My husband is a soldier so I often make a comparison to trench warfare: once they dig a trench, they stay there. If you’re an hour into an epic extinction burst and thinking “I can’t take this anymore!” …remember: this is where they’ll START if you try and break this habit again. Something to keep in mind is that if you give in before the behavior has burst, that is now your new baseline. So how do you react to these?ġ Stick to your guns, continue with the Logical Consequence Process and Planned Ignoring and ride this thing out so that you can move on.Ģ Give in, go back to doing what you’ve always done and continue experiencing this behaviour that’s driving you to drink. If you’ve reinforced this behavior once or twice and then change course the burst will be relatively small. The longer this reaction has been expected, the worse the burst is going to be. So how far does she have to go before you give her that attention? This is their Oscar meltdown, their Hail Mary, their Brittany Spears head shave.ĭepending on how tenacious your child is and how long the history of this behavior is- they will either escalate very quickly or give up quickly. The motivation on this is pretty clear: hitting the baby got her attention. She may start trying to destroy objects or hurt herself. She may come and try and hit you or the baby. So the next time she hits her baby brother you rush to the baby, pick him up and say “Oh no, did your sister hit you? Are you okay? That must have really hurt! Here would you like some milk?” and walk away from her…she’s going to pitch a fit.īecause you’ve just reacted in the total opposite fashion to what she’s expected. Now say you decide to move away from timeouts and into natural and logical consequences and planned ignoring. If every time your child hits their baby brother, you say “That’s it! We don’t hit! Go to the corner for a timeout!”…and then you stand over her explaining to her that hitting hurts, babies get hurt easily, we have to be gentle with the baby…on and on and on until her time out is finished, she’s going to have a strong expectation for that reaction. As a general rule: it doesn’t occur again. If you don’t give in, and they keep filling their behavior balloon- eventually it POPs. If you give them what they want, the balloon deflates. Think of it like a balloon: When they don’t get the reaction they’re expecting, they go bigger, badder, stronger…in essence, filling the balloon with their attempts to return to the status quo. Or your preschooler starts tearing apart their room after you put your foot down and limit them to one glass of water at bedtime. Or that their toddler is throwing all their food on the floor without even trying a bite when you don’t offer an alternative. This is often why parents will report that the crying on the second night of sleep training is worse than the first. They continue to escalate the behavior searching for that old reliable reaction. Your child will perform more of the behavior you are trying to get rid of. The burst refers to when someone ups the ante to new highs. This is why being consistent in our parenting is absolutely vital to everyone’s sanity: when we inconsistently reward undesired behavior, there’s a lot more extinction going on. This is one of those concepts that once you understand it, everything changes Let’s talk about ExtinctionĮxtinction is what happens when a behavior that was previously reinforced (intentionally or not) is no longer reinforced. They escalate the behavior in severity in an attempt to get the reaction they anticipated. When someone isn’t getting the reaction they want or expect, they up the ante. Parents commonly complain over and over again: ” I tried what you suggested, and she/he just screamed louder/hit harder/ bit/ freaked out/ enter terrifying child behavior here… Until I did what I always do and it stopped.”Įxtinction Bursts occur when an individual uses a social behavior to either get their way or get the desired reaction from someone. “Extinction Burts” is used to describe a child’s behavior that “just getting worse” in response to an intervention/change in parenting tactic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |