Positive Strategies for managing and preventing out-of-control behaviour‘
Jed Baker earned his MA and Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Albany. He is the director of the Social Skills Training Project, a private organisation serving individuals with autism and social communication problems. He also sits on the professional advisory board of many autism organisations. With over 20 years experience of working with children on the autism spectrum he is an award winning author of five books and he writes and lectures internationally on the topic of social skills training and managing challenging behaviours.
I only recently came across this book and I found it really interesting and easy to read. It does offer good basic down to earth advice and the chapters are broken down with sub headings with each chapter ending with a small summary highlighting the main points covered. Throughout the book Jed also provides us with many examples of children he has worked with and sometimes situations that have arisen with his own children. He talks us through what the presenting issues were and how and what plans were put in place to help to reduce, and in some cases reconcile, these behaviours.
I need to say at this point that it is not written with children who have a severe learning disability in mind. It is aimed at what we might describe as mainstream or higher functioning autistic children. From a personal point of view I was slightly disappointed that it didn’t give advice on how we might manage and prevent meltdowns in those with learning disabilities as this is the situation I find myself in and I will return to this point later. However, I think whether, like myself, you have a child with a severe learning disability, a higher functioning child or to be honest any mainstream child who is not on the spectrum, there is something as parents or carers we can all learn from this book. After all, we all know that every child is prone to the odd meltdown and, even when we may think we can avoid them, the world is an unpredictable place and unexpected things happen which may trigger them too.
What is a ‘Meltdown?‘
Simply put Jed describes meltdowns as ‘escalating negative emotional reactions’. We have all seen them (often in the middle of the supermarket), experienced them with our own children (again in the middle of the supermarket!!), and probably had a few ourselves too (I’m admitting to nothing here😃). He goes on to describe how certain characteristics make them more likely. It was here that I found my son James fell into some of the categories, i.e. he does have issues with emotional reactivity, sensory processing and difficulty with abstract thinking and perspective taking. These terms are explained in more depth in the book and I’m sure we would all identify our children, or ourselves, as having some of these characteristics. Jed also goes on to describe in more detail the functions of certain areas of the brain and how this may lead to more difficulty controlling emotions.
As I read the book I naturally found myself thinking a lot about James, about the behaviours he presents and what may be the triggers for them. I’ve thought about this a lot over the years but in reading this book I welcomed the opportunity to give myself some time to do this, and somehow Jed’s explanations seemed to help to put things into some sort of perspective. Jed makes statements about things like ‘when one has challenges with abstract thinking, it may be difficult to take another’s perspective.’ James only has one perspective, his!! He is almost oblivious, I would say, to anyone else’s. Jed talks about ‘inflexibility’ in terms of how people manage the challenges of daily life. I think it’s fair to say James’ cognitive impairment renders him fairly inflexible.
Adjusting our Expectations as Parents
At the beginning of this chapter, Jed refers to an essay written by Emily Perl Kingsley called Welcome to Holland. I wrote about this essay in my last post. Jed talks about the importance of adjusting our own expectations as a parent so that we can appreciate our children for who they are. He adds that ‘in order to help our children manage their reactions and frustration we need first to be able to control our own reactions to their behaviour to avoid constant power struggles.’ We all know that’s easier said than done but he makes a valid point. He goes on to say that we should expect challenging behaviours from our children as it is part of normal development. Jed says we should understand that these behaviours are temporary until we work out how to manage and prevent them. I think this situation is not so temporary in the instance of a child/adult with a severe learning disability because they do not have the tools to be able to work through and resolve these issues. In this situation it’s about how we as parents/carers manage this going forward, and maybe we can learn some techniques to help de-escalate the meltdowns. Visual supports in the form of timetables, schedules, now and next boards etc may all provide positive reinforcements.
Self Help Strategies
Jed was able to work with his students and formulate a plan for how they could recognise when they were becoming frustrated and going into meltdown mode. Together they devised strategies which would help them to help to calm down and to deal with the situations they found themselves in. The likelihood of doing this with someone with a severe learning disability is extremely limited. In this instance it really is down to the adults/carers to recognise when a meltdown is likely to occur and try to use distraction where possible to alleviate this, as we do with James. But, it has to be said in James’ case that he reaches a point of no return. A point whereby there is nothing you can do to prevent the meltdown from occurring. At that stage you cannot reason with James in any way, he does not like physical contact and even just talking to him can cause his behaviour to escalate. If you try and talk to him it can lead to a more prolonged and distressing outburst and so he needs to be given some time and space to self-regulate. By which I mean not overwhelming him any more than he is already but letting him calm down in his own time. When he has calmed enough it then is usually possible to distract him with a favourite activity and begin interacting with him again on his terms.
Understanding the Triggers
In order to fully understand the triggers for why a behaviour occurs, psychologists will undertake a Functional Behaviour Assessment. Jed describes the purpose of this in his book and talks in quite a lot of detail about the ABCs of behaviour. For those not familiar with that term it refers to the Antecedent – what happens before the behaviour; the Behaviour – what the child/adult did; and the Consequences – what happened afterwards. I have filled in many ABC forms over the years. It’s laborious, but that said it can be very beneficial in recognising what the triggers to the behaviours are. Armed with that information you can then look at putting a prevention plan in place or devising ways in which to avoid the triggers and hopefully reduce the frequency of meltdowns occurring.
Toward the end of Jed’s book he provides us with lots of case studies and examples of behaviours that he experienced amongst his students and how they developed prevention plans to help eliminate those. As I said previously though, these were students who were able to discuss and recognise their feelings and reactions and work toward resolving those challenging behaviours.
In Summary
This is an interesting read and, whilst not aimed at those with a severe learning disability, it doesn’t mean that everyone can’t get something from this book in terms of thinking about how we manage our child’s behaviour. With James in mind and thinking specifically about James’ meltdowns in the car I thought I would contact Jed directly and see if he could offer any advice that was so blindingly obvious that neither myself or anyone working with James had thought of. I thought it was a bit cheeky as I am sure he’s a very busy man, but I had nothing to lose. I emailed him and, though I kept it brief, I explained about James’ episodes in the car as these are particularly problematical and distressing for James. To my utter surprise I did receive a reply that very same day. It too was brief and he listed a few points to consider. Below each is my response to his suggestions.
- Ensure James is choosing to go to destination before he gets in the car.
James says ‘No,’ by shaking his head, to most things. I do not feel he is able to make this decision. He will say ‘No’ but be very happy when he arrives at the destination. The behaviours also occur when he is going somewhere I know he is very happy to go.
- If he wants to go use a timer and overestimate the time it will take to get there.
We haven’t tried this. I’m really not sure James could grasp this concept.
- Consider his favourite videos to occupy him
James really isn’t interested in any videos and I’m reluctant to try this as technology failing is one of James’ biggest triggers for a meltdown.
- Try using GPS apps to avoid traffic even if a longer route.
We do take alternate routes when we are aware of roadworks and do our utmost to avoid routes with lots of traffic lights. However, we still have to stop at junctions, roundabouts etc which is unavoidable and James finds this very challenging.
- Evaluate meds. Consider if there is a short acting med for lengthy trips.
We avoid long trips. James’ meltdowns can occur frequently on even the shortest of journeys so I do not consider medication to be an option.
Unfortunately, Jed had no magic wand. As much as I’d like to think so I don’t think one exists but if anyone knows differently then I’d really love to hear from you.
