How To Be Proactive

Transcript:

Hey there. I'm Crystal. I'm a behavior analyst, and I'm here to help you uncomplicate the complicated world of behavior. We are going get into all things behavior here. Strategies, interventions, support, data, assessments, the good, the frustrating, and especially the complicated. I'm a behavior analyst who loves to educate, be positive, and most importantly, be proactive. This podcast is your place to learn more about behavior analysis and the beautiful benefits that come with being positive and proactive. This is your uninterrupted time to talk behavior with your bestie. So grab your headphones, your walking shoes, or pull up that comfy chair and get ready to learn.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode two of Uncomplicate Behavior. I'm your host, Crystal Ruse, and I'm really happy that you're here and that you're taking time out of your busy day, your busy life, to learn a little bit more about behavior and how to be more positive and more proactive about it. Because when behavior problems come up with our kids, our clients, our students, it can make our busy days seem that much busier and way more overwhelming. A huge part of that, in my opinion, is because when we look at behavior at it's face value, it's topography, it can be really frustrating. I always say behavior draws a ton of emotion. So today I want to talk about being proactive. My ultimate goal here is to empower you as a listener to cope with the frustrations of behavior and rather than be reactive, I want you to think, what is the functions of this behavior? And how can I teach a new skill or be proactive to set them up for success? How can I turn this around and make this a learning opportunity, a time to praise them for being flexible? What positive strategies can I use to change the behavior? Now, before we get into the goodness of this episode, I want to check in and make sure that you've listened to episode one. It's called? Start here, go anywhere. I really want you to know the foundational knowledge of the basic functions of the behavior so that you can understand what the heck I'm talking about as we move through the different topics that go along with uncomplicating behavior. So today we're going to be discussing different ways to be proactive. And if you've ever listened to me present at an IEP meeting or participated in staff training or parent coaching that I've done, you will know the one thing I stress is being proactive, using antecedent interventions, priming, setting kids up for success. There are so many ways we can infuse positivity and prepare kids to engage in the behaviors that we want to see. I love finding ways to inflate reinforcement into our kids day. Now, why would we want to do that? Because it builds our kids confidence and momentum, and it creates more positive patterns of behavior. When we tell a child what we want them to do, and they do it, we build their confidence. We begin to pair our directions with positive outcomes and that's what we want, right? We want to teach our kids that they can do hard things, that they can be flexible, and they can make good choices. Proactive measures are among my favorite. No, they are my favorite to talk about because it's easy, because it takes very little time, training and experience. You don't really need any materials either. Just to give you some background information on how easy this is. I do it all the time with my kids. I set them up for success. I'm constantly telling them what's upcoming, what the expectation is, and I praise them for their behavior or their effort towards that behavior. Now, I noticed a while back that my husband does this too. When he's getting the kids ready to go out to sports or he's taking them out on a little venture by himself, I notice him talking about what could happen and what the result could or should be. And whenever I hear this, I laugh to myself and I'm like, I bet he doesn't know what he's doing. He's just doing it because he's seen it modeled so many times, and that's really just how easy it is. I'm really excited to dive into this today. Before we get started, once again, there's some foundational knowledge that is really helpful. There are three key terms that I want you to know as we work through being proactive. So they are antecedent, triggers, and setting events. Now, if you're working in education or you have a student with an IEP, the word antecedent gets thrown around a lot, especially if you have some technical people on your team. You might even hear triggers or setting events. What I want to make sure of is that you really understand what antecedents triggers and setting events are and how we use them to positively intervene on behavior because we want to know the language and understand the terminology to bring the information to our team or to challenge our team to consider these very, very important variables.

Now, according to the Book of Applied Behavior Analysis, the term antecedent refers to environmental conditions or stimulus changes that exist or occur prior to the behavior of interest. Notice how the definition includes environmental conditions and stimulus changes, what is happening around and in the environment. So this includes transitions, students moving around the room, escalated noise volumes, sirens, directions to engage in behavior, redirections. A  stimulus is defined as energy changes that affect an organism through its receptor cells. Basically, we are talking what changes occurred in the environment prior to the behavior occurring? So that's definitely not rocket science, right? It's pretty easy.

Now, let's look at triggers, because antecedent and triggers are often used interchangeably. But I think it's important to get the single definition down and try to really understand each component of this so we can be more proactive. Triggers are what comes before thoughts, feelings or behaviors. They lead to a change in responses or emotions. Triggers can also be referred to as cues or prompts. So think of it this way antecedents are environmental and stimulus changes that occur outside of our control. We have to think we cannot control antecedents, but we can control their impact by being proactive. When we look at the difference between an antecedent and a trigger, remember, triggers are events that ignite behavioral choices. Basically something that happens that evokes feelings or thoughts.

Setting events are fun because they're sneaky and you kind of have to dig a little deeper for them. Setting events are prior events or environmental changes that don't happen right before the behavior. There are so many great examples. An easy one to discuss is when a child did not sleep the night before, was woken up early and then did not eat breakfast. While that student is more likely to engage in maladaptive behavior not because of an immediate antecedent or triggering event, but because they are tired, hungry and definitely more irritable. Now, this happens to me when I wander downstairs at 05:00 a .m. To start work and find out that my favorite coffee creamer is gone or we're out of espresso. I am definitely more irritable.

So let's get into planning and understanding how to be proactive. We always consider the antecedents triggers and setting events. This is something that you can write down, you can talk about it with your team, you can talk about it with your partner. What are the things that most likely contribute to this behavior? What are the antecedents that are going on? What are the triggering events? Are there any setting events that contribute to the magnitude or size of this behavior? This discussion should be something like every time they are in lounge mode and we tell them it's time for gymnastics. Every time they haven't had good sleep or they're feeling really hungry or tired, when there are new changes or there will be unexpected changes or unfamiliar events. So the number one thing we do when trying to be proactive is we determine what are those variables? What are those antecedents? We are asking ourselves what significant role do the antecedents triggers and setting events play in this behavior? Now, the more you think about this, the more natural it will become because when I first started out in this field, I had to force myself to think in the most objective manner possible. What did I actually see happen? We never want to say, well, they were sad, they were crying. They're sad because they're crying while they're crying because they're sad. That is a never ending cycle of speculation and it takes us down roads that lead to a hypothesis on feelings which we can never really prove. So stick with the objective, only what you can see and back up factually. These antecedents are things that you want to share with your school team your partner, whoever has a stake in this, because we want to share information so that we can all be on the same page and if someone else doesn't know the power that comes with being able to predict the behavior, we can share that knowledge with them too. I often see teens that know the antecedents, but they don't have an active plan to intervene on them. Or parents or friends that say every time it's time for bath, or every time it's time for this. Understanding what is happening before the behavior gives us the power to identify the interventions.

So the next step is to decide what you want them to do or say instead. So what is the pro social statement or behavior we want them to make? Then we decide is this a skill that we need to teach them or is this something that is in their repertoire that they know how to do that we just need to reinforce? So step three we teach or review the skill. Let's not teach the skill when they're in the middle of an epic meltdown, right? I mean, they are most likely not going to hear or process any good lessons that we are trying to teach at that time. The best time to teach is when they are in a calm and receptive state. When the conversation is flowing, everyone's happy, everyone is calm. Now, of course, everyone and situation is different. So you want to speak with your team, your behaviorist, to ensure that everyone is on the same page with this b ut, what a great thing to bring to the team, right? How and when should we be teaching this skill and with what tools? I love a good old fashioned social story. Social stories are the most tried and true interventions. They map things out for our kids so well. Now depending on the kid and what they can get from it, right? With my own kids, I find books on confidence, facing bullies, asking for help, being distracted. Once this is talked about, we can create a plan with them. So when you're not first in line, what are some strategies we can use or things you can say? Teaching the skill allows us the ability to prime them, to remind them prior to the behavior occurring. Priming is telling them get ready for this, this is going to happen, this is what you can do. So it's all a matter of teaching.

Step four is we are going to prompt and we are going to praise that behavior. And it feels a little funny saying this after I have spent years telling teams that they are prompting too much. But prompts aren't all bad. In fact, they are super necessary. It's the way that we prompt that makes the difference, the implementation of the prompt. And if you've done steps one through three, then you are set to prompt that behavior before it occurs. When you know that antecedent event is coming. That's what antecedent intervention is. We are intervening before the behavior occurs. You positively remind them, hey, after PE, it's your friend's turn to be first. What are you going to do? It's okay to prompt the response, you have them repeat it and praise the heck out of them. I tend to be a lot with kids when it comes to reinforcement, and for the vast majority, that's okay but I definitely have learned to water down my praise with certain kids so know your audience. Does your kid love big praise and high five? Yes. Then do it. If not, then don't you dare, right? Like, do what feels good to them. High five. Social attention, thumbs up, a head nod, increased social attention. If that's what they like, then we give that to them. We reinforce them for engaging in the behavior that we have just prompted them to engage in. And just a side note here, I've heard from different staff members or teams that they don't want to praise the prompt because the behavior was the expectation, right? They are expected to engage in that behavior so when they finally do it, there's no recognition or praise because the staff or the parent or whoever it may be feel that that is the expectation. Well, my friends, that is wrong. When they finally do it, we praise the heck out of them and we let them know that they did something right. We let them know that they can do it and they are on the right path. It is so important to label what they did and praise that specifically. Like, hey, I love the way you asked for help today. You recognized you needed it and you found a solution. I'm so proud of you for making that positive choice. Reinforcement should be really specific. Hey, I love how you were second or third in line today. You did a really good job of being flexible. I love to see that. Think about how that positive statement can make that child feel and how that can create new behavioral patterns for them. All these steps go into being proactive, and all of them are really important. Priming, prompting and praising are all clinchers, right? They're game changers for sure but the recognition and planning are critical as well.

So let's run through these steps really quickly because I explained each step and I got into a lot of detail, but I want to give you a quick recap. So number one: we are going to solidify and understand the antecedents triggers and setting events. Number two: we're going to decide a couple of things. We're going to decide what we want the child to do instead. What is that pro social behavior we want to see? and we decide, is this something in their repertoire or is this a new skill we need to teach? Number three: we make a plan. When are we going to intervene? What are the things we're going to do or say? And number four: we are going to prompt and praise them for their engagement in the correct behavior. And that's it for today. I want you to think about how you can be more proactive when challenging behaviors occur. We can't always control for our environment and the conditions we face, but we can lessen the impact by preparing and making a plan. I hope that you leave this episode with more knowledge on behavior and start to identify what is happening before the behavior occurs so that we can be prepared and we can control our reactions. Next week we're going to be getting into reactive measures and how to react and reinforce what we want to see. I can't wait to get into it. I'll see you soon.

Well, you did it. Another step closer to uncomplicating behavior. I'm so proud of you for taking the time to learn more about behavior analysis. Still interested in learning more or have a question or topic that you'd love some answers to? Head over to Uncomplicatebehaviorpodcast.com for today's show notes. Submit a question or topic you would love to hear about and subscribe to my email and podcast so you never miss a new episode. I created this podcast for you and I want it to serve you well, so don't be afraid to reach out to me directly.