Curiosity as the Catalyst to Participation

In this session, pediatric occupational therapist Greg Santucci steps out of his usual host's chair and joins host Mick Olds to talk about curiosity as the catalyst to participation. Greg is the founding director of Power Play Pediatric Therapy and the creator of the Model of Child Engagement, with more than 25 years in school-based and outpatient settings.

Greg opens with his son Luke's kindergarten year, a clip chart, and a classmate who was moved to yellow day after day, years before anyone asked why he was struggling. From there he goes back to infancy, when adults get curious about every cry, and draws on Kelly Mahler's work to show how that kind of co-regulation helps interoception develop. He explains why pausing is skilled care, shares research linking an empathic approach to discipline with fewer suspensions, and sets compliance-based approaches beside connection-based ones. Greg is openly critical of clip charts and of reducing behavior to four functions, and offers his PENS lens instead: a behavior comes from a problem a child can't solve, an emotion they can't handle, a need that isn't met, or a skill they can't reach in that moment. With Mick, the second half turns to circle time, homework, what "it's boring" usually means, and being curious about your own part first.

Therapists, educators, and parents will come away with a way to reframe behavior that points to help, questions to ask in the middle of a hard moment, and a reminder to accept a child's answer before fixing anything. Grounded in Greg's decades in classrooms and clinics and his life as a dad, this session is funny, warm, and built around a strategy that costs nothing.