response to Janine

[Guest guest]

This is a normal response for children starting out with DTT. It is

imporatnt however only to reinforce a response that is used in the

apporpriate situation. For example, if you ask your child to imitate a

response that you make such as clapping your hands and he claps then it

is apporpriate to reinforce that response with praise and a tangible.

If you ask you child if he wants juice and he claps his hands it is not

appropriate to give him juice. It would be more apporopriate if you

asked him to say juice or to engage in a diffierent requesting response

such as pointing or reaching when asked what do you want.

The reason that children start to go thru all the responses that they

have learned in session to get reinforcers is because they are

generalizing a new skill. They understand that when they do things such

as clap thier hands or touch their nose that they get something good,

because it happened in the past. This is a good sign. However, if you

start to reinforce those reponses outside of that situation then those

responses start to function as a form of requesting. The child may use

clap hands to mean " give me the thing that you have in your hand " .

Therefore to change the responses taught in session to functional

responses that are only used in the correct situation you must make sure

not to reinforce those responses unless you have asked the child to

demonstrate that response and you should also work on a more appropriate

replacement response to use for requesting such as pointing to an item

or using a word or sign to request it. I hope this is helpful.

Krista