Managing Challenging Behaviors

What should be established to help allay a child’s anxiety?

• Predictability and Consistency

• Calm Atmosphere

• Attending to Appropriate Behaviors

What is the importance of attending to appropriate behaviors?

• To increase awareness of desired behaviors

• To minimize chaos

• To establish predictability

What should be done to provide an environment that promotes successful engagement?

• Provide structured and unstructured activities

• Minimize aversive events

• Increase communication effectiveness

What should be the first step in preventing situations that lead to frustration with communication barriers?

• Be attentive to child's efforts to communicate

• Use complex language to convey messages

• Ignore the child's attempts to communicate

• Assume the child understands expectations

What can be a result of uncertainty about what is expected from children?

• They may act in inappropriate ways

• They will always follow rules

• They will understand expectations

• They will not test limits

What should OT do to help children manage responses to environmental stimuli?

• Create individualized expectations

• Ignore the child's behavior

• Increase demands on the child

• Provide no support

What is a strategy to increase compliance through contingency methods?

• Withhold desired items until tasks are completed

• Force the child to comply

• Ignore the child's preferences

• Provide no rewards

What is the purpose of a token economy?

• To earn tokens for desired behaviors

• To punish undesired behaviors

• To ignore the child's actions

• To provide no structure

What should be done to help children transition between activities?

• Use a consistent transition routine

• Change routines frequently

• Ignore the transition process

• Make transitions unpredictable

What is the first step in a functional behavioral analysis?

• Identify the behavior

• Ignore the behavior

• Punish the behavior

• Change the environment