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Working With Your Special Needs Child |
By:
Dr. Noel Swanson |
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Working with Your Special Needs Child
by Dr. Noel Swanson
Listed below are concerns from parents of special needs children:
1. Do special needs children understand cause and effect and also rewards versus punishments? Do they comprehend the same way as other children?
The interesting thing is that this is not an issue. All creatures great and small have an interest in reward versus punishment to some degree. Think about the bottom of the food chain such as a cockroach. Cockroaches despise the light and live to move around in the dark hours of the night. They associate good feelings with dark and bad feelings with light. They might not think about it in those terms or even at all.
If you flip on the lights you will see roaches hurrying towards darkness under a couch or a crack in the wall. They sense the light and know that a feeling of punishment is headed their way. They know that if they head towards darkness they are heading towards a reward. This repeat reward makes them always want to scramble to the darkness.
Roaches don't have a memory and can't be instructed like we can. Canines can be instructed because they have a wonderful memory. They know, for example, if they hear the word "stay" they will stay in place in order to receive a treat or reward.
The more sophisticated the creature, the better their memory and analytical skills, and the greater their awareness of time (i.e. that future events will happen) then the more complex the varieties of reward and punishment that can be used.
What reward and punishments should you dole out? Simple. Try first by experimenting with different rewards and punishments based on your own experience. Have a plan of rewards and punishments that will affect your child's behavior. Make sure that you are consistent. If their behavior changes then you have accomplished your goal. If it does not then take these two things into consideration:
a) either the rewards/punishments were not sufficiently motivating (again, see the book for details) or
b) your child could not build a bridge between the behavior and the reward or punishment. If you wait too long to respond to a behavior then your reward or punishment may have little or no meaning. This is most often see when dealing with younger children.
So, when you see that your system is not working. You step back, have a think about it, modify it, and then try again. Ultimately you will either succeed in changing the behavior, or you won't. Which leads to the second question:
You have tried all of the tips you can think of and your child's behavior hasn't changed. For example, maybe your child had PDD. You are required to complete a few hours of physical therapy with your child eacy day. However, your child doesn't want to do the physical therapy.
You try everything you can think of and read the book thoroughly. You try different reward and punishment systems to no avail. You have struggled to make physical therapy appear like a fun time. No matter what you do, you are not accomplishing the physical therapy session every day.
What can you do about this? You have two choices including:
a. You could become all bent out of shape about it. You get mad at yourself for your apparent failure. You feel like you are no service to your child. You want to find the magic cure that will help your child do his physical therapy.
b. You stop and look at your situation. You take a deep breath and look at things realistically and logically. You are okay with the fact that half the time the physical therapy session may not happen, but this is still an improvement from how much physical therapy your child was accomplishing last year.
Which is better?
The downfall of (a.) is that you will amp up your stress level which affects everyone negatively. You are not having a good time and your results won't improve this way.
Sometimes you just have to learn to live with the fact that your child may never be totally motivated to do the physical therapy. It's sad, but true. It is better to work with what you have then cry about not achieving perfection.
Is it not better to dial back the expectations and the striving, and aim to achieve the best that you can GIVEN THE LIMITATIONS YOU FIND YOURSELF UNDER? And, surprisingly, often when the stress is relieved, and the fun returns, then performance improves. But even if it doesn't, which would you rather have: a) 50% performance and everyone is miserable or, b) 50% performance and everyone is happy?
The important thing to remember is to not try to compete to an unrealistic level. Strive to achieve the small successes and accept that things might never totally be the way you want them to be.
Why not visit Dr. Noel Swanson's website http://www.good-child-guide.com and buy his fascinating book The GOOD CHILD Guide? You can also get more free articles about child behavior AND a free newsletter. Well worth it. Click here to get your own unique version of this article.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article53682.html |
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