I love kids with behavior needs. As a pretty “Type A” kind of person, I like to figure things out and use data to make decisions. Students with behavior challenges fit right into my love for charts, organization and problem solving!
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| www.the-parenting-magazine.com |
First things first…so you have a child in your class or you
are the parent of a child who challenges your patience and skill level. Maybe he is distracted, or talks out. Maybe he argues more than he complies or rarely
completes work. He could be a bully or
perhaps he is so shy that he never speaks in class. Whatever the issue, behavior challenges can
impact an entire class, destroy a well planned lesson and inhibit learning. You need a consistent approach that targets
the reason WHY a child is behaving inappropriately before you can do anything
effective about it.
WHY? Seems like a
difficult question to answer, doesn’t it?
Actually, it doesn’t have to be.
The most important thing to realize when analyzing behaviors is that
there are only TWO reasons why kids behave.
Let me say that again.
There are only TWO reasons why kids behave. There are two intrinsic, basic categories
that can identify every behavior a child exhibits:
- To gain something
- To avoid something
To Gain Something:
Think about that for a moment. Kids with behaviors caused by a need to GAIN
something may be trying to gain attention or control, as a couple examples. Perhaps their need for attention is so strong
that even negative attention satisfies that need. If that is the case, a teacher who regularly
calls a child out on his negative choices is actually getting REINFORCED for
his behavior and therefore the behavior will not be extinct anytime soon.
If a child needs to gain control, for example, perhaps she has
to win at things all the time, prove she is right or bully people into doing
what she wants. For a child who has a
need for control, educators and caregivers need to find a way to meet the need
the child has, in a positive way, while extinguishing the need for control in
negative circumstances.
To Avoid Something:
Now let’s think about those children with the need to avoid
as the overarching reason for their behaviors.
What might they be trying to avoid?
The most common may be work avoidance or avoiding embarrassment (or
other such social stressors a child may perceive to be an issue).
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| www.potomacpsychiatry.com |
Once you know why a child is behaving a certain way, it is
much easier to develop a plan that is truly individualized towards your
student. It is pointless to search out
behavior plans or sticker charts online that are a “one size fits all”
model. If each child has his or her own
reasons for behaving, that come out in different ways at various times, it
seems obvious that our plans to help extinguish that behavior should be just as
individualized. The first step in doing
this is to understand, why, exactly, the child is behaving negatively.
Sounds great, you say, but how do you figure out the WHY?
Ah, stay tuned.
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