The social thinking concept for Friday’s session was being a “thinking about you” person vs a “just me” person. Most of the time we are expected to be a “thinking of you” person. In the classroom, on the playground, and in the cafeteria students are expected to think about the needs of others and adjust their behavior accordingly. The teacher expects students to think about how their behavior affects others in the classroom so that they don’t blurt out answers or meltdown when math is hard. Sometimes it is okay to be a “just me” person. When a student is alone reading or playing a video game in their room it is okay. When we are with other people it is important to think of them. We always want others to have good thoughts and feelings about us.
First things first-
I created a visual for the group so that they could see and hear what it means to be a “thinking of you” or a “just me” person.
We read this wonderful book
The story is a great lesson in perspective taking and “thinking of you” vs. “just me”.
The boy and his friends step on ants for fun. He thinks ants are too small to feel anything. Ants are annoying.
The ant tries to convince the boy otherwise. Ants have families too. Ants have important jobs to do for their families and nest mates.
As we read the book we talked about which character is the “thinking of you” character and which one is the “just me” character. This was a very difficult concept for the students. I started having uncomfortable thoughts about this lesson. It was a good lesson but a difficult one. The students struggled to talk about different perspectives. They knew right away which character was the “just me” character but could not use information they gathered from the story to tell me how they knew. Back to the drawing board…
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Best,
Robin
lunchbuddiesplus 
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