Behaviour.

Many young children will display behaviours, at some point, which parents or educators may refer to as challenging. For most of these children, these moments will be fleeting or concerns will resolve as the child continues to develop language, self-regulation, and social skills.

Children with Autism, however, often struggle in all of these areas, and thus are at greater risk of developing persisting, interfering behaviours. These may include not following directions, shouting and screaming or sometimes even more disruptive and potentially injurious behaviours such as hitting.

 

First and foremost, it is important to ensure that basic structures and routines are in place, children are explicitly taught clear rules and boundaries, and there are consistent ways of responding to both positive or prosocial behaviours and any behaviours of concern.

Ensuring that these foundational supports are in place will encourage more engagement and positive interactions among all children, while minimising the need for individualised and more intensive supports.

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Encouraging Positive Behaviour.

Rule #1   Provide Structure: 

Maximise use of routines and transition cues.

• Use of bells, visual or audible timers, or chants/songs can help reduce difficulties associated with transitions. Some documents that provide fun transition songs are Transition Rhymes and Singing Smoothes Classroom Transitions.
• Be consistent, someone the child can trust. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
• Be clear about rules and expectations from the start. Use precise, consistent, developmentally appropriate language.
• Provide reminders of the rules, routines or expectations as necessary, visually supported where possible.
• Visual schedules can be very helpful in ensuring that children know where they should be and what they should be doing throughout the day.

Rule #2   Maximise Engagement: 

• Try to minimise down time. Keep a box of small enjoyable fidget items/activities for the student to have during wait time and transitions to ensure there is something the child with Autism can engage with independently in each station.
• Explicitly teach routines to encourage independence.
• Some children will be overwhelmed with too many choices, you may need to limit choice to 2-3 activities during free-play or less structured periods.
• Recognise that it may be necessary to change activities frequently to accommodate shorter attention spans and an increased need for movement.
• Intersperse quiet or structured activities with movement activities (sensory diet) and easy/enjoyable activities with boring/difficult tasks.
• Teach play skills. Don’t assume that the child with Autism knows how to engage with toys, or that he or she will explore new toys on his/her own.
• Use ‘do’ statements rather than ‘don’t’ statements. If needing to interrupt inappropriate behaviours, be sure to redirect the child with what to do rather than what not to do.

Rule #3  Use reinforcement (rewards) effectively: 

• Take every opportunity to praise the child for appropriate behaviour (“catch them being good”). Children should always receive more positive attention than reprimands.
• Ignore minor inappropriate behaviour, pick and choose your battles.
• When necessary, redirect inappropriate behaviour in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone.
• If using rewards, make sure that they are meaningful to the child. The effort must be worth the ‘pay-off.’
• Try to avoid ‘rewarding’ the child when he or she is engaging in inappropriate behaviour.

Delivering Effective Instructions. 

Good, clear instructions teach children exactly what is expected.  A good instruction is one which keeps you from repeating the instruction over and over because the child did not hear, did not listen or did not understand what you were asking. 

When we ask children to do things and we do not follow through, we increase the chance that the child will not respond in the future.

How to deliver effective instructions: 

• Get the child’s attention before you start. You may need to move closer to the child, even get down to eye level. Gently touch them or interrupt their current activity to let them know you are talking to them.
• Phrase the instruction as a statement, not a question.  If you ask a child to do something, then you are giving them a choice.  Children should be given choices whenever possible; however, there are times when choices are not appropriate. Example: Instead of “Eoin, would you go to the snack table?” say, “Eoin, go to the snack table, please.”
• Make your instructions important: if it doesn’t matter, don’t ask. Before giving an instruction, make sure you are willing and able to follow through.  In other words, if it is not important, don’t bother.  When we ask children to do things and do not follow through, we increase the chance that they will not comply later.

• Keep it simple. Use developmentally appropriate language. You may need to break down multi-step instructions step-by-step. Or you may even need to reduce the instruction to key words only. Example:  Instead of “you need to close your school bag now,” say “close bag.”
• Provide extra time for processing, as needed. Some children will require a little extra time to understand the request. Continuing to repeat the verbal instruction in rapid succession may only serve to frustrate the child. Assuming you have made sure to get the child’s attention, deliver the instruction and allow anywhere up to a minute for the child to initiate.
• Avoid repeating instructions over and over. If the child does not understand what to do, it is best to show him.  If you have adhered to the previous steps and the child has not followed the instruction, deliver the verbal instruction again and model, gesture, or gently guide him to help him understand what you are requesting.  Each time you repeat the instruction and the child does not comply, you are increasing the likelihood that the child will be noncompliant in the future.  Follow through on each and every instruction.
• Reward compliance.  When the child completes the request, be sure to provide immediate praise and acknowledgement.

Useful link:

Teaching Tools for Young Children. 

When Challenges Persist. 

Behaviour is influenced by many different factors; how tired or hungry we may be, generally how well we are or whether or not we are wearing our favourite outfit, just to name a few.

For the young child with Autism, frustrations will often be compounded by the fact that he or she finds it difficult to communicate, or possibly even fully understand themselves, what is bothering them.

When determining how to support a child who engages in frequent behaviours that challenge, it is important to understand why the behaviours are occurring and what the young child may be attempting to communicate or accomplish.

 

When basic routines and structures do not resolve behaviour concerns, the following steps may help: 

1. Speak with the family or caregivers. Parents know their children best. Honest and frequent communication with parents is always the first step, and continuing to work together will be crucial to identifying holistic solutions to positively support the child.
2. Observe triggers and responses. We all engage in behaviours that work for us or that result in a pleasant outcome and we generally avoid engaging in behaviours that result in unpleasant or neutral consequences. If hungry, we walk to the refrigerator to get a snack or we might ring a friend on the phone when we want to ask advice or tell them something exciting. We probably would not bother with the walk to the refrigerator if we knew it was empty (we would find another solution) and we would not ring our friend if we knew they were on a cruise ship inaccessible for the next week. The point is, all behaviour serves a purpose and we increase our chances of selecting more appropriate and effective strategies if we understand the purpose.

Understanding behaviour involves trying to find patterns, noticing what is happening in the environment, both before and after the occurrence of the behaviour. This process is referred to as a functional assessment of behaviour.

There are many different ways or methods but one of the easiest and most common strategies is to record ABC data. Each instance of challenging behaviour, or as many as possible, is viewed and recorded in terms of the ABCs as follows:

 

You can download a sample ABC chart to print here.

Look for patterns that will help suggest the purpose or function of behaviour.

It is the very rare instance that the behaviours occur for only one reason; of course it’s never that simple. But over time common themes generally emerge.

Some of the more common reasons or ‘functions’ of behaviour include:

 

Understanding why the behaviour is occurring will enable you to identify strategies that are more likely to be effective. For example, frequent explanations about why a particular behaviour is ‘not nice’ will only encourage inappropriate behaviours if the child is motivated to get adult attention in any form. Similarly, removing a child from circle time or a group activity because they do not like the activity and are engaging in behaviours that disrupt the group will only increase disruptive behaviours to avoid activities.

A better solution is to try to establish why the child does not like the activity. The following table outlines a few strategies based on function.

To get attention: 

• Notice and praise positive behaviours
• Teach the child how to appropriately access attention
• Where possible, schedule periods of individual attention spaced throughout the day and make sure this is reflected on a visual schedule
• Try to minimise attention to inappropriate behaviours. Where it is necessary to interrupt, approach the child with a do request rather than don’t.

To get items/activities/routines/sensory input: 

ASD children often have difficulty when told ‘no, you can’t have that’.

• Ensure the child has an effective way of appropriately communicating/requesting desired items. 
• Teach the child to tolerate waiting. Visual cues and timers can be extremely useful. Depending on the child, you may need to start with very short intervals, sometimes even seconds, and gradually increase the time.
• Remind the child when the item or activity will be available. Where possible, use first/then statements or visuals, or reference the visual schedule to help explain.
• Redirect to available choices. For example, you might say ‘play doh is not a choice right now, you can play in the sand or with the blocks. Again, visual supports in the form a choice boards can be very useful. Be certain to praise the child for accepting an alternative.

If the behaviour is a sensory-seeking behaviour, try to find a way to either make the behaviour more appropriate, or find an activity that might offer similar input in a more appropriate way. For example if the child enjoys ripping paper, block from ripping any worksheets and remind the child they can rip tissue for art.

Try to avoid giving preferred items in response to difficult behaviours. 

• Teach to appropriately request a break from, or discontinuation of, the activity.
• Try to determine specifically why the child is trying to avoid the item or activity. Sometimes you’ll find that changing something small about the activity can make a huge difference (e.g. seating the child at the edge of a table rather than between 2 peers)
• Use rewards, give them something to work for. Use a first/then board or token board as a visual contract.
• Gradually increase tolerance by providing brief, frequent exposures followed by a reward or something fun. For example, if the child tries to avoid group activities you might initially only require him or her to come to circle time for one song (‘first song/then sand play’), and then gradually increase requirements.
• Embed choice in the activity. You don’t have to compromise the end goal, but try to find some way to provide choice; this could be where to complete the activity, when, with whom, or how.

Monitor Progress.

It will be essential to continue to communicate with families to ensure consistency across settings and determine whether behaviour is improving.

Simple record keeping (google record keeping log visual) or logs will enable you to most accurately identify, and share any progress, or lack thereof, with parents.

This information will also be extremely helpful should the family need to seek additional assistance from any specialists.