Hi I'm Dr. Mary Barbara, autism mom,
behavior analysts and best-selling
author. You might be wondering why
children with autism have such a hard
time transitioning from highly preferred
activities to non preferred activities.
I'm here to tell you today that we all
have trouble with transitions. Just
imagine you are on a beach on a
beautiful sunny day, having a cold drink
and reading a great book. On a scale of 1
to 10 with 10 being the most reinforcing
activity you know, you would probably
rate being on the beach on this day to
be a 10. Without warning, I abruptly come
up to you and say, "All done beach, time to
load heavy boxes in a truck," you would
most likely not like this at all and you
might start displaying problem behaviors
in the form of arguing with me, stomping
your feet, and slamming your chair onto
the sand. You might even refuse to leave
your preferred activity and literally
dig your heels into the sand. What I want
to illustrate in that example is that we
all have problem behaviors transitioning
from very high preferred activities to
non preferred activities. The key is to
ease transitions by not asking a child
to transition from a 10, from a highly
preferred activity, to a one or two,
which is work constantly throughout the
day. I'm going to give you five tips and
techniques to help you ease transitions. #1 Dangle the carrot or offer
the reinforcements before problem
behaviors occur. When my son Lucas was
little he loved to be in the ocean up to
his neck for hours. I needed to offer him
something really powerful like pizza to
get him to come out of the ocean. Always
remember, if you're going to offer
reinforcement remember to offer that
reinforcement before you place a demand
to transition, not after you place the
demand and have a problem behavior
already occur. So in this case with Lucas
in the ocean I would say,
"Lucas time for pizza let's get out and
dry off." The second tip to these
transitions is don't physically move or
drag a student from one location to
another even if the child is small
enough to carry or move. I wouldn't even
think about physically dragging you off
the beach to help me load the heavy
boxes as this could lead to me getting
arrested for assault. It disturbs me that
some people try to physically move
students with autism from one activity
to the next. #3 - Whenever
possible, give choices. In the beach
example, for instance if
I would have come up to you and stated
that I needed help with some heavy boxes
and asked you when it would be a good
time for you to transition, you probably
would have been a lot more cooperative.
You may have suggested that we load the
boxes when you were finished your drink
or after you've finished a chapter in
the great book you were reading. We make
a lot of choices throughout the day,
especially when we are faced with
difficult or unpleasant tasks, we need to
give our students with autism as many
choices as possible to ease transitions. Tip #4 is to sandwich harder
activities in between preferred
activities and consider using schedules
and timers. The last tip tip, #5 is to make sure all workstations
are paired with reinforcement and avoid
the word work whenever you can. Some of
the best classrooms and home programs I
have ever seen have strong reinforcers
at every work area, and I often tell
professionals and parents to avoid using
the word work for students who already
are having difficulty with transitions,
and to spend a few minutes at the
beginning of each teaching session
pairing yourself and the materials with
reinforcements. If the students are not
running towards you the next activity or
at least moving there without problem
behavior, your demands are probably too
high and/or reinforcement too low. If you
want to find out more and have those
5 tips in writing just
click the link below and sign up for my
free cheat sheet on five ways to reduce
transition problem. Thanks a lot and I'll
see you next week.