Sasha from The Autism Helper explains planned ignoring, a strategy for attention-seeking behaviors identified through functional behavior assessment. It works only for non-dangerous behaviors while you teach a replacement behavior that gets the child positive attention. Consistency across your team and data tracking are essential.
Hi, this is Sasha from The Autism Helper, and in this episode of the mini video training series, we're going to talk about planned ignoring and when this strategy is appropriate to use. So planned ignoring is an intervention that removes attention from a problem behavior. So this is a strategy that can be used with attention behaviors. So problem behaviors that are functioning to get attention, meaning you've done an FBA, you've taken the data to show that this is likely the why behind this problem behavior. Planned ignoring works because it removes that desired consequence of attention. So the idea is that if that behavior is no longer working, hopefully our child will no longer want to engage in the problem behavior because it's not working anymore. They're not getting that desired consequence of attention. So you are, of course, using this strategy while teaching replacement behavior. We always need to be teaching replacement behaviors. While we're looking at decreasing that negative behavior, we then want to be increasing a positive behavior in its place. So you want to be teaching a communicative, pro-social way to get access to attention. So while you're teaching that, then you want to know how to respond when those problem behaviors happen. So you want to remove attention and engage in this planned ignoring, purposeful ignoring of that behavior. It's important to note here that we're ignoring a behavior. We're not ignoring the child, but we are ignoring the inappropriate or negative maladaptive way that they're requesting attention and removing that desired consequence. So first of all, this is not an appropriate intervention for every attention behavior because there are a lot of behaviors behaviors that are simply too unsafe to ignore. We cannot ignore behaviors that are potentially very dangerous or destructive, so it's not going to be appropriate for those types of behaviors. Where it is appropriate is for behaviors that are not dangerous but are maybe disruptive or inappropriate or not, um, or maybe are stigmatizing to that child, and behaviors that we don't necessarily want to see more of. So things like swearing, whining, off-task behavior, things like that, this might be an appropriate time to use planned ignoring. Planned ignoring can be hard for some people to implement because some of these behaviors might feel very disrespectful and inappropriate in the morning, in the time. If a child is swearing at a teacher, that's extremely disrespectful and it's hard to not react in the moment. But just know that when you react in that moment and you respond, you are giving the child exactly what they want. When they mouth off and they swear and it's an attention behavior and you say, "Hey, you shouldn't talk to me like that. I'm an adult." I mean, it's like they pressed a big shiny red button and they got your attention. They got what they wanted. It can feel weird and wrong to utilize planned ignoring in that situation because you might feel like you're letting them get away with it. But actually you're not. Actually, you are showing them that this negative behavior does not work anymore while you are teaching them positive ways to get your attention and to get a reaction from you. So it's important to identify that by responding, by reacting, you're getting into that tug of war, and you really want to teach your staff and your team to drop the rope. Don't get into the power struggle because your kids will win. So for these types of attention behaviors, utilize that planned ignoring by removing the attention. That whole team aspect is really important because if only 1 or 2 people are utilizing this strategy, your child or individual will quickly figure out who to go to, to get attention from. So you want to really make sure that this is a team endeavor that we're all doing, that we are all removing this attention from the negative behavior, and really make sure that you're doing that in a way that is effective. You're not, you know, still giving eye contact or still talking about the student or staying near the student, that you're really just not responding and walking away. At the same time, of course, we're teaching that replacement behavior, and then when our kids use that replacement behavior, we're giving loads and loads of attention. So if you've taken an FBA and you've really identified that this behavior could be for an attention function and this behavior is not dangerous, planned ignoring may be a good strategy for you. So you want to look at how you as a team can implement this strategy, if it even can be done, and then what are some ways that you can ensure that it's consistent with the whole team. And you want to take that data to make sure that this intervention is working. The data will tell you if it's the right intervention or not. If it's not making any changes in those behaviors, then you'll know you maybe need to try something else. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the mini video training series. Please check out our YouTube channel, The Autism Helper, or our website, theautismhelper.com, for more.
