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 and improve their quality of life.
While parents are not given a 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.
Once the purpose of your child’s behavior is identified (why are they doing / acting a certain way), it can be addressed using specific strategies.
Techniques to increase or decrease certain behaviors: Provide short, clear, concise directions / expectations, model appropriate behavior, talk less, use little oral language incorporating gestural and visual cues, use close proximity, use yourself as visual tool, body language, and facial expressions, wait and allow processing time, eliminate the audience for negative attention, utilize prompting levels to de-escalate a crisis, redirect and repeat directions / expectations, reinforce and praise desired behaviors so that they repeat expected / appropriate behaviors, remain consistent and steadfast, establish routines, and always follow through.
Your goal is to increase desired behaviors in a peaceful reinforcing manner. For more information on shaping your child’s behaviors, contact us at maytorresramirez@gmail.com.
