Can the Alert Program® help my students?

Yes, and we can show you how easily you can support attention for those who are in General or Special Education through low-budget activities in our books, songs, and games!In our Take Five! book, you’ll find lots of practical activities that have been kid-tested and teacher-approved; “we’ve been there, done it” for decades. So, we know the concerns of classroom teachers and we provide you with self-regulation activities for individual students, small groups, or your whole class.Your students will love learning about the Alert Program® vocabulary and strategies through the Test Drive (book and CD). It couldn’t be easier: This book and its engaging songs lay it all out for you, explaining what to say to your students and how to keep them alert for learning.We’ve adapted the classic games Go Fish and Bingo to be economical and fun for your classroom. Your students will enjoy them so much, they won’t even know they are learning concepts to make school easier.And you can teach the entire Alert Program® to your students using the Leader’s Guide’s step-by-step activities, and 50+ pages of reproducibles, so your students can learn how to be independent in changing how alert they feel.All of our books, games, and songs were developed to be easily implemented by teachers (General and Special Education), so you’ll want to check out our list of Alert Program® materials to learn more. Or you may want to begin by viewing our Overview of the Alert Program® Webinar.

What evidence supports the use of the Alert Program® in my classroom?

The Alert Program® has been helping students of all ages and ability levels since 1990 and research has demonstrated its effectiveness.Many teachers print out the 20+ pages of our “Alert Program® Literature and Research” document to share with parents, school administrators, or other team members to show the excellence in evidence-based practice. Want more ideas of how to get administrative support in your setting? Click here or browse answers to common questions in the Need Support section of our footer.

How can I explain the Alert Program® to parents?

Our complimentary, one page handout helps you pave the way in explaining to parents (team members or administrators) how the Alert Program® supports your classroom curriculum. Click here to print the “What’s All This Talk About Engines?” free handout.Also, many teachers have our Introductory Booklets on hand for parents (team members or administrators) who want to learn the basics of the Alert Program®. Or you may want to direct them to our website’s New to the Alert Program® page, Blog articles, or Free Resources to learn more.

How do I help my students attend and be focused in my classroom?

The Alert Program® online course has received rave reviews from teachers and administrators who feel empowered to implement self-regulation strategies in their classrooms, schools, or school districts. Learn how implementing a few self-regulation ideas into your lesson plans can yield positive results, in a relatively short amount of time! See our Alert Program® Online Course.

I’m totally new to the Alert Program®. Where should I begin?

We are happy to support you to find ways to help your students. You may have more questions and we’ve got answers! Click here to learn more about the Alert Program®.

S1E2: Who's Regulating Who? - The Alert Program

Real conversations about sensory regulation, nervous systems, and the people supporting them.

Who’s Regulating Who? is a podcast from The Alert Program® exploring sensory regulation in real life. Created for occupational therapists, educators, caregivers, and anyone curious about how nervous systems affect behavior, learning, relationships, and performance.

Episode 2: Sensory Regulation in Practice: An OT Perspective

In this special episode, occupational therapist Carla Cay Williams draws on 40 years of experience with families, schools, and clinics to explore what makes the Alert Program® effective—and enduring—decades after its creation.

As founder of KidPower and an internationally recognized OT, Carla shares why regulation starts with the body, how curiosity can change the way we respond to people, and what sensory awareness can teach us about supporting others at home, in schools, and at work. Listen for a fresh, practical look at what regulation really means—and how to notice what someone may need before labeling what you see.

This is THE conversation to listen to! Don’t miss it.

Don’t use Spotify? Listen here: https://share.descript.com/view/WWZbIL6Wwx8

About Our Guest: Carla Cay Williams, OTR

Carla Cay Williams, occupational therapist, has taught live Alert Program^®trainings nationally and internationally. She has 40+ years of experience providing a wide variety of treatment techniques including sensory integration, combined speech/language and motor therapy, and social skills groups that implement the Alert Program^®. Carla Cay has worked with Mary Sue and Sherry since the inception of the Alert Program^®.

She has received rave reviews while teaching the Alert Program^® in Singapore, Finland, Ireland, Wales, and teaching multiple times in Canada, Australia, England, and Scotland. In addition to her innovative treatment, Carla Cay has also lectured internationally on sensory integration concepts and in 2014 she co-authored her first book, Our Heart’s Desire: For Families Navigating the Journey of Sensory Processing Challenges.

Connect with Jennie Len on LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPT:

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Jennie Largent: Alright, welcome back to Who’s Regulating Who? a podcast from the Alert Program® about sensory regulation, our nervous systems, and what it looks like to support ourselves and others in everyday life.

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Jennie Largent: I’m your host, Jennie Lynn Largent, and today, I’m super excited to be joined by Carla K. Williams, an occupational therapist, global speaker, and Alert Program trainer.

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Jennie Largent: Carla founded the therapy clinic, KidPower in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’s co-authored a book on sensory processing challenges, and her work brings together sensory integration, speech-language and motor therapy.

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Jennie Largent: And it really touches on so many things that, from an HR perspective and a people perspective, I’ve been curious about for a long time.

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Jennie Largent: We have a lot to discuss, so let’s get started with Who’s Regulating Who.

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Jennie Largent: Hi, Carla! Welcome! I’m thrilled to have you here.

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Carla Cay Williams: Thank you.

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Jennie Largent: Before we get into the Alert Program®, I’d really love to start with you and your own story.

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Jennie Largent: How long have you been an occupational therapist? What year did you start?

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Carla Cay Williams: 40 years, yeah. 1986.

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Jennie Largent: What drew you to this field?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, when I was in high school, I read a book about a young girl with cerebral palsy, and she was a really highly intelligent girl, but had these motor issues, and the story was really about how her mom

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Carla Cay Williams: treated her the same way as all the other kids in the family, and really what she was able to accomplish because of that. And there was also a young girl in our community that had autism, and it was really hard for the family to find a babysitter, so I was the babysitter, and got to know her really well, and was just intrigued by getting to hang out and spend time with her, and

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Carla Cay Williams: do the things that she liked to do. At that time, she was nonverbal, and

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Carla Cay Williams: went clear to another town to go to school, and so it was very interesting, and what I really thought I wanted to do when I grew up was be a music therapist, but, while I was in school, I decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do, and got, pointed in the direction of occupational therapy, and in

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Carla Cay Williams: going to OT school, I realized I could work with kids all I wanted to, and so I was on my way, and I’ve been doing pediatrics ever since I graduated.

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Jennie Largent: Isn’t it interesting how many of us start out thinking we’re called to one place, and then something else arrives in our lives? Would you put that in this category for you?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, I knew I wanted to work with kids with developmental or physical disabilities, but I didn’t know how that would happen until I was guided.

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Jennie Largent: I’m curious what part of the work is most fulfilling for you. I imagine helping people and families is rewarding, but what keeps you engaged despite the challenges?

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Jennie Largent: there’s a lot of challenges in this work, too. What keeps you going, and what keeps you interested, where this is still fresh and rewarding for you?

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Carla Cay Williams: In this field, we never stop learning. I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I’m still learning. That ongoing learning is very motivating.

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Carla Cay Williams: Ongoing learning and new knowledge are such an important part of the work. And when you work with kids and families, they never stop teaching, so they’re our biggest teachers and who we learn from the most, and so really just the

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Carla Cay Williams: The learning community, mentors, other teachers, and especially the kids and families are what keep me going.

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Jennie Largent: I’ve really, as I’ve, been kind of an observer of this industry, for those that don’t know about me, I come from the HR, people management, change management side, where I’m looking at people management.

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Jennie Largent: That overlaps a little with what we’re discussing, but this is a very different lens.

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Jennie Largent: And I really am taken aback by kind of what I guess it’s almost like a

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Jennie Largent: a learning loop. I want to call it a feedback loop. To your point, you’re learning from each other. Once you get the system

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Jennie Largent: working, with everyone using the same language and building on it, you get to see something beautiful happen.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes, yeah, absolutely.

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Jennie Largent: Well

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Jennie Largent: I know, we’ve got a lot to talk about, and you’ve got a lot of tools in your toolkit. There are so many different

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Jennie Largent: modalities and different lenses that you use, so I don’t want to give the audience any kind of impression that you are a one-trick pony. But you have been a part of Alert Program since essentially the beginning, and

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Jennie Largent: And you’ve been, with the founders, training, globally for all this time.

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Jennie Largent: And, I keep seeing you come back to this. before I was ever involved, before I ever even knew about any of this.

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Jennie Largent: I didn’t even know what occupational therapists did, and was barely, waking up to my own, career while you were building this with the founders of a program.

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Jennie Largent: Help me see what makes this system just work.

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Jennie Largent: Why do you keep coming back to it?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, I think, first of all, it is really there’s so many facets of it that work. I guess the foundational facet would be that the whole entire program in my profession

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Carla Cay Williams: Is based on the neuroscience and the theories and the

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Carla Cay Williams: the background of science that makes it all, makes it all understandable about why it works, because it really is all about neurochemistry and the brain and, making what we call adaptive responses to what happens to us. And so, that is probably one of the foundations of it. Then the cool thing that

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Carla Cay Williams: the founders did was take that information and made it usable in a way that they could talk to a young child about it, that they could talk to a family about it, that they could teach other professionals about it, in a way that they can work with kids who don’t have any language at all. And so, here’s this great program that’s accessible to anyone.

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Carla Cay Williams: That’s based on strong neurological, neuroscientific theory and research,

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Carla Cay Williams: And I think that that’s what makes it, incredible, and the fact that

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Carla Cay Williams: They’ve been using this program’s been out in the world for, like, 35 years, and the people who learned it 35 years ago can still tell stories to this day about how they use it and how it has affected people that they even taught it to 35 years ago.

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Carla Cay Williams: So, yeah, it’s just it’s just kind of all-encompassing in what it has to offer.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and what I’m hearing from you, the term, and I’ve never heard this term, I don’t know if anybody’s ever used this, but this is what came up to me when you were talking.

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Jennie Largent: Scientifically informed communications.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah.

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Jennie Largent: Right? Right? Like, we’re you’re taking you’re taking evidence.

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Jennie Largent: And all of this really complex

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Jennie Largent: Not easy to wrap your head around education, right, about the way that our bodies and our nervous systems work.

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Jennie Largent: Then you’re putting it together, then the system is facilitating your ability

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Jennie Largent: To put together a shared language and a communication system

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Jennie Largent: Right? That is appropriate for the group you’re supporting. And that could mean

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Jennie Largent: families, it could mean, right, co-workers, it blends in because we all have these same needs. Specifically, it’s very easy to see this work out, and the need is very clear when you’re dealing with children, specifically ones with disabilities, right? But this

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Jennie Largent: community, framework, right? I see it as being applicable to because what family doesn’t have challenges, right? And what family doesn’t go through

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Jennie Largent: a situation where they’re, oh, we’ve got a child, and now we’re learning what this child is, this child is growing up in front of us, and we’re learning what their needs are. And so there’s I see this being applicable for people, that are just, alive with bodies.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes, it is. Completely usable in almost any situation, individual, group, Workplace, home, school.

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Jennie Largent: Right.

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Carla Cay Williams: Anywhere.

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Jennie Largent: And I see this as, like, it’s like, the goal is to have a shared communication, but you have to go through

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Jennie Largent: These steps and phases, right, that are part of the program in order to do this intentionally with and then be able to engage with everyone that is part of the person you’re supporting.

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Jennie Largent: engaging with their observation skills and their, and that’s when it just turns into this beautiful, magical thing, that, it gives me, the tingles to be able to think about, because when

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Jennie Largent: I personally hadn’t seen that magic on the HR and the business side. I had to come over to your world to see that, and it’s really been beautiful to witness.

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Carla Cay Williams: That’s awesome.

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Jennie Largent: Okay, so moving on, I, as I have gotten more educated in your field, Carla, one of the biggest takeaways, and I mentioned this in Episode 1, because it but I think it deserves repeating, and I’d like to hear your side of this, your perspective.

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Jennie Largent: Regulated is not always calm.

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Jennie Largent:.

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Carla Cay Williams: Nope.

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Jennie Largent: I really, I really have seen this, I’ve seen this time and time again now, and it has really changed the way that I, look at, look at, relationships, honestly.

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Jennie Largent: I realized that through witnessing, what you do, that sometimes without realizing it.

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Jennie Largent: We, as adults, try to calm people around us.

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Jennie Largent: Or we expect them to regulate themselves in ways that are comfortable for us.

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Jennie Largent: How do you explain what regulation really means, and why someone can be

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Jennie Largent: regulated while moving, feeling excited, showing strong emotion, Not every regulated person looks like they’re meditating at the temple, right? Exactly.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah. Well, the way we kind of look at it, and the way the Alert Program® looks at it, is that, we all have different states of arousal at different times. It could be at different times of the day, it can be at different

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Carla Cay Williams: Moments during a conversation, it can be our general arousal state, that’s kind of typical, like.

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Carla Cay Williams: you might think of a person with attention deficit as having a very high arousal state, or,

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Carla Cay Williams: a person who, is maybe shy, you might see them as having kind of a lower arousal state, because they just look quieter and shyer. But really, it’s all about what’s happening in the nervous system, and so our states of arousal change all the time. They fluctuate all through the day, all through the year, all through the all through the week.

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Carla Cay Williams: And so, what self-regulation really is, is the ability to change your alert state, your arousal state, whenever you need to change it. So, someone might,

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Carla Cay Williams: be in a just-right arousal state while they’re yelling and screaming at a pro football game, right? That’s the appropriate place to be in a high arousal state when you’re jumping up and down and yelling and screaming and very excited. You’re still regulated, you’re regulated for a football game. Now, you might not be regulated in that way if you went to a theater and you were doing a watching a performance.

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Carla Cay Williams: the expectations of that environment would not be to stand up and yell and scream and cheer. So, even though you’re excited and you’re still having a great time, you have to be regulated for a theater and not for an arena. And so, that’s just really what self-regulation is. It’s just matching your level of alertness or your level of arousal to what’s expected in the situation around you.

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Carla Cay Williams: with the people, with the environment, all of that.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and it’s contextual. Like, you the whole point of this is that you can’t force like, you can’t say things like, oh, this person

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Jennie Largent: always needs XYZ. Like, you could name it better than I could, but this black and white thinking of just saying, okay, this is the strategy, or what we do to support this person, because that’s going to change depending on all these different variables, right? Which is what I

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Jennie Largent: what the program helps you see. It helps you break down those variables so that you can you can start making some intentional decisions, and then you can start testing things out, right?

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Carla Cay Williams: Right.

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Jennie Largent: Oh.

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Jennie Largent: And right but let’s before we get into that, like, regulation is a really big word. Can you just like, there’s self-regulation, co-regulation, there’s emotional regulation, there’s sensory, there’s, like and I think a lot of people, within the last several years, this has become kind of a

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Jennie Largent: I don’t want to call it a buzzword, because, that makes it feel dirty to me, but it has, I think a lot of people are starting to become aware of not only

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Jennie Largent: their, need to regulate, but also people are becoming more aware of their own neurodiversity, right? All of our nervous systems and our brains work a little bit different, and there’s a lot of variety there that I think the last just several, five years even, have shown a light on, right?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah.

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Jennie Largent: Help us see what the difference between all these different terms are.

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, you’re right, there’s not a whole lot of difference between them. It’s just, they’re all ways of looking at regulation coming from different frames of reference, right? So, self-regulation would be coming from a neuroscientific frame of reference, just because we’re talking about being able to upregulate or down-regulate the nervous system. So, that would be self-regulation.

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Carla Cay Williams: When you look at co-regulation, what that’s really talking about is that

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Carla Cay Williams: the people in a room, or the person sitting across from you, like you were talking about, regulation doesn’t necessarily mean calm, right? So, if you have this person who’s really wired across from you.

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Carla Cay Williams: co-regulation would be, like, literally meeting them where they are, and then helping them come back down together. I don’t know if any of you are Ted Lasso fans, but I just heard about a perfect Ted Lasso regulation story where

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Carla Cay Williams: in the new season, the women coach was getting exacerbated with whatever the situation was, and she was escalating. Her arousal was going up, she was getting dysregulated, and all he did was went over and sat by her on the bench.

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Carla Cay Williams: And just started breathing. He couldn’t calm her down by telling her to knock it off, get over it, take some deep breaths, nothing. He just sat with her, and just started breathing, and maybe breathed a little faster at the beginning, because she was maybe breathing faster, and as they breathed together.

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Carla Cay Williams: then they can come down to this place where then maybe they can have a conversation. So, co-regulation might be using your own nervous system to help regulate the nervous system of another. And boy, parents, they have to use this all the time. When you have a screaming baby, just being calm and talking to them quietly is not going to calm them down. Probably, you’ll have to bounce them around a little bit big, maybe bigger than they

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Carla Cay Williams: need to be bounced around, and then as they calm, you can take it to a little bounce or a rocking, but sometimes just that calm movement isn’t what that baby needs. They need something bigger, and so that would kind of be what co-regulation is.

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Carla Cay Williams: Gosh, as far as emotional regulation, it’s just really being able to get a handle on what emotion you’re actually having, what and actually why, self learning how to self-regulate works

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Carla Cay Williams: First, before emotional regulation, is that,

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Carla Cay Williams: emotions cause sensations in our bodies. We oftentimes know what feeling we’re having based on the sensation that we’re having in our body, and so emotional regulation is just becoming in tune with that and becoming aware of where emotions arise, what they feel like, what they

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Carla Cay Williams: What they get defined as in your mind, and then being able to find a way to

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Carla Cay Williams: Put a lid on those, or just describe or define them differently, so that you can come to a place of better understanding about them.

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Jennie Largent: I’m hearing a lot about that your body sends you the signals, right? part of this is learning how to interpret our signals

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Jennie Largent: And sometimes that’s going to be an emotional component.

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Jennie Largent: And sometimes it’s it’s not, right? And sometimes it gets a little muddied because it’s both.

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Jennie Largent: But you have to start somewhere, right? And when when a person is, just let’s just assume, like, we’re not trying to explain the whole system, right? Just starting with the most basic thing, if a person’s dysregulated, let’s just assume we’re talking about an adult.

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Jennie Largent: and we’re at they are registering that they are dysregulated. What’s the first step that you would recommend that they do? And just assume that they don’t know anything about the program, assume that this person doesn’t have any kind of occupational therapy background.

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Jennie Largent: What would you suggest?

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Carla Cay Williams: So, are you asking what to suggest the person themselves do, or the person

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Jennie Largent: If you just, if you just were giving, a one-liner recommendation to somebody that is not in a regulated state, an adult.

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Jennie Largent: what would you just suggest them to start with? clearly, you don’t can’t diagnose anybody in this situation without any details, but

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Jennie Largent: In general, how would you prompt them to get curious about themselves?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, first of all, what I know about self-regulation is, until they’ve gotten an understanding about what’s happening to them.

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Carla Cay Williams: it would be really hard for them to make unless they already know a choice that works for them all the time that they just naturally do. The getting curious part, I guess, would be the first step. Like, it would it would be if it’s an individual adult, it would be the desire to know

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Carla Cay Williams: why this happens to me every time I’m in this situation, or what is this that’s going on, or, where did this where did this feeling come from, or why is it more intense sometimes and not as intense in other times? it would be literally becoming curious about what’s going on with themselves, because only when you start asking the questions to figure out can you figure it out.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and I and I would say that it, one of the, again, big lessons I learned, and this is kind of giving a little bit of a precursor to our next topic, but,

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Jennie Largent: It just doesn’t start with

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Jennie Largent: really addressing the emotions. Like, yes, it’s good to be self-aware and to name and discuss the emotions, but sometimes, like like, when I feel dysregulated, the first thing I need to do is move my body.

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Jennie Largent: I just need to move, right? Sometimes that’s I used to think it was a change of the environment, by the way. I used to think.

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Jennie Largent: that I was like, oh, stressful situation, I need to walk away. And I that sometimes is the case, but a lot of times it’s just I get an urge of my body is, like, something needs to change. So, I almost feel like it’s like it’s like, hey, move your body, right? Like, do something to feels better, right?

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Jennie Largent: either direction that you feel, if you’re, if you’re, does that, does that feel right to you?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, absolutely, and I think the reason that I didn’t go to that very first is that for some people, moving their body, like, literally getting movement, like walking or, going on a bike ride or whatever, that kind of moving your body could really be a great first choice. And for some people, the overwhelm in their body could be because of the overwhelm in the environment around them, and so

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Carla Cay Williams: For some people, literally finding a quiet place that doesn’t have as much stimulation or have as much going on where they can kind of disengage for a short time to just pull everything back together could be another, really, an option just as big as moving your body, but

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Carla Cay Williams: literally,

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Carla Cay Williams: moving your body is a way to completely change the neurochemistry that’s happening that’s causing some of the dysregulation in the first place. So yeah, either one of those two, I think, are would be things that a person could access right away, depending on what their nervous system needs are at the time.

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Jennie Largent: That’s a great call-out that, and I know that we’ll talk about this a little bit more later, but

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Jennie Largent: that’s my experience, right? Like, I bring my own personal biases, my own experience and lens.

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Jennie Largent: I tend to have an engine that runs a little higher, right? I tend to be, like, ready to go, operating, so it doesn’t surprise me that my body is telling me, and my nervous system, it typically leans on, hey, let’s get moving, right? Like, it wants to it wants to move in order to change my my state.

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Jennie Largent: I

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Jennie Largent: should not, and do not want to, assume that that’s the case for everyone else, right? There are going to be people like me, but there are also going to be people and then this also, I can be the person seeking the quiet room, too, right? Like, because we all change, and it’s like

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Jennie Largent: throughout the day, throughout the, the week, the month, the hour, the minute, right? We’re going through so many different changes that

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Jennie Largent: And we’re complicated people!

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes, absolutely.

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Jennie Largent: So, as we wrap up this topic, I just want to, be clear here that, regulation is a really big topic.

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Jennie Largent: We want to be clear about the intentional lenses that we use when we’re talking about this.

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Jennie Largent: We, when we say regulation, we might mean self-regulation, co-regulation, emotional, how our body senses and, senses our environment.

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Jennie Largent: And all of this affects our alertness.

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Jennie Largent: these things overlap, they’re not separate, neat little boxes. This is one of the things the analysts within my own brain has really had to accept.

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Jennie Largent: I really want to make this all clean and neat, but these are just all different ways of looking at ourselves, and it’s not it’s not a nice and tidy, perfect, perfect categorization.

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Jennie Largent: It’s also worth clarifying that Alert Program is not intended to replace

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Jennie Largent: other modalities, specifically, social-emotional learning. There are a lot of other, systems out there that

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Jennie Largent: really support the emotional side, and the executive functioning, and the academic learning. if you think about the learning pyramid, Carla, right? There’s a lot of stuff that supports

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Jennie Largent: higher up.

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Jennie Largent: I want to be really clear that we are just starting where the foundation is, right? We are making a point that you have to start with the body first, and if you do that, then the rest of this is going to be more effective.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes.

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Jennie Largent: Okay, thank you, Carla. That was a really, really great start to our conversation.

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Jennie Largent: as I go through the big aha moments that have really stuck with me as I’ve learned about the Alert Program® and this overall industry.

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Jennie Largent: One of the big things that I’ve walked away from is that people often try to talk or reason their way

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Jennie Largent: Through a difficult moment.

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Jennie Largent: they try to think their way, it’s all this very brainy thing. I do it, I’ve done it all my life, I feel like.

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Jennie Largent: What role does the body and sensory cues play in this,?

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Jennie Largent: And, and why can’t we just think our way to regulation effectively?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, one of the founders of the theory of sensory integration, which is the framework

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Carla Cay Williams: and the theory that the Alert Program® was built on, really was a neuroscientist and a behavioral scientist who became an occupational therapist and really just saw that, there were when you look at someone who has a learning disability or someone who is, posturally or physically struggling with movement.

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Carla Cay Williams: A lot of the areas

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Carla Cay Williams: that allow them not to move forward are based in our foundational sensory systems, and she really created a flow chart that really looked at the sensory systems as being the foundation for moving into higher-level skill and learning.

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Carla Cay Williams: And, there was an occupational therapist and a teacher here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Carla Cay Williams: who took that information and put it into a visual framework that now is used all over the world. A lot of the reason it’s used all over the world is because the Alert Program® uses this as a foundation for

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Carla Cay Williams: Why to provide sensory input in order to get the higher level skills that we’re looking for, like attention and behavior and social interactions and all of our skills that we need for school, the auditory and the visual and the language and the fine motor, all of those things.

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Carla Cay Williams: are on the top of what we call the pyramid of Learning. And,

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Carla Cay Williams: So the pyramid of learning not only has the foundational sensory systems, it also is based on the flat foundation of our nervous system. And every nervous system, whether it be animal or human, needs the same things to survive, right? So, we’re not only just looking at the sensory systems, but there could be lots of reasons for behavior and

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Carla Cay Williams: for difficulty learning and growing in skill that have only just to do with being an alive being, and taking into account things like sleep, and nutrition and water, and breath, and relationship. All of those things that are paramount to us just surviving as humans are also

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Carla Cay Williams: we have to also take those into account when we’re looking at self-regulation, right? Because if you’re hungry, or you’re thirsty, or you haven’t gotten any sleep, or you have not moved your body and exercised for 3 days, all of that is going to affect your arousal state and your ability to self-regulate. So, we look at all of those things, as well as

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Carla Cay Williams: the input from our environment that we’re able to take in and use effectively in order to make adaptive responses that match the situation that we’re in, or that allow us to be in a place for learning. If we are not self-regulated.

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Carla Cay Williams: We cannot manage our emotions, we cannot learn new things, we cannot be in control of our bodies, and so that’s kind of the foundation from the early science and the early theories of sensory integration that really is the framework, where this framework developed from.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and I really, just put another way.

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Jennie Largent: I’ve seen this many times in my own life, I’ve seen it in HR. HR conversations are not always the most, positive. there’s a lot of emotions that can come on, and especially when you’re dealing with performance.

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Jennie Largent: And when people get flooded or overstimulated or overwhelmed.

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Jennie Largent: their body kind of takes over. And I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, like, public speaking, this, like you mentioned, sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation as an adult is a really, like, that, that’s one that I can really.

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Jennie Largent: Empathize and feel, right? Like, when I have not had sleep.

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Jennie Largent: I can actually feel my capacity has lessened, right? And

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Jennie Largent: I will be the tantrum-y, toddler.

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Jennie Largent: for that entire time, until I get my rest.

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Jennie Largent: You’re not gonna talk me into a good mood. You’re not gonna talk me into being able to think more wise wisely, right? My my ability to make

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Jennie Largent: difficult, smart decisions, and be able to self-manage

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Jennie Largent: It’s just like that it’s like that that just turned off, and it’s like it’s like, what you’re talking about is

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Jennie Largent: is how do I engage with my nervous system and my body to turn those things back on?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes, that’s it.

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Jennie Largent: Okay, so, Carla, you have been sharing a lot of your perspective about

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Jennie Largent: just what how you’ve seen Alert Program work in, in people’s lives and in your own career.

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Jennie Largent: You founded KidPower, the clinic in Albuquerque, decades ago. You still support them, is that correct? You’re no longer the owner. You founded them. Actually, you want to take a moment and share a little bit about KidPower?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, we, started KidPower about 30 it’s gonna be 35 years, ago, and, I had amazing mentors in a clinic where I worked, previously, and really based how Kid Power was gonna run based on what I learned from them. And so, we’re just a family-centered

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Carla Cay Williams: private practice clinic that provides occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language therapy for kids, and we are family-centered and also, clinic-centered because we, as therapists, we all work together as a team. The OTs, the PTs, the speech therapists, really, we, spend a lot of time collaborating on the kids, and then also the families are involved in the therapy as well.

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Carla Cay Williams: like them to be back in the clinic with us, learning when and how they can, and again, this kind of a clinic situation lends itself perfectly to doing a whole, family, group-centered therapy around a child’s self-regulation. It’s one of the facets of the things that we do.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and it was a really, an honor, Carla, to be able to see your team, really, I got to see them go through, a day of training with you, and really saw the care and the dedication, and there was just so much magic. You can tell the

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Jennie Largent: that this group really, cares about the families that they’re supporting, and, they were just showing up with bells on, and I just appreciate that so much. I see that

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Jennie Largent: a lot in this industry, and that’s one of the things that really, touches my heart. when you come from, a background of finance and business, you can kind of lose touch of that a little bit, and it’s just been so beautiful to see

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Jennie Largent: the magic of really just helping people be more, engaged with their own life, right? That’s what you’re doing. You’re helping, the children that you support engage, but you’re also helping their entire family unit engage.

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Jennie Largent: Right?

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Carla Cay Williams: Absolutely.

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Jennie Largent: Well, I would love to hear some, whatever amount of stories I, I just feel like there’s so many nuggets

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Jennie Largent: of beautiful magic, and heartwarming real impacts that I have heard and seen, with watching you and watching your team, and

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Jennie Largent: And this overall industry work. what are some of the top ones that you could share with us today that really help us see the power of Alert Program specifically?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, the first one is actually the very first group that we ever did at Kid Power when we when we very first started. We were very small, and we had

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Carla Cay Williams: two full-time OTs, a full-time speech therapist, and a part-time PT. And, the speech therapist had actually come from, the other clinic that we had worked at, too, and so she was a little bit familiar with the How Does Your Engine Run program, and she really wanted to bring in, from the speech-language perspective, the speech and language and,

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Carla Cay Williams: friendship, communication, getting to getting to create relationship part of the whole being in a group, and so we co

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Carla Cay Williams: did a group together of 4-year-olds, and we wanted these kids to do this group together because they were all getting ready to go to kindergarten, they were all very dysregulated in very different ways.

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Carla Cay Williams: And, they were all about the same age, and they all had these great families who were really interested in learning how to help them, so we took the summer and just did it. We were gonna do an 8-week group, teach them the How Does Your Engine Run program, involve some social skills training and that sort of thing, so that when they were ready to go to kindergarten, they’d be ready to go to kindergarten.

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Carla Cay Williams: And so, we had gone through the whole summer, and they were doing great, and the parents said, whoa.

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Carla Cay Williams: this is now our kindergarten support group. We are not stopping. We want this group to keep going until the school year is going, so that we make sure we’ve got this covered. And so, that was a that was number one, a big hint that, this information was valuable even for kids and families that were four years old. when they first created the program, the

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Carla Cay Williams: the co-creators really talked about, kids would have to be at kind of a cognitive level, because there was going to be some cognitive learning and cognitive language, and we did that with 4-year-olds, and it worked just great. We did it with 4-year-old language, and they learned it. But the coolest thing was, in part of our getting to know well, the first thing that we did was we just went to a school.

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Carla Cay Williams: got a teacher to lend us a kindergarten classroom, and we went to a school, and we went and practiced, and we practiced on the playground, and we practiced in the classroom, and we practiced doing head, shoulders, knees, and toes, and we practiced doing the hokey pokey that they would have to do in circle time, and what about if you don’t know the movements, and what about if sitting too long makes your engine go too high? And,

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Carla Cay Williams: Then, the next thing that came up in the fall was the International Balloon Fiesta here in Albuquerque, and in the course of, again, working with these families, they say, oh my goodness, we could never go to the Balloon Fiesta. Our kid could never make it through the Balloon Fiesta. It just ruins our family trip, we just don’t even do it. Or if we do, he goes to Grandma’s, and we go do the Balloon Fiesta. So, Mary and I looked at each other and said, okay.

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Carla Cay Williams: let’s get them ready to go to the balloon fiesta. So we did. We practiced, we figured out what was going to help them regulate when it was too loud, when there was too many people, when there were balloons shooting up in the air. When there were fireworks, we went ended up going to the balloon glow. We didn’t get up in the morning and go, we went to the afternoon-evening balloon glow. So there were fireworks afterwards, and,

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Carla Cay Williams: we didn’t look the same as all the other families that were going to the balloon fiesta, because we had headphones, and we had backpacks, and we had Chewies in our mouth, and we had weighted vests on, and we had all the things that we needed. We had a quiet place that we had organized and set up in a corner where they could leave the balloon park and go over to a corner of the park and just have a quiet place to regroup if they needed to. And we had the best night ever.

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Carla Cay Williams: And to me, that’s always shown the power of what it can do when there’s just a common language. And really, if I had to say, that story would transfer over to tens of hundreds of kids and families who learn the Alert Program®.

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Carla Cay Williams: who have a common language, who honor and understand each other’s differing nervous systems, and what where the mismatches can happen in a day, and can call it out, and say what it is, and support each other to get what they need, to feel better, and be able to come back and join the family group. Like I said, those could be those could be a hundred stories told over and over, because just

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Carla Cay Williams: the more we do it, the more families, get to experience that. So, yeah, it’s just powerful. And then I could really say the same thing for schools. Schools with kids of all different ages, all different levels of functioning, all the way from nonverbal, kids with autism, kids with severe developmental disabilities, to teenagers who

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Carla Cay Williams: were in a classroom, again, where the OT and the speech therapist just worked together.

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Carla Cay Williams: to help these boys learn how to move their bodies, what things were available to them in the classroom, how to let an adult know if their engine was too high or too low, or if they were in just right and ready to do learning. And it just became a common thing that they did every day, and just became a part of the boys’ routines, and gave them so much autonomy in the classroom.

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Carla Cay Williams: When they didn’t have any before, because there was no way to access it. It’s just and really, any school, any group that’s been trained, psychologists, counselors, therapists, teachers, families, would probably have the same kinds of stories that they could tell, just about how

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Carla Cay Williams: They can just shift the

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Carla Cay Williams: Shift the kind of whole level of the of the group situation that they’re in, because they’re able to

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Carla Cay Williams: Talk about it in a way that makes sense to everyone.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and I love that last story, and for anybody that’s listening, if you take the online course, you will have access to these stories. Some of these, at least, not all of what you’re sharing today, but the one that you just spoke about with the teen boys.

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Jennie Largent: It really, you’ll be able to see a video of this example if you take the course, but because sometimes it can be hard to imagine if you don’t see the full thing, but really what I gather from that

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Jennie Largent: is it’s an example of how you can co-regulate with an older person, right? We tend to, especially when you’re, you tend to be in the OT world, focused on the earlier side, which is, we are definitely able to apply this system for

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Jennie Largent: those without language, right? early, early years. But then also, when someone’s older, sometimes it’s

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Jennie Largent: I’m just assuming here, and putting myself into your shoes, I think it would be a little

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Jennie Largent: Less obvious, Of how to support someone that’s older, right?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, it’s

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Jennie Largent: It’s not, like, people probably feel a little more comfortable really getting close to, physically close to a smaller child and really co-regulating with them. It’s a little different for somebody that’s, say, 17 years old.

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Carla Cay Williams: And that’s that’s, again, the beauty of the Alert Program®. And actually, one of the cool things is, the co-founders just rewrote the manual, the book, and in it just put, like.

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Carla Cay Williams: a multitude more of examples and ideas for kids who are teenagers, because you’re right, not every kid, not every teenage kid is going to want to talk about their engine. And so, there’s a lot of ways to do that that would be kind of more teenage or adult related, to

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Carla Cay Williams: really just, again, begin to have that conversation with them to figure out a way to make them more functional in different situations that they’re finding challenging for themselves, yeah.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and I yeah, and I see a lot of this, it’s just it’s helping the individual understand what’s going on. Like, all of this, no matter the age, like, I see this happening for the very young and the older, where

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Jennie Largent: They you’re bringing them along on the ride, and they’re

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Jennie Largent: part of building the ride. And because of that, it really does empower them.

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Jennie Largent: That’s a really, really

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, that, the Alert Program® is not about adults teaching other people

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Carla Cay Williams: how to do something. It’s really working together to figure out, by getting feedback from the literal person, whether it be by a conversation or by really taking the time to observe the person who can’t respond verbally or physically very well. Just taking lots of time to observe. Is it helping? Is it not helping? Is it working? Is it not working? Is this

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Carla Cay Williams: Giving them joy and jubilation and empowerment, or is this

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Carla Cay Williams: just not allowing them to be who they want to be at this moment. So, yeah, that’s another great thing about it, is that the program is developed with the people that you’re working with. It’s not something that we’re saying, we have all the answers and we’re going to teach it to you.

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Jennie Largent: Right, this doesn’t feel like the, you should XYZ kind of mood, right? Like, we’re not we’re not working our finger at anybody. We’re getting curious, and we’re leaning in, and we’re saying, hey.

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Jennie Largent: What’s gonna help you feel better, right?

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Carla Cay Williams: Yep.

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Jennie Largent: All right, so just in conclusion of kind of what I’m seeing here, my big takeaways for this part of our conversation is that people with limited abilities can still be empowered to do more with co-regulation. Like, we really can

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Jennie Largent: help them with small movements and small strategies, we can make them it may look small to us, but it can really be empowering for them.

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Jennie Largent: This is applicable to the very, very young, with no language.

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Jennie Largent: all the way to the elderly lady, in a nursing home that might be facing dementia, or some other cognitive challenges that cognitive and physical, right? This person can also take advantage of this system if the people supporting her, knew it.

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Jennie Largent: And also, I feel like the magic, again, is not forcing calm. It’s about being curious and intentional, and not assuming. part of this is questioning our own, and pausing, and questioning our own assumptions during this.

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Carla Cay Williams: Hmm, yes.

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Jennie Largent: All right, carla. Thank you so much for this. This has been a great conversation. I as we get down to the last part of this, I just see, when I back up and look at the OTs that I’ve met, and the people that are doing this work.

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Jennie Largent: I’m really taken aback by the fact that this is this is both intuitive work and highly scientific, evidence-based work.

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Jennie Largent: There’s a need for

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Jennie Largent: sensing and really feeling, and, like, really paying attention to whatever your body and your mind is giving you information. But also, there’s a need for precise discernment.

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Jennie Largent: OTs are have gone through strenuous academic learning, to be able to train their brain to be able to

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Jennie Largent: To not just make, biased-filled assumptions.

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Jennie Largent: how do you view this, like, how do you tell other, OTs? Let’s just imagine that, you’re coaching a younger peer of yours.

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Jennie Largent: How do you suggest that they balance this?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, these days in OT school, therapists are just really getting a lot of the scientific evidence. They talk a lot about evidence-based practice, and

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Carla Cay Williams: Using techniques and strategies that are proven to work, and it’s kind of one of the great things about the Alert Program®. There’s so much research that has been done on it, both from taking bits and pieces of the scientific research about

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Carla Cay Williams: each of the sensory systems, but also many research projects done on the Alert Program® itself, or using tenants of the Alert Program® itself. So, it’s kind of great that with any therapist that I were to talk to about it, I could say, yeah, it’s evidence-based, based on all the research that’s been done.

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Carla Cay Williams: Then comes the therapeutic part. In occupational therapy, we call it therapeutic use of self. So, we get taught and we’re encouraged to really spend time developing relationships with the people that we work with, because in relationship, and

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Carla Cay Williams: in learning about the other person, we find out what is their occupation? What is it that their is their life’s work? What is it that they’re wanting to do? So, the occupation of a person who just had a stroke will not may be going back to their job, but it also may be going back to now figuring out how to cook in their kitchen.

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Carla Cay Williams: with this new body that they have after having a stroke. And so, everything we do is based on the

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Carla Cay Williams: the occupation or the drive or the desire of the person that we’re working with. And so, really what this program, the steps and stages of this program, allow us to do regarding self-regulation when that’s not accessible to a person is to use the science of what we know works for each of the sensory systems, find out

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Carla Cay Williams: what is going to work the best for that person, and then find a way to help them put those things into what they’re doing every day to reach the goal that they want to reach in whatever setting or situation that they’re in. So it’s just all part of, our clinical reasoning, our, goal setting and planning with the person that we’re working with.

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Carla Cay Williams: just Bringing those two things together.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I really love I feel like this would be really satisfying work to do. If I put myself in an OT’s shoes.

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Jennie Largent: There’s something really beautiful about the balance there that you just spoke about, and

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Jennie Largent: I see this as

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Jennie Largent: when people learn an individual learns, this system, and a group adopts this system, what it’s doing is it’s just

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Jennie Largent: helping the

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Jennie Largent: the expert get in touch with their own expertise, right? It’s like, alright, you’ve got all this great knowledge with all these million different tools at your disposal.

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Jennie Largent: What is the Simple and practical system.

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Jennie Largent: that is going to allow you to leverage your expertise in the way that you, already know how to do. Now, how now it’s like, how do we get this into a system that is going to work not only for our brains, right, but for all of the brains that we’re trying to engage with, right? The moms, the

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Jennie Largent: aides, the, you name it, right? Not everybody has our education.

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Jennie Largent: So, how do we How do we

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Jennie Largent: Share that with a very group that could be third grade education, could be

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Jennie Largent: Having their own disabilities of their own right that aren’t, supported, right?

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Carla Cay Williams: Right.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah.

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Jennie Largent: Beautiful work, beautiful work.

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Jennie Largent: Okay, so Carla, stepping back a bit, I’m just gonna make an assumption here that sensory experiences have

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Jennie Largent: probably impacted your entire life, and probably all the other people in your life.

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Jennie Largent: I would love to just, hear kind of how you’re seeing this

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Jennie Largent: pop up in your day-to-day, right? Take off your OT hat.

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Jennie Largent: And, and, and where do you just see this just, just showing up?

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Carla Cay Williams: You mean for me personally?

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, just, just, yeah, in your, in your life, in your day-to-day.

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Carla Cay Williams: Oh, well, one of the ways we learn how to self-regulate in the Alert Program® is, through the mouth, and I am a mouth self-regulator, for sure. I probably would be could be called an emotional eater. I definitely like.

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Jennie Largent: Thank you.

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Carla Cay Williams: That’s my dream.

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Carla Cay Williams: I like to chew my gum, I like to touch my face, I like to have a piece of candy in my mouth, I always look forward to the eating part, one of my favorite things. So, for me, every day, the way that I self-regulate, like you had said, what would you tell an adult to do? And for me, it’s get something in my mouth. If I can be

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Carla Cay Williams: Doing something with my mouth, I’m usually

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Carla Cay Williams: Pretty regulated, so that would be a more common thing for me.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, I can see that. And I probably I’m just gonna assume, because I can see this applying to my day-to-day, too, where I just see these little like, I’ll have little interactions with people, once I learned the system and the application, little interactions started to shift for me, where I would see opportunities to

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Jennie Largent: be more intentional about how I show up.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, it’s really true. It kind of helps you learn how to be aware of what a situation might be ahead of time, and then be prepared to go into that situation, especially if it’s going to be difficult, rather than going in, having the reaction, and then having to deal with it afterwards,? It always feels better if you can go in prepared a little bit.

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Jennie Largent: Now, this doesn’t mean that we’re trying to perfect. I just want to point this out. It just kind of, as we’re talking and, we’re talking about being intentional, we’re talking about planning.

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Jennie Largent: there are some people, I don’t know any, but some people out there might overthink, right, and try to try to perfect this stuff, right?

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Jennie Largent: Talk about that for a second.

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, there isn’t perfection, because it’s ever-changing. Like you talked about at the very beginning, we can have our best ideas, and if anybody has ever worked with another human being in their life in a supportive role, that what works one time doesn’t always work the next time. And so, yeah, it’s not about being perfect, but it’s really about increasing your repertoire of tools, increasing the

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Carla Cay Williams: Quivers in your, in your

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Carla Cay Williams: in your arrow kit, it’s arrows, I guess, increasing the arrows in your kit, just so that you have more tools to choose from, when you need to find something to help another person or yourself feel better or feel more functional in the situation.

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Jennie Largent: Yep, makes a lot of sense.

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Jennie Largent: Okay, so, carla, we’ve talked about, a lot, a lot of different applications of the Alert Program®. I really want to

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Jennie Largent: pause and kind of back up a little bit. It is very clear. It’s been documented and essentially proven, it’s evidence-based, and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of very serious research.

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Jennie Largent: really proves that this is a effective and effective system for youth, right? And specifically disabled youth.

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Jennie Largent: I would like to take and just

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Jennie Largent: Let’s theorize, what could this look like?

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Jennie Largent: when you apply it to people outside of that world, specifically, people just in the workforce. as I’ve mentioned before, and anybody that knows me knows that, I come from the business HR perspective.

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Jennie Largent: And, my fellow HR people, we’ve got some overlap with the OTs, right? We’re keen observers, too.

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Jennie Largent: And we’re paying attention to a lot of different voices, right? An HR executive is going to, have lots of different, directives and goals.

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Jennie Largent: And probably not many of those goals listed actually say

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Jennie Largent: hey, help your people feel better, but if your people are actually feeling better and feeling supported, they’re probably gonna do their job a little bit better. And, how many different times have

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Jennie Largent: we as HR people heard or talked about, like, when the word accommodation comes up.

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Jennie Largent: I don’t know about you, and I’m speaking to my HR people, oh my god, that word makes me get a little a little I get a little weird feeling, right? Because there’s legality, right? There’s a lot of legality in that word.

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Jennie Largent: There’s a lot of risks embedded in that word, and we kind of get

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Jennie Largent: taught to think more like the risk and the business manager, and we kind of I don’t know, I tend to be,

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Jennie Largent: kind of, it’s like, almost like they want me, the they want me to really focus on the bottom line of the financial, piece of this, and it makes me forget about the person that’s actually here, right in front of me.

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Jennie Largent: So, with that kind of in mind, I’d love to hear what you would want a manager.

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Jennie Largent: to get curious about. one of the things that is embedded in our program is the idea of being a detective.

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Jennie Largent: We have not talked about that yet, but I would just summarize being a detective as, as getting really curious, intentionally curious, about what feedback somebody is offering.

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Jennie Largent: And then testing out different strategies to try to get them in a different state.

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Jennie Largent: I’m really curious how you see that applying to just and you can just you can imagine this in any industry you want. Imagine all the fluorescent lights, and the QC of cubicles, in that world, is this is this applicable?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, I think there’s so many facets to that question, because very first, as an HR person who would be wanting to look at this overall, is that I would hope that that person had a really clear

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Carla Cay Williams: Sense and knowledge and

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Carla Cay Williams: experience of the culture of whatever the company is that they’re working for, because it’s like, we’ve been talking a lot about families or teachers in classrooms.

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Carla Cay Williams: There’s definitely a culture in a classroom. There’s definitely a culture in a family, there’s expectations that the adults have for how things are gonna go, about what they want for their children.

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Carla Cay Williams: just transfer that language to a company. There’s a culture in a company

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Carla Cay Williams: And there’s something that the company wants from their workers, from their team members. There’s a common goal, often, that the whole team is working for. There’s, success that,

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Carla Cay Williams: From the top to the bottom that people want to see, and so

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Carla Cay Williams: that culture would have to be really clear, because if the expectations are not clear, then people don’t know what response they’re supposed to have, how they’re supposed to be in that environment, what’s expected of them. They just kind of take the feedback from what they’re watching all around them, but they could be totally off. So, I always think that starting at the beginning with.

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Carla Cay Williams: what are the expectations, and

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Carla Cay Williams: In the Alert Program®, there’s a really great amount of time spent on having those conversations with all the adults, that the adults kind of know

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Carla Cay Williams: what is it that makes you tick? What is it that works for you? What do you have to what do you have to do and have to be prepared to meet the expectation that’s put in front of you? Whether it be getting yourself to work on time, or keeping your space organized, or working, in a in a bunch of in a cubicle with all the other people when you need music, or you need to talk.

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Carla Cay Williams: or you need whatever, and you need to bring your food in there, and it doesn’t work for everybody else to be smelling the food. Who knows what it is, but you can’t even have those conversations until there’s a clear understanding of what are we trying to do here? if you look at some companies, they’re very

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Carla Cay Williams: Cubicle, wear your suit, wear quiet.

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Carla Cay Williams: we don’t mingle, except at the water cooler, and if that’s the culture, the person would have to know, I really want to fit in this culture, so here’s what I’m going to have to do to fit in this culture.

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Carla Cay Williams: On the flip side, there are cultures like where Bill Gates is the head, or you’re working at Pixar, where nobody sits in a chair. They’re riding skateboards and scooter boards and playing pool and ping pong and shooting baskets while they’re doing their work. And then there are people who are doing great work when they’re not even at the office. They’re at home in their own sensory-safe environment.

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Carla Cay Williams: Where they can do everything they need to be at their most effective work level, and they’re busting it out however many hours a day, maybe an hour here and an hour there, and three hours there, but they’re getting it done, and so

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Carla Cay Williams: those are just all conversations that the HR person would be able should be able to have with any employee on any level, knowing what’s expected from the top, and then being able to support the people that they’re supporting to be as successful as they can in that culture.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes, get them?

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Jennie Largent: And I also think having the invitation. Like, if you had, I’m imagining myself at a large company, you have the president of the company, or the head of your HR, your people. If you had somebody realistic stand out there and say, look.

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Jennie Largent: You matter?

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Jennie Largent: the way that you show up at work matters to us. We all have this shared goal.

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Jennie Largent: But you are a human that has a body, and we see that.

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Jennie Largent: And You are allowed and invited to share what your needs are.

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Jennie Largent: how powerful that could be. I was left to do this, just as everyone else has been. I was left to figure this out on my own. And I’m grateful that I was able to do that. I came up with my own models. Truly, I did. I came up with my own method of handling this, because that’s what I had to do.

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Jennie Largent: if somebody at the top had genuinely, and if I had seen it continually be, it wasn’t just talk, right? If somebody had actually shown up and said, look, your accommodations matter, and I got the feeling from the HR team.

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Jennie Largent: that accommodations wasn’t a dirty word, right? Because HR tends to not want to offer up this conversation, because what’s the difference between and just imagine, like, you’re in charge of HR, you’re you’re already

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Jennie Largent: your to-do list is already crazy, and then you’re going to say, hey, what else can I do to make you happy? Like, people are just gonna people are just gonna give you a load of complaints, potentially, right? So, it can feel a little, intimidating to do.

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Jennie Largent: But if we lean into that, and we don’t get scared of the outcome.

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Jennie Largent: I feel like this could be really, really powerful, and it reminds me of the you’ve mentioned it before, Carla, the Comfort-Safety Continuum.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes, yeah. So, what the Comfort Safety Continuum really says is that at the very foundation, any person or any

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Carla Cay Williams: Any live being has to feel comfortable and safe. That’s the most important thing. We all operate from needing to feel comfortable and safe in our own nervous system and in the space around us. When we feel comfortable and safe, we

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Carla Cay Williams: develop a little confidence. We kind of feel like, okay, I think I got this. I think I think I feel confident. And when you’re confident, you’re willing to take a risk.

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Carla Cay Williams: And when you take a risk, and it works out, or you feel like, oh my gosh, I think I see how this is all supposed to be, you develop competence. And competence is, like, where we all want to be. We all want to walk into a situation feeling competent. And when you do walk into a situation and feel competent, you already feel

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Carla Cay Williams: more comfortable and safe, which gives you even more confidence to take even more risks, to develop even more competence, and it’s just this cycle that keeps happening.

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Jennie Largent: Right?

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Jennie Largent: And I can see and feel that this is a this would allow

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Jennie Largent: I can feel this in my own body, that the more I’m those little micro-moments of support, oh, I was able to say, hey, those fluorescent lights.

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Jennie Largent: at 6 AM, made my head hurt.

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Jennie Largent: can we, not turn them on and let the natural light do its work? Like.

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Jennie Largent: Like, that is not a wild thing to request. Yet, when I back up and remember the moments when I was a junior employee.

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Jennie Largent: I did not feel like that was something I could have said, not without now, I’m a loudmouth either way, so I’m gonna do it no matter what. But, people that aren’t like me, might feel, different about this. I’ve actually seen

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Jennie Largent: people have A true panic attack.

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Jennie Largent: Because they’re given a directive, by their superior.

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Jennie Largent: And they don’t see any other room around that.

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Jennie Largent: Right? They just see the directive, and then, if they’re in a

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Jennie Largent: challenge where something isn’t working for them, right? Either the environment, or the computer setup, or whatever have you,?

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Jennie Largent: If that’s if you’re struggling with that, and someone comes in and says, do this thing, and they have power, and you feel that, and you want to be a good worker, that can create a horrible internal experience.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yes.

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Jennie Largent: But, if you do feel, right, supported and, like, you can go in and

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Jennie Largent: ask for something without having your head chopped off, and that people start and also, I feel like people can if people experienced HR in this kind of way, right, where it was like, hey, I’m not scared of your requests.

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Jennie Largent: hey, I want to actually support you and your body and your nervous system, it probably would make people look at the whole term HR less scary, right? When people in a company, say you’ve worked at a company for 30 years, and HR calls you Friday at 2 p.m.

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Jennie Largent: oh my god, you’re scared. You’re not that’s not you’re not assuming that that HR meeting is going to be a positive one, right? And so it’s like, what can I do to actually shift because a lot of these people that come to this work, Carla.

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Jennie Largent: they’re just like the OTs that come, they come from a different, maybe they have different skills, a little bit different, lens, but they want to help people. People get into HR not because they want to do, payroll reports.

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Jennie Largent: or whatever, right? They do it because they want to help people succeed. So I really think that this, could open up, a whole other coma- conversation, not just around accommodations. Accommodations is a big one, because I think that that one can be tricky for people.

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Jennie Largent: But also, I just think that it just helps us treat each other like we’re humans, and recognize that we all have bodies, and being a detective, right, is not gonna hurt us in any part of our life.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah.

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Jennie Largent: Alright, so some of the things that I’ve taken away from this is, what we observe isn’t automatically a behavior problem to correct, not only with children, but also performance and behavior with adults in the workplace.

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Jennie Largent: This can be a cue for us to get curious about what a person needs.

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Jennie Largent: This could totally change how HR leaders view accommodations, and talk about it.

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Jennie Largent: And It also impacts how I view performance reviews.

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Jennie Largent: would this be a good time for an employee to ask for sensory support? Let’s just put ourselves in a situation where

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Jennie Largent: Hey, Carla!

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Jennie Largent: It’s time for your review. You didn’t do so great. You, had 4 goals, and you reached one of them barely.

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Jennie Largent: What’s going on?

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Jennie Largent: Right? What would that look like if

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Jennie Largent: Carla, you felt comfortable in admitting that you were struggling.

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, the first thing that I think of is, could there be work even before

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Carla Cay Williams: that meeting where the employee was encouraged to share a little bit about, first of all, is there anything I, as the HR person can do to help make this meeting feel comfortable and safe for you? Like, what do you need? Like, for some people, it may even be meeting at a certain time of the day, or can they bring their tea in with them?

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Carla Cay Williams: When they come to the meeting.

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Jennie Largent: I’m hearing flexibility, that there’s a flexibility in the way that, because in your OT world, you are automatically assuming, and this just is coming to me right now, but, like, you’re automatically assuming that this other person and this whole other body

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Jennie Largent: has

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Jennie Largent: preferences. Not necessarily preferences thought out like this, but nervous system preferences, right? And you’re assuming that that is A true, B,

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Jennie Largent: And then, and then B is that it’s different, and that you can’t just automatically see it, right? You’ve got to engage with a person to discover what their specific preferences are.

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Jennie Largent: And we could ask, also, the employees to get curious, right? Even just saying, hey, staff, like, let’s just say, how many wellness things do, companies offer? And that, a lot of times, is a place, a time period for

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Jennie Largent: you’d go on your big long coffee walk, or take a 2-hour lunch, or snooze, whatever, right? And it’s like, it’s like, if that were actually

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Jennie Largent: They taken seriously, this would be part of their wellness programs.

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Carla Cay Williams: I, I really think, now that you say that out loud, the Alert Program® is a perfect wellness program.

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Carla Cay Williams: I think it just would be wellness across the whole, the whole corporation.

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Jennie Largent: You’re gauging the own individual, because it’s like, not only am I seeing an invitation for HR and the staff to work differently together, but it’s also just an invitation of, hey, you as an individual, take a breather.

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Jennie Largent: Let’s all check in with ourselves.

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Jennie Largent: And any leader, I will just say, any leader that feels, clammy about this.

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Jennie Largent: And starts wondering how much productivity you’re gonna lose?

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Jennie Largent: then we need to back way up, because I just want to challenge that that if you have that kind of assumption.

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Jennie Largent: then this whole system is not nothing’s gonna work. Because you have to I fundamentally, truly in my heart, believe that as a business leader, you have to respect a person’s own autonomy and ability to self-manage.

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Jennie Largent: And that they can get things done on their own. And, and for you, and there’s value in being able to support their ability to just

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Jennie Largent: feel good, and show up authentically, because that’s when you’re going to get people that do that really extra magic work, that, that you’re really getting the best out of people. to your point earlier, you were talking about how

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Jennie Largent: Someone needs to feel supported. If you are walking towards an HR conversation, and all you’re thinking about is, oh my god, I’m getting fired, or I’m getting in trouble, and there’s no consideration about your experience.

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Jennie Largent: It’s not gonna leave people with a good feeling.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, and it’s kind of like how we would talk about quote-unquote behaviors, when this comes up with a family, like, oh my god, I’m gonna be spending all this time giving them what they need, or some people even see it as rewarding negative behaviors, right? Like, when you do something for them that’s supposed to be making them feel better, it’s like you’re rewarding their negative behavior, and actually, it’s quite the opposite.

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Carla Cay Williams: When you say the behaviors are getting in the way of best performance, what we say is, if you give them what they need in order not to experience that dysregulation, give them what they need so that they feel regulated most of the time, you’re gonna get

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Carla Cay Williams: all the time of regulated performance. If you’re constantly trying to react to whatever the behavior is, or, try and fix it after it’s happened, you’re spending all of your time doing that, rather than setting the person up for success.

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Jennie Largent: Yes, yes. And I also think that, just in general.

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Jennie Largent: Business leaders need to hear this. Control is completely an illusion.

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Carla Cay Williams: I’m serious.

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Jennie Largent: Right? Like, if you really think that you can force someone to do one way or another, like, yeah, you’re gonna have some abusers. Yeah, you’re gonna we always have, like, we’re look at all any any sliver of life. How many places do we have the 10-20%

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Jennie Largent: People that are bad actors.

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Jennie Largent: It just happens. But guess what? HR systems, this is where HR people already are excelling well. We are really good at using, just like OTs, we use both our intuition, our, observation skills and feeling things out, and also, we’ve got systems that make it really

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Jennie Largent: clean and straightforward when it’s an actual performance behavior problem. If somebody is actually abusing the benefit

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Jennie Largent: You’re going to sniff that out real quick.

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Jennie Largent: Okay, so, one of the big things that, I’m learning right now, I’m just hearing this over and over again, is that we could all learn from each other.

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Jennie Largent: Education can learn from, clinics.

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Jennie Largent: Business can learn from educations, education people, like, we all should step out of our own little silo for a bit, and look at the other corner of what other people are doing, because

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Jennie Largent: Business could really learn from what’s already working on the education side. And I get that there’s a lot of people out there that would probably assume that this stuff isn’t applicable to them because they don’t work with children.

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Jennie Largent: And I just want to remind you that you have a nervous system, too, and if you think that you’re anything other than a big kid, then you’re fooling yourself.

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Jennie Largent: Alright, so, in closing, Carla, this has been a really, beautiful conversation. I’ve really enjoyed this.

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Jennie Largent: what’s keeping you excited today? you’ve I feel like I could not describe your bio, even if I had a whole other hour to go, so I can only imagine what area of, of fun you’re into, but just, what’s getting you really excited these days?

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Carla Cay Williams: Well, just just the fact that, I guess, these kind of conversations are continuing, because as long as we can talk about it, and people can start looking at this sort of thing in a different way, it’s just exciting that there might be more interest in, taking into account. I think,

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Carla Cay Williams: the reality of COVID really brought this out in a lot of people. I think people got to get very introspective during that time about what it is that makes them tick, and you hear stories about all the creativity that came out when people were just home with themselves. You,

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Carla Cay Williams: you get the stories of how people who realized how much better they could work at home happened when they really got to work at home, how many businesses are now allowing people to work at home because that really worked for them. And on the flip side, how many people found, oh my gosh, when I am not in my social realm.

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Carla Cay Williams: I don’t function very well. I need social, I need interaction, I need people. I need to go to the office. I need to be there in a room with all those people.

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Carla Cay Williams: I can’t do it on a screen. you can have all 20 people on our team on a screen, but I can’t be I can’t be my best self there. And so, really.

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Carla Cay Williams: that situation just really allowed a lot of these conversations to start, even in a different, deeper way. And so, I’m just excited that the conversations are happening, and gosh knows, in this world right now, we need ways to see that every individual with every individual difference they have is a really important individual, and they are going to do things the way that

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Carla Cay Williams: work the best for them so that they can be the best person that they can be, and it’s not going to look the same way as I or you are gonna do it. And on the deeper level.

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Carla Cay Williams: that’s the bigger conversation that I’m just really glad that even a little conversation like this might open up for people to see that, like, one of the things I say when I’m teaching the Engine program is.

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Carla Cay Williams: I don’t believe that children, so I’ll just change that to people, I do not believe that most people wake up

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Carla Cay Williams: And the first thing they think about is how they’re gonna go out and ruin everybody’s day. I just don’t believe people get up to find a way to ruin people’s days. Everyone’s just trying to wake up and do the best that they can.

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Carla Cay Williams: In whatever situation that they’re in, and as long as we’re coming at it from that place where we have no idea what that takes for any individual person, unless we’re willing to have that conversation with them. And especially if you’re a support person.

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Carla Cay Williams: who needs to support a person to be their best person every day. Having that conversation is so meaningful, and if you’re questioning

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Carla Cay Williams: why someone might be doing something the way they’re doing it. The question really is, huh, what about doing it that way helps you? Why is that what’s working for you there? Help me understand that, because that doesn’t work for me,? It’s a conversation. No blame, no shame.

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Carla Cay Williams: Just a conversation.

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Jennie Largent: That’s the thing, that’s the beauty of this, is that none of this is judgment. Like, so many

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Jennie Largent: times I’ve seen

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Jennie Largent: you start with, how can I support you? And there’s some kind of judgment embedded in that, where it’s like, oh, your fill-in-the-blank is bad, right? It could be an emotion, it could be whatever, and it’s like, it’s like, we really this system

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Jennie Largent: kind of

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Jennie Largent: and I don’t want to say forces, because it’s so flexible and gentle that it doesn’t force anything, but it really stabilizes and allows for the other to occur, right? Where,

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Jennie Largent: It just it’s flexible, it’s a beautiful way of flexibility, but also it doesn’t you don’t lose the pillars that really are scientifically grounded.

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Carla Cay Williams: Yeah, and the other part that I could see someone arguing, saying, oh my gosh, they’re just gonna let people do whatever they want, no matter what’s happening, and that’s not it either, because just like we talked about, there’s explicit rules, there’s social rules, there’s school rules, there’s family rules, there’s workplace rules. There are all those rules that are still gonna stay in place, and so

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Carla Cay Williams: What we’re saying is, let’s be explicit about what those rules are, and why they’re in place, and

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Carla Cay Williams: sometimes when we look at rules, we have to say, well, is this a realistic rule? Is this a rule just because one person needs it, so we all have to do it? Why is the rule in place? And once we understand why the rule is in place, and why this is the we, if it’s a family or a workplace or a classroom, it’s the big we, right? We have to make it work for everyone, and so

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Carla Cay Williams: that’s the other part. It’s not people running amok doing whatever they want. It’s helping them learn to identify what’s expected in the situation, and how to match that in a way that’s appropriate. And so, yeah, we can still follow rules, and have rules, and have

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Carla Cay Williams: anything that we need to have guardrails, that’s that’s life, too. And so, really, it’s about just helping everyone be the best they can be in that situation.

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Jennie Largent: Yeah, and I also see, yes, this takes time, right? Like, if a if an organization was looking at

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Jennie Largent: training themselves and implementing this system.

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Jennie Largent: yeah, it’s gonna take some time on the front end, but aren’t your people worth it? And I’m just gonna say, and you can look this up on your own, there’s so many different, pieces of research that are out there that are very quantifiable and very financially driven, and my point here is that if you

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Jennie Largent: Dedicate and carve out a little time on the front end.

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Jennie Largent: You’re going to end up saving money on the back end, because your hiring is going to, people are going to stay, you’re going to spend less money on your talent acquisition.

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Jennie Largent: And the stars are gonna love you, and they’re gonna stay. They’re gonna want to explore and have their full autonomy respected.

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Jennie Largent: And also, I just want to say that through all of this, it’s a move of honoring people, right? This is

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Jennie Largent: hey, you’re different than me. I honor you, and I’m ready to support you in that way. And I don’t think can’t think of anything more beautiful than to bring to

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Jennie Largent: a workplace.

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Jennie Largent: All right, so as we wrap up, so my takeaways from this conversation, Carla, they are plentiful. But I’ll just, I’ll list out the ones that I really have felt, live today.

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Jennie Largent: The Alert Program® gives people a way to notice their alertness, explore what influences it, and try sensory-based strategies that can help fit their situation.

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Jennie Largent: Self-regulation and co-regulation are connected. There’s an overlap.

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Jennie Largent: People build their own awareness and strategies in relationship with others in other environments.

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Jennie Largent: We’re not just in a vacuum.

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Jennie Largent: You must start with the body up, not with talking, not with thinking, not with naming emotions.

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Jennie Largent: And these same habits can inform leadership.

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Jennie Largent: Observe before labeling. Ask questions. Invite conversations. Make reasonable supports.

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Jennie Largent: And check whether it helped.

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Jennie Largent: If this conversation has you wanting to understand the Alert Program® framework more deeply, don’t stop with this podcast.

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Jennie Largent: The Alert Program® online course is available now at alertprogram.com.

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Jennie Largent: If you’re part of a school, clinic, or organization

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Jennie Largent: and you’re thinking, ‘We need our people to understand this together,’

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Jennie Largent: then talk to us.

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Jennie Largent: We are actively booking live Alert Program training, and we can also work with you beyond the training on implementation and sustainability.

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Jennie Largent: Go to alertprogram.com and tell us what you’re trying to accomplish. Understanding regulation is valuable, but the real beauty is putting it into practice in a workable way that supports change.

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Jennie Largent: I’m Jennie Largent.

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Jennie Largent: This is Who’s Regulating Who, and I’ll see you next time.

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Jennie Largent: We offer two different online courses.

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Jennie Largent: If you’re an occupational therapist, special educator, or clinical leader, we suggest considering taking The Alert Program® online course.

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Jennie Largent: It takes 20 hours to complete, and you can do it in your own time.

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Jennie Largent: Listeners can use the discount code REGULATE25 for $25 off enrollment.

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Jennie Largent: If you are a caregiver, business leader, or adult seeking growth,

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Jennie Largent: Your Best Self is the ideal course.

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Jennie Largent: It only takes 6 hours to complete, and is a simplified version of the Standard Alert Program course.

Those who are interested are also welcome to send any questions or drop a note to Jennie’s inbox: development@alertprogram.com. We appreciate YOU!

About TherapyWorks, Inc.
TherapyWorks, Inc. is the company behind the Alert Program^®, the essential body-first self-regulation system that helps people build practical regulation skills for daily life, learning, and work. Join what occupational therapists have known for over 40 years! The system is offered through three learning paths: the Alert Program^® Online Course, Your Best Self Online Course, and in-person group training.

About Jennie Len Largent
Jennie Len Largent is a people-first business consultant specializing in human resources, professional training, and complex change. Before joining the Alert Program^® as a training coordinator, she worked across financial services, technology, and the nonprofit sector. She now focuses on helping more people and organizations understand and apply practical sensory-regulation strategies.

Real conversations about sensory regulation, nervous systems, and the people supporting them.

Episode 2: Sensory Regulation in Practice: An OT Perspective

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