Effective Discipline #8: Reaction Strategies: Redirection What do you do when the negative behavior occurs? Many people scold, counsel, demand, and try to force the child to stop. That often leads to emotional chaos for both the parents and the child. There are four common reaction strategies that are used to intervene with negative behavior. The most common are redirection, social disapproval, time out, and response cost (taking away privileges). This article will take a look at redirection and how to use it effectively. Redirection is the technique that I use the most, and recommend to try first. It tends to “teach”, rather than punish. With “redirection” we want to quickly interrupt the negative behavior and redirect the child to the desired replacement behavior, calming strategy, or into a distracting activity. The focus is on heavily reinforcing the child for appropriate behavior (being good). Then, when negative behavior occurs, we quickly interrupt the behavior, with minimal attention as possible, and redirect the child back to the appropriate behavior so he can continue to be reinforced. This procedure focuses attention on what you want the child to do. In the redirection model we are trying to minimize the attention given to the negative behavior (thus reducing the payoffs) while redirecting the child back to desired behavior so that he can continue to receive frequent reinforcement. The basic procedures consist of: 1. Teach the desired behavior by focusing on previewing, coaching, and reinforcing the child for the desired behavior. 2. When the negative behavior does occur, quickly interrupt it, redirect the child to “what you want him to do” (desired behavior), then reinforce with praise and positive attention. 3. Say very little about the negative behavior (no scolding, counseling, negotiating, etc.). Focus instead on what you want the child to do. 4. Use guidance and coaching as needed to help redirect the child to the appropriate behavior, while ignoring the inappropriate behavior. 5. Once the child responds to the redirection, reinforce cooperation with praise and positive attention. This sounds easy to do, but it can be very difficult. Parents are used to scolding, counseling, directing, and trying to power their way to stopping the negative behavior. It can be difficult to show little emotion while redirecting the behavior back on a positive track. Negative behavior tends to draw our attention, and takes it away from “what we want the child to do.” It can be hard learning to say very little about the negative behavior, and focusing all attention on what we want the child to do. You need to focus attention on guiding the child through the desired response. This technique takes some practice to learn to do effectively. Example #1 Sally frequently slaps herself when she gets frustrated with doing difficult tasks. We are trying to get her to say the word “help” so we can assist her in making the task easier. We role play and practice saying “help” during activities so she learns how to produce the desired response. Then, during daily activities, we remind Sally before doing tasks that if it gets hard to do, then say “help” and we will come and assist her. Of course, since slapping her face is a very established response to frustration, we cannot expect it to immediately go away. Before starting the activity we preview saying “help” if she needs assistance and remind her again a couple of minutes into the task. If she starts to slap her face, we gently block the slapping and redirect her to say “help” (which she has learned to do with practice), and immediately assist her to make the task easier. We say nothing about the slapping; just redirected her to say help and immediately assisted her. Once the task is completed we review how well asking for help worked for her. Example#2 Jackie has a strong self stimulatory behavior of picking at her fingers, often until they bleed. This behavior occurs frequently, and is difficult to control. The teacher will tell her to stop, which she will for approximately one minute, then return to picking. We tried reinforcing Jackie for not picking, but she seems to do it without thinking about it. With further observation we noticed that this behavior occurs frequently when Jackie’s hands are not occupied, and infrequently when her hands are kept busy. We decided to reinforce Jackie for keeping her hands busy; manipulating toys and fidget items, coloring, playing with cards, and drawing pictures. We place a box of these items at her desk. When she has completed her assignments, Jackie is encouraged and reinforced (with praise) to keep her hands occupied with her play items during her free time. When staff notice Jackie starting to pick at her fingers, they redirect her by giving her one of her play items to manipulate, and reinforcing her if she cooperates. We also build in added reinforcement for playing with her toys. In addition, Jackie has a token card with three squares in a row, followed by a picture of a computer. During each down time, if she plays with her items they give her a star on her chart. When she fills up the three squares she earns 15 minutes of playing her favorite computer game. By increasing the amount of time her hands are busy, the picking drastically reduced. Example #3 Joshua has difficulty controlling his emotions when upset. Once he gets upset he explodes into screaming, crying and biting his hand. He will do this for 5-10 minutes until he exhausts himself. He will often make his hand bleed. We want to teach Joshua a better way of calming himself when upset. Joshua’s parents reported that Joshua likes to rock to sooth himself when anxious. With Joshua’s help we decided to try and teach him to chew on a piece of tubing periodically throughout the day to keep him more regulated. We also wanted him to learn to rock and bite/chew on the tubing to sooth himself when upset. We felt by having him become used to chewing on the tubing throughout the day, it will become a familiar tool to use when upset. We practiced having Joshua rock and chew on his tubing when upset, encouraged him to chew on his tubing during the day, and especially during times of high stress. This was easy to do since Joshua enjoyed chewing. When Joshua would start to get mad, his parents would sit down with him, redirect him to rock and chew on the tubing, and model it by doing it right along with him. It took a several weeks for Joshua to inhibit his hand biting and substitute the tubing, but with coaching he was able to effectively make the switch. Over time, the parents learned the early signs that he was getting upset, and taught Joshua to take a break, sit and rock while chewing his tubing. He learned to do this frequently when getting too aroused or overwhelmed, so it became a tool for regulating his emotional reactions. Hand biting was significantly reduced since it was substituted with the tubing. Redirection alone only works if the behavior is easily redirected. If the child refuses and fights it, causing the situation to escalate, then this technique needs to be strengthened with additional strategies (pulling back until calm then redirecting, brief time out, etc.). This technique is often tried first, with other strategies added if redirection alone is not effective.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:43:31 +0000
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