Kids with autism or signs of autism cry formany reasons and trying to figure out why they are crying can be tricky.
Today's video blog is all about the reasonswhy kids might be crying and how you can help turn this behavior around.
Hi, I'm Dr.
Mary Barbera, autism mom, BoardCertified Behavior Analyst and bestselling author.
Each week I provide you with some of my ideasabout turning autism and signs of autism around so if you haven't subscribed to my YouTubechannel, you can do that now.
As a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, I'vebeen in many situations with kids crying.
Once I went out to do an initial evaluationand the child cried during the entire session.
We don't want kids crying.
That's never a good thing.
I like to use the analogy of me, if I werelearning to fly a plane.
When I start, I have no idea how to fly theplane.
I get into the cockpit and there's a zillionlevers all around me and there you are trying to explain the levers and the hundreds orthousands of buttons and levers and you start talking to me about all these levers and explainingthings.
It's going way over my head and I might startcrying.
And if you keep going with the instructionon the levers I'm sobbing at that point.
I'm almost hyperventilating.
I don't even want to fly a plane at this point.
I'm so overwhelmed and if you just keep goingon and on while I'm crying or sobbing or hyperventilating, I am not learning anything about any of thoselevers.
And so when kids are crying and professionalsand parents are trying to continue with the demands and continue with the, with this, whatever situation is going on, it's just not going to work.
The child or client who is crying is not goingto be learning at the same time.
So crying or any kind of problem behaviorcan be an indication of the child being in some kind of pain.
As a registered nurse and a Board CertifiedBehavior Analyst, I did a blog a while back about medical issues.
I did a few of them.
I did one on the importance of ruling outmedical issues and how it's impossible, especially if kids are not talking or or fairly conversational.
I also did a video blog on how to teach childrenhow to indicate they are in pain.
And the first step to do that is to teachchildren to label and receptively identify body parts.
So teaching children with autism to indicatethey're in pain is a good idea.
But like with the analogy of the plane, youknow, I'm not in pain, I'm just overwhelmed by the demands and I have very little reinforcementand things are presented to me that are too technical.
And so that kind crying is probably not pain.
That kind of crying.
Is, is basically my communication.
And kids without fully conversational communicationoften cry because they might even talk, but they don't have the ability to tell you exactlywhat the problem is.
So crying, it can just be communication.
Even newborn babies who cry to be fed or cryto have their diapers changed or to be held.
It's a, it's a reflex and crying is the firstform of communication.
But like the plane analogy, if a child iscrying, the demands are too high and reinforcement is too low.
And that I say a lot because I see a lot ofcrying and other problem behaviors and that's all it is.
We just have to make reinforcement reallyhigh and demands really low and systematically get them higher as we start to fade out reinforcement.
But crying is not something that we shouldjust accept as part of autism or a part of being two or three or four or 10.
Crying.
We really, there are definitely steps youcan take.
I did a video blog on the tackling problembehaviors.
So you can look at that video blog when you'redone with this.
And the also the important thing besides learninghow to tackle a problem behavior, the first step is always assessment.
We need to figure out if it is pain, if itis just overwhelm and lack of communication.
If our demands are too high, what is our reinforcement? So we need to really make a, make a good assessment.
Then we need to make a plan and part of thatplan is to spend 95% of our time preventing problem behavior, including crying.
Finally, check out my video blog on how Iuse a simple paper calendar system to help keep track of crying and other problem behaviors.
And it really could help you start to turnthings around.
In summary, if you have a child or clientwho is crying and they have a diagnosis of autism or maybe signs of autism or even typicallydeveloping children, if you have a child who's crying, whining or screaming, you don't knowhow to help them.
You want to start with assessment, make aplan and use my calendar system, which are all outlined in my three step guide that youcan get for free by downloading at right here at marybarbera.
com/join and this free guideis going to help you learn better how to assess, make a plan, and keep easy data to start turningthings around today.
If you like this video blog, I would loveit if you leave me a comment, give me a thumbs up, share the video with others who mightbenefit and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one, and don't forget todownload the three step guide at marybarbera.
com/join and I'll see you right here next week.
.
