
Number five, promoting problem solving. In episode 54, I talked about Dr. Damon Korb's book called Raising an Organized Child, and he mentions that sometimes we will make excuses for the bored but gifted child. We reason, well, they're just bored in class because the teacher isn't providing enough stimulation for them. But Dr. Korb actually says the root cause is disorganization, because these kids don't know how to access a dropdown menu of what to think about when they're not actively given an assignment to do. Now, I told you my client was gifted in some ways, especially in his memory, yet he was quickly bored when we weren't talking about what he wanted to talk about, and this was my way of trying to help him access a dropdown box in his mind.
Knowing how to think about something that interests you is what creative thinkers do. Finally, six, fostering a growth mindset. He developed better personal insight. So I told you writing was difficult for him. He used a lot of pencil pressure when he wrote, I mean, a ton of pencil pressure, and once he stopped writing to shake his hand and commenting about his hand hurting, I asked him why, and he replied, I'm pushing too hard. Now that is a golden response. To have him identify the problem himself was a huge step for him because all problems tended to be someone else's problem and he had a hard time taking ownership. Answering a why question about a problem that he could solve. That equals taking ownership. That equals growth mindset.
That equals making life happen instead of life happening to you. That was a big one I hadn't expected, but I shouldn't have been surprised because all things tend to rise together when you find the root of the problem. Or another way to say that is when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself.
Thanks so much for listening, and remember to visit the free resource library at thespeechumbrella.com/free for that news article template. Give us a thumbs up, like and subscribe. leave a five star review if you like this episode. And join me again in two weeks for more topics under the speech umbrella.
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