POSITIVE ATTENTION AND PLANNED IGNORING

Hello friends
Lets work on changing behaviour through attention and ignoring to teach new skills for our children... i hope u find this topic intresting and useful!!!!!!!!
Using positive attention and planned ignoring helps your child learn new skills and directs to practice behavior that will strengthen relationship with you and others.

 Positive attention: most of our children love attention, and they quickly learn how to get attention (what to do to get it). Giving positive attention such as hugging, kissing, watching what your child does, smiles, and praise can motivate your child what he is already doing, and continue try harder to do new skills differently. Some children who do not get positive attention will act differently to get your response (you may find yourself giving negative attention such as scolding and yelling).

How and when you provide attention can be a powerful tool to build skills and encourage good behavior. If you learn to give positive attention carefully it helps to increase the target behavior/skills. Ignoring/holding attention can help to decrease the behavior. It’s important to learn the type of positive attention you are selected to give it depends on what your child really enjoys like pat on the back, smiles, praise, high fives, singing his favorite song, listening to him .Tune in to what your child doing and how are you responding; when the behavior you want to see increases, that means the type of positive attention you are giving is working.

 Behavior or skills needs more of positive attention need to focus on

• think the skill he has now
• Next steps you would like to take in his learning
• At the start find out all the opportunities to give positive attention
• Set up opportunities/activities encourage the behavior(this way he will have more opportunities to learn)

How to reward him with positive attention

• Get down to your child level(face to face)
• Speak with right amount of enthusiasm(soft ,gentle, smooth depends upon your child response level)
• Label the specific behavior or activity (you did sort colours correctly)
• Keep your sentence simple and short while giving positive strokes
• At a times You may need to vary the type of reinforcement you give it your child( when you think your child is too dependent on the reinforcement you are giving)
• When your child seems to be uninterested/lack of motivation  by the attention you are giving, consider  the other ways to reward with positive attention( use verbal praise and then change in to  giving hugs)
• Varying the type of positive attention, will also make it easier over time for it to become more natural and spontaneous

LYou may also find behavior you want to see occurs at the same as an inappropriate one; it’s ok to provide positive attention but make sure you are clear about what your positive attention for. Ex, when you asked your child to pack bag to go home from school he stats screaming followed by he packs his bag. Reinforce him by saying nice packing your bag

Now you have an idea how and when to give positive attention

Ignoring: helps to reduce the problem behavior

Steps in reducing the problem behavior by ignoring/extinction:

v  Identification of the problem behavior you would like to reduce

v  Label/statement of the behavior

v  Investigate the motivation(reasons) for the selected behavior

v  ABC analysis of problem behavior

Antecedent-what happened before the behavior? /what triggered the behavior?

Behavior-The real behavior

Consequence-what happened immediately after the behavior?

v  Is your attention helping your child to maintain problem behavior?

These are the steps you have to analyze before you work on the strategy

If the behavior is safe to ignore planned ignoring is right one to use, you might think what is planned ignoring- it means when you deliberately with hold your attention from your child while he is displaying problem behavior that you want to reduce. Ex, when you ask your child to colour when you are busy cooking for him, if he starts throwing book instead of colouring try planned ignoring. Let’s see how this works; in the above example if you give attention to your child, he learn that tantrum is a good way to get your attention

Steps in planned ignoring

o   Selecting one behavior at a time

o   Ignore problem behavior as soon he exhibits

o   Making ignoring obvious by looking away by not giving any response

o   Keep neutral facial expression

o   Avoid talking to  your child

o   Continue engaging yourself by what you are doing

o   If you slightly pays attention by talking or saying no to him the length of tantrum likely  to increase

o   As soon as there is a break in the tantrum you help your child actively engage in the activity

o   Direct him to another activity and succeeds him by giving positive attention

o   Try not to do too much at once it will frustrate you

o   It will involve lot of commitment from you and the environment to effectively reduce the behavior

Remember always the problem behavior will get worse/escalates frequency before it gets better. This does not mean the ignoring is not working, this means your child is testing you. If you start ignoring then you stop as soon as it gets worse, you may actually be rewarding the behavior that likely to occur again in the future. After implementing carefully if the behavior increases there is a risk; consult a doctor, or behavior therapist.

Positive attention or practiced ignoring may take time before things get better and smoother, that’s okJJJJJ

Be patient

Every child is different and unique

In the process of teaching your child you are learning too

At the most it gives you practice!!!!!!!!!!!! Just keep trying
see soon with another important topic, till then take care