Very often you go into a classroom and the first thing you hear from a teacher is “Oh that child is so challenging to manage”. Sometimes it’s a parent – “Oh please help me, my child is so difficult to parent!”… but have you evaluated WHY before labelling the child?
- Can he/she communicate their needs and desires? Are they hungry? Tired?
- Could the environment be too challenging for this child? Is there too much or too little stimulation?
- Are the tasks or demands given to him/her too challenging?
- Are you reinforcing to your child, do you have a rapport?
- Are you able to break the tasks and demands down for them to understand? Can you individualise the curriculum?
- Is your child motivated to learn?
- Is there trauma? Mental health challenges?
- Is he/she misdiagnosed or under diagnosed?
- Is he/she over or under medicated?
There are so many questions to ask to determine why your child exhibits disruptive behaviour, and negatively labelling a child is a lazy way that signals conclusion. Instead, is the right assessment and evaluation of these challenging behaviours being done? This is crucial to the determination of an effective behavioural intervention plan to teach appropriate replacement behaviours for your child to thrive in any setting. To do this a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) should be carried out.
FBA – what is a Functional Behaviour Assessment? A brief explanation.
The purpose of an FBA is to determine the reason why your child is displaying problem behaviours. Only then can a behaviour intervention plan be formulated to help your child make socially significant changes in their behaviour. An FBA forces an educator to look deeper to pinpoint the cause of the challenging behaviour instead of creating a stigma and labelling your child in a negative way.
The FBA consists of three aspects: the antecedent, the behaviour and the consequence.
The Antecedent
The Antecedent occurs directly before the behaviour occurs. For example if your child engages in shouting behaviour, you need to examine what happened right before your child shouts. Maybe you gave your child a demand he/she didn’t like e.g. do your homework. Perhaps you denied your child access to screen time. Once the antecedent is clear, an effective strategy to deal with the triggers can be formulated to help your child.
The Behaviour
Data is collected and the behaviour is noted each time it occurs. It is very important to be specific when writing down the behaviour so we know exactly how the behaviour looks like. For example words like “aggressive” are not observable and does not give us a clear idea of what your child actually did. Did he/she scream, pinch, hit, punch etc.? This will really help in determining a successful intervention plan.
The Consequence
The consequence is what happens directly after the behaviour occurs. In the example of shouting, what did the parent or teacher do immediately after the behaviour? Did they tell him/her off e.g. “Go to your room!”. By understanding how the parent or teacher reacts to the challenging behaviour we can look at the effectiveness of the consequence and work on changing it to shape the child’s behaviour in a positive manner.
Once the antecedent, behaviour and consequence are evaluated and the function determined, a Behaviour Intervention Plan can be created. This will consist of positive alternative behaviours that will be taught to replace the disruptive behaviour. This will help reduce the disruptive behaviour/s that can lead to negative labels. There are usually 4 main functions for any behaviour: to gain social attention, gain access to tangible items or preferred activities, avoid or escape a demand or situation and sensory (automatic reinforcement).
For example if the antecedent is the parent telling the child “ go do all your homework now!” and the behaviour is “the child shouts “NO WAY, NEVER!” and the consequence is the parent saying “You better do it now!” We may want to teach the child instead of shouting to ask calmly “can I do it later?” or “can I do some now and some later?” This is based on the function of wanting to escape doing all the homework at that instance.
Challenging behaviour can be complex, consisting of one function or multiple functions. Unless a functional behaviour assessment is carried out and the root cause of the behaviour is identified, then only can we start to teach the right behaviours we want our children to engage in. Understanding the function of the disruptive behaviour will help us understand the child and be able to help cultivate the success that each child deserves.
To meet with a professional psychologist or counsellor, call The Other Clinic at 8809 0659 or email us hello@theotherclinic.sg.
REFERENCES
Cooper, J.O., Heron, T.E., & Heward, W.L.(2019). Applied Behaviour Analysis (3RD Edition). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.
Hanley, G.P. (2012). Functional Assessment of Problem Behaviour: Dispelling myths, overcoming implementation obstacles, and developing new lore. Summer; 5(1), pp.54-72.
O’Neill, R. E., Horner, R. H., Albin, R. W., Sprague, J. R., Storey, K., & Newton, N. S. (1997). Functional assessment and program development for problem behavior: A practical handbook. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.