I took a course on behaviour management.
The course was geared towards work supporting individuals with severe disabilities, varying degrees of autism, and non-verbal communications.
There are a lot of challenging behaviours with this group of people, but I found that a lot of the methods and information that I learned can be applied to ones own life, friends, kids, and co-workers.
One of the methods used to alter behaviour is positive re-enforcement. We build up and encourage behaviour that's beneficial, giving praise when it's due. It's important with all people to know what behaviour it is you're encouraging, and also to be sincere. Praise that's given that isn't really deserved is just patronizing. Whether a brain is broken or in fine working order, the individual can and will pick up on being talked down to.
Another method (that has proven to be very effective with my client base) is re-direction. Basically, instead of outright saying "no", I provide other ideas. Not always easy, as it requires an active imagination, but you get the hang of it with different people. This is probably something you already may find yourself doing. Imagine that someone is starting to talk religion or politics - with some folk you can just ask them to stop, but a smoother way is to re-direct the conversation. Come up with something else.
With my client base this works well. Instead of saying "you can't go to the zoo today" we will give other options of what we're doing. But not many options - usually only two. People get upset and indecisive when given too many options (I find this to be true with almost everyone, myself included!) Mind you, these brains that I'm dealing with are wired in many difficult abnormal ways... That being said, everyone's damaged in one way or another, and I see autistic traits of low degree all over the place now that I recognize it.
It's kind of like ADHD, or ADD - the inability to pay attention, sit still and focus is the problem.
This problem, or symptom, comes from many different things in many different ways. The point is, all people have problems with how to focus.
Now, what was I doing...
The course was geared towards work supporting individuals with severe disabilities, varying degrees of autism, and non-verbal communications.
There are a lot of challenging behaviours with this group of people, but I found that a lot of the methods and information that I learned can be applied to ones own life, friends, kids, and co-workers.
One of the methods used to alter behaviour is positive re-enforcement. We build up and encourage behaviour that's beneficial, giving praise when it's due. It's important with all people to know what behaviour it is you're encouraging, and also to be sincere. Praise that's given that isn't really deserved is just patronizing. Whether a brain is broken or in fine working order, the individual can and will pick up on being talked down to.
Another method (that has proven to be very effective with my client base) is re-direction. Basically, instead of outright saying "no", I provide other ideas. Not always easy, as it requires an active imagination, but you get the hang of it with different people. This is probably something you already may find yourself doing. Imagine that someone is starting to talk religion or politics - with some folk you can just ask them to stop, but a smoother way is to re-direct the conversation. Come up with something else.
With my client base this works well. Instead of saying "you can't go to the zoo today" we will give other options of what we're doing. But not many options - usually only two. People get upset and indecisive when given too many options (I find this to be true with almost everyone, myself included!) Mind you, these brains that I'm dealing with are wired in many difficult abnormal ways... That being said, everyone's damaged in one way or another, and I see autistic traits of low degree all over the place now that I recognize it.
It's kind of like ADHD, or ADD - the inability to pay attention, sit still and focus is the problem.
This problem, or symptom, comes from many different things in many different ways. The point is, all people have problems with how to focus.
Now, what was I doing...
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