Matching Tone and Vocali...

This Month’s Behaviour Management Strategy – Jan 2010

This is the third of the building rapport series of Bites.  In the last two months I have talked about hot buttons and matching breathing.  This month is about how we can make a profound connection with a student who has little, if any, spoken language.  Such students often vocalize – particularly when emotions are heightened, for example when they are excited or distressed.  Matching their vocalisation works in a similar way to linguistic hot buttons [Bite 22 November 2009] in that it makes a connection what the student is experiencing.

While working on “War Horse” we took a number of students with complex needs onto the Olivier Stage to interact in their own time with some of the amazing horse puppets.  One student, Donovan* is on the autistic spectrum and seemed very distressed for much of the session making a variety of vocal noises.  His teacher several times took him out or walked him round the perimeter of the enormous stage to seek calm him down.   When it came to his turn to meet Joey, the life-size horse puppet operated by 3 puppeteers, Donovan still made distressed noises and turned away from Joey.  We tried getting Joey to become very still, to make more noise, less noise, to turn his head away, to look directly at Donovan.  Nothing seemed to help him feel comfortable enough to interact with Joey.  Then we asked the puppeteers to make Joey’s neigh sounds match the intonation and volume of Donovan’s vocalisations.  The result was immediate.  Donovan stopped, became quiet, looked directly at Joey’s head, smiled and stretched out his hand to touch the horse’s head.  Everyone was flabbergasted.  It was as if a tap had suddenly been turned on after being frozen solid.  A profound connection was made by matching Donovan’s vocalisation.

The thing with all these rapport building strategies is to try them all until one works with each particular situation and student.  Each one of them is powerful on its own, but they become even more effective when we use them together. 

*  As always names have been changed.