In my role supporting children with autism in mainstream nurseries I often advise on individual education plan (IEP) targets. Often one of these targets may address a particular behaviour of the child’s that the setting is finding challenging. I frequently see the term ‘ignore the behaviour’ as a strategy…I recently asked the SENCO what they meant by this phrase and she said they had been advised to ignore the behaviour so that the child wouldn’t receive attention for it, however they were finding this difficult as the behaviour, climbing up on furniture and jumping off, was dangerous and posed a risk to the child, other children and potentially the adults. This wasn’t the first time that I’ve found ‘ignoring’ as a strategy misinterpreted and therefore hard to put in place effectively.
When it is advisable to ‘ignore’ behaviours that challenge us, a lot of planning needs to happen to make this a viable, effective and safe strategy.
Taking the climbing example: it is obviously not safe for the child to be climbing on furniture and jumping off so some adult intervention is necessary. It is the way that we go about this intervention that can make the difference.
Rather than completely ignoring the behaviour so that an accident ends up happening, an assigned adult can calmly go over to the child, make no eye-contact, use minimal or no language and calmly support the child back to the ground. As soon as the child is safe, the adult can then give them lots of attention and re-engage the child in their favourite, most motivating activity.
The behaviour that we are addressing is ignored but the situation remains safe. If this strategy is used consistently eventually the child will learn that it is a lot more fun to engage the adult’s attention in a more positive way and/or there’s more exciting things to do in the room than climb on furniture! Of course if the climbing behaviour is addressing a sensory need then other strategies can be put in place such as more directed and frequent use of the climbing frame, games such as ‘humpty dumpty’ in the sensory room etc.
In my own practice I found this approach really effective for a child that frequently hit other children in order to gain the adult’s attention. As a team we discussed the behaviour, monitored and recorded how often and when it occurred and then decided on a consistent ‘planned ignoring’ strategy. In this case we ensured that in general this little girl would be kept engaged as much as possible in really positive activities, if the behaviour occurred all the adult attention would be given to the child who had been hit and not to her thus effectively ‘ignoring’ the behaviour. After just a week of this consistent approach this little girl realised that playing alongside her friends got her a lot more attention than hitting out.
So when thinking of using ‘planned ignoring’ as a strategy these steps can help:
· Monitor and record the behaviour for triggers, what happened, what happened afterwards.
· Analyse your recording to look for reasons for the behaviour – remember all behaviour is a communication or serving a function for that child.
· Devise a consistent strategy that all the team will partake in.
· If using ‘planned ignoring’ ensure this involves minimal eye contact and minimal language.
· Plan to teach the child positive ways to meet the reasons for their behaviour e.g. how to engage an adult’s attention positively and build this into your ‘planned ignoring’ strategy.
· Ensure that whatever strategies you use everyone is safe and confident in the approach.
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