Welcome to the Wired Differently podcast where we chat all about how to best support exceptional children.

I'm your host, Holly Blanc Moses, the mom psychologist who gets it.

Welcome, everybody. Today we're talking about setting up differently wired children for virtual social

interaction. And right now, it is so important, more important than ever. You may have found

that some children are really missing interacting with others. They miss their friends at school. They miss their teachers.

They're missing their extended family members. And other differently wired children love social

distancing because they feel so much more comfortable. As we know, for some children,

interaction can feel anxiety provoking. So whether they are not liking the

interaction or liking the interaction, it's important they stay connected because it's going to

help them ease back into interacting once they go back to school and are more active in their

communities. We want to make that

transition better for them. So we're going to talk about exactly how to do that with the how,

what, who, and the exit strategy for communicating with others during social distancing. So first,

let's talk about the how. Every child is

different. We have to ask them what they feel most comfortable doing. We have to help them determine

what is the way they want to communicate. So that could be video. It could be FaceTime. It could be Zoom. It could be Skype. It could be making a call and putting it on speaker so your child can do handstands at the same time. And I am talking about my youngest son right now. It could be text. It could be chat. It could be a combination of a few. Some children like to start with

video and then ultimately like to go to the chat box. There are so many different ways,

including recording an audio and then sending it off to someone, texting it to someone.

It could be recording a video and doing the same

thing. Maybe they send a video being emailed. Again, it's all about the how, how they feel most

comfortable. Now, let's talk about the what. Oftentimes, I hear my client say, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. And they're so

worried about it that they avoid interaction because they're worried that they'll feel silly or

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