It's all fun and games until someone figures out the function of your behavior!

As promised, we'll be digging into functions of behavior more in this blog post (super fun stuff!).

ALL behavior happens to access one of the four functions (yes, even yours).  In our last blog post, we briefly covered S.E.A.T  (sensory, escape, access and tangibles).

Sometimes it's easy to figure out what the function of a specific behavior is.  For instance, if you child asks you for a cookie and starts to tantrum or hit when you say no, then the function can be identified as access to a (T)tangible.

If you ask your child to clean their room, sit down, or something similar and they run the other way, then your function is (E)escape.

Typically, behaviors that happen regardless of the presence of demands, and occur with or without other people being present (think hand flapping, spinning, etc) are occurring for access to (A) automatic.  You've probably heard the term "stimming" or SSB's; these are occurring for this function.

Now, (A) attention can be harder.  We have a tendency as adults to think that attention only means good attention, but this is untrue.  You can provide attention to your child by giving high fives, snuggles, etc but you're also providing attention when you're raising your voice, becoming upset, putting your child in time-out, etc etc.

This is the key to why those generalized behavior strategies won't work.  If your child hits to escape a demand, and is placed in time out every time they hit - then they've successfully escaped the demand.  So next time they want to escape, they'll hit.  If your child wants attention, and knows if they hit their sibling that they'll end up in time out - they'll probably hit their sibling a lot (lots of time outs equals lots of attention, especially if you have to keep reminding them to sit in their seat).

Remember those handy ABC charts I gave you last time.  If you fill those out, you'll be able to see what the common consequence for your child's behaviors are!

Here's where things get interesting.  Take a peek at the chart below.

Got it?  Nope, probably not.  That's because we've been taught that "punishment" means bad and "reinforcement" means good.  Just to mess with you a little bit, I need you to forget everything you thought you knew about those two terms. 

Next time, we'll discuss this more in depth!