Reply to Behavior problems HFA- likes to seek negative attention

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Reply to "Behavior problems HFA- likes to seek negative attention"

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[quote=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.  [/quote]

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