Articles
Jodi Larkin Ð Instructor Therapist, Hons. B.Sc., BST
For some children who have Autism, behavioural outbursts or 'tantrums' are common, and sometimes daily, occurrences. Often these 'tantrums' are due to an inability to adequately and appropriately identify their needs, wants or frustrations.
It can be a difficult task for a parent to determine why their child is behaving the way they are because it can become very overwhelming and, at times, it can appear as though the behaviour comes out of no where. However, for each 'tantrum' behaviour, as difficult as it may be to see, there is a reason for the occurrence of that behaviour.
An easy way to help determine why this 'tantrum' behaviour is occurring is to look at the ABC's.
Antecedent - Behaviour - Consequence
For every behaviour, it is important to look at the antecedents (what occurs directly before the behaviour) and the consequences (what occurs directly after the behaviour).
Each time the behaviour occurs, it is important to notice what occurs directly before the behaviour, because that may be evoking the behaviour. This is often not something grand and large in scale, but most often small and overlooked. A common antecedent for children with Autism is noise. Many people believe this means a loud noise such as another child screaming or a loud crash of thunder, but often children with Autism have a high sensitivity to noise and it can be a small and common noise such as a television being slightly louder than normal that can trigger this behaviour.
Similarly, it is also important to determine what occurs directly after the behaviour that may help to perpetuate and prolong this behaviour. As every parent knows, consequences can strengthen a behaviour, such as a parent providing a child with an allowance to increase the time and effort they spend on chores, the same is true for a child with Autism. Continuing along the lines of the above example, when the child screams because that television is too loud, the parent then decreases the volume, so the child had a 'tantrum' and because of that, the loud noise is decreased.
When the consequence is what the child wanted (such as a decrease in the volume of the television), the child then learns that their behaviour gave them the desired outcome that they wanted, so they then learn that if they engage in that behaviour again, then they will once again get what they want.
To summarize:
Antecedent: the volume on the television is too loud (which hurts the child's ears because of their high sensitivity)
Behaviour: the child engages in 'tantruming' behaviour
Consequence: the child's parent decreased the volume on the television (which is what the child wanted to occur, hence the child's behaviour got them what they wanted to occur)
At times when a behaviour appears to have been occurring for no reason at all, upon closer examination, one can see that there are a lot of factors occurring in combination that contribute to that behaviour. Not only does a behaviour occur because of something that happens before the behaviour, but what happens after the behaviour also contributes to the occurrences of the behaviour, so it is important to remember to look at what happens before and after a behaviour to help determine why that behaviour occurs.
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