An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn

by Rogers, Sally J.

  Activity: Observe Your Child’s Socially Desirable and Undesirable

  Behaviors, Their Antecedents, and Their Consequences

  This exercise will help you see and describe the whole sequence underlying some of your child’s habitual behaviors. It is so important to begin to see the ABC sequences that underlie your child’s current repertoire of desirable and undesirable behaviors that we encourage you to spend the next few days learning to see them. If you learn this skill well, you will be able to use it effectively throughout your child’s life to teach new behaviors, increase desirable behaviors your child already does, and reduce the frequency of your child’s unwanted behaviors. These principles work in the elementary school period, during adolescence, and in adulthood. Once you learn to see them, they will start to “pop out” at you, which will give you many more ideas for ways to teach your child new or different responses to situations and experiences. Start by jotting down examples of your child’s behaviors (B’s) and goals. Those are the keys to defining the antecedents (A’s) and consequences (C’s). Once you have the B’s and goals down, note the consequence and the antecedent, just as you have done earlier. These are probably getting easier and easier to see. Be sure to write down some desirable behaviors that your child demonstrates, and also some undesirable behaviors—things you wish your child did not do.

  Summary of Step 4

  If you have followed along and carried out the preceding activities, you now know how to “see” the goals, antecedents, and consequences that underlie a number of your child’s desirable and undesirable behaviors. This step continues the process of understanding the function of your child’s behavior, situation by situation. The next step involves using this knowledge to teach your child new skills and to increase the number of learning opportunities you provide for your child. See if you agree with most of the statements in the following checklist. If so, you are now armed with important skills for understanding the relationships that support your child’s various behaviors: goals, antecedents, and consequences—knowledge you will use in Step 5. If not, review this section, spend more time observing, and discuss your observations with a supportive other. Stay with this until you can easily see the antecedents, goals, and consequences underlying a variety of your child’s most desirable and most undesirable behaviors in many situations.

  Activity Checklist: Am I Putting the ABC’s of Learning Together?

  ____ I have spent some time observing my child and have made a list of my child’s most and least desirable behaviors.

  ____ I understand the goals, antecedents, and consequences underlying some of my child’s socially desirable behaviors.

  ____ I understand the goals, antecedents, and consequences underlying some of my child’s undesirable behaviors.

  ____ I have observed some of my child’s most desirable and undesirable behaviors and have delineated their goals, antecedents, and consequences in most of the six types of target activities.

  Step 5. Use the ABC’s to Increase Your Child’s Learning

  Opportunities and Teach Your Child New Skills or Behaviors

  Rationale. Every interaction you have with your child is a potential learning opportunity. To mobilize more of the many opportunities you have, you need to be aware of all the potential reinforcers that present themselves. Often these are things your child desires—food and drink; attention; favorite objects; comfort and affection; safety and security; interesting sights, sounds, and events; pleasant touch and movement. Or they may be unpleasant stimuli your child wants removed, such as hunger or thirst, noxious sounds (e.g., vacuum cleaner), unpleasant sensations (e.g., sticky hands or a messy diaper), frightening stimuli, or barriers to your child’s goals (e.g., fixing a broken toy, opening a cupboard or refrigerator).

  Activity: Make Sure Your Child Is Communicating Goals

  as Maturely as Possible

  You can corral these opportunities to work on your child’s behalf by asking yourself these questions every time you deliver something your child wants or remove something your child dislikes: How is my child communicating her desires? Is she using the most mature communicative behaviors she is capable of to indicate her goals? Or am I providing all these reinforcers to a child who is doing little to communicate her goals? These are really important questions. One parent who asked herself this question said, “You know, he is like the Little Prince. He doesn’t have to do a darn thing—we all meet his every need without him exerting any effort at all!” It was a big insight for her. She was not asking of her son what we typically expect other children to do: to communicate as well as they can. How often have we all said to a whiny child, “Use your words,” or cued a child who said, “I want more milk,” to add “please” to that demand? Or to correct a child who grabs by taking the toy away, giving it back to the first child, and telling the grabber to “ask nicely”? We expect children to use their current communicative ability to achieve their goals, and we cue them, or prompt them, to use the desired behavior.

  So think about what communications your child is easily capable of: Reaching? Pointing? Vocalizing with intent? Imitating sounds? Making a choice between two? Looking at you to communicate? Whatever communications are currently present in your child’s repertoire and are easy for your child to do—that’s how your child can be communicating his goals. When he is using undesirable behaviors to communicate, such as whining, screaming, or tantrums, do these things: Ignore those behaviors (extinguish); cue the desired behavior by modeling or prompting an appropriate behavior that will allow the child to achieve his goal (a reach or a verbal request); expect your child to use the appropriate behavior; and then allow your child to reach his goal (reward).

  Make a list of your child’s current communications, both verbal and gestural. These are the tools your child has for communicating her needs and desires. Now keep those in mind when you next start to provide your child with something you know she wants. Clearly show your child it is available; that is the A—the antecedent. But hold back and wait to deliver it until your child has communicated for it, using one of the communications you have listed. Wait for the B—the behavior—and cue it if your child needs some help. Once your child communicates well, then deliver the C—the consequence, the reinforcer for your child’s communication.

  What if your child does not produce the communication or uses an unwanted behavior, such as whining? Ignore the unwanted behavior and prompt the behavior that is appropriate. Help your child do it. If your child can say a word, model the word. If your child can reach, put the object within reaching distance. If your child can point, model the point. If needed, physically guide your child through the response you are teaching. After your child acts, deliver. You have provided a learning opportunity—a full ABC sequence.

  Let’s say the situation involves giving your child a peanut butter sandwich, and your communicative goal for your preverbal child for her to use her voice to communicate requests. Let’s say you have cut the sandwich up into eight tiny bite-sized pieces for your child. If you hold the plate toward your hungry child (A), and your child reaches and says “Mmmm” (B), and you hand the plate over (C), you have provided one learning opportunity for your child.

  Now let’s say you are sitting at the table as well, and when your child reaches and says “Mmmm,” you provide one piece of the sandwich. Your child stuffs it into her mouth and reaches and says “Mmmm” again. You deliver another piece. Your child’s drink is also beside you, out of your child’s reach. Your child reaches for the cup. You hold it up and say “Drink?”, and your child reaches and says “Mmmm.” You give the cup over, your child has a drink, and you take it back. Over this meal, with the sandwich, the drink, and a few pieces of banana that you have also cut up, you have provided 15 or more learning opportunities for your child to learn to use her voice to request. And that doesn’t take into account the number of times you have also imitated your child by taking a bite of your own sandwich, saying “yum yum,” and having a l
ittle imitation exchange (more learning opportunities).

  So here is an important way to start to build more learning opportunities into your child’s day—by being aware of the many antecedents that precede the behaviors you are teaching, the many times you deliver reinforcers by meeting your child’s goals, and the many ways you can help your child develop and practice an appropriate communicative behavior of some type before you deliver.

  Activity: Observe Your Child’s Behavior for Occurrences

  of the ABC’s

  Spend some time reviewing your day with your child. Think about the times today you gave your child something you knew he wanted. Think about the times you removed something or changed something you knew was bothering your child. List them in the left-hand column of the form on the next page. Those are the reinforcers, or potential reinforcers, that you provided your child. For each one, remember what your child did that resulted in your action—how your child communicated his need or desire. Write that on the right-hand side. Here are the learning opportunities that you provided your child in these situations. If there was no child behavior that preceded your rewarding action, write down “None” in the right-hand column. There was a missed opportunity for learning. Over the next few days, see if you can become more aware of these potential missed opportunities, and instead wait for a child communication or prompt your child to communicate in some way before you provide the consequence, so that you are turning missed opportunities into learning opportunities. Make extra copies of the form if you need more space.

  Step 6. Change Unwanted Behaviors

  Rationale. All little children (and most adults as well) have habits that are not very pleasing or attractive. In the lists you have just made, you may have identified some of your child’s behaviors that you are not so happy with. Your child may scream to communicate a desire, or drag you by the hand, or bite to avoid someone or to gain access to a desired object. Your child may fall on the floor and bang her head when her brother takes a toy or when you refuse to give her another candy bar. Why does your child do these things? You may have already figured that out: In completing the activities earlier in this chapter, you may well have run into some of these unwanted behaviors. By analyzing the ABC sequence of these behaviors, you have “evaluated” them. You have learned the functional relations that supported the behaviors—the A and the C. If your child has some unwanted behaviors and you have not yet identified their ABC sequences, now is the time to do that. In this final step, we are going to explain how to help your child learn more acceptable behaviors to replace these unwanted ones.

  Activity: Identify an Unwanted Behavior

  and a Possible Replacement

  Choose one of your child’s unwanted behaviors that occurs often and that has a clear ABC frame—a behavior you would really like to change.1 Now remember the ABCs of learning. Look at your child’s goal without expecting that your child will change goals. Ask yourself: “What does he want? What is his goal?” After you have answered that question, ask yourself: “What do I wish he would do instead to ask for what he wants or achieve his goal?” If he screams to get out of doing something he doesn’t like or to get a toy, what do you wish he would do instead of screaming to request that you stop what he is being asked to do or to have access to the toy? If he bangs his head on the floor when you take his pacifier away, what do you wish he would do instead to achieve his goal? The behaviors you wish to see instead of the unwanted behaviors are called replacement behaviors.

  Rule 7. A good replacement behavior must be as easy for the child to do as the unwanted behavior, and must result in the same reward as quickly as does the unwanted behavior. The replacement behavior will work only if it is as functional—as efficient, as effective, as easy—as the unwanted behavior. The replacement behavior already has to be in your child’s repertoire, and you have to be able to prompt it easily.

  Activity: Teach the Replacement Behavior

  So, with Rule 7 in mind, focus on the unwanted behavior you would like to see changed, and think about what else your child could do—now, easily, efficiently—to achieve the same goal. That is your replacement behavior. Write down how the sequence will look: What is the antecedent (A); what is your replacement behavior (B); what is your child’s goal; and what is the consequence (C), or reward, for using the replacement B? Got it?

  Here is an example. A = your Pepsi. Unwanted B = grabbing. Replacement B = pointing. Child’s goal = your Pepsi. C = your Pepsi. Now think about how you are going to prompt your child to do the replacement B as soon as the A occurs and before the unwanted B occurs. Get ready to prompt the replacement B, and then deliver the C right away. If the unwanted B is already under way, ignore it, prompt the replacement B, and then provide the positive C.

  Example: You get your Pepsi and sit down on the couch. Your daughter appears and heads for the Pepsi. You pick it up, and as she looks at it, you say, “Want a drink? Point. Point to Pepsi.” You model, she points, and you give her a sip, but not the whole can. You take it back and get a drink. She reaches and you say again, “Point.” She points and gets a sip. This goes on a few more times, until she is pointing without any instructions. No grabbing has occurred at all.

  What about Molly? As described earlier, Molly screams and grabs when her sister gets a glass of milk, and Dad tells her sister to give it to Molly and get another. A = sight of milk. B = scream and grab. Goal = wants milk. C = gets milk. Dad has to think of a replacement behavior for screaming and grabbing, and Molly has not yet learned to speak. What behavior can Molly use to request a glass of milk? Pointing to the milk? Signing “drink” or “please”? Vocalizing and making eye contact? Molly’s family has to decide what kind of appropriate communication Molly should use when she wants something from someone else. They decide on a simplified “please” sign that their speech therapist has suggested—her hand held against her chest. Now her parents need to create the learning opportunities for her to learn this replacement communication.

  The antecedent occurs: Molly sees big sister Tina get a glass of milk from the refrigerator, and Molly screams and grabs at Tina to get the milk. Dad goes to Molly, takes her hands off Tina, puts her hand to her chest to make the “please” sign, and says to Molly, “Please.” As soon as Molly finishes making the sign, with Dad’s help, Tina cooperatively hands Molly the milk and gets another. Although this is a step in the right direction, Dad thinks this through later and notices two things he would like to improve on: (1) Molly is still screaming and grabbing, and (2) Tina is still losing her original glass of milk. The next time, Dad is ready. When Tina asks, Dad encourages her to get two glasses of milk, and Dad moves right beside Molly. Tina gets the glasses of milk, and when Dad sees Molly look at the glasses of milk, he immediately walks her to Tina and helps her sign “please.” Then Tina gives Molly the second glass of milk, feeling very proud that she has helped her little sister learn to communicate. Now Dad has assured that Molly receives the milk for making the sign and not the scream.

  See what has happened? The same antecedent (seeing Tina with the milk) is now being linked with a desired behavior—an appropriate communication—which results in the same reinforcer (the milk) that has previously supported the unwanted behavior. Over time, if the family is consistent with this new routine, the “please” sign will become linked to the sight of the milk (and all other objects she wants from another person), because that is the only way Molly will get the milk. The glass of milk will support a positive behavior rather than an unwanted one, while Molly learns a more useful and acceptable communication, and she still gets the milk.

  With this example in mind, go back to the unwanted behavior you have zeroed in on for your own child and consider how you will help your child use the replacement behavior for attaining her goal. Imagine how you will help your child, or prompt your child, to carry out the replacement behavior and then deliver the reinforcer. Start practicing as soon as you can imagine it.

  Caution! A coping strategy
that families sometimes use in the face of unwanted behaviors is to try to avoid problem behaviors by placing fewer and fewer demands or expectations on the child. Although this is a very natural response to tantrums or aggression, it backfires in two ways, both of which over time reduce the child’s learning. First, it takes away learning opportunities. If the child does not have to do anything to gain what he wants, then no new learning is taking place. Second, it reinforces either very immature behavior, like whining or grabbing, or unwanted behavior, like Molly’s screaming. Avoiding the problem behavior by giving in earlier does not change the use of unwanted behavior. Only by actively teaching a more desirable response can you really change your child’s behavior. Your child can learn a more desirable response. Your child has learned one way of responding, and your child can learn a more desirable way as well.