Many of the past posts have focused on understanding, accepting, and
validating the child, before attempting to change their behavior. One
of the basic premises of this page is “assume the children is doing the
best that they can, given the situation they are in, and their current
skills to deal with the demands.” Consequently, when the
child is struggling, we need to lower the demands to better match their
skill level, and/or provide greater assistance to support their
performance. Hence, when things go wrong, we often have placed the
child in situations for which they cannot handle. We need to take
responsibility for overwhelming them.
Now, in this premise,
where does the responsibility lie with the child? Autism presents many
challenges (sensory issues, information processing, emotional
dysregulation, social relating issues, etc.) that overwhelms the child,
and explains “why” they may melt down and act out. However, autism
must not “excuse” the behavior. Of course, when the child is
overwhelmed and disorganized, we need to recognize, understand, and
validate how he is “feeling”, but not necessarily accept how he is
“behaving.” All children need boundaries, rules, and expectations. We
must communicate understanding when upset, but not accept physically
attacking others, destroying property, and serious self injury. Autism
is not an ‘excuse” for aggression. The child needs to learn that there
are a variety of ways that they can express frustration (even screaming,
hitting a pillow, etc.), but attacking others or breaking property are
not acceptable.
We as the supportive adults need to ask “how
do I want the child to express frustration?” Working with the child,
identify a couple of ways (coping skills) for the child to appropriately
express their anger and frustration (using their words, physical
exercise, ask for help, engage in regulating patterns- rocking, jumping,
etc.). From there we need to help the child practice these
alternatives so they can adequately express their anger. However, we
also must establish strong expectations of no aggression, and have
appropriate consequences, including making amends, for aggression.
Boundaries and expectations need to be very clear, with consistent
consequences, so they are concrete and easy to understand. The child
needs strong, black and white rules and expectations to make sense of
the world, and understand what is acceptable and what is not allowed.
Just like we need to understand and respect them, they also need to
learn to respect others.
Strong boundaries, with clear
expectations, and consistent consequences, implemented in a posture of
understanding, acceptance, and validation allows us to respect the
child, while changing their behavior. By focusing on teaching,
practicing, and heavily reinforcing the positive alternative behavior,
natural consequences for unacceptable acting out can be effective.
However, before dealing with the behavior, acknowledge and validate the
“feelings” underlying the behavior. Implement the consequence without
degrading the child, so he views the consequence as the result of his
behavior. Make sure the child knows and practices how to react
appropriately, and always review what the consequence is before using
it. This way, when you implement the consequence, it is understandable
and predictable. Every child needs strong boundaries and consequences
for his actions. Don’t let the diagnosis excuse the behavior. At the
same time, when the outbursts occur, we more than likely placed the
child in a situation that they could not handle. We still have the
responsibility to re-evaluate the demands, and provide greater
assistance and support to decrease the likelihood of the situation
occurring again. By doing so, we decrease the frequency of these
unacceptable behavior by better matching the demands to the child’s
abilities, and teaching the child acceptable ways of dealing with anger
and frustration.
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