Before a child with Autism joins a mainstream classroom regardless of whether he or she has an aide, the first concern the child’s new teachers usually have is how likely the child will behave disruptively and if they are capable to manage the child’s as well as the classroom’s behaviors. To increase the success of transiting to a mainstream classroom, parents and therapists are recommended to identify potential triggers, increase the children’s tolerance to those identified triggers, and teach replacement skills as well as other essential skills that will contribute to the decrease of the disruptive behaviors.
To identify potential triggers, we should analyze incidents of disruptive behaviors in the past. The process includes identifying the general themes among the events occurred before the past incidents, and then predicting what situations in school under the themes may evoke behaviors. Some common themes are expectations not being met, requests being declined, and corrective feedback from others.
If a child has been showing difficulties to cope with expectations not being met, then he or she may find it hard to be flexible with sudden changes of school timetable, cancellations of activities in short notice, unfamiliar teachers substituting a lesson, or new arrangement or restrictions of school activities and routines, e.g. recess takes place in classroom instead of playground due to bad weather, or teacher changes seat-arrangement in classroom.
If a child finds it less tolerable in situations of others declining their requests or not fulfilling their wishes, one common and frequent trigger to them is not being picked by teacher when they volunteer to answer a question. Other related triggers are not being picked to perform special roles or participate in special tasks in class, not being invited or accepted to join an academic or leisure group activity by peers, or even being made to wait for their turn.
The formats of teacher giving feedback to students are different from those observed at home and in therapy. Children who always look for approval from adults may find it difficult to cope with situations that teacher does not acknowledge their responses immediately or does not give individual feedback at all. Some children may be less tolerant to variant forms of corrective feedback like deduction of marks, crosses and written feedback on their assignments or test papers, while some children refuse to fulfill the demands of redoing or correcting their work.
When a potential trigger is identified, we should test it out several times in simulated scenarios. If a child does react, then we can formulate a training plan that includes tolerance training and replacement skills training.
Information provided by Autism Partnership
Autism Partnership (AP) is one of the most established Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) service providers for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in the world. Formed in 1994 in the United States, AP is run by professional clinicians and specializes in providing one-on-one therapy, group interventions and overseas consultation for children with ASD and their families.
Please share to let more people know about ABA Therapy Skills.
Facebook: APautism
Wechat: AutismPartnership_HK
Learn more about our ABA Services
[:zh]在患有自閉症的孩子加入主流學校之前，無論他們是否有老師支援，孩子的新老師通常首先關心的是孩子發生滋擾性行為的機會以及他們是否有能力管理孩子以及教室裡的行為。為了增加過渡到主流學校的成功率，父母和治療師應先確定可能觸發滋擾性行為的誘因，提高孩子對這些誘因的容忍度，並教授替代技能以及其他關鍵的基本技能。
為了確定潛在的觸發因素，我們應該分析過去的滋擾行為。該過程包括在行為發生之前的事件中識別主題，然後預測在該主題下學校中的哪些情況會引起行為。一些常見的主題是期望未得到滿足，請求被拒絕以及其他人的反饋。
如果孩子表現出不接受期望不被滿足，那麼他們可能會不接受學校時間表突然改變，活動在短時間內被取消，不熟悉的老師代課，或學校規律和日常活動的有新的安排和限制 (例如由於惡劣的天氣，小息在教室而不是操場上進行; 或者老師更改了教室的座位安排) 。
如果孩子難以忍受別人拒絕他們的要求或不滿足他們的意願，那麼在學校有可能見到的將會是當他們舉手回答問題但老師不選擇他們時，他們當時可能會有情緒性的反應。其他相關觸發因素包括不被挑選擔任班中的特別的角色 (如班長或班代表) 或參與課堂上的特別任務，不被同伴邀請或被拒絕參加學術或遊玩的群體活動，或在不同情景中等待很長的時間。
教師向學生給予反饋的形式與在家中和治療中的形式不同。常常尋求成人認同的孩子可能不會應付老師沒有立即回應他們的作答或根本沒有直接對學生給予反饋的情況。一些孩子可能不太願意接受各種形式的改正和反饋，例如在作業或試卷上扣除分數，「叉」的符號和文字反饋，而有些孩子則拒絕重做或改正的要求。
當識別出潛在的觸發因素時，我們應該在模擬場景中對其進行多次測試。如果孩子確實有反應，那麼我們可以制定一個訓練計劃，其中包括容忍力訓練和替代技能訓練。
資訊由Autism Partnership提供
Autism Partnership （AP）於1994年在美國成立，是全球最具規模為自閉症患者提供『應用行為分析』(ABA) 治療的專業機構。AP是由多位專業臨床心理學家、應用行為分析治療顧問及治療師管理，為患有自閉症譜系障礙（ASD）的兒童及其家庭提供一對一治療、行為干預小組訓練及海外諮詢服務。
請分享，讓更多人了解自閉症及學習更多應用行為分析（ ABA）的治療技巧。 Facebook: APautism 微信號: AutismPartnership_HK [:]
