It is difficult to watch a child scream, hit, kick, bite, or throw tantrums. What is even more frustrating is to not know what to do in order to help your child. Even after trying time outs, first-then statements, providing rewards, etc., you still may struggle on discovering what will work to help your child to not exhibit these behaviors (or at least decrease how often they occur). At this point, you have the right to speak with your child's school, physician, and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) team in regards to your concerns. If your child has an IEP, request that your child's IEP team conducts a Functional Behavioral Assessment or FBA. A Functional Behavioral Assessment is an assessment that helps identify the cause or function of the behavior before developing a strategy or intervention. Once the function has been identified an intervention can be developed to help decrease or eliminate the behavior.
Who Would Conduct the Functional Behavioral Assessment?
Individuals that know the child well (i.e. parents, teachers, childcare providers) and IEP team members can conduct the functional behavioral assessment. The following ways would be used to obtain the information for this assessment: interviews, rating scales, observations, and manipulating different things within the child's environment. It helps to have some that is trained to conduct the observations so that individual knows what to look for and how to collect the data efficiently and effectively.
How Could the Results Make an Impact?
Once the information has been collected from the Functional Behavioral Assessment, you will be able to find out what the function or cause of your child's behaviors are. This will also help your child's educational staff and IEP team develop interventions that will meet his or her needs as well as either reduce or eliminate behaviors. The results will also help your child's IEP team address if services and type of instruction will be needed. If your child already has an IEP, these changes can either be made through rewriting or amending (making the necessary changes without rewriting the entire IEP) the IEP.
It is important that you advocate for your child's needs, even if it means that you need to request that a Functional Behavioral Assessment be conducted. This assessment will provide answers to explain why your child is exhibiting certain behaviors and how he or she can receive assistance. As parents it is our job to help our child to be happy, successful, and enjoy life. A negative behavior can impact all three.
