What should you do IN RESPONSE to your child engaging in challenging behavior?

Remember those four reasons why people may engage in challenging behaviors discussed in the previous post?  People may want attention from other people, may want something, may want to get out of something, or may enjoy how the behavior feels.  If you haven’t already read it, we suggest reading the prior post so the information below is as useful as possible.

This post will focus on reactive strategies, based on the reason your child is engaging in the particular challenging behavior.  In other words, what should you do in response to your child engaging in the behavior?  This is probably the most stressful for parents as they may wonder if what they are doing is right.  They may wonder if they are hindering or helping their child.  Hopefully we can provide some guidance.

If your child engages in a particular challenging behavior to get something that he/she wants, it is important for him to learn that his behaviors do not lead to getting what he/she wants.  You should avoid giving them what they want when engaging in the problem behavior, and even after the behavior ends.  The child should only be allowed to get what they want if he engages in a more appropriate behavior, which we will discuss in a future post. This can be difficult for parents as giving the child what they want quiets them down and relieves much of the stress in the home or community setting.  The problem is that your child will learn this connection and continue to engage in this behavior in the future when they want to same thing. It will become a repeated cycle.

If your child engages in a particular challenging behavior to get out of something, such as homework or eating dinner, it is important to not allow him to get out of the situation until they engage in a more appropriate behavior.  If the child hits and screams while doing homework, it is important to follow through, require them to complete a few more problems without hitting and screaming, and then they can leave.  More appropriate behaviors to get out of doing things they don’t want to do will be discussed in future posts.

If your child engages in a particular challenging behavior to get attention, you should avoid providing attention to them until the behavior is not occurring or he engages in a more appropriate behavior to get your attention.  Providing attention only teaches them that this bad behavior leads to what they want.  This connection needs to be disconnected and the child needs to be taught more appropriate ways to get attention.

Last, if your child engages in some challenging behavior because it feels good, such as head banging, it is important to block this behavior so that this particular behavior does not provide the sensory satisfaction that your child is receiving (in addition to preventing them from doing harm to themselves).  You can physically block the behavior or there are many devices created for this purpose.

Stay tuned for a future post providing suggestions for what to teach your child to do instead of engaging in the bad behaviors they currently know will get them what they want.  Just reacting how we have described above will not teach new, appropriate ways to get what they want.  Teaching a new, more appropriate behavior is the key to decreasing challenging behaviors.

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