Uncertainty: Advancing to a New Level

I finally got my act together with uncertainty. Here are two recent clips of our work on uncertainty in which I get it RIGHT. The first one was a quick blurp I uploaded to the consultant as soon as I got off the phone to make sure I was on the right track.


The second one shows the culmination of what we have been doing after one week of steady explorations of uncertainty. Steve left for Chile yesterday. Whenever he heads south, people invariably email or call him and beg him to pick up the latest gadgets and toys. Sometimes, he is finds himself carrying more stuff than necessities (clothes, toiletries, etc.). On this trip, he dedicated a small carry-on bag to things for other people. Unfortunately, he had to be at work by 8 o'clock for an important meeting and three UPS deliveries would not be arriving until later in the morning. That meant the kids and I met Steve at the airport (a 2.5 hour round trip for us). Fortunately, I needed video and the trip gave us many ways to explore uncertainty!


My consultant and I agree Pamela is ready for the next level. We are going to skip a step that Pamela can already do (solving a problem or finding out when she realizes she does not know). Our new level is when I know something, but Pamela does not know. I am transferring to her the responsibility of her telling me when she does not know. This may sound obvious to a neurotypical person, but we need to make sure that Pamela recognizes that she does not know things that other people might know. At first, we thought I might have to scaffold this discovery by stopping and gaze shifting between something she does not know and her face. Pamela caught on IMMEDIATELY and she took my breath away. There are times in the video clip below in which I did scaffold with a declarative comment like, "I bet you don't know where we are going."


Today, we did have a moment of uncertainty in which Pamela was unhappy and did NOT reference me at all. The kitchen radio cut out for a few minutes; and, no matter how hard I tried to let her know that I did not know when the radio would be back on air and smiled, she was too upset to feel reassured. Hopefully, some day, our work on uncertainty will help her deal with situations like this better.