Why does my child do this at school? What an FBA is, for parents (audio overview)

A free audio overview for families, derived from Special Learning's course "Decreasing Problem Behavior Using an FBA, Part 1" (presented by Christine Austin). It is a synthetic voice, not a person, summarizing one session of the course; it is not the session itself.

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Episode notes

• Free tools and guides, no account needed: special-learning.com/free-resources
• The ABCs of Autism guide, free and written for families: store.special-learning.com/free-abcs-of-autism.html
• The full session, and the rest of the series, is in Special Learning's Video CE Library, written for professionals: special-learning.com/for-behavior-analysts

Transcript

This is a free audio overview from Special Learning. It's a synthetic voice, not a person, and it's summarizing one session of a training course. It isn't the session itself.

The session is the first of two on decreasing problem behavior, and this one is about the assessment that comes before any plan. It's taught by Christine Austin, a behavior analyst who directed clinical operations at a center-based autism program. It was recorded for professionals. This overview is for the parent who has been told the school is "doing an FBA" and would like to know what that means, what will happen, and what part of it is theirs.

Start with the letters. FBA stands for functional behavior assessment, and the presenter's definition is plain: it's the work of finding out what purpose a behavior serves for a person. Not what it looks like. What it does for them. She says everything else depends on this. If nobody has found out what is keeping a behavior going, she says, it doesn't matter what the plan says, because it won't make progress.

The session's map of behavior is short enough to remember. Every behavior is bracketed by what happened right before it and what happened right after it, and both of those shape whether it happens again. Behind them sit things that happened much earlier and still matter: how the child slept, whether he ate, how he's feeling, whether something hurts. The presenter says those earlier things are often invisible to the people at school, which is one reason the assessment needs the family.

Then the reason behind the reason. People behave, she says, for one of two purposes: to get something, or to get out of something. Getting something might be attention, or an object, or a feeling the body produces on its own, as with rocking or hand flapping. Getting out of something might be escaping a task, or relieving something uncomfortable, the way scratching relieves an itch. The same behavior can serve any of these, and two children who look identical may need opposite plans. That is why the assessment exists.

The assessment has three parts, and the session takes them in order. The first is asking. There are structured questionnaires, and the presenter says they work best when someone sits with the parent and talks them through rather than sending a form home. She says parents are the experts on their children, that they know what happens when nobody else is around, and that a lot of what drives behavior can't be seen at school at all. She tells a story about a nine-year-old girl who refused tasks for a third of her day. When her parents were given the form, they didn't mark it as a problem. That's just our daughter, they said. That's what she does. It was only when someone talked it through with them that they saw how much learning it was costing her. The presenter's point isn't that the parents were wrong. It's that living with a behavior for nine years makes it normal, and a conversation can make it visible again.

The second part is watching. Someone writes down, for each time the behavior happens, what came right before, exactly what the child did, and what came right after, with no guessing about feelings. The presenter is specific about what good notes look like. Not "there was no trigger," because there is always something happening in the room. Not "he protested," because the next reader won't know what a protest looks like for this child. She wants the words the adult actually said, how long it lasted, whether anyone was hurt, and a note about anything the family reported that morning. She describes a notebook that travels between home and school every day for exactly this. When it comes back saying two hours of sleep, a hard afternoon is not a mystery.

She adds two cautions here that a parent can carry into a meeting. One observation proves nothing. It takes repeated observations, over days, to see a pattern. And the notes will tend to point at attention, because when a child hits or spits or refuses, an adult always responds. That response is real, but it isn't always the reason. The presenter says to read what came before as carefully as what came after.

The third part is the one with the formal name, a functional analysis, and the session is careful with it. Here a trained clinician sets up short, controlled situations to test which purpose the behavior serves, and in doing so deliberately lets the behavior work, so its frequency may rise during the test. The presenter says it is never done without the parents' written consent and the agency's approval, that at her program only certified clinicians run it, and that for a child who hurts himself it may be safer not to do it at all if the first two parts already give the answer. If someone proposes one for your child, the session gives you the questions: who will run it, what exactly will happen, and what safeguards are in place.

The session also spends time on choosing what to work on when there's more than one behavior. Safety first, always. Then whatever costs the child the most learning and the most time with other children. Then what's most likely to change, and what the team has the resources to change. And sometimes, she says, start with the one you can improve fastest, because a first success matters.

One detail from the middle of the session explains something parents see and rarely hear explained. She describes a child who protested by sweeping materials off the table. When that stopped, he began sitting back and folding his arms instead. The staff had been treating the sweeping, not the refusing, so the behavior changed shape and kept its job. That's why a good team watches for the purpose and not only the form.

Finally, the session answers the question of what to do in the meantime, while the assessment is still running. The presenter's fallback is what she calls neutral redirection. When the behavior happens, keep a neutral face, don't talk about it, don't react to it, wait for it to stop, and then calmly bring the child back to what was asked, with help if needed, and notice the good behavior that follows. If the child wanted something, wait until things are calm and then have him ask for it properly before he gets it, with a short gap so the asking isn't stitched onto the tantrum. She is honest that this is the simplest tool, not the plan, and that the plan comes from the assessment. But it is something a family can hold onto in the weeks before the plan exists.

The words for these things differ from country to country and school to school. The question underneath them doesn't. Before anyone tries to change what your child does, someone should be able to tell you what it's for, and you are one of the people who knows.

This is general information for families, not clinical advice, and not a treatment recommendation for any individual child.

If you want something to use today rather than something to buy, Special Learning's free tools and guides are at special-learning.com/free-resources, no account needed.

The full session, and the rest of the series, is in Special Learning's Video CE Library; the link is in the episode notes.

This has been a free audio overview from Special Learning.