I am lost, luckily they are not.
I still remember the first time Joel sang Spider Monster in the middle of our session. It wasn’t on the schedule. No prompt. No checkbox to mark it down. We were sitting at the table, working on a structured program with picture cards. Joel was quiet, focused or maybe just drifting. Then suddenly, he looked up and sang: “Spider Monster… Spider Monster…” It was the Sesame Street version. A soft, silly song that caught me completely off guard. I had two choices. Redirect him and get back to the program, or meet him where he was. So I sang back. Just one line. And he smiled. That kind of smile that’s rare, the kind that feels like a moment. We didn’t finish the program that day. We didn’t get any clean data. But the next morning, he came back to the table on his own. No resistance, no prompts. There’s no spot on the data sheet for “built emotional trust,” but I know we did. I didn’t grow up thinking I’d end up here. I’m from a small mountain town in Malaysia. My grandmother w...
