Kids with autism or signs of autism cry for many reasons and trying to figure out why
they are crying can be tricky.
Today's video blog is all about the reasons why kids might be crying and how you can help
turn this behavior around.
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, Board Certified Behavior Analyst and bestselling
author.
Each week I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism and signs of autism around
so if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can do that now.
As a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, I've been in many situations with kids crying.
Once I went out to do an initial evaluation and the child cried during the entire session.
We don't want kids crying.
That's never a good thing.
I like to use the analogy of me, if I were learning to fly a plane.
When I start, I have no idea how to fly the plane.
I get into the cockpit and there's a zillion levers all around me and there you are trying
to explain the levers and the hundreds or thousands of buttons and levers and you start
talking to me about all these levers and explaining things.
It's going way over my head and I might start crying.
And if you keep going with the instruction on the levers I'm sobbing at that point.
I'm almost hyperventilating.
I don't even want to fly a plane at this point.
I'm so overwhelmed and if you just keep going on and on while I'm crying or sobbing or hyperventilating,
I am not learning anything about any of those levers.
And so when kids are crying and professionals and parents are trying to continue with the
demands and continue with the, with this, whatever situation is going on, it's just
not going to work.
The child or client who is crying is not going to be learning at the same time.
So crying or any kind of problem behavior can be an indication of the child being in
some kind of pain.
As a registered nurse and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, I did a blog a while back
about medical issues.
I did a few of them.
I did one on the importance of ruling out medical issues and how it's impossible, especially
if kids are not talking or or fairly conversational.
I also did a video blog on how to teach children how to indicate they are in pain.
And the first step to do that is to teach children to label and receptively identify
body parts.
So teaching children with autism to indicate they're in pain is a good idea.
But like with the analogy of the plane, you know, I'm not in pain, I'm just overwhelmed
by the demands and I have very little reinforcement and things are presented to me that are too
technical.
And so that kind crying is probably not pain.
That kind of crying.
Is, is basically my communication.
And kids without fully conversational communication often cry because they might even talk, but
they don't have the ability to tell you exactly what the problem is.
So crying, it can just be communication.
Even newborn babies who cry to be fed or cry to have their diapers changed or to be held.
It's a, it's a reflex and crying is the first form of communication.
But like the plane analogy, if a child is crying, the demands are too high and reinforcement
is too low.
And that I say a lot because I see a lot of crying and other problem behaviors and that's
all it is.
We just have to make reinforcement really high and demands really low and systematically
get them higher as we start to fade out reinforcement.
But crying is not something that we should just accept as part of autism or a part of
being two or three or four or 10.
Crying.
We really, there are definitely steps you can take.
I did a video blog on the tackling problem behaviors.
So you can look at that video blog when you're done with this.
And the also the important thing besides learning how to tackle a problem behavior, the first
step is always assessment.
We need to figure out if it is pain, if it is just overwhelm and lack of communication.
If our demands are too high, what is our reinforcement?
So we need to really make a, make a good assessment.
Then we need to make a plan and part of that plan is to spend 95% of our time preventing
problem behavior, including crying.
Finally, check out my video blog on how I use a simple paper calendar system to help
keep track of crying and other problem behaviors.
And it really could help you start to turn things around.
In summary, if you have a child or client who is crying and they have a diagnosis of
autism or maybe signs of autism or even typically developing children, if you have a child who's
crying, whining or screaming, you don't know how to help them.
You want to start with assessment, make a plan and use my calendar system, which are
all outlined in my three step guide that you can get for free by downloading at right here
at marybarbera.com/join and this free guide is going to help you learn better how to assess,
make a plan, and keep easy data to start turning things around today.
If you like this video blog, I would love it if you leave me a comment, give me a thumbs
up, share the video with others who might benefit and subscribe to the channel for more
videos like this one, and don't forget to download the three step guide at marybarbera.com/join
and I'll see you right here next week.