The ABC View: Our starting Point
How we View Behavior
The students that arrive at our doorstep require intensive treatment and support that is beyond the scope of the traditional support systems from which they come. The problems that drive the referrals to our programs are most certainly complex and profound -- social, emotional, and behaviorally so. This is the work that we do, and this is why we exist as Atlantic Academy: To solve problems; which is to say, to provide effective treatment for youth with intensive needs and challenges.
Our approach to solving these challenges is critical, as solutions are elusive, and effective action improbable, if our understanding of the problem is fuzzy, convoluted, or lacks collective agreement. How a problem is solved is generally shaped by how it is conceived of in the first place.
When we are with a student, within the context of the school day, and facing a behavior problem, how are we to proceed? If within that context, the view and understanding of our students’ problem behavior is believed to simply be a function of their:
Diagnosis (Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Bipolar, etc)
Home life (limited resources and excessive stressors)
History (early childhood)
Brain (underdeveloped frontal lobes, brain injury)
Laziness, Rage, Non-compliance, Self-esteem, Entitlement, Bossiness, Rudeness, etc
...how are we to proceed in that moment, with effective action? Our students certainly have complex and multiple diagnoses, with home lives rife with adversity, and histories fraught with tragedy and pain (and brains shaped by these experiences). In my experience, seeing our children’s problem behaviors strictly through these lenses can evoke feelings of overwhelm, confusion, cynicism, hopelessness, and even our own anger or defensiveness (especially if we view our students’ challenging behaviors as a fixed character flaw, i.e., they are “entitled,” lack “accountability,” or simply “disabled,” or “perpetrators”).
Generally, when our interactions with our students are entrenched in these views, and flooded by related emotions, effective action is unlikely, and we begin to question whether such folks can positively do this work.
The view that we practice at Atlantic Academy is a contextual-behavioral one, and attempts to understand problem behaviors by first adhering to three basic principles:
All behavior is purposeful and occurs because it works at some level (i.e., maladaptive responses to basic needs and wants)
2. Behavior problems reflect skill-deficits
3. Acquiring new skills is possible given consistent opportunities for positive practice and ongoing teaching.
With this in mind, we then seek to understand our students’ behavior challenges by simply looking at what is happening, within the context that the problem (behavior) is happening. As a starting point, we use the ABC model of behavior, which helps optimize alignment with the basic principles stated above:
Start here
B = BEHAVIOR
Ask: What exactly is the problem behavior? Is it hitting, cursing, staying in bed, and refusing to get up?
The B refers to what a person does or is doing that we are interested in or concerned with, such as aggression, property destruction, chronic task refusal. (This is why our students are in our services).
Then go here
A = ANTECEDENT
Ask: What did you see, hear, notice with your 5-senses that happened immediately prior to the behavior?
Often seen as a trigger, or evocative/ motivating event before the behavior
Lastly
C = CONSEQUENCE
Ask: What did you see, hear, notice with your 5-senses that happened immediately after the behavior?
Can be considered the “feedback” from the environment that the behavior produced--which is a kind of “response” to the antecedent.
(Behavior analysts use this basic framework to begin to hypothesize what the behavior is communicating [the function], which leads to effective and individualized interventions intended to teach critical skills. For sake of this post, we will keep this exercise simply in the domain of the ABCs of behavior as the building blocks to clear understanding/right view of problem behavior)
Let’s look at how the ABCs emerge in the following scenario:
Jed’s school called his parents about some concerns with his “anger management.” They reported that he had been “out of control” lately and wasn’t respecting his peers' personal boundaries. Because his parents were not exactly sure what the school meant by “anger management” or “out of control,” after some follow-up questions, it was clear that the problem behavior was yelling and cursing at his peers, and occasionally physically assaulting them by pushing and shoving them. Jed’s parents wanted to fully understand the purpose of Jed’s behavior problems, so they asked for antecedent events that seemed to “trigger” these behaviors by asking, "what happened in the environment prior to these outbursts." After some further discussion, they learned that before these outbursts, Jed was involved in playing games with his peers at recess, or during gym, and usually contained a very physically-active and competitive component. Usually, the immediate antecedents to Jed’s outbursts were losing a game, or when the activity seemed to conflict with Jed’s notion of the rules. Jed’s parents then asked what typically happened immediately after such outbursts, the consequences to the behavior problems. The school reported that, following Jed’s outbursts, he is asked to go sit in a “chill-out” chair to “cool-off,” or he is sent to the principal’s office. According to the school, Jed typically calms down once he is away from his peers and the group activity.
Coming to an agreement on what the specific problem is, without using constructs that are difficult to pin down (such as "anger management"), helps to provide a clear starting point for all involved. Once we can agree on what the behavior is, we can move to using an equivalent process for unpacking environment events that happen before and after the behavior we are interested in. Although it may sound simple, doing this can lead to very effective and individualized ways we can begin to rearrange the environment to set a student up for success, and perhaps most importantly--begin to identify the skill-deficit that is reflected by the problem behavior, and teach the child how to more effectively get their needs and wants met.
This contextual-behavioral view is the lens we use at Atlantic Academy to understand our student’s challenges, and is a building block for our assessment process, which drives our interventions.