Why Consistent Responses are Key to Changing Behavior
Hey all, this is going to be part 1 of a 4 part blog post on making behavior changes in young children. Now, just to clarify, I’m not talking Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), I’m talking about little tricks and tips you can use to try to curb challenging behaviors in your little one.
Caregivers, do you ever feel like you’re constantly redirecting, scolding, or frustrated when your child engages in a behavior that you feel is: dangerous, disruptive, or inappropriate? If you nodded your head, you’re not alone. Every. Single. Child. I’ve worked with demonstrates this behavior at some point or another.
Not sure what I mean? I’m talking: climbing your couch, jumping off furniture, sitting on the table, eating plants, pulling the dog’s tail, the list goes on. Man, can these disrupt your whole day, and FAST!
How do you usually handle these? Do you plead, “sweetie, please don’t climb on the table”? Do you scold, “stop it right now”? Do you swat, “we don’t eat plants”? Do you ignore?
I’m not here to judge your parenting, but I will ask you, is your strategy helpful? If so, for how long? How do you feel when you implement it? How does your child react? Do you use the same strategy every time or do you mix it up?
I often see these strategies work for a short time, but then the child is right back to doing the behavior again, and again, and again, until everyone is big mad.
So what’s a frustrated caregiver to do? Well here’s how I often respond…
I love implementing a “prompt hierarchy” which is just a fancy name for “a script”. It’s a thought out way to respond to a variety of challenging behaviors that the child may engage in. I really like for the hierarchy to be generic enough that my caregivers don’t need to think too hard or need to change it if the child does something new. This helps with consistency, which in turn is useful to the child.
With consistency, the child will learn what behavior their caregiver is looking for, and over time, they will engage in that “preferred” behavior. Once we show and tell children what we expect from them, most will learn and change their behavior. I’m coming at this from a place of, kids don’t want to misbehave, they want to behave well, but we have to teach them how to do it.
One way we can do that is by making sure we respond the same way, any time they’re engaging in a behavior that we don’t like. The more you can get the hang of responding in a consistent way, the quicker your child will learn what you are looking for.
Want an example? Here’s one for hitting. Pretend your child just started hitting (as most kids will go through this phase). They hit you, their sibling, their pet, their friends, you never know who’s next.
The next time they hit, I’d recommending using the following hierarchy waiting at least 5 second between each step…
“No hitting, hitting hurts”—said in a firm, but neutral tone (we don’t want to yell and scare but we don’t want to laugh and make it a game).
“No hitting, or I help”
“I help in 3…2…1”
“I’m helping your body stop hitting” and remove them from the situation. Hold them if you need, move them to a different room, etc.
Then, say they climb the furniture, you don’t need a whole new hierarchy, it just changes to this…
“Get down”—in firm, but neutral tone.
“Get down, or I help”
“I help in 3…2…1”
“I’m helping your body down” and remove from the situation.
You didn’t need to think about how to respond to that one, you already had a plan in place. And you can explain this plan to sitters, other caregivers, etc. so they can do it too.
At each step you’re giving clear, concise instructions as to what you want to change, and how it will happen. You’re not leaving any room for discussion, but rather are being firm, yet neutral (notice I didn’t use “please”, this is not a time for “please”). This is so important because we all know yelling doesn’t work well, yet being funny often ends with a game. Once your child understands what you want from them, they can give it to you, because children want to please not misbehave.
And the great thing about consistency is that it doesn’t take too long to see results, particularly when you pair up: consistent responses, positive praise, environmental changes, and frequent movement (more on the last 3 to come in this 4 part series).
I hope this will shed some light on modifying challenging behaviors and why sometimes less is more, as long as you’re consistent.
If you have thoughts, comments or questions, feel free to get in touch with me via the contact page. Up next week is positive praise.