Re: how to stop hair pulling, hitting, biting, kicking.....

[Guest guest]

My son is 5 and completely non verbal. He is starting to discriminate between

several signs and use them correctly. But during drills when he doesnt want

to work(not always) he starts doing all these bad behaviors to his

therapists. We have tried stopping work and having him sit quietly but it

doesnt work. We taught him the sign for stop but we cant always stop when he

uses it or we wont get any work done. any ideas? We are just starting VB

after doing ABA for awhile. He does better with fast pace drills but still

gets those kicks and hair pulls in.

karen w

[Guest guest]

First of all, you need to heavily reinforce him for using signs

appropriately. If he doesn't want to work and is starting to be

aggressive, then there is definitely a problem with the reinforcement

delivery system.

Right now, because he has little language, maybe you need to concentrate on

manding before moving on to the tacting, if that is what he is doing at the

table. You need to get a hold of the ABLLS and find out if you are trying

to teach him skills he is not quite ready to learn yet. Your consultant

should be addressing all these issues, but it sounds to me like the

instructional side is not quite right at the moment.

These issues are very common when there is not a well thought out plan and

some rigid DTT curriculum is just being followed without rhyme or

reason. If the demands you are making on your son are too much, you will

get the behaviors you are seeing. It is very difficult sometimes to find

the right balance, how not to trigger the behaviors (which are for

avoidance in your son's case) and still maintain a good rate of

instruction. Since you are just switching from the DTT, to the DTT-net

format, you may have to overhaul the entire program and concentrate on the

language acquisition. Keep the demands low and praise him at the rate of

at least 6 times/minute. Do not ignore his appropriate signing for " stop "

but let him have a 10 second break on the timer. Just don't let him do

anything that is too reinforcing during the break, but still let him get

away for the few seconds. Give him a big reinforcer for working for 2 to 3

minutes for NOT aggressing. Please reinforce him for not aggressing heavily.

Your consultant or program manager needs to address these issues

thoroughly, but the first thing to do is complete the ABLLS if you have not

before you decide on how to change his program to the AVB methodology.

Rose

At 07:58 AM 2/15/2002 -0500, you wrote:

>My son is 5 and completely non verbal. He is starting to discriminate between

>several signs and use them correctly. But during drills when he doesnt want

>to work(not always) he starts doing all these bad behaviors to his

>therapists. We have tried stopping work and having him sit quietly but it

>doesnt work. We taught him the sign for stop but we cant always stop when he

>uses it or we wont get any work done. any ideas? We are just starting VB

>after doing ABA for awhile. He does better with fast pace drills but still

>gets those kicks and hair pulls in.

>karen w

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Hi!

As I don't know your specific situation, I don't want

to assume things. Based on what you posted, it sounds

like that the function for your child's hair pulling,

hitting, etc. is escape. You can do several things to

decrease the behaviors maintained by escape. You can

decrease the motivation to escape by pairing

therapists more with reinforcers,interspersing trials

requiring verbal responses with trials requiring

physical responses, interspersing mastered trials with

acquisition trials, starting with teaching in the

context of a reinforcing activity. As the function

seems to be escape, you also have to find a reinforcer

that can compete with escape at the moment and require

less responses for reinforcement. Reinforce the mand

" stop " , give a short break (few seconds) and also use

the strong reinforcer that is stronger than escape.

Once the mand is well established, you can then use an

intermittent schedule of reinforcement and ask your

child to " wait " , such as " one more picture, then

break " . At the same time, try your best to make the

behaviors ineffective for your child, which means to

make these behaviors not work for him in escaping the

tasks. Work through the behaviors if possible.

Hope this helps!

Jing Zhou, M.S.,

Board Certified Behavior Analyst

Consultant

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