You’ve hit the behavioral jackpot. Through a cunning combo of reinforcing an appropriate replacement behavior and using a function based intervention – you have reduced and maybe even eliminated all together a problem behavior. Insert victory dance here. First things first – tell yourself that you rock. Tell yourself you are amazing and awesome and did a great job. Because often times it is unlikely that anyone else will tell you that. Give yourself a little treat – indulge some online shopping, a netflix marathon, a really delicious and bad for your meal, or maybe a few extra glasses of the good red wine (the one that’s on the higher shelf in your grocery store). Be proud of yourself and your hard work.
Now many of this interventions are let’s just face it – downright exhausting, time-consuming, and energy zapping. It’s worth it for the results but it might not be something you can maintain for an extended period of time. You will need to pull back – slowly and gradually.
Some ways you can fade the intervention:
The key is to — USE YOUR DATA. You need to wait until you have some steady decreased behaviors until you pull back. When problem behaviors are near zero levels – you can start utilizing some of the fading techniques. If your problem behaviors aren’t near zero levels – that probably means you have’t chosen the right intervention, haven’t identifying the correct function, or have not implemented intervention consistently. Wait until success to change anything!
This post is part of Summer Series: Reducing Problem Behavior. Click here to see more in this series!
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