5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support Post Round-Up

As promised in the last post of the series, I wanted to finish up this challenging behavior series of posts by walking through some of highlights and rounding up the relevant posts. This series has gone on for quite a while so I thought it would be nice to have something like a table of contents to come back to if you have more time (yeah right) or need something or missed something. I am sure that over time I will add posts that are relevant to this series. When I do, I will try to link them back to this series through THIS LINK. Most will probably be about strategies for addressing challenging behaviors that I didn't touch on during this series or new research that comes out over time. Or anything else relevant that occurs to me....that's the joy of blogging.

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DOs and DON'Ts of Using Fines or Response Cost to Reduce Challenging Behavior

As I said in the last post, it's important to use your FBA to determine what kind of consequence is going to be effective. One kind of consequence we often use when we have a reinforcement system, like a token system, in place is response cost. Response cost is when we remove a reinforcer or an opportunity for a reinforcer from the student in response to a challenging behavior. It can be used in many different ways, but probably the most common is when the student is earning tokens in a token system and we remove them when we observe the behavior we are trying to decrease. In our society we are prone to take things away as a punishment for misbehavior, which makes many people think that response cost is a natural to include in the use of a reinforcement system (i.e., you earn when you're good, you lose when you're not). However, response cost often can come back and bite you if you aren't careful. So, I thought I would take some time to discuss some DOs and Don'ts about using response cost with students. These are relevant to any population from typical individuals to those with behavior disorders and of course those with ASD.
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Thomas and the Thinking Chair: Why "Consequences" Aren't Always What You Need

The final step for strategies in writing a successful behavior plan is developing the responsive strategies.  I spoke in my last post about DOs and DON'Ts for Responding to Challenging Behavior.  That post generated more views and interest than most of the other posts I've written.  So, either, everyone is really struggling with how do we respond when there is challenging behavior or we are missing the fact that most of our work has to come when challenging behavior isn't happening.  I suspect it's probably a combination of the two because we do struggle with how to react to challenging behavior and we do live in a society in which most challenging behavior is addressed and discussed in terms of how to respond to it, rather than how to prevent it.  I hope that the series leading up to that post helps us to remember that it's the work we put in up front with the teaching replacement behaviors and using antecedent interventions that creates real behavior change.

With that said, let me talk a little about what we, as a society, term as "consequences" for behavior.  One of the things I hear over and over again in my job is, "He needs to have a consequence" and "I can't just let the behavior go. He has to be disciplined."  Believe it or not, a punishing consequence for one student is not a punishing consequence for another.  Just like reinforcement, it depends on how the consequence affects future behavior. If the behavior decreases, it was punishment.  For some, our "punishment" is actually a reinforcer.

Let's take a common consequence we often use with young children and sometimes in school: Removing a student from an activity as a consequence of his or her behavior.  Essentially it is separating him or her from the group.  Sometimes people call it the thinking chair, as in the place to think about your behavior.  This consequence is frequently used with typical young kids.  It's effective, in moderation, with most problems presented by typical kids because typical kids are often hungry for adult attention and like the activity they have been removed from.

Now, let's consider Thomas (who is not a real person but whom many of you may feel you know).  Thomas is a 5-year-old with autism.  Interacting with other people is one of the hardest things he does all day.  It's not that he doesn't like people or to be completely isolated, but social interaction and communication are hard for him.  Most of his interactions focus around things he wants to get or sabotaged situations adults create to get more communication and interaction from him.  And sometimes Thomas starts hitting the kid sitting next to him or shoves him off his chair, and starts to scream, in the middle of morning meeting.

A functional assessment reveals that Thomas' behavior serves for him to escape from the social activities.  Before the functional assessment was completed, Thomas' teacher was doing something many preschool teachers do and removing him from the morning meeting to the thinking chair until he calmed down.  The data showed that calming down usually didn't occur until it was time to move to centers.  When the behavior analyst shared this with the teacher and told her that she needed ignore the screaming and hitting and keep Thomas in the circle, obviously she was upset and not happy with that solution as his behavior was ruining her teaching activity for the whole class.  She also stated that she "can't just do nothing!  He has to have a consequence for that behavior!"

So, was think chair or time out effective for decreasing Thomas' behavior?  Was it an effective consequence?

NO!  It was actually reinforcing the challenging behavior.  Thomas's hitting was followed by escape from the activity that probably was pretty difficult for him (sitting in a group, communication, social interaction).  Just because the teacher was the one removing him didn't make it any less reinforcing.  Just because we perceive removal as being a punishment didn't make it one for Thomas.

With that said, there also needs to be a good bit more thought put into how to address Thomas' behavior than simply making him remain in morning meeting (i.e., simply changing the consequence).  That's going to be a difficult task for the teacher to accomplish and be very disruptive for the rest of the class, so that is not a good solution.

Other solutions might include teaching Thomas to ask for a break, giving the teacher the opportunity to remove him for an appropriate skill rather than an inappropriate behavior.  Another might be changing morning meeting so that he has more communication and social support through more communication supports and more visuals (like a mini-schedule that shows him what is coming next).  And still another idea is to have him only participate in shorter periods of morning meeting and then move on to another activity proactively (taking into account how long he can usually sit without a problem) and reinforcing him for participating appropriately during that shorter time period.

So, in keeping with my mantra that there is ALWAYS more than one solution to every problem, you have to find the solution for challenging behavior that fits the student and the environment.

Just like with anything else, when choosing a response (or consequence) to challenging behavior, look to your FBA to tell you what will or won't be effective.  And try to help others understand that "consequences" aren't always the most effective way to change behavior.

Stepping down from my soapbox (until next time),

DOs and DON'Ts for Responding to Challenging Behavior

It's been a while but I really want to try to finish up the 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support series with the final few posts on responding to challenging behavior considerations. Of course these posts will be interspersed with our Special Educator's Blog Hop coming in February for Valentine's Day and Workbasket Wednesday next week so it won't be too intense.

Oh those behaviors we can't just pretend don't happen! That kiddo who hits the kid next to him because it lights him up like a Christmas Tree that cries screams--"He hit me!" That girl who, in the middle of your instruction when you are working with another student, starts throwing your materials off the table including the scissors.

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How Should We Respond to Challenging Behavior?

Returning to the series on challenging behavior brings us to the third type of strategies to include in a behavioral support plan: Responsive strategies. No matter what we do when we plan behavioral support, there will be days when it fails and when the behavior occurs. No matter how many antecedent strategies and replacement strategies we use, what reaction the behavior gets in the environment is going to affect it and we need to be prepared for them. Not being prepared and as consistent as possible is sometimes what increased the behaviors in the first place, so it pays to take time to design the response. Here are some things we need to think about in responsive strategies.

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3 Ways to Teach Replacements or Coping Strategies for Sensory-Based Challenging Behavior

As I talked about in my last post in the challenging behavior series, there are two primary ways that the different sensory experiences of students with autism might be related to the function of a challenging behavior. It might be to escape from a situation that is too loud, or too bright or too smelly or all of those things among others. It might also be to gain reinforcement from something internal or end an internal feeling that is uncomfortable. Today I want to talk about how we can teach an individual replacement behaviors to get their needs met without the challenging behavior. These are some of the most difficult replacement behaviors to teach and identify so let me share some examples.

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Is it Sensory or Behavior? The WRONG Question--Here's Why

OK, I know I have already ruffled some feathers with the title of this post, but please hang with me and let me explain. I want to continue with the challenging behavior series by addressing the sensory or automatic function of challenging behavior. You can find more of this series here.

Recently on Pinterest I have been seeing lots of posts that pose the title of Is it Sensory or is it Behavior? I'm happy that people understand that all behaviors are not deliberately manipulative, which I think is what they are intending. They are making the differentiation between willful behavior (which assumes that challenging behavior is deliberate) and behavior that functions because an individual (often on the autism spectrum but not always) is overwhelmed by sensory input in their environment. However, there are some serious myths and misconceptions about this approach that I think go beyond semantics of how we talk about behavior that I want to explore in today's post.

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3 Ways to Make Positive Reinforcement Systems Work in the Classroom

Returning to my series on managing challenging behavior, I wanted to take a moment to talk about positive reinforcement of appropriate behavior and why creating systems for giving it might be helpful and is important. Positive reinforcement is both an antecedent strategy /preventive strategy as well as a teaching tool for replacement skills. We try to keep it from being a response to negative behavior since reinforcement would increase that undesired behavior. If we use positive reinforcement systems consistently for appropriate behaviors, we reduce the likelihood that challenging behaviors will be exhibited and we use reinforcement systems to teach new skills to replace challenging behavior like raising their hand to gain attention (positive reinforcement) and asking for a break (negative reinforcement--we took something away and the asking for a break increased). For general classroom management we want to reinforce appropriate behavior across the classroom about 5 times for every redirection or correction that we make (Flora, 2000). We also have a good research literature that tells us that classrooms typically do not reach that ratio and that increasing praise can improve students' behavior (Flora, 2000).

Teachers don’t have just one job. Have you ever met a teacher who felt he/she just had to do well in one thing? I haven’t. Just thinking of everything that a teacher needs to do throughout the day is exhausting. But I don’t need to tell YOU that (unless you aren’t a teacher). However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean to be said. Trying to keep track of everything that is happening in a successful classroom and keep all the students engaged is a monumental task. When I am running a classroom, I find it easiest when I automate as many of the tasks as I possibly can. The more I can do that, the less time I have to spend remembering, and the more engaged I can be with the students—which is always my ultimate goal (you know, prevents challenging behavior, increases skills effectively….for those reasons).

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Defining a Break in Functional Communication Training

In my last post, I talked about how to teach a communication response to replace escape-related challenging behavior and had a protocol for teaching a break response as one of the options. I wanted to take some time today to talk about what a break might actually look like. As I noted in that post, the type of break and what happens during a break can vary as much as all our different students. A break can take place in the same place as the activity the student is asking to escape. Typically this would make sense if the student is escaping from work.
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Teaching Appropriate Attention-Seeking to Replace Challenging Behaviors (Freebie!)

When we talk about replacement behaviors and functional communication training (FCT), the three most common applications are teaching attention seeking, teaching escape behaviors, and teaching requesting items and actions (for the tangible function). Today I want to talk about how to teach an individual to use an appropriate communicative way to gain attention from others. You can teach students to gain attention in a variety of ways from telling jokes, initiating interactions in play, and initiating conversations among others. These work well for students who have some communication skills but aren't using them effectively. I want to focus today more on the student who does not have effective communicative ways to gain attention. They might be nonverbal and have limited communication skills or they might be verbal but not use their language effectively or communicatively (like the kid who recites the newscast but can't ask for a banana). These are the students who need the basics of communication specifically focused on gaining the attention that their challenging behavior currently serves. Obviously this is something you would use for students whose FBAs indicated attention as a primary function of challenging behavior. I am going to give you the highlights and then I have included a free download of a protocol with more details about how to set it up.

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Functional Communication Training: Why It's More Than Just "Use Your Words"

Last time I talked about some beginning considerations in replacement skills. Today I want to talk about one of the most common type of replacement skills: communication skills. Functional Communication Training (FCT) is teaching specific communication skills that serve the same function as the challenging behavior. It's probably one of the most common forms of replacement skills that we use. We reference it all the time whenever we tell a student, "Use your words." However, replacing challenging behavior with communication isn't as simple as that. If it was as simple as that, we could just redirect and move on and the problem would no longer exist. And repeating "Use your words" multiple times isn't going to do it either. So what is FCT and how do we use it? Let's talk about that today.

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What Are Replacement Behaviors and What Do We Need To Know to Be Effective?

Thanks to I Teach
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So, how are you surviving the beginning of the year? Class set up? Schedule set (does it ever really get finalized??). At this point in the series, we are ready to move on to the second part of the behavior support plan--the teaching parts. If you haven't seen the post on the format of a behavior support plan, check here. There is a freebie, so go ahead and check it out and I'll wait.

OK, ready to continue? This section of the support plan is divided up into 2 components: teaching replacement skills and teaching ancillary skills (or skills the student needs but that aren't necessarily related to the function of the behavior). Before we get started on specific skills in each area, let me clear up a few frequently asked questions about them.

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5 Ways to Prep Students to Prevent Challenging Behavior: Antecedent Strategies

To read more of the series on challenging behavior click HERE.

So, in this post I want to finish up talking about antecedent strategies by talking about ways to prepare a student prior to a situation that may be related to challenging behavior so that the student can get through the activity productively and without difficulty. Sometimes preparing someone before they have to manage a difficult situation can help them manage their behavior. Think of it as when you remind your significant other that we decided to try not to argue with the in-laws during the dinner tonight. We all do it, it's just a matter of making the preparation clear and meaningful for our students--and planning the time to be able to do it. Here are some ways that we can prepare students to help their behavior be more successful.
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6 Ways to Change Task Presentation to Prevent Challenging Behavior: Antecedent Strategies

To check out the rest of this series on 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support, click HERE.

If this series proves nothing else, it is that addressing and preventing challenging behavior is a complex, complicated, long job...and it is. But there are some things you can do that will prevent challenging behaviors just in the way you present tasks to students. These will work well if you have a student whose FBA showed that the behavior served to escape from demands from staff or parents. Essentially these are strategies that will lessen the student's negative response to task demands by making them easier, more interesting, and/or more palatable in some way so they are more likely to comply. And let's face it, increased compliance, and decreased challenging behavior is a win-win for you and the student. So, let's look at some strategies.

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3 Ways to Adjust the Physical Space to Prevent Challenging Behavior

If you are looking for the special education blog hop and the freebies and giveaway, click HERE.

Today I am continuing with the antecedent strategies for preventing challenging behavior in step 4 of 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support. To see the rest of the series click HERE.

Sometimes, preventing challenging behavior can be as simple as changing around the furniture. And sometimes it helps to have the furniture you need. Since many of us are setting up classrooms for the school year, today I want to talk about how the physical arrangement of the environment can affect challenging behaviors.
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5 Types and Functions of Visual Supports--Antecedent Interventions for Behavioral Support

In continuing the series 5 Steps to Meaningful Behavioral Support, we are on Step 4 of creating the behavior plan and choosing interventions. Remembering that our interventions must match our hypotheses, one of the first sets of strategies we use are often referred to as antecedent interventions because they address the antecedents to the challenging behavior based on your FBA. As you will remember (or click here to be reminded), one of the huge advantages of using a function-based approach to behavior support is that you can address behaviors before they happen to avoid them all together through prevention. So, today I'm going to talk about some of the more common antecedent strategies we might use.
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Addressing Setting Events in Meaningful Behavioral Support

Do you remember that I was doing a series on behavioral support? Yea, well I feel like you must think I forgot about the most important part--INTERVENTION! What good does it do to complete a killer FBA if we don't have rockin' interventions that actually reduce challenging behavior?? So, no, I have not forgotten...just got a bit distracted. But now we shall continue. If you want to catch the rest of the series, you can do that HERE.
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7 Ways to Facilitate Successful Team Meetings for Writing BSPs (FREEBIE!)

Thanks to Melonhedz, Lovin' Lit, and
I Teach What's Your Superpower for images

Whew! What a crazy time of year--gotta love (or not) the beginning of school. I know for some of you it's still a ways off, but for all my friends in the South it's coming sooner rather than later. And I'm trying to get some new products up and ready for the new year (and the big TPT sale--more later) and helping my consulting client districts get their classrooms set up. And, oh yeah, all my graduate students have been very busy over the summer--which keeps me busy. In all of that, I know you probably think I forgot about the behavior series, but I promise I didn't! So this is the next in the series. Last time I talked about the reasons why behavior support plans should be created by a team. Today I want to talk about how to help that team meeting go smoothly and be productive--and not be a giant time suck that we all know meetings can become. Hey, I sit in meetings for a living (it seems that way sometimes) when I would much rather be in a classroom helping a teacher. I know how they can meander and not get you where you want to go. So, here are some tips to prevent that and get to a successful behavior plan.
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