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

Thanks to I Teach
What's Your Superpowers for Clipart

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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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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