Sasha from The Autism Helper explains how to treat student defiance as communication. Define exactly what defiance looks like, run a functional behavior assessment to find what's reinforcing it (attention, escape, or both), then teach replacement skills that are easier to perform and get the same result.
Hi, this is Sasha from The Autism Helper, and in this episode of the mini video training series, we're going to talk about how to deal with defiance. So it's important to think about what we identify as defiance as still a set of behaviors. For some reason, defiance kind of develops its own little personality, and we might be really good at viewing other behaviors as communication and following following that whole process, but defiance creeps in and we just kind of shut down. And we don't want to get ourselves in a situation where we're wiping our hands. "Well, he's just defiant, so I'm done." You can't ever be done. Defiance, just like all behaviors, is communicating something, and we want to approach this set of behaviors that we've named as being defiant the same way we would any other set of behaviors. We want to identify the function, We want to figure out a replacement behavior, and we want to figure out how we can remove that desired consequence from the defiant behaviors. So first off is really identifying that this set of behaviors known as defiance is working, and it's working well. Do you want to know how I know it's working well? Because the student is continuing to do it. We continue to engage in behaviors that work for us. So this set of behaviors, defiance, is working for this kid. They're getting something out of it. So we want to approach this in the same way. We want to conduct a thorough functional behavior assessment. We want to look at defining what defiance means. You can't just say, "He's defiant." That could mean such a huge range of things. A kid laying their head on the desk is defiant, and a kid punching someone in the face and running out the room is defiant. So define what that means. Does that mean saying no? Does that mean engaging in verbal arguments? Does that mean swearing? Does that mean throwing things? Define what that means. Then really look at identifying the why. Why is this behavior happening? This child isn't innately bad or naughty. This behavior is communicating a lack of skills. So we've got to figure out what they're communicating that they want. So take that ABC data, conduct those informal assessments, maybe conduct an FA, and figure out what's going on behind this defiance. Because we've got to figure out the why if we're gonna make any changes. So things like defiance might sometimes be multiply controlled. That sounds kind of crazy. I'm gonna explain what it means. So multiply controlled just means that there's multiple whys. It's not just for attention. It's not just for escape. It's a little bit of both. And those behaviors are tricky to deal with because if the child isn't getting out of work, then they're getting attention. "Cool, well, if they're not getting attention, then they're getting out of work. Cool." They're winning either way, so it can be harder to intervene. But we really want to highlight the reinforcing aspects of engaging in these defiant behaviors. So are they— what's happening right after the defiance? Is the teacher lecturing him? And remember, negative attention is still attention. Are peers laughing? Is he getting sent to the principal's office, which is escape? Even though principal's office might not sound like fun to me and you, it sounds real fun to him because guess what? I don't have to do my social studies work when I'm in the principal's office. So look at what's happening continuously after those defiant behaviors. And then you want to look at what skills is this child missing that can get access to those same reinforcers. So we're following the same blueprint we always follow. We want to figure out that replacement behavior. Can we give this child another way to ask for attention? Can we give this child another way to ask for a break? Can we give this child another way of asking for help or saying that this is too hard? They obviously don't have those skills yet. And of course, with all replacement behaviors, we want to make that replacement response easier for the kid to do. And guess what? Defiance is pretty easy, so we got to get creative and more effective. Also tricky because defiance is really effective too. So we want to make sure that we're providing that really robust reinforcer when our student does ask for a break. We're giving them that break all the time and it's a great break, or we're giving them that peer attention, we're facilitating that. So it can be tricky, but if you kind of go through this process and you follow that same blueprint that we always talk about, you can really make effective change on reducing those defiant behaviors and increasing those positive replacement behaviors. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the mini video training series. If you'd like to check out more, head over to my YouTube channel, The Autism Helper, or to theautismhelper.com.
