Behavioral Strategies

[Lisa Lightner]

Question: What strategies have you found effective for managing your child's behavior at school? How did you work these into their IEP?

[EmilyM]

I don't know if it's a real strategy, per day, but firmness. I have really had to dig in my own heels.

[JSD24]

With younger children, especially, it's been shown that you need to correct behavior 'in the moment'.  My child started having wetting accidents at school as they were coming home on the bus wet.  I asked the teacher to make sure they got changed when they were wet.  The teacher said that with 25 kindergarteners, she couldn't do this for my child.  The teacher had said she had seen this in the past and that it was a phase and would correct itself.  I didn't know about special ed back then.  I probably should have asked for an IEP or 504 but I just didn't know they existed.  My solution was to buy pull-ups and have my child wear them to school - kindergarten was a half day so they wouldn't need to be changed at school.  With using my strategy, the accidents got worse and my toilet trained child stopped being toilet trained.  This teacher retired 2 years later but the "phase" persisted past graduation from HS.

Mine is a great example of a behavior strategy fail in working with the school.  I'm not sure if having the school cooperate and correct this behavior (peeing their pants rather than using the toilet) in kindergarten would have prevented this from getting worse and worse as it was partly due to a medical issue - constipation.  The behavior & medical issue was so intertwined it is hard to tell when one left off & the other started.  Holding in going #2 put pressure on the bladder which caused it to spasm resulting in wet pants accidents.  We would need for a doctor to recognise this and properly treat the constipation before we could stop the accidents from happening.  (We needed more than one OTC med to stop the cycle of constipation.)  Other things contributed like not taking in enough fluids and not being in tune with interoceptive signals due to autism (autism was diagnosed at age 13).  We did put this into a 504 in 4th grade.  They identified the autism in 8th grade and this transferred into the IEP when we met for the 1st IEP meeting in June of 8th grade.  (The reminders didn't happen in 8th grade which led to the autism being recognized by the school and getting the IEP.)

A classroom aide that monitored my child for accidents might have been the solution.  Instead, we did timed voiding - where the teacher told my child to use the bathroom once a day at school (and later 3X a day when school became full day).  We'll never know if this strategy would have got us to a solution sooner.  What helped is having the school use timed voiding - same strategy we used at home - to manage wetting accidents.  This didn't eliminate them though.  There were a few times where there was a change in the schedule like a field trip or event at school where a reminder didn't happen and there were accidents.

[Indifata70]

Managing a child’s behavior at school can be challenging, but several strategies have proven effective. One of the most important approaches is consistent positive reinforcement. Praising good behavior, even for small achievements, encourages the child to repeat those behaviors. This can be integrated into an IEP by setting specific goals for positive behavior and establishing a reward system that is monitored by both the teacher and parents.

Edited September 9 by Indifata70
Other

[Indifata70]

Managing a child’s behavior at school, particularly if they have an Individualized Education Program (IEP), can be challenging but very rewarding. Here are some strategies that have been effective for many parents and how they can be integrated into an IEP: Scripmine