Intro: Welcome to the Just Seven Steps podcast with Robert Schramm, a board-certified behavioral analyst, educator, author, and developer of the Seven Steps to Successful Parenting. For more than 20 years, Robert has been teaching parents and professionals how to support children and developing the values and priorities necessary to live a successful life. In this podcast, you’ll hear from some of the biggest experts in the fields of education, parenting, and behavior analysis. So, buckle in and get ready for a wild ride where you’ll learn to be your best in just seven steps. 

Robert: Hello and thank you for participating in my Just Seven Steps podcast. This is the first episode where I’m going to give you a little bit of the background of the seven steps, including how I got started in my career and what led up to their development. I’m also going to give you a few stories of how they have helped parents just like you and getting their goals met. The seven steps to successful parenting are an amazing approach to help you determine the best way to interact with your children and make decisions about how you should respond to their behavior that is universally effective and behaviorally based. It’s designed to teach you how to give your children good reasons to start making the types of choices you want to see them make as they’re going through their day. When learning about the seven steps, it’s extremely important that you understand that each step, although imperative to learn and implement, cannot alone make the kind of changes you’re hoping to see. It is only the full effect of all seven steps used in concert with each other when and how they prove to be needed. That will give you the change that you need. So whether you have found me and this podcast because you’re a parent of a child, either with or without a diagnosis, or you’ve been struggling with your child’s behavior or low motivation. Or you’re a professional teacher or a behavior analyst who’s seen my work, read my books, or participated in one of my workshops in the past. You’re likely here because you have kids you want to help to the best of your ability. And you know, the seven steps to instructional motivation are your best bet to finding the right answer for any child. We need to understand how to best interact with the people around us, whether I’m interacting with my kids, my clients, my wife, my employees, my friends, my colleagues. The seven steps are an excellent way for me to formulate how I want to be within that interaction. I want to make sure that I’m offering as much value and support as I can to those relationships. I’m still being able to get my needs met in those relationships as well. This can be even more crucial when I’m working with a child who has special needs or behavior issues that haven’t been met with a lot of positive education in the past. Whether I’m focusing in and creating some kind of an interaction plan for a child, it’s always the seven steps that I focus on as the reasons why I do the things I do. It’s really not hard for me to find a good, solid connection with a child I meet for the very first time because I understand and use the concepts of the seven steps quite naturally and often without even thinking about them. And if your job is a professional or a parent is to get the most out of your relationships with your kids so that you can have the best possible future for them. You will want to understand these seven steps just as well as I do. So whether you’re dealing with something that is a routine daily issue or something novel that’s happening for the very first time, you want to make sure that you have a system by which you can always make strong, positive decisions about how to react and respond. You want to know how to best present your expectations, hold limits when necessary, and use motivation and reinforcement as a consistent tool. And it will give you a way to judge your progress as things start to get better and better as you plan your moves forward. 

Robert: So this is really exciting for me as I’ve been doing this work for such a long time. That’s been over 20 years now and this is the first time I’m presenting myself and my work in a podcast format is something that’s been bouncing around in my brain for a while now, but I’ve decided that at 53 years old, what am I waiting for? Let’s start sharing these insights and supports that I have learned and taught for so many years to so many people, to as many people who can hear my voice. And in today’s episode, I’m going to focus on a I’m going to focus a bit on everything in my career that led up to the development of the seven steps and share with you some ideas about how and why you would want to know these steps for yourself and for the families you support. I’m also looking forward to using this podcast as an avenue for speaking with and sharing with you the wisdom of some of my favorite professionals in the fields of parenting, education and behavior analysis. I want to bring them on here and let them dove into topics that they feel are the most critical to them at this point in their careers and should be important to you as well. That I ask about how they develop their instructional motivation and if or how they use the seven steps as part of their approach. I also want to see what priorities they have and then the way that they go about their daily work helping children. I’d like to bring a parent or two on to talk with us as well, as well as some professionals who have also used these techniques on their own parenting. So thank you so much for being a part of this first episode with me as a formal introduction. 

Robert: My name is Robert Schramm. I have a master’s degree in special education and I have been a board certified behavior analyst since 2003. I’m the author of the. Two books you see behind me. Motivation and Reinforcement and the Seven Steps to Earning Instructional Control. I’ve been in the field of education for well over 20 years, and I’ve worked directly with well over a thousand kids developing individual plans for their basic needs. I think if you were to ask me why I’ve been so successful as I have been over the years, it would be because I was never comfortable in just doing what I was taught. I always had to see what I was doing was effective for the client and family and had it makes sense to me and I had to feel comfortable doing it. It was always important to me that any approach that I use to help any child had to both help them make meaningful progress in their lives, but also had to help me build a relationship with that child that would last. Additionally, I realized early on that I was going to need to find a way to be able to teach this approach to the most important people in any child’s life their parents or caregivers. For this reason, the techniques around understanding of how to engage children and build a desire to learn while accepting me as part of their learning process was paramount to anything I was doing. Before I get into how that developed. Just a quick bit about my background. The first experiences I had with special education and likely the reason I considered teaching as a career relate to my Uncle Mickey. So Uncle Mickey was my mom’s youngest brother, and he was just a few years older than me. We would go to my grandmother’s house quite often growing up, and Mickey and I became close. Here’s a picture of me and Mickey during a holiday party when we were at our. I guess we were in our late teens or twenties. My guess is this is Thanksgiving. And we had had our Philip turkey. So Mickey has Down syndrome. And I saw early on that the supports that were available for people like my uncle were limited and often limiting. He was never allowed to be in the local school as he went to a school that was designed for kids with Down’s syndrome. Because of this, the children on his block didn’t seem to know or feel comfortable with Mickey. They often made fun of him or teased him right in front of me. I had to defend him often in those days. I never understood why he had to be segregated and isolated from the kids who should have grown up with him and been his friends. Not only did Mickey Mouse out, but those kids all missed out on someone who was one of my best friends. So early in my career, I took a job as an inclusion specialist for the Manhattan Beach School District in California. There, my job is to make sure that all the kids on my caseload were given the right to have their education in general education classrooms with their typically developing peers in addition to inclusion specialists. I did work a few summers in a special day class for kids with disabilities, as well as worked a few years as an adaptive physical education instructor. And among my work, I felt that I had been given the tools necessary to help many of the children in my classes needs, or at least work towards their potential. I did notice there was one group of kids that I was struggling to maintain a positive teaching connection with, and that was the children who were diagnosed with autism. It was the children with autism spectrum disorders that I felt proved the most challenging to reach because the moments of connection that I could develop with them seemed so fleeting. So it was always my goal to help find a way, a better way to reach them. And that’s what really led me to my search for a better way to teach. This search eventually led me to the behavior science and ultimately to becoming a board certified behavior analyst. 

Robert: What I loved about behavior analysis was that it wasn’t just a tool or an idea, but rather it was an approach to understanding what really affects behavior and how we can start to affect the environment in ways that give kids reasons to engage in important learning and development. It really was through an understanding of the principles of behavior that I began to be a truly competent teacher. But because I was a teacher first and not a scientist, I was always able to keep the child’s point of view in the forefront of my planning. And when I was taught to do things that were incongruent with what I believed was appropriate for interactions with a child, I immediately began using the principles of behavior to find a way to improve those techniques, to make them more child and family friendly without losing any of the effectiveness was at this point that I had the chance to move to Germany with my wife Nadine. Then we started our service called Knospe-ABA. This company helped us support the education of thousands of children in and around Germany. While working in Germany, I began to become more and more convinced that there had to be a way to gain instructional motivation or engagement from children without using a technique that was popular in behavior analysis at the time called Escape Extinction. Escape Extinction was a process of blocking a child’s desire to escape teaching efforts, either through physically blocking the environment, nagging the child with repeated instructions, and sometimes forced physical prompting to complete a task. In my desire to find a way to avoid using escape extinction, I began to realize there were some basic, important behavioral principles that if they were met consistently, could help a child to desire engagement and want to be a part of the learning with me. And it was my whittling down of the behavioral education I received to just these basic, most important factors that allowed me to developed would eventually became the seven steps to instructional motivation, an approach to teaching without escaped extinction. This was a big development in the field, and this helped me. And through my books and workshops, tens of thousands of professionals and families develop a better relationship with their kids while helping their kids to make progress on important goals. Because I began to see that as long as an individual could find a way to individualize and meet the expectations of the seven steps with their child, they could find their way to better cooperation and a better relationship. 

Robert: So whether I was teaching the seven steps to a parent who wanted to help their child with or without a disability, or whether I was teaching a behavior analyst, a school teacher, a speech pathologist or an occupational therapist, I had this easy to teach and replicate system for becoming any child’s favorite teacher or guide. And doing so helped me help teachers and therapists to be. Better at what they were doing, better at getting their goals met, and more satisfied in their relationships with their clients or kids, whether a parent or a professional using the Seven Steps as your approach to instructional motivation. It’s just more fun. Using motivation and making things fun is so crucially important in long term teaching and parenting relationships. I don’t just want a child to do something for me. I want to give something of value to that child as well. I want them to learn that positive interactions with other people are a process of give and take and that it’s ultimately worth the effort. That participation and engagement leads to good things and that learning has its own rewards. And the process of doing this is no longer a mystery. It’s something that I’ve learned to fully understand and to teach to people all over the globe to massive success. If I can teach someone these seven basic concepts or steps, the people using them will improve their lives and the lives of the kids they’re focused on. Although I started my career in special education through some very great experiences with wonderful parents who worked hard to learn the seven steps and apply them. I kept hearing one thing over and over, you know, I could really use this with my other kids. You see, although families were often learning how to use the seven steps to develop positive teaching environments for their children with disabilities. It was often just as effective, or even more so for their kids without any diagnosis, who just struggled prioritizing the activities that their parents wanted them to eat. Kids from ages about 3 to 15 who were perfectly capable in every way of making good choices and participate in important parent chosen activities, but who didn’t want to and would find effective ways to wear their parents down and get them to give in on more and more of their expectations. For these children with behavior concerns or low motivation, the seven steps were often an even more valuable and important tool because it uses the child’s motivation as a pull on behavior and teaches parents how to get their children to want to do the things they want them to be doing. So where, as a tool for kids with severe disabilities who needed instruction and motivation so that the parents can begin to teach them things that they weren’t able to learn without intensive teaching. Just for the kids with only motivation and behavior concerns, it becomes the only thing you really need to learn to help completely change their lives. 

Robert: Just last week, I was talking with Jessie, the single father of five, who came to me for help with his four year old son, Harley. Even though Jessie has a daughter with autism and one with Down’s syndrome, it was his four year old undiagnosed son, Harley Lewis, causing Jesse the biggest worries. You see, Harley was the one who wasn’t listening and had become increasingly controlling around the house. He would fight with his sisters and he would kick others, hit them. It wasn’t uncommon for Harley to be in full blown meltdown tantrum on the floor, kicking and screaming several times a day. He had horrible sleeping patterns and would wake up in the middle of the night terrorizing the house and waking everyone. He had recently been kicked out of his local preschool because of his behavior, and Jesse was at his wit’s end with what to do. But since learning and implementing just these seven basic steps, Jesse has found a new life and relationship with Harley. Jesse describes the differences night and day. Let’s see. What did he say exactly? Oh, yeah. Things work a lot better. Harley is back in preschool with nothing but positive notes from the start. He’s becoming a role model for his sisters, and he isn’t waking in the night anymore. He has much healthier relationships with everyone in his life. He wants to see more, say more and show more. He is even speaking more clearly and has become a helper around the house. Before I learn the seven steps to successful parenting, everything was stressful, but now we just have fun together. 

Robert: Another parent worth discussing is Jennifer. She was struggling with her pre-teen son, Connor, who had become increasingly more aggressive against her and her husband over the past few years. Connor was a minecraft superstar who wanted to play all day and all night. When he wasn’t on the computer playing, he was fighting to get back on the computer. His grades were bad, his sleep habits worse, and the school was constantly calling home to complain about his behavior. When I began working with Jennifer, she was understandably very skeptical. She was a strong, educated woman who had read and looked for help for years. She wasn’t. I guess she was willing to do anything I suggested, but she just didn’t have much hope that anything would work. To make matters worse, she was becoming more afraid of Connor’s physical aggressions, and Connor’s father was beginning to become more aggressive with Connor in his attempts to keep his wife safe at home. Now, I do want to point out that whenever you’re dealing with someone who is physically aggressive to others, self abusive or destructive to the environment, it is always best to seek the support of a qualified behavior analyst or someone who can help. But working directly with Jennifer and her husband in the home, I was able to help them make major changes in the life of their family and son just by teaching them the seven steps. Jennifer was able to limit the amount of computer time Connor was using each day, get him to participate in outdoor activities with the family that he used to avoid. Motivated him to begin using more appropriate language around the house. And at the last time I spoke with her. Jennifer hadn’t been hit by her son in months. When you hear about these successes with children, who outside of behavior would be considered neurotypical and you consider the 20 plus years I’ve used these techniques with children with disabilities, it becomes quite obvious why I’ve decided to start this podcast. We need to get this information into the hands of more parents, more professionals working with all of our kids. 

Robert: So if you’re struggling to get your child to brush their teeth or use the toilet or clean up their room or eat better foods, take some physical exercise or be on the computer less, get better grades, or even learn to learn how to talk. Then the seven steps are going to be a major benefit to you. They’re likely going to be exactly what you need. The truth is, we can do our best for our kids when we take the time to truly understand their desires and motivations and use that knowledge to help set up an environment that is motivating and reinforcing to better behavior choices than it is to the less effective ones that you’re seeing now, where we can start a snowball effect of relationship building that grows to a better and better behavior over time. And this truly is what the seven steps are designed to do. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion of how and why I developed the Seven Steps to Instructional Motivation, also known as the Seven Steps to Successful Parenting and Why I wanted to start this podcast. Stay tuned for some great episodes to come. I plan to answer some common questions that I get from parents and professions, like how do I get my kids to respect my authority? Or How do I get my child to clean up after themselves without having to remind them a hundred times a day? How do I get my child to do their homework? Is being too strict or too permissive or worse? And how can I limit my. Screen time without them hating me. How can I stop being a mac? And much more. And I’m sure many of these answers, when filtered through the seven steps, will surprise you. And don’t forget about our special conversations with celebs of the education and parenting worlds. I can’t wait for those. So please remember, you can change the way your child interacts with you and you can get your goals met while becoming your child’s favorite person. And you can learn to do all of this with just seven steps. Just seven steps is your family’s path to progress. And that brings us to the end of another great episode of the Just Seven Steps podcast. Thank you for taking the time to join me today for sharing our links with your friends and family. If you enjoyed this podcast, then come check out my online community where you’ll learn how to improve your relationship with your child or clients in truly meaningful ways. Right now, you can join me for a free online workshop at just seven steps dot com backslash workshop where you’ll be given the practical and effective parenting strategies you’ve been craving and you’re ready for more. You can also join my online parenting course at rates discounted, especially for my podcast listeners. Go to just seven Steps.com Backslash Workshop for the free workshop and all the details. I can’t wait to see you there. Now go enjoy your kids. They’re going to be adults before you know it.