Reinforcer the Powerful Tool to Teach Children

Some educators who is not familiar with Applied Behavior Analysis might think that food, toys other preferred items and social praise are given to a child after every mass trial is bribery. Well, it is some sort of bribery, which would find disgusting(probably not an appropriate adjective to describe), but if it open learning opportunities for a child, then so be it.

I remembered my supervisor saying that she would rather teach a hundred kids with ADHD than a kid with no reinforcer at hand. Being in the business of treating autism, reinforcers are very powerful tool that can open the floodgates of behavioral, academic, social and developmental skills for the child.

If you want the child to comply with you, you offer him a value dear to him in form of food, toy, tickle or social praise if he first does what being tasked of him. In the early stage of treatment, reinforcers that are tangible are heavily used. Eventually, when you a child has attained great progress to the point where he enjoys social praises, then you can start to fade it to intangible reinforcers in the form of social praises such as “Good job!”,”Well done!”,etc.

If you know the value of reinforcer in teaching a child, by all means use it to its fullest extent and you will see the changes of the child unfold right before your very eyes.

How Parents Reinforce Bad Behavior of a Child with Special Needs

Normally, when a child would escape from demand he may cry, whine, shout and throw a tantrum. If you are special education caregiver who doesn’t have good background in special needs, you would give in to those kinds of tactics from a child. However, when you are trained and have the wide knowledge on how to handle a situation like this, which is difficult, then it will be such a breeze from you.

When a child throws a tantrum, cry or shout, the best thing you can do is to ignore the child until the time he calms down. Because when one you reinforce any kind of bad behaviors by providing attention, definitely the behavior will not disappear and it will hinder the child’s learning.

In my experience as a Applied Behavior Analysis therapist, I have come to know that planned ignoring bad behaviors of a child can reap results. It was when you ignore when child will learn to calm themselves. It is important that bad behaviors are addressed for children with special needs will have more learning opportunities to be had.

Parents should also try to ignore when they see or hear their child displaying bad behaviors when under the care of a therapist to avoid reinforcing it. After all, therapist are hired to facilitate learning of skills for the child. It is important to trust the therapist for they know how to handle bad behaviors. Although it is given that there are times when a child is a not complaint, bear into mind that therapist are there to pull the child from his state and bring on learning for the child.