Dear Kid Whisperer,

I am currently struggling with one of my second-grade students who has autism. He is frequently screaming, swearing, and at times poking, lightly hitting or touching other students. I have been ignoring the behaviors when appropriate, and I have taught the other students to ignore the screaming and swearing. I also make a point to notice students around him when they are doing the correct thing and give positive attention to the behaviors I want to see. I use Delayed Learning Opportunities to teach the behaviors that he needs to master, but the negative behaviors aren’t stopping. Last year, he was removed from the classroom every time he used these behaviors, and I’d like to avoid that if possible.

Answer: First, you are doing so many things right. You may even be doing everything right.

For any Behavioral Leadership newbies out there, instead of trying to have an immediate punishment, probably when neither student nor teacher were calm enough to learn and teach, a Learning Opportunity was delayed. The teacher calmly let the student know that he will be required to learn a lesson about how to act next time, or solve the problem the behavior caused.

I get this question all the time: “Does Behavioral Leadership work with autistic kids?” My answer always begins the same way: “What really doesn’t work with autistic kids is Traditional Discipline.”

First, since educators aren’t taught behavior management in college, Traditional Discipline amounts to a patchwork of arbitrary garbage that involves teachers mostly making things up as they go allow along, which creates negative behaviors, which create horrible stress, which results in an educator’s actions being dictated by their brain stem. Repeated demands, lectures and punishments, often expressed with anger are, sadly, often the norm. No judgment here, as this was certainly true of yours truly at the beginning of my career.

So then, what about autistic kids and these tactics? How well do autistic kids do with anger, lectures and punishments?

Right: not very well. Lots of kids with autism have very high control needs and have serious problems processing lots of demands and lectures about what they should be doing.

Also, autistic kids are often the first people to realize when something doesn’t make sense, and they tend to hate when something doesn’t make sense!

That’s important here because punishment doesn’t make sense! It never does. Punishment simply involves making a student’s life more painful to change their behavior: taking away something they want (maybe recess) or introducing something they don’t want (copying a page of the dictionary). This makes no sense and an autistic kid is likely to be the first to notice this fact.

On the other hand, what are autistic kids usually good at? Learning! They are especially good at learning when an expert in how they learn best is involved with planning a great lesson.

Once an educator has calmly delayed a Learning Opportunity, it gives them the time and space to come up with an authentic lesson about that behavior, which considers the way that the individual student learns best. This also gives the educator the time to enlist others, perhaps an intervention specialist, or another expert on how to best teach students with autism, to come up with a lesson that requires the student to practice the behavior they are struggling with or solve the problem that they caused.

Though it may be less difficult to create the perfect lesson for most other students, this is what ALL students deserve! No student should ever be punished, but all students need to learn to use positive behaviors.

You may be doing everything exactly right. It sounds like this student’s behaviors were being reinforced all year last year. You wrote to me in early September, so you may just need to do what you are doing for longer.

You may also want to ask a special education professional at your school about how to create a lesson regarding these behaviors. BUT, only accept lessons that require this student to take action to practice the behavior that he’s struggling with, or require him to actively solve the problem that he caused.

All kids can learn, but they cannot all learn in the same way. Doing things the Behavioral Leadership way gives you the opportunity to teach behavior the same way you teach academics: differentiating for kids depending on what they need so they can learn best!

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