Positive behavior support for preschoolers: Positive Behavior Support | ECLKC

Опубликовано: September 4, 2023 в 6:54 pm

Автор: alexxlab

Категории: Miscellaneous

Positive Behaviour Support: autism therapy

What is Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)?

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is an individualised and comprehensive approach that parents and carers use to teach and encourage children to behave in new ways.

The approach makes challenging behaviour less likely to happen because it removes things that trigger, encourage or reward that behaviour. It also helps children learn new behaviour to replace the challenging behaviour.

Who is Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) for?

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is for anyone with behaviour challenges, including autistic children. The approach can also be used with people with intellectual, learning, developmental and social challenges.

What is Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) used for?

The main goal of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is to help children learn new ways to behave.

Where does Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) come from?

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) emerged in the 1980s, evolving from Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). Both PBS and ABA are based on ‘learning theory’, but PBS developed with a stronger focus on being person centred or family centred.

Learning theory suggests that how people behave in a situation depends on their previous experiences of similar situations.

What is the idea behind Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)?

The idea behind Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is that all behaviour serves a purpose. Children can learn new behaviour when it’s known what they’re getting or communicating when they behave in particular ways.

The PBS approach aims to help children learn new ways of communicating and getting what they want – for example, by using words or signs to communicate. These new ways of communicating can replace challenging behaviour.

The key feature of a PBS approach is an individualised plan that is:

implemented by everyone involved with a child on a day-to-day basis
used in the natural environment where a behaviour occurs.

What does Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) involve?

First, the child has a medical assessment to make sure their behaviour isn’t caused by a physical illness like an ear infection or toothache.

Next, a trained practitioner, like a psychologist or other professional, talks with the child’s family and observes the child’s behaviour to work out what the child gets by behaving in a particular way. This is known as a functional assessment.

After the assessment, families work with the practitioner on a detailed plan to remove or minimise the triggers for the behaviour and, wherever possible, stop any accidental rewards for the behaviour.

Once they have a plan, parents can teach and encourage the child to use new skills and ways of communicating to express their wants and needs.

Does Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) help autistic children?

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is supported by high-quality research. This research shows that PBS:

improves children’s school performance
helps children ask for things
helps children give and share information
reduces children’s aggression towards themselves and others
reduces meltdowns and disruptive behaviour.

Children benefit most from this therapy when it’s consistently and accurately put into practice.

Who practises Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)?

Psychologists and other professionals who are trained in Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) can develop PBS therapies and support carers in putting them into practice.

Where can you find a practitioner?

You can find psychologists at Australian Psychological Society – Find a psychologist.

If you’re interested in Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), you could talk about it with your GP or one of the other professionals working with your child. You could also talk about it with your NDIA planner, early childhood partner or local area coordinator, if you have one.

Parent education, training, support and involvement

If your child is in a therapy program that uses Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), your involvement is essential.

You’ll have a central role in the collaborative team that develops the PBS plan. As part of this, you should be trained to put the plan into action and respond to difficult situations.

You’ll be responsible for implementing the PBS plan at home, and you’ll play an active role in providing feedback to the team about your child’s progress.

Cost considerations

There’s a cost for developing a Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) plan, because you do this in collaboration with a trained practitioner like a psychologist or experienced education professional. The cost varies depending on how long it takes to develop the plan, as well as the practitioner’s qualifications.

You use the plan in your child’s natural environments, so there’s no financial cost for putting the plan into action.

You might be eligible to see a psychologist at a subsidised rate for a limited number of sessions through Medicare. Some private health care funds might also cover a portion of the consultation fee. If the therapist has HICAPS, you might be able to make a claim immediately.

You can contact the NDIS to find out whether you can include the cost of PBS therapy in children’s NDIS plans.

Therapies and supports for autistic children range from behaviour therapies and developmental approaches to medicines and alternative therapies. When you understand the main types of therapies and supports for autistic children, it’ll be easier to work out the approach that will best suit your child.

Encouraging good behaviour in kids: tips

How to encourage positive behaviour in your child

Children quickly learn how to behave when they get positive, consistent guidance from you. This means giving praise and attention when you notice your child behaving well and using consequences when you need to guide them towards more positive behaviour.

Here are practical tips for putting this positive approach into action.

Tips to encourage positive behaviour

1. Give your child positive attention and spend quality time together
Your relationship is key to guiding your child towards positive behaviour. You can build a close and loving relationship by spending time with your child playing, reading or chatting. Giving your child positive attention like hugs, smiles and encouragement is also important.

2. Be a role model
Use your own behaviour to guide your child. Your child watches you to get clues on how to behave – and what you do is often much more important than what you say. For example, if you want your child to say ‘please’, say it yourself. If you don’t want your child to raise their voice, speak quietly and calmly yourself.

3. Tell your child how you feel
Telling your child honestly how their behaviour affects you helps your child to see their own feelings in yours. And if you start sentences with ‘I’, it gives your child the chance to see things from your perspective. It’s best to talk about feelings when you’re both calm.

Helping your child understand their own and other people’s emotions is important to helping them cope with strong emotions like frustration that sometimes lead to behaviour like tantrums.

4. Catch your child being ‘good’
When your child is behaving well, give your child positive feedback or praise. For example, ‘Wow, you’re playing so nicely. I really like the way you’re keeping all the blocks on the table’. Praise makes positive behaviour more likely and challenging behaviour less likely. Try to focus more on positive behaviour than challenging behaviour.

5. Get down to your child’s level
When you get close to your child, you can tune in to what they’re feeling or thinking. Being close helps your child focus on what you’re saying about their behaviour. It also makes it easier for your child to follow your instructions.

6. Listen actively
To listen actively, you can nod as your child talks, and repeat back what you think your child is feeling. For example, ‘It sounds like you felt really sad when Amit wouldn’t let you join his game’. This helps your child feel heard, respected and comforted.

7. Keep promises
When you follow through on your promises, your child learns to trust and respect you. Your child learns that you won’t let them down when you’ve promised something nice, and your child also learns not to try to change your mind when you’ve explained a consequence. So when you promise to go for a walk after your child picks up their toys, make sure you have your walking shoes handy. If you tell your 3-year-old that they’ll have quiet time if they don’t stop throwing dirt, be prepared to follow through.

8. Create an environment for positive behaviour
The environment around your child can influence their behaviour, so you can shape the environment to help your child behave well. This can be as simple as making sure your child’s space has plenty of safe, stimulating things to play with. Also make sure that your child can’t reach things they could break or that might hurt them.

9. Decide what’s important
Before you get involved in anything your child is doing – especially to say ‘no’ or ‘stop’ – ask yourself if it really matters. By ignoring behaviours that aren’t important and keeping instructions, requests and negative feedback to a minimum, you create fewer opportunities for conflict and bad feelings. You can use family rules to let everyone know what’s important in your family.

10. Keep instructions simple and positive
Instructions should be clear, short and appropriate for your child’s age, so your child can understand and remember them. And positive rules are usually better than negative ones, because they guide your child’s behaviour in a positive way. For example, ‘Please shut the gate’ is better than ‘Don’t leave the gate open’. If you need to tell your child to stop doing something, always tell them what to do instead – for example, ‘Stop jumping on the bed, and please sit on the bed’.

11. Give children responsibility – and consequences
As your child gets older, you can give your child more responsibility for their own behaviour. You can also give your child the chance to experience the natural consequences of that behaviour. For example, if it’s your child’s responsibility to pack for a sleepover and your child forgets their favourite pillow, the natural consequence is that your child will have to manage without the pillow for the night.

At other times you might need to provide consequences for inappropriate or unacceptable behaviour. For these times, make sure that you’ve explained the consequences and your child has agreed to them in advance.

12. Give your child the chance to succeed
Set up your child to behave well, and then praise them for it. For example, give your child some simple chores or things that they can do to help the family. Praising your child’s behaviour and effort will encourage your child to continue. And giving your child a lot of practice doing a chore helps them get better at it, feel good about doing it, and want to keep doing it.

13. Prepare for challenging situations
There are times when meeting your child’s needs and doing things you need to do will be tricky – for example, when you’re shopping, in the car or at an appointment. If you think about these challenging situations in advance, you can plan around your child’s needs. Give your child a 5-minute warning before you need them to change activities. Talk to your child about why you need their cooperation. Then your child is prepared for what you expect.

14. Keep your sense of humour
It often helps to keep daily life with children light. You can do this by using songs, humour and fun. For example, you can pretend to be the menacing tickle monster who needs the toys picked up off the floor.

Humour at your child’s expense won’t help, though, because young children are easily hurt by parental ‘teasing’. It’s also best to avoid jokes when your child is behaving in challenging ways. This can accidentally reinforce the behaviour by giving it too much attention.

A practical guide to the development of positive behavior in children exhibiting problem behavior. ~ Autism | ABA

In a previous post, we talked about professional standards for promoting positive behavior in children and adolescents. In this article, we invite our readers to move from theory to practice and get acquainted with specific recommendations regarding the formation of positive behavior in children demonstrating problematic behavior.

The focus of positive behavioral strategies is on the responses of those in the child’s immediate environment and caregivers that help the child or adolescent learn acceptable behavior by providing a safe, interesting and developmentally appropriate learning experience and environmental conditions, providing fair and consistent rules and logical consequences of behavior.

Prevention and management of behavioral problems are most successful in environments that are safe, receptive, and offer opportunities to learn useful skills and strategies for coping with a variety of life circumstances and coping with emotional stress.

Maximum efforts should be made to modify the environment in which the child lives, learns and plays, since direct social experience and the physical environment can contribute to the formation and maintenance of both adaptive behavior and problematic behavior.

Safe and interesting learning experience and environment.

Children and young people should be protected from danger and have the things they need to keep them busy and involved. Paying attention to their positive behavior at these intervals can encourage them to learn acceptable behavior.

Fair and consistent rules.

Children and teenagers learn to be responsible and develop the skill of self-control through fair and consistent rules. The people in their immediate environment and staff should develop rules that are easy to follow and the number should be small. Rules should always tell you WHAT to do and not what NOT to do (no rules don’t work, e.g. “Don’t hit your sister” should be phrased as “Keep your hands to yourself”).
Clear instructions.

No child or teenager can behave well all the time, and they all learn and develop differently. Caregivers and staff must give clear, calm, timely and unambiguous instructions, in which case they may influence the child’s behavior.

Logical consequences.

Giving logical consequences is one of the best methods for dealing with moderate problematic behavior that doesn’t occur very often. Consequences work best if they are brief and immediate. Children and adolescents learn how to control themselves if people in their immediate environment use the consequences of problematic behavior consistently and immediately. If a child does not follow a rule or a clear instruction, it is necessary to choose a consequence that is appropriate for a particular situation. It is important that at this moment the adult remains calm.

All behavior has a function, and typically children engage in problem behavior to avoid or evade an activity/job, person, or sensory stimulation, or to gain access to something, such as social attention, materials, or, again, sensory stimulation. A child or teenager may engage in unwanted behavior in order to achieve or avoid something that may be happening in the environment. When problematic behavior occurs, it is worth collecting data and information regarding the following questions:

• Target behavior: Which behavior needs to be reduced? What behavior needs to be increased?
• Environment/experience: What should be present in the daily environment/experience? What should not be present?
• Antecedents/Triggers: Which event often occurs immediately after the problem behavior? Which of the events that have occurred can play the role of a trigger?
• Consequence: What should be done if the behavior to be reduced occurs? What needs to be done when a desired behavior appears that needs to be increased?

For some children, the antecedent/trigger for problem behavior may be a change in the usual and predictable daily routine. In the case of other children, unwanted behavior may be triggered by a request or instruction from a member of the immediate environment or a staff member to engage in an unwanted activity. Understanding by loved ones the antecedents/triggers of problem behaviors can go a long way in preventing these behaviors from occurring.

When gathering information and data on problematic behavior, the following points should be considered:

• Is there anything in the child’s physical or interpersonal environment that may influence the child’s behaviour?
• Frequency of the behavior, and whether the behavior occurs in different contexts
• Types of interventions that have been successfully used to de-escalate the behavior
• How long has the child had a medical examination? If he is undergoing any treatment, when was it last reviewed?
• Would it be beneficial for the child to take part in any additional activities outside of the curriculum?
• Does the child have any disability that could affect his understanding? Are there any linguistic or cultural factors?
• Are there any activities that can help a child or adolescent build their self-esteem?

It will also be useful to pay attention and take into account indicators of the escalation of problem behavior in children and adolescents:

1. A state of calm – the child demonstrates a willingness to cooperate.
2. Trigger – the child experiences or experiences some unresolved conflict.
3. Arousal – the child shows an increase in unfocused behavior.
4. Acceleration / acceleration – the child demonstrates an increased emotional state / behavior.
5. Peak – the child is out of control.
6. De-escalation – child shows confusion/confusion.
7. Recovery – the child shows a desire to engage in activities that do not involve interaction, as well as an unwillingness to address the issue of peak problem behavior.

Gathering reliable information and data on a child’s problematic behavior helps identify specific behaviors that need to be reduced or increased in their repertoire, and helps develop more appropriate positive behaviors.

Using a positive behavior support plan.

If a child or teen’s problem behavior escalates (eg, aggression, avoidance of an activity), a positive behavior support plan can be developed to respond to the problem behavior appropriately.

If problematic behavior increases in severity, then behavior support planning should include consultation and involvement of parents (if appropriate), caregivers, social workers, school staff, and other professionals from agencies such as child and youth mental health services , sexual assault organizations, providers of private therapy and behavioral services, etc. An unwanted behavior plan involves understanding why the behavior occurs and how best to help the child learn more acceptable behavior.

As part of a plan to maintain positive behavior, it is important to identify the possible function (or cause) of the child’s or adolescent’s behavior. This information is collected through observation and data collection (for example, on the number of behavioral episodes) and through an assessment of the child’s strengths and needs.

A copy of the plan can be given to all the people involved in the implementation process, and to the child or young person, if appropriate.

Once the target behavior function has been established, the rest of the desired behavior support planning process can be completed:

• Target behavior: What behavior needs to be reduced? (for example, aggressive behavior). What behavior needs to be increased? (eg safe play with peers)
• Antecedent random events: What environmental conditions/contexts/triggers can be modified to produce proactive environmental/experiential changes that would make the target behavior unnecessary?
• Behavior training: What new behaviors can the child’s immediate environment and staff members teach to replace the current target behavior? Behavioral learning is how the people around the child respond to the child’s desired and undesirable behavior as defined by the behavior support plan.
• Consequence modification: How can adults change their behavior in relation to the original target behavior and the new behavior that replaces it?

When the child’s immediate environment and caregivers teach new behaviors, they may consider the following direct behavioral intervention strategies:

• Redirecting the child from problematic behavior
• Changing the environment to meet the child’s current needs
• Removal of privileges or attention for a short period of time
• Rewarding the child to choose the right behavior

Other strategies may also be used, such as giving the child opportunities to learn how to cope with different situations. Use these strategies at times that are not associated with unwanted behavior:

• Relaxation training
• Stress management
• Anger management techniques
• Teaching general skills that will give the child more control over his life by improving his daily skills self help
• Teaching a child to make decisions will increase their autonomy and independence.

If a child’s behavior poses a risk to himself or others, it is best to develop a behavior support plan in consultation with appropriate professionals to ensure the child’s safety and prompt de-escalation of the problem. Once such a plan has been developed, the caregivers and caregivers monitor changes in the target behavior of the child as well as more general changes in the child’s standard of living. School teachers, support staff and social workers can also provide information about changes that have taken place in the school context.

Objective measures are used to document progress, measuring the number of times the child chose the desired behavior over the undesirable one, the number of times the child avoided the antecedent/triggers, and the times the child was assisted in the desired behavior by learning opportunities. If the child is making only minimal progress, then the behavior support plan may need to be reassessed.

Source: http://www.communities.qld.gov.au/resources/childsafety/practice-manual/pr-guide-supporting-positive-behaviour.pdf

Support for positive behavior in psychological science and education // Psychological and pedagogical research – 2012. Volume 4. No. 4

Annotation

Recently there has been a growing interest in using positive behavior support in working with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Positive Behavior Support is not a new concept, a “therapy” for problem behavior, a new science, a profession, or a subject of study. Positive Behavior Support combines a wide range of elements from Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), Social Role Valorization (SRV), Person-Centered Planning, and changes in the structure of psychosocial service delivery systems. Positive behavior support can be used not only in working with people with disabilities; it is not bound by a rigid set of procedures and methods. Currently, legislative and regulatory government bodies adhere to the idea of introducing strategies based on the support of positive behavior to solve problems in the education system. The ideological and philosophical prerequisites for supporting positive behavior are considered, including the connection with applied behavior analysis and with value-oriented approaches to the provision of social services. Clinical recommendations are provided for more effective, socially acceptable and empirically reliable approaches to correcting problem behavior.

Keywords: positive behavior support, applied behavior analysis, positive reinforcement, behavioral disorders, intellectual disabilities, social role valorization, person-centered planning

Publication heading: Counseling

Material type: scientific article

For quote:
Dewulf M. D., Lighton A.L. Support for positive behavior in psychological science and education [Electronic resource] // Psychological science and education psyedu.ru. 2012. Volume 4. No. 4. URL: https://psyjournals.ru/journals/psyedu/archive/2012_n4/57098 (date of access: 06/27/2023)

Excerpt from article

Over the last 25 years there has been a growing interest in the use of PBS
in addressing the clinical challenges that sometimes occur among people having
intellectual and developmental disabilities. Early published articles (e.g.,
Horner Dunlap, Koegel, Carr, Sailor, & Anderson, 1990; McGee, Menolascino,
Hobbs and Menousek 1987; Meyer & Evans, 1989) centered primarily on
non-aversive behavior management and “gentle teaching” rather than what most
practitioners now consider PBS, but ultimately sought to eliminate the use of
punishment, aversive consequences, and “dehumanizing” behavioral
interventions.

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