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System for tracking behavior?


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I need a way to track my child's behavior to see if all these various therapies are helping. I have tried writing things down but is it more narrative and I need sone way to track things quantitatively.

Any ideas? What have you done that has worked for you? Thanks!

 

 

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Starting with a narrative approach is more qualitative, which you can then analyse and identify the specific 'things' that you want to track.

You can then define a way to report daily, on each of the 'things'.  What criteria to look for in each of them?  Then how to make a report, which could be some sort of scale.

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You have a lot of options and may need a hybrid approach.

 

First, what are you tracking. You can only track so much at a time. Decide what you want to track. You can also, separately, have certain times that you track. Maybe you want to look for improvement in a certain scenario or certain time of day. And also you are tracking a few things at all times.

 

For some things -- you can track with a tally. If you are looking for a presence of something, it can be something good you want to see more of, or it can be something you want to see less of. Tallies can be good enough for some purposes.

 

Another tool is an ABC data sheet. You can probably print these from the Internet or make your own. This is where -- maybe you want to put more information. You put what happened before, what happened, what happened next, time, and extenuating circumstances (hungry, tired, set off by something that happened before, etc).

 

Hopefully you can ask your therapists for help in minimizing/targeting what you track. If they are mainly working on a certain thing, maybe that is what you mainly track.

 

There are ways to track at a certain time, instead of all the time, to get an idea but do less work of tracking. So you can track for a 2 hour block of time every day. Or track one day a week.

 

It is really good to track, but it needs to be manageable. And, ideally you can see what is effective and what is not so effective, and then make decisions to keep going or change.

 

But ime you have to be picky about what you track, or it mixes together.

 

Another thing, the therapist may be tracking during sessions or in some form.

 

Maybe if you know therapy sessions are going well -- if you get this info -- then you are more tracking skills generalizing to "outside of therapy."

 

I think that is easier, because you probably know what you are looking for.

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There is a word "measurable" and it is something where -- if you make what you are tracking measurable, it will be easier to track different things.

 

But it can be hard to decide how to define things in order to track them. It can be the hardest part sometimes.

 

Maybe one of the therapist could help you go from your narrative to having some measurable things to track. That is something that has helped me. It gives more of a framework for how to look at things.

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A first step is to make a list of the specific behaviors you are seeing. Some will be bad things. Some need to be "yay he is using his skill, his coping strategy, etc.". That can help you see what skill is working better, or if there is an increase in using a coping strategy.

 

Maybe you have several skills or coping strategies that the therapists are working on, and you want to see how often and how successfully they are used.

 

Potentially you could list them and use tallies. Probably start a new tally each day.

 

If something is going wrong and you are trying to look for a pattern, you might need more info and to break down the before/during/after with an ABC data sheet.

 

I am guessing you want to see reduction in some bad behaviors and then increase in the use of skills/strategies from therapy.

 

If you see something not generalizing then you might need to talk to the therapist about how you can provide prompts to help your child use the techniques.

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If your behavior issues aren't too serious, I think maybe take a look at the Alan Kazdin books. I think he has good advice and it can help to go along with therapy.

 

For more serious behavior issues then I hope your therapist is good and I think ---- ask your therapist for some advice.

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Also keep in mind -- environmental supports are good. These are changes you make to help your child.

 

But you don't know how your child will do when the supports are removed.

 

So you try for some balance where your child is very supported, but is also challenged to make some improvement and progress, so that there can be a little less and a little less support needed over time.

 

But if you happened to make changes so that your child wasn't having behavior issues because of not even being placed in a challenging situation, then that doesn't necessarily mean a reduction in behavior issues is caused by improvements from therapy.

 

Just something to keep in mind.

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There are some common patterns, too. Not everybody has a common pattern, but many kids do.

 

So, this is things like: having trouble with transitions, having trouble with not wanting to do things -- maybe because of anxiety, maybe because they seem too hard, seeking attention even if it is negative attention, wanting to be give something.

 

If there are any patterns like this -- then there are strategies that go with each pattern.

 

There are also patterns that go along with sensory needs.

 

Those are the kinds of patterns I am more familiar with ;)

Edited by Lecka
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What Lecka said. Basically, write down a list of the 10 worst, terrible things he does, put it into a little checklist with boxes so the worker can tick tick all the behaviors that occurred, and print enough copies of the forms that you can have one for the morning, one for the afternoon, one for the evening. 

 

Our behaviorist made us really thorough behavior forms. We have ABC space on there, but again anything that happens over and over (like consequences) has tick boxes. 

 

And yes, that's what they do. They tally the behaviors. My ds' list used to be, well let's just say it was 30+ behaviors long. You might want to spend one day and just write the behaviors. Like do that today or Saturday. Then take a day to make your forms. Then start fresh on Monday.

 

Just as a total aside, our behaviorist looks not only at whether the actual # of behaviors is decreasing (sort of a pragmatic thing), but also at his STRESS, sort of a meta level, big picture view. As his STRESS goes down, his whole reaction to EVERYTHING is calmer. So tick ticking boxes isn't everything, but it's a piece. 

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Just as a total aside, our behaviorist looks not only at whether the actual # of behaviors is decreasing (sort of a pragmatic thing), but also at his STRESS, sort of a meta level, big picture view. As his STRESS goes down, his whole reaction to EVERYTHING is calmer. So tick ticking boxes isn't everything, but it's a piece. 

 

This would apply to a child with generalized anxiety, which is not necessarily relevant to the OP. 

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You can also google ABC and behavior tracking forms and find some. Like I said, our behaviorist made us one that was really custom for ds. It lets whoever is working with him log antecedent data overall (how the morning is going, what work was done, etc.), then ABC anything significant and tally the more mundane stuff.

 

If you've got a lot of therapies happening, do you have one person helping you coordinate or set goals? Like Lecka is saying, I find it helpful. I'm a really thorough person, but I'm so *close* to things. The behaviorist is standing back. I'll just bop her things, little updates, and she connects those with those and the data. She connects it to what she knows about other kids. She's able to help us set really gradual goals. 

 

Like right now, we've identified a goal of helping him be able to settle for workers faster. He's used to having a period of time with a timer when a new worker comes in, and that really works for him. But we're seeing that now he needs to settle faster when he has more $$$ workers to work with or shorter times. So that kind of thing is producing behaviors if we don't handle it right, but it's not a communication issue and not an immediately fixable ABC kinda gig. It's one of those big picture things where we go ok, we want him to be able to do X, so we're going to break it down and build up to it and get there. And we had to communicate about it, sure, but it's rigidity, control, self-regulation, expectations. I was missing that we had a hole there, so I was thinking too fast, like oh just provide a motivator and boom we should be able to get there! And now we're realizing no, this is something we're going to have to build up to. So that's data, but it's also someone helping *me* see the big picture so I can problem solve. The solution is pretty simple (decrease play time before transitioning to work incrementally).

 

Good luck. Behavior is hard. Language is sort of a bottomless pit for us. My ds' scores go up and down. His needs to communicate increase faster than my interventions, even though I try and try. Sometimes it's complex. 

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Also, you know this, but antecedants can span across days. For my ds, physical stuff, sensory is huge. So whatever we do the day before sets us up for a good day the next. HUGE piece. So you can log things like food, exercise, therapy sessions, all sorts of things that you track to look for patterns. My ds is usually very tired the next day after very intense therapy. I can't just go schedule some kind of really intense cognitive session the next day after we do speech. His speech therapy (PROMPT) is very intense motor planning, and he'll be tired! 

 

So it's important to look over the days as you collect data and look for patterns. If kids react to foods or are having changes in routine over the weekend, same gig. 

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For my son, as his language increased his behavior issues decreased. That is pretty common, too.

 

We have not had behavior therapy (ABA) but this has been our experience as well, with my 8 year old who has had some expressive language delays. 

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Thanks so much for the thoughts and suggestions. I am finally getting back to this after a day filled with OT, teeth extractions and an early intervention appointment for another child. So I need to sit down and think and read through these responses again and figure out a system. We had a previous therapist (3 years ago now) that was really good at tracking things like this.

 

 

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Thanks so much for the thoughts and suggestions. I am finally getting back to this after a day filled with OT, teeth extractions and an early intervention appointment for another child. So I need to sit down and think and read through these responses again and figure out a system. We had a previous therapist (3 years ago now) that was really good at tracking things like this.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

:grouphug:

 

Look at old paperwork if you have some from the old therapist. That might be helpful! 

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For transitioning to new people, one can take the child to a neutral place the child favors before the starting date, and casually introduce the person and inform the child that this person will be working with him/ her. Maybe have the new person buy the child something like an ice-cream and interact with the child casually. This way the face becomes familiar to the child when the person comes to the family's home. 

 

Just a suggestion!

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I don't do Facebook (or other social media) but the Autism Discussion Page is open for public viewing, so I looked it up. I only have his green book and he says that this topic is found in the blue. However, he does cite the research in the comments, which is a study on lower functioning kids. So I guess this would be relevant to those with low functioning kids.

 

Cortisol Levels Higher in Lower-Functioning Autism

https://psychcentral.com/news/2015/06/09/cortisol-levels-higher-in-lower-functioning-autism/85522.html

 

Here's the link from the Autism Discussion Page. It is from July 2016:

https://m.facebook.com/autismdiscussionpage/posts/1097485793664253

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Quote from the study:
 

Children with LFASD had significantly higher cortisol, the stress indicator, across the day than both the HFASD and typical children and, interestingly, children with HFASD did not significantly differ from the typical children across the day,†said Putnam.

These findings have significant implications as they suggest that differences in cortisol levels and stress may be linked to the functional level, specifically IQ, of children with ASD.

 

 

Edited to put quote in quotation box as I did not have that feature available to me on my tablet this morning. 

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