Parents are their child’s biggest advocates.
Families with children diagnosed with disabilities are in need of the proper assistance to help educate them. There are strategies that can facilitate this and improve their quality of life.
While parents are not given an social parental guide on ‘how to raise a child’, there are techniques and strategies we can utilize at home that will change the dynamics of your home environment for the better. We need to learn the ‘why’ a child is behaving a certain way, then replace the undesirable or inappropriate behavior with a desirable, more appropriate behavior.
identify the purpose of your child’s behavior (why are the doing/acting a certain way) in order to address is it using strategies that will be
Effective provide short, clear, concise directions/expectations, model appropriate behavior talk less, use little oral language incorporating gestural and visual cues
close proximity, use yourself as visual tool, body language, facial expressions wait, allow processing time eliminate the audience for negative attention
utilize prompting levels to de-escalate redirect, repeat directions /expectations reinforce and praise desired behaviors so that they repeat expected/appropriate behaviors.
Remain consistent and steadfast. Establish routines. Follow through. Your goal is to increase desired behaviors in a peaceful reinforcing manner. For more information on shaping your child’s behaviors, follow us @handinhandacademy
