Behavior problems HFA- likes to seek negative attention

[Anonymous]

My 6 year old boy with HFA lis a junkie for negative attention. He loves to do things he shouldn't to see the person's reactions. I had to stop all therapists except ABA, because they were reinforcing his behavior. He really enjoys doing things that are wrong. He does it knowingly. Has anyone had this experience? How did you deal with it? Did your child outgrow it. I'm very worried because this behavior is getting him in trouble at school.

[Anonymous]

How were therapists reinforcing the negative attention seeking?

[Anonymous]

Have you thought about working with a BCBA? )A trained behavior therapist). Maybe hire one and have him/her observe at school and at home for suggestions and a plan to implement. Ignoring really works best for attention seekers but it has to be done correctly and across all settings to be effective

[Anonymous]

We are having this issue with my DS with HFA who is 7. A lot of it has to do with our Sp Ed school staff who are all new this year and have little to no experience with dealing with kids with ASD, a huge change from prior years when we did not have this problem.

I second getting in a behaviorist to teach the school to how to deal with the negative attention seeking - stop rewarding the kid with attention. Easier said than done.

[Anonymous]

Just a brainstorm, but what about replacing negative attention with positive attention? Would your DS respond to a behavioral sticker chart?

My DS is in the diagnosis process- we don't quite know what's going on. He did seek purposely seek negative attention when he was younger. Responding to the negativite behavior with any type of attention (except of course protecting safety and property) was a "no go."

Replacement strategies such as visual charts and immediate rewards helped enough that it almost completely broke the compulsion. Now at seven, he's can do the wrong thing impulsively, but he is no longer oppositional.

[Anonymous]

Original poster- I have BCBA's working with him, but it doesn't seem to help that much. Whenever he has to do something he doesn't want to do his behavior is awful. We started seeing a psychiatrist. The first 2 visits were fine. On the third visit he didn't want to be there, he wanted to go to the park. He went the doctor's office and behaved horribly. It's his way or the highway, and he's so young.

[Anonymous]

My son is 5 and we have had this problem since 3. And his behavior has only gotten worse until recently. We tried everything except BCBA, which we are seeking out now. We are also avoiding medication unless nothing else works.

The best thing we have done so far is having him work with a play therapist 2x a week for that last 3 month. She has helped him realize why he does these negative behaviors and is teaching him how to express what he actually wants with words. It hasn't made his behavior all go away, but it has been the only thing that has been helpful so far.

[Anonymous]

I'd like to know the name of your play therapist, if you don't mind. Is the person a psychologist, Floortime?

[Anonymous]

Instead of stopping therapy, you need better therapists.

[Anonymous]

We have been dealing with the need for negative attention with DS (age 9) for years. It has gotten better with the RIGHT BCBA (we have had 4). A few things we have learned.... consistency. If the school is willing to work with the parent and the BCBA as a team, it is best because it doesn't do any good to ignore attention seeking behavior at home if they cater to it at school. Obviously, there are times that the school must cater but not always. Ratio. For the PP who said try positive attention, it takes at least a 5:1 ratio of positive attention to negative attention for DS to get anything out of it. For the average parent, that is overwhelming. DS has a checklist but the part of the checklist that works is the part where he gets to choose a preferred activity based on how well he completes the checklist. And to start out, he helped make the list of preferred activities and rated them based on which ones mean the most to him. Flexibility. What works today probably won't work next month. Scale. The thing I didn't realize about negative attention is the scale. When DS does something wrong, our response was more animated- big facial expressions and maybe loud voices. For an Aspie who has trouble reading emotions, this made it easy to understand: he had our attention. Yet, when DS did something great, like have a good day at school, we would celebrate but it wouldn't be as animated--- not as loud as when we are upset and the facial expressions for pride and happy don't seem as obvious for my Aspie. So the more we ignore negative behavior (unless safety is involved), the bigger the reactions to positive behavior seems. This is especially important in public where everyone wants to acknowledge the actions of a misbehaving kid but only sometimes will a someone come up and tell a kid how well behaved he or she is. So DS learned that he could get more attention in public, whether from strangers or from us when we used to get embarrassed. Not anymore! Our BCBA's guidance to ignore negative attention seeking behavior is validated every time DS does something wrong and I see him looking at me to see if I noticed. It's tough though. But if you stick with ignoring the bad, making the positive bigger and getting the school, family, friends, etc on board, after a spike in bad behavior (when child is checking to see if you really mean it), things will improve.

[Anonymous]

Get the book The Kazdin Method and buy a copy for people who work with your son. It explains in detail how to give positive reinforcement, including a DVD and explanation on how to praise with the effusiveness of a cheerleader; also how to NOT react to negative behaviors. There are lists of common motivators by age. My DS was like this too and started to turn it around around age 12 (but started doing it later too, so hopefully your DS will learn sooner). I think some of it can be stress related as well so try to find ways to reduce stress or demands. Show you have faith in your son. We have a therapist who always tells our DS that he doesn't need to be perfect but to try his best to resist the temptation of doing things that will get him in trouble or upset someone. Ask the teacher to give him frequent praise or rewards for class periods where he makes good choices and then reward him at home. Also talk about contructive ways to get attention, like doing well on school activities, being kind, etc.

[Anonymous]

PP 10:39 with the play therapist

We see Judith Gallant In Silver Spring, MD. I got her name through a neighbor who's child also gets very violent. Again working with her is not a quick fix, but we are seeing progress. Our son use to get so angry he would literally black out, destroy his own toys and then not know why they were broken. But now we can talk him down before things get that bad 60% of the time. She may be full up, but is a very seasoned clinician and my be able to to provide a recommendation.

By the way we tried several versions of time-out and many many positive reinforcement tools, sensory integration therapies, and was in PEP for 2 years. I also interviewed about 5 different practices and DS met with one other therapist before I settled on Judy. Working with her is the only thing we have found that has made a dent in his behavior. She was only person I met who didn't tell me her prescribed way of doing things, before she even met him. Our son does have HFA but we know he also has other things going on. She really looked at him holistically instead of viewing him just through his diagnosis or behavioral problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have been dealing with the need for negative attention with DS (age 9) for years. It has gotten better with the RIGHT BCBA (we have had 4). A few things we have learned.... consistency. If the school is willing to work with the parent and the BCBA as a team, it is best because it doesn't do any good to ignore attention seeking behavior at home if they cater to it at school. Obviously, there are times that the school must cater but not always. Ratio. For the PP who said try positive attention, it takes at least a 5:1 ratio of positive attention to negative attention for DS to get anything out of it. For the average parent, that is overwhelming. DS has a checklist but the part of the checklist that works is the part where he gets to choose a preferred activity based on how well he completes the checklist. And to start out, he helped make the list of preferred activities and rated them based on which ones mean the most to him. Flexibility. What works today probably won't work next month. Scale. The thing I didn't realize about negative attention is the scale. When DS does something wrong, our response was more animated- big facial expressions and maybe loud voices. For an Aspie who has trouble reading emotions, this made it easy to understand: he had our attention. Yet, when DS did something great, like have a good day at school, we would celebrate but it wouldn't be as animated--- not as loud as when we are upset and the facial expressions for pride and happy don't seem as obvious for my Aspie. So the more we ignore negative behavior (unless safety is involved), the bigger the reactions to positive behavior seems. This is especially important in public where everyone wants to acknowledge the actions of a misbehaving kid but only sometimes will a someone come up and tell a kid how well behaved he or she is. So DS learned that he could get more attention in public, whether from strangers or from us when we used to get embarrassed. Not anymore! Our BCBA's guidance to ignore negative attention seeking behavior is validated every time DS does something wrong and I see him looking at me to see if I noticed. It's tough though. But if you stick with ignoring the bad, making the positive bigger and getting the school, family, friends, etc on board, after a spike in bad behavior (when child is checking to see if you really mean it), things will improve.

This. Its not just ignoring, its your mental state. Blood curling screams are hard to ignore, but if you can see it as "just a behavior" and stay calm, you can say, "use a calm voice" etc.

I'm hoping that our next BCBA will do the trick b/c I want so badly for him to join the community in activities that I know he'll enjoy, if we could just get past these behaviors... aaahhh....

Good luck to all of us lol

[Anonymous]

1901-- this is a good bcba. Who is it?

[Anonymous]

DH is licensed as an RN (BSN) and a professional counselor (MA in clinical psychology). His psych grad program specialized in classical behaviorial psychology. (Skinner and all that.)

Behavioral reward are set up for behavior/reward. Your son uses bad behavior to get your attention. He doesn't care if you are angry. He has your attention.My son was much the same way.

What we did to end that was time-outs. Not revolutionary, but it worked. He need to get ZERO reinforcement for bad behavior and a time-out from attention was the way to do that. If he acted up, broke a rule, whatever, he was sent to his room for a time-out. Immediately. No reminders. No yelling. Just go to your room for X minutes (X = age of child) My kid would start to tantrum in his room. We let that happen. No behavior reinforcement. If he started kicking walls or doors, we went to his room and put him in a basket hold.

Here's an explanation of a basket hold from another web site: "Stand behind the child, reach around her, and cross her arms in front of her chest.

Loosely encircle the child's left wrist with your right thumb and forefinger, and encircle the child's right wrist with your left thumb and forefinger.

Do NOT squeeze the child's wrist; otherwise, you'll bruise her.

Hold the child's arms tightly enough to prevent her from getting enough leverage to hurl her upper body or head into your chest.

Do NOT pull the child's arms; this can readily dislocate a small shoulder.

Slide to the floor and place the child between your legs.

Put your legs over the child's legs to prevent kicking, but be careful not to crush the child's legs.

As the child rages and struggles (often spitting, cursing, and attempting to kick and bite — this is what causes some adults to lose their cool; tantrums can last from a minute to an hour), speak in soothing tones:“It's okay. You're all right. I'll keep you safe. I'll control you until you can control yourself. I'll let go when you settle down.”" When the kid stops, let him go. Go back to what you were doing. Ask him to do the correct behavior and praise him for doing it.

If we are in public, the time out is on a bench or the floor. I will go to a baskethold in public if it doesn't stop.

The other side of this technique is rewarding good behavior. Any correct behavior gets a lot of praise and positive attention. You want to make it more rewarding to do the right thing.