Sasha from The Autism Helper explains how to address escape-maintained problem behaviors in autistic students. Time-outs and sensory breaks backfire because they give students the escape they're seeking. Instead, teach them to ask for breaks, adjust demanding tasks, and require task completion before any reward.
Hi, this is Sasha from The Autism Helper, and in this episode of the mini video training series, I'm going to talk about what does not work for escape behaviors. So if you've done an FBA and you've done your due diligence and you think this could be an escape behavior, first off, you want to do a lot of proactive interventions before you jump in. So you really want to look at what the child is escaping from and why. Is the work too hard? Is the social demand beyond their social skill level? And really look at tweaking what kind of that aversive thing is that the child is escaping. So you'll be working on that at the same time as also teaching replacement behavior. We want to ensure that all of our kids have a way to ask for a break. You and I ask for breaks all the time, or just take breaks. Think about how much time we spend on social media avoiding our chores or the IEP we have to write or things that we don't feel like doing. That's an escape, and we do that whenever we want. So we wanna ensure that our kids have a communicative way to ask for a break that is reinforced, that teachers are saying yes to. When our kids say, "Hey, you know, I've had too much," or "I wanna break," or "I need 5 minutes," we're saying, "Yes, you can take that." We're not always saying no to that. So you'll be doing those proactive interventions, you'll be teaching that replacement behavior, but what do you do when those negative behaviors then do occur that we think are likely to escape something? So you want to, as much as possible, remove the opportunity to really escape that task. So you want to ensure that the student maybe is still coming back to that activity. You want to make sure you're not using timeout, you're not using a long lecture, because while you're giving a 2-minute lecture, Guess who's not working? That student. You want to ensure that you're not using walks in the hallway or going to the sensory room or things like that right after those negative behaviors because that's a form of a break. We might think that timeout is negative, but for some kids they're like, "Cool, I didn't want to do that social studies work anyways." So if we're giving a timeout every time Johnny kicks the teacher under the table, he's now learned that if I don't want to do the work that's presented, I can kick my teacher and I get to go to timeout, and life's pretty awesome there because I don't have to do my work. So really look at if you're using strategies like that, what types of behaviors you're looking them for, and then look at those escape behaviors and make sure that as much as possible there's no break following that response. So if you have a child that is getting up and walking away from the table or engaging in off-task behaviors, when they eventually come back to the table, it's right back to that same activity. And then whatever reinforcer they were working for, maybe they were working for iPad or they were working for some type of treat, you have to complete that activity, that same activity, to get that reinforcer, to really show that when this type of activity is presented to you, you do have to complete it in order to get what you want. And that's of course ensuring that that is a task that the student can do and all of those good things. But when you have a task that is at the student's level, that isn't something they're bored of, and you've taught the replacement behavior, Then you want to ensure that yes, we are completing those tasks that are given because that's part of life, right? We have to complete tasks that are given to us even if we don't like it. I really believe that that is an important life skill. We don't all love every aspect of our jobs, but sometimes you have to do some mundane or boring tasks because that's just part of the job responsibilities. So if you've done a thorough FBA and done your due diligence, taken that data, and you think this could be an escape behavior, look at making sure that you're not falling into any those common mistakes when setting up your behavior plans for escape behaviors. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the mini video training series. If you'd like to check out more, head over to my channel on YouTube, The Autism Helper, or check out the videos on my website, theautismhelper.com.
