01/23/2022
I hope everyone has been having a good weekend! Today I wanted to share one of the concepts of ABA that really inspired me to make a career out of it. It has served me well in my career and my life, and I think it may help others as well.
Every person does what they do for a reason. This applies to all people of all ages, whether they’re neurotypical or not. There may be situations where the person doesn’t have self-awareness of what that reason is, or they may know but are unable to communicate it, but that doesn’t change that there is a reason.
Not only that, but if we’re able to pay attention closely enough to the circumstances where they do the things they do, we can make educated guesses on what those reasons are (which we can then test to see if we’re right or not), and gain valuable understanding on what motivates that person, even if they can’t tell us themselves. With this mindset, we can more easily see individuals on the spectrum as the people they are, people like us, doing the best they can in a world that’s difficult to understand, and help them to thrive.
In ABA, the field has studied these types of motivations extensively and broken them down to 4 main types of reasons…
1) Attention-seeking
2) Escape from something they don’t like
3) Access to a tangible thing like a toy or snack
4) Automatic/Sensory, which basically means it feels good to them, like stimming (or yoga! 🧘)
As a BCBA, a big part of what I do is figuring out what reasons motivate specific behaviors, mainly by observing/figuring out what’s happening before, during, and after the behaviors occur. I’ll talk more about that in a later post!
Are there any behaviors your children engage in that are confusing to you? Do you have questions on how to apply this to your life? Feel free to share your thoughts!
