Empowering social-emotional growth starts with understanding—and then helping the child to understand—the data in each child’s profiles, and how neuropsychological and neurophysiological skills influence their social-emotional and academic outcomes

Engaging in successful social interactions is a highly complex process, with lots of opportunities to go awry. Cultural rules and expectations tend to assume that children are intuitively picking up basic social rules, understanding how they apply in one context versus another, and efficiently cataloging social feedback so they can reapply it later. Unfortunately, for many kids this assumption is false.

The reality is that for all of us, social interactions are just as heavily influenced by our neuropsychological and neurophysiological profiles as our academic experiences are. We therefore apply the same data-driven approach to identifying and then building up the skill deficiencies undermining students’ social interactions that we do to personalize other aspects of the child’s program. This includes a neuroscience-driven focus on preparing the child to access their social skills in the moment, leveraging well-established sensory strategies. As with all aspects of our programming, we approach this with a highly-individualized, problem-solving approach in which our goal is to give the child agency over their own social-emotional outcomes by gradually developing the scaffolded skills they need to do so.

Each student’s program at Cajal starts with identifying the specific challenges holding them back. Then our multi-disciplinary clinical team develops a data-driven program to build up the skills they need to propel their social growth. This analysis begins in the admissions process, through a detailed parent questionnaire, a review of the child’s prior assessments and an on-site interview day. Throughout this process, we view emotional and behavioral differences as “bread crumbs” indicating problems that this child needs our help to solve. For some children, these difficulties reflect poor social cognition. Traditional approaches such as pragmatic language therapy may be utilized to help fill those gaps, but we take this a step further by identifying and then developing relative deficiencies in the child’s neurocognitive and neurophysiologic skills that interfere with their ability to pick up that information in the first place. Often, the children in our cohort know what to do in a given situation, but struggle to act on that information in real time—in which case the child requires a different approach, that is more focused on helping them to maintain neurological regulation to gain agency over their social experiences. Find out more about how we assess social-emotional learning needs.

We empower transformative social-emotional growth that transfers across settings, by teaching them how they can turn core universal truths about body-brain connections in their favor

We propel sustained, cross-setting social-emotional growth by helping students understand how their learning, social & emotional experiences are influenced by their unique profiles—and how they can use those connections to improve their own outcomes. At the heart of this approach is the scientific reality that our thoughts, feelings and academic access are deeply influenced by our unique profile of neuropsychological “splinter skills” on the one hand, and our then-current level of neurophysiologic regulation on the other.

This premise flows throughout all aspects of Cajal Academy’s social-emotional approach. Use these links to learn more about our pioneering, Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach and how we use it to empower kids to understand their own actions and shift from social learners into social leaders; to give kids agency over their experiences in the moment through strategies they can use to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs; and to propel student growth through coaching in moments of conflict—whether that is between two students or between a student and a task that scares them. Parents report that this translates to sustained social growth at home and in the community, often within just a couple months of joining the program.

Use these links to learn more about the core components of our approach.

Our Agency and Growth Mindset Coaching brings a powerful new tool to kids’ psycho-social toolbox, helping them make and leverage the connections between body and brain experiences

Stress, anxiety, sadness, joy, excitement, happiness and depression are not just emotional states but physiologic ones. Often, physiologic responses are so closely tied to a given emotional state that we will experience them as an emotional reaction. However, these body-brain connections are bilateral—so they can be used to re-regulate the brain as well. For instance, students who have sensory processing disorders may be profoundly overwhelmed by a strong sensory input, but for all of us, specific sensory inputs release neurochemicals in the brain that, when applied in the correct sequence and amount, can re-regulate the brain as well.

Our unique Growth Mindset and Agency Coaching is a real-time coaching model that brings together all aspects of even our most complex students’ profiles to help them disentangle the many competing motivations, desires, autonomic and/or emotional triggers and “Not Yet Skills” within the context of specific social, emotional and/or academic events. This powerful approach is a collaborative process in which the coach helps the child to analyze a specific event in the moment, modelling how they can bring the high analytical skills for which our cohort is selected to better understand experiences that may happen very quickly or may be very overwhelming in the moment. Over time, students learn to distinguish between their triggers, their neurophysiological and/or emotional reactions thereto and their responses, accepting reactions they may not yet be able to control while giving them agency to start “driving a Moment of Choice” to select responses that align with their social and/or learning goals.

We help kids “leap frog” from social learning to social leadership by leveraging our small setting to give them a toolbox for how to foster truly-inclusive neurodivergent communities at home and in the community

At the core of the curriculum itself is the understanding that social interactions reflect each child’s “Not Yet Skills:” a lens that replaces culturally-loaded concepts like “character” that kids may struggle to make actionable with the more scientifically-grounded understanding that our current social experiences are the product of myriad skills—which we can develop through the process of neuroplasticity. This gives kids permission to be who they are and where they are in the learning process, and a growth mindset about their own emotional development.

We coach our students in how to use this powerful lens to understand their peers’ actions as well, giving them powerful perspectives that foster social and emotional resilience. We infuse these understandings throughout our program, specifically fostering our community’s unique culture of not just accepting but celebrating one another’s differences. By educating students on the science of how children grow, think and feel, and on the range of neurophysiological differences, we provide the basis for true empathy towards one’s peers. Learning differences, self-regulation challenges and more become “just science,” taking the judgment out so kids can bring their best selves to the learning experience. Within our student body, this translates into an authentic culture of shared progress, as students gain confidence and a vocabulary for sharing and supporting both our challenges and our victories, harnessing the healing power of a safe and supportive peer group. This provides what is for many kids a first experience of being able to safely acknowledge and receive support for their struggles within a peer community, fostering life-long skills in seeking and accepting support for our challenges.

Taking this a step further, we put these understandings at the heart of a toolbox kids can use to foster truly inclusive neurodivergent communities, with a shift from “following the rules” to “fostering community” as the goal of our social-emotional and behavioral curriculum. Paradoxically, our small setting accelerates this work, by giving students a safe and more predictable social environment within which to do the self-reflective work required to master these new skills. Parents report that this approach, which is unique to Cajal Academy, translates to sustained social growth at home and in the community, often within just a couple months of joining the program.