The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The purpose of this interactive session is to empower parents and professionals supporting families with practical strategies and tools for using positive behavior support to resolve their children’s behavior challenges. The session will include a brief overview of the evolution of behavioral parent training toward individualized, lifestyle-oriented approaches. Participants will be guided through an informal problem solving process to begin identifying environmental modifications, replacement behaviors, and consequence management strategies to promote positive behavior change in typical daily routines. Children with autism and related disabilities commonly experience significant behavioral challenges, often brought on by their difficulty adapting to events in their environment and effectively communicating their needs (Einfeld & Tonge, 1996; Lowe, 2007).  Behavior problems of this population often are not resolved through traditional or informal interventions but instead require more systematic, assessment-based methods.  Over the years, a variety of methods based on the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA) have emerged as effective practice in addressing problem behavior.  They include consequence-based strategies that employ reinforcement (and punishment) procedures and systematic instruction to teach functional language and social and daily living skills.  These methods have become staples of behavioral parent training programs (Dumas, 1989; Eyberg & Boggs, 1989; Forehand & McMahon, 1981; Lovaas, 1993) and have proven quite successful when implemented consistently by families.

More recently, research in the area of functional analysis and assessment (FBA) has demonstrated the importance of individualizing interventions for children based on the purposes the behavior serves and circumstances surrounding it (Day, Horner, & O’Neill, 1994; Durand & Crimmins, 1988; Iwata, Dorsey, & Slifer, 1988).  Whereas initially FBA was seen as appropriately conducted by only highly trained professionals, the methods have gradually been simplified and adapted for use by teachers, parents, and other daily support providers.  There has been a growing recognition that in order to gain a complete picture of the variables affecting children’s behavior, parents and other care providers must be included as partners in the process.  Parent education programs should therefore be expanded to teach not only procedures, but he principles and processes to better understand and address behavioral concerns (Dunlap, Newton, Fox, Benito, & Vaughn, 2001; James & Scotti, 2000; Peterson et al, 2002).            At the same time these developments have been occurring in the fields of ABA and behavioral parent education, positive behavior support has emerged as an approach to supporting children with behavior problems that not only addresses specific behaviors, but also focuses on lifestyle issues important in producing durable change (Dunlap et al., 2000; Koegel, Koegel, & Dunlap, 1996).  Positive behavior support has contributed to the field by placing a greater emphasis on preventing problems by modifying the social and physical environments (Conroy & Stichter, 2003) and creating interventions that truly fit the natural rhythms of daily life.  It also includes explicit processes for collaborating with family members and service providers to understand and address behavior, with the goal of empowering families to use PBS on their own.  In essence, the primary goal of positive behavior support is to be able to use the principles of ABA to produce meaningful changes in real life.            Unfortunately, much of the information on positive behavior support is still geared toward professionals rather than families.  Examples are often more relevant to schools or agencies and often to do not take into consideration the complexity of family life.  For this reason, it is often not embraced or implemented by families and others who care for children with autism and other severe disabilities on a daily basis.  In order for PBS to meet its objective of creating lifestyle and systems change, it must be packaged in a way that those who will actually be using it (parents, teachers, therapists, etc.) can readily apply it.  People who have knowledge of PBS must be willing to abandon an expert-driven orientation and “give it away.”  This has been the focus of the authors’ work (Hieneman, Childs, & Sergay, 2006).            The purpose of this session is to demonstrate how PBS can be shared with parents so that they are empowered to resolve their own children’s behavioral challenges – rather than relying on consultants or experts to guide the process.  Participants will be guided through an informal FBA process to begin identifying strategies to prevent, manage, and teach replacement behaviors.  Case examples will be used to illustrate the process and the first author will provide preliminary data from the PFI Project to demonstrate the impact of behavioral parent training in PBS.  Resources for further learning will be suggested.

Learning Objectives: