I had a question come in last week from Amy who is a participant in our online course
and community and she said she had an idea for a future video blog.
She said if you could address the issue of having or not having kids with autism, apologize
for their behavior following an aggressive behavior.
When is a prompted apology appropriate and when does it just reinforce the negative behavior?
So today I'm going to give Amy some advice and I'll hopefully help you guys understand
when you should prompt an, I'm sorry or a different kind of apology.
Hi, I'm Dr Mary Barbera, autism mom board certified behavior analyst and bestselling
author of the verbal behavior approach, kids that are served by my courses and even my
book, The Verbal Behavior Approach are typically kids with pretty significant language disorders
as well.
So we use the VB MAPP assessment as a base within our verbal behavior bundle of courses.
VB MAPP is a tool by a Dr Mark Sundberg who wrote the forward for my book, The Verbal
Behavior Approach.
And within the VB MAPP, are language abilities of uh, three levels, zero to 18 month old,
uh, 18 months or 30 month old and then 30 months old up to 48 month old.
So this advice that I'm going to give kind of depends on, well it definitely depends
on the language ability of the child and a child no matter what the chronologic age.
If they are functioning within the VB MAPP, a level of functioning, then it's going to
be a different uh, recommendation.
Then I would give someone with who’s fully conversational.
In general, whether you're talking about a child who's not conversational or someone
who is conversational.
We want to, before we treat any problem behavior, in this case, treating aggressive behavior
with, with or without an apology.
We would want to do an assessment and that could be a one page assessment like I created
several years ago now or a VB MAPP assessment or a higher level assessment for kids that
have higher language abilities.
If you are within the VB MAPP, especially level 1 or level 2 up to 30 months of age,
typical development, the child is not going to be able to comprehend an apology and I
think it would probably be a very bad idea to chain that together with an aggressive
behavior.
The other thing that as a behavior analyst, I want to point out is that you also need
to understand the functions of behavior.
So if it's an escape, say the child hits a, say it's my child and the child hits me when
I say it's time to go up and take a bath.
Me slowing down and saying, no, that's not nice.
You don't hit mommy.
Now you have to say “I'm sorry” and you know, don't hit mommy.
All that nonsense is slowing down the bathtime routine.
So in that case saying, sorry, working on that within the context of an escape behavior,
uh, would not be recommended.
It would, it would probably end up delaying the bathtime and reinforcing the hitting behavior.
Even if the function is access to tangibles or attention.
Say the child is playing with his brother and he wants the toy, or he wants mom's attention
from the other room.
Hitting his brother is going to get, uh, the brothers attention.
Brothers probably going to start screaming.
Mom's going to come in, try to figure out what's going on.
And even, okay.
So at that point, the hitting's over.
Now the brother's screaming, the mom comes in and that all is going to be, if I chain
in now, Johnny say, you're sorry to your brother, that's not nice.
No hitting.
That's giving, uh, Johnny a lot of attention.
So whether it's escape or access to tangibles or attention, chaining an “I'm sorry”,
without really knowing that that is a part of the plan is, uh, really almost always a
bad idea.
The way this happens is things get chained together.
So I get mad.
So I'm Johnny, I get mad.
I hit somebody, I say I'm sorry, and delay the task or get out of the task, or I might
get the toy, um, that I want.
I definitely get mom's attention.
And so hitting actually gets more likely to occur, gets shaped up by just, uh, intervening
with some kind of sorry, uh, treatment.
My, as I said, my verbal behavior bundle covers functions of behavior and helps both parents
and professionals learn what to do and how to figure out a plan based on the child's
strengths and needs.
And if you would like to learn more about my online courses and community, you can attend
a free workshop at marybarbera.com/workshop.
I hope you enjoyed this short video blog.
If you did give me a thumbs up, leave me a comment and share it with someone else who
might benefit.
And I'll see you right here next week.