How to manage problem behaviours in children with autism
What are problem behaviours?
- Anything that is considered disruptive to the child’s life.
- Problem behaviours can have an impact on daily functioning within the home, school, involvement in activities.
- Problem behaviours are behaviours which parents, teachers, or others who are involved in the child’s life would like to see reduced or completely eliminated.
Who does it impact?
In addition to the actual child, they can directly or indirectly impact the family, peers, and even unrelated individuals.
Problem behaviours have a negative impact on those around the individual and often impedes the development of meaningful relationships in their lives.
What is the impact?
Problem behaviours often leads to emotional and physical damage to the individual, peers, and family members. Sometimes it can also lead to physical damage in the surrounding environment.
How do we define problem behaviour?
These can be categorized into 1of 4 possible functions.
Behaviour motivated by attention
Behaviour motivated by escape
Behaviour motivated by tangible reinforcement
Behaviour motivated by sensory reinforcement
Steps in reducing problem behaviour
- First you must determine the function:
- If you are trying to eliminate a target behaviour and you are not clear what the function is, you are less likely to see a reduction.
- To determine the function of the behaviour, an assessment, called a Functional Assessment (FA) or Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) must be completed by a professional.
- Based on the function, a behaviour plan should be developed to determine exactly how you and others around the individual will make changes or manipulate the environment in order to better determine when the problem behaviour occurs.
- Once you know when the behaviour occurs you can better control the variables surrounding the behaviours.
- Third, once you know the function and setting events of the problem behaviour, you will train staff, parents and teachers on how to prevent the behaviour from occurring in the first place, and in addition what to do once the behaviour does come up.
- Individuals in the child’s life must be able to identify the signs prior to the problem behaviour and intervene at an early point.
- It is also important to determine how to intervene.
Behaviour escalation
Behaviour does not occur in a vacuum.
There are usually signs or precursor behaviours which tell us that a child is about to display problem behaviour, have a tantrum etc. It is up to the change agent to intervene at an early stage.
Eventually we must put the onus on the child and teach the child how to manage their own behaviours.
Managing behaviours
A child may do this through the use of breathing techniques, exercises, cognitive behaviour techniques, and recognizing the sign of their behaviours. We can teach a child how to read cues in the environment that may lead to problem behaviours.
For the parents and change agents, you will rely on the basic principles of a behaviour, that of reinforcement and punishment, to help modify, change, or reduce behaviour.
Reinforcement
1.Set a standard or expectation of how you expect the child to act. What are the expectations within the home? School? Or within an extra-curricular activity?
2.Praise the child for all the good behaviour which he does and all the behaviours which align with your expectations.
3.You may also praise behaviours which are close to the standard and continue to shape these behaviours until he reaches the standard
Punishment:
1.This should be used as a last resort! When and only when you have found that reinforcement is not working.
2.Punishment should also be used along with reinforcement to ensure you are replacing problem behaviours with new, appropriate and alternative behaviours.
3.To determine the best form of punishment, this should be done under the guidance of a professional who will help you track the reduction of the problem behaviour and determine if punishment is effective.
