4 Ways to Prevent Problem Behaviors

If you are looking to decrease problem behavior within your child, the best way to do that is prevent that behavior before it starts. I'm Sasha Long. I am a board-certified behavior analyst and a former special education teacher, and today I'm going to share 4 ways to prevent problem behavior. These are easy-to-use strategies that can be readily applied to your home or your classroom. I always say that decreasing challenging behavior really happens away from the challenging behavior. Because once the problem behavior happens, you're automatically in reactive mode, right? You have to provide a reactive response. We're going to have so much more success being proactive and preventing problem behavior before it even starts. The first strategy seems really simple and maybe like something you're doing already, but I think it's always important to be more purposeful about adding this into our repertoire with our kids or with our students. The first strategy to preventing problem behavior is to review expectations. Not just once, not just on Monday, not just in the start of the school year. We have to review expectations all the time. My kids, I use this all the time with them and sometimes they roll their eyes at me, but guess what? It works. On the way to every playdate, every family party, every time we're going to anyone's house, on that drive I review expectations with my kids on how we act in someone else's house. We say hi when we get there. We share and we compromise with our friends. When it's time to go, we say goodbye and thank you and we leave. And they're always like, Mom, I know. And I'm always like, half the time this is for your dad. When Mom says it's time to go, we gotta go, right? We have to review expectations with our kids, with our family, with our students every time. You have an expectation in your head of how your kids should be acting. You need to communicate that to them in a clear, understandable and accessible way. I love using visuals when clarifying expectations and schedules, which is our number 2 step. Visuals means pictures or words. Writing things out is a visual for your students that are fluent readers, for your kids that are fluent readers. Write things out just in the same way you make yourself a grocery list or to-do list so you don't forget anything. Do the same thing when reviewing expectations. This can be simple, this can be more complicated with pictures. But this could be something as simple as a Post-it, like, hey, we're gonna go to the doctor's office, and at the doctor's office, I expect you to sit in the waiting room quietly. I expect you to listen to the doctor when he talks to you, and I expect you to answer the doctor's questions. Writing it out, because when we're talking and we're saying, hey, these are my expectations here at the doctor's office, some of our kids' processing speed may not be there yet when we're giving all of this information in a verbal way. Just in the same way, maybe if you listen to an audiobook or a podcast and all of a sudden you realize that you haven't been paying paid attention in the last 5 minutes because you've been thinking about what you're making for dinner or daydreaming. Same thing with our kids, right? Their mind's somewhere else. So bring them back, focus them back, and be like, hey, here are my expectations for you. Now, if your kids are not yet fluent readers, you can add in a little picture. I love adding little pictures like here. You can also draw it. I'm going to show an example of that in a second. Hey, if you need to ask for a break, this is how I expect you to do that. In the classroom, taping things to the desk so it's accessible. Hey, if you need a break, this is what you do. You raise your hand, you say excuse me, it's very clear. And having really general expectations or rules for your class, for your house that you're talking about readily. As I said, this isn't one and done. We're talking about it all the time. If you are a teacher, at the start of every single small group, you should take 60 to 90 seconds to review expectations. Yep, every single time. How do we take turns? How do we ask for help? What if we're out of supplies? What if we make a mistake? What do we do? Go through those things readily. This is the biggest way to prevent problem behaviors because we're getting everyone on the same page. Now, the second way we can prevent problem behaviors is tied with number one. So along with reviewing expectations, we want to use schedules to show the order of activities and the events. This is also really another way to review expectations, right? If you have a busy Saturday morning with your child and a bunch of errands to do, review what those are. In the classroom, if we're gonna go through a bunch of centers or have different activities to do, review what those are. So there's a bunch of ways that you can utilize schedules, and I actually have another video on YouTube that shows different types of schedules. But again, we're going visual. Visual can be text, visual can be pictures, visual can be color-coded pictures— all kinds of ways you can use schedules. So in your classroom, you want a daily schedule that shows the order of activities. We're gonna have table work, we're gonna do reading, we're gonna do circle, lunch. It's all clarified. You can use real photos. I like taking photos of the student in the classroom, using those for the schedule pictures. That's an awesome way to do it. These are not special ed tools. If you're watching this and you are a gen ed teacher or in a resource room and thinking like, I don't know if they need a schedule, they do. Schedules are functional. We all use schedules. If we couldn't use schedules, we wouldn't be at our jobs on time, we wouldn't be at our best friend's birthday party, we wouldn't get our kids to their soccer soccer practice. Schedules are functional. Now, not all kids may need a schedule like this with a movable piece and a picture on it, but all kids need a schedule that shows the order of activities, right? Just like we have our Google Calendar and our to-do list— I mean, I live and breathe by my to-do list, it's how I get things done— our kids need schedules to show what's expected of them. So let's say you have a few activities in the evening. Instead of being like, hey Johnny, I need you to clean your room, do your homework, and set the table, a lot can get lost in translation there. There's a lot of executive functioning struggles that your child might have when giving them a 3-step verbal direction. They have to remember those 3 steps, they have to be paying attention, they need that verbal processing there, that receptive language processing. That's a lot, and if we get frustrated because they get distracted at the first task and never get the other 2 tasks done, it's because we really aren't giving enough support. So we want to prevent the distraction. We want to prevent the off-task behaviors by giving tools to keep them on task. And a simple to-do list like this— you can make this on a piece of paper, super easy— clean room, check it off, do homework, check it off, set table, check it off. And then when you go to give reminders, if the student is distracted, this is what you come with. Not with, "Oh my gosh, you're laying on your bed, what are you doing?" No, you come with this: "Remember, it's time to clean our room, then we're doing our homework, then we're setting the table." This is what the reminder is. I do this all the time with my younger kids. I just draw pictures. Obviously, I'm not an artist, but this is all you need. Hey, your morning routine: you need to get dressed, you need to brush your teeth, you need to eat breakfast. And then model this and check it off at each one. Okay, we, we got dressed, now we're brushing our teeth. We are clearly showing what we expect them to do instead of being unclear on, hey, I expect you to get dressed and brush your teeth before breakfast. We are being really clear, we're clarifying expectations by using our schedules. Alright, so our first 2 steps for preventing problem behavior were reviewing expectations and using schedules. Number 3 is giving an accessible means of communication at all times and validating and responding to that communication. Now that doesn't mean saying yes every time, but it does mean validating that communication. I hear you. I see what you're saying. I understand you. Whether we say yes or no is kind of the next piece, but we have to first respond to that communication attempt. Now, for our students with limited verbal communication, lean into visuals. We want to give students a way to ask for a break, ask for using a coping strategy, what things they can do in a break. All of these things can really replace the problem behavior. Remember, Every problem behavior is communicating something. Your child needs help, support, a break, time alone, attention. And if we can give them a new means of communicating that, we can really effectively get rid of that problem behavior. But we need to give that means of communication, and we need to show them that this communication works. So that means that sometimes in the middle of a work task in your classroom, if a student says, "Hey, I need a break," We're going to reinforce that behavior by being like, okay, you can have a break. And we're not gonna worry at that moment about like, well, oh my gosh, now they're getting out of work, they need to do their work. At that moment, we are celebrating that they are using a positive pro-social behavior to get what they want. Instead of laying starfish on the floor, instead of running from their table, instead of throwing the task, they are using something appropriate to respond with what they want and need. We want to respect that and we want to reinforce that. So ensure that we have methods of communication at all times and ensure that we're responding to it and then we're reinforcing it when we can. If your students have great fluent verbal skills, then when they say, "Hey, I need a break," or "I'm bored of this," responding like, "Oh my gosh, you're bored right now. I hear you. Here are some solutions," or "What can we do about that?" That's that next problem-solving step, but the first piece is is responding and validating that communication. So, our third strategy to prevent problem behavior is being aware of sensory overload. Now, we all get overloaded by things in our environment, right? Think about if you're in a crowded mall. Picture this: you're in a crowded mall, it's maybe Christmas time, you have a big coat on, it's hot, people are bumping into you, you're running late, How are you feeling in this moment? I mean, I'm overwhelmed just explaining this scenario. I feel sweaty. I feel stressed. If someone comes and asks you to do something, you're probably like, oh my God, leave me alone, right? If your kids are like bugging you at the moment, you're like, oh my gosh, stop. You are experiencing sensory overload. When we are in a state of sensory overload, we are going to likely, all of us, maybe engage in some unexpected problem behaviors like snapping at our kids, because we are trying to escape that situation and we are trying to calm our senses down. So we want to help our kids in these scenarios by monitoring what could be a source of sensory overload. Is it changes in routine? Is it the volume that people are talking at? Is it the fluorescent lights in the gym? Is it the crowded hallway in passing periods? Is it the smell of the food that you're cooking for dinner? What could be a source of sensory overload for your child? Be aware of those settings and then provide appropriate coping strategies and tools during those times. For kids that maybe have some limited verbal skills, again, I love visuals here. I love a choice board. I love a step-by-step menu of, hey, these are things I can do when I'm overwhelmed or overstimulated. These are steps I can take. But these are also strategies you can use with any child with any level of verbal skills. I'm just saying, hey, do you want a break? "Here's some noise-canceling headphones. Let's go sit over here for a second." You are gonna really help monitor that situation, and when you see that overwhelm, identifying that, naming that with your child, and helping them have an appropriate escape and break in that moment. All right, so we covered a lot in this video. We talked about 4 ways to prevent problem behavior. You're gonna have the best success decreasing problem behavior by preventing it before it starts. Once the problem behavior happens, you are responding. So we can prevent problem behavior by reviewing expectations, using schedules, having accessible communication that we validate, and being aware of sensory overload. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Sasha Long, and I'm the founder and president of The Autism Helper. Please follow us on YouTube for more behavior strategies.