Last week, we introduced planned ignoring to guide your child’s behavior. The idea of planned ignoring is that you deliberately withhold your attention when unwanted behaviors occur. Attention is a powerful reinforcer that you might not realize. Sometimes, even reprimands or negative attention could serve as a reinforcer for children. The questions are how to make planned ignoring more effective and if it is suitable for you and your child.
One of the most difficult aspects is ignoring. As sometimes, it is extremely difficult to not give in from time to time. Here are some tips when using planned ignoring:
- Plan ways to distract yourself: You should always be proactive and find things or ways to distract yourself from attending to the behavior. You could put on some music, breathe deeply, or think of something irrelevant such as planning your shopping list.
- Start withholding your attention when the behavior starts and provide attention right away when the behavior stops.
- Always give your child positive attention and praise for positive behavior or the alternative behavior. In other words, the behavior you want to see instead.
As not every strategy is suitable for every situation. Here are questions that help you to answer whether planned ignoring is right for you and your child:
Can I ignore the behavior if it gets worse?
We talked about extinction burst in which you would see an expected increase in unwanted behavior. For example, if the unwanted behavior is tapping the table and once you start withholding your attention, they start slamming the table. If you feel that you cannot deal with and simply ignore the behavior, it is better to stick to reinforcement-based strategies.
Should you ignore the behavior?
Some behavior cannot be ignored for obvious reasons. You cannot ignore behaviors that might harm themselves, others.
Is the behavior also reinforced by other’s attention?
The unwanted behaviors could also be maintained by other’s attention. For example, another caregiver, siblings, friends. Therefore, it is difficult to see the desired results when only you are withholding attention for the behavior.
Planned ignoring is not suitable for everyone and every situation. Therefore, you should ask your board-certified behavior analysts (BCBAs) for suggestions.
We will switch gears next week and discuss antecedent strategies that could address unwanted behaviors before they happen.
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In Week 3, we discussed the topic of behavior-specific praise. This week we are going to incorporate the strategy with the new technique: praising the alternative behavior. Sometimes, parents want to simply change or get rid of behaviors that the child engages in. For example, arguing with siblings constantly, throwing a temper tantrum when told no, or not following instructions. When thinking of trying to stop a behavior, naturally we are more inclined to punish it. However, a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) will tell you to praise or reinforce alternative behavior instead.
Praising the alternative behavior is not as easy as it might sound. Simply recall the last time you praise your child when she was sitting quietly watching TV or playing nicely with siblings. You might ignore this until you are hearing them arguing then you might be inclined to yell at your child or even tell them to stop doing that. A phenomenon called negativity bias in which we have this natural instinct that forces us to notice more what is wrong in our environment because it has survival values. It makes noticing appropriate behaviors even more challenging.
To apply the technique of praising alternative behavior:
- caregivers will need to find the behavior that they do not want first.
- Next, find the positive behavior that can replace the behavior or identify what the opposite of the problem behavior is.
- Now, it is time to catch the child in the “act” or being good.
- As the child displays the positive behavior the caregivers want, behavior-specific praise will be provided.
For example, if you are trying to get rid of the behavior of the child arguing with the siblings (selecting the behavior you want to change). You would find times that the child is playing with siblings nicely ( the opposite of the problem behavior) and you could say “ Josh, it is so wonderful to see that you are playing with your sister so nicely” and give the child a gentle hug (delivering behavior-specific praise).
You might think why not just go ahead and punish the behavior? In applied behavior analysis (ABA), Punishment is always the last resort. Also, in this case, if you use punishment procedures, you only stop the problem behavior by using reprimands and not teaching the child what to do instead. Applying the technique of praising the alternative behavior will help the child to know what to do instead and by reinforcing the positive behavior, you will see more of it in the future.
For more information on the power of reinforcement check out this blog post and like our Facebook page for new content in the coming weeks.
Last week, we introduced planned ignoring to guide your child’s behavior. The idea of planned ignoring is that you deliberately withhold your attention when unwanted behaviors occur. Attention is a powerful reinforcer that you might not realize. Sometimes, even reprimands or negative attention could serve as a reinforcer for children. The questions are how to make planned ignoring more effective and if it is suitable for you and your child.