Living With Special Needs Children

Following are questions asked by parents of special needs children:

1. Do special needs children understand cause and effect and also rewards versus punishments? Do they comprehend the same way as other children?

The interesting thing is that this is not an issue. All creatures great and small have an interest in reward versus punishment to some degree. Think about the bottom of the food chain such as a cockroach. Cockroaches despise the light and live to move around in the dark hours of the night. They associate good feelings with dark and bad feelings with light. They might not think about it in those terms or even at all.

Turn on the lights and the roach goes scuttling for darkness. In a very basic sense, light = punishment and darkness = reward. The behavior of escaping from light to dark is rewarded, and so is repeated.

Roaches don’t have a memory and can’t be instructed like we can. Canines can be instructed because they have a wonderful memory. They know, for example, if they hear the word “stay” they will stay in place in order to receive a treat or reward.

The more sophisticated the creature, the better their memory and analytical skills, and the greater their awareness of time (i.e. that future events will happen) then the more complex the varieties of reward and punishment that can be used.

How do you know what you can use? Simple. You start with a good guess, and then experiment. You implement a system of rewards and or punishments to modify a behavior (exact details of how to do this are in the book), and see what happens. If the behavior changes, the carry on! If it does not, then one of two things applies:

a) your rewards and punishments systems did not have large enough effect in your child’s life or

b) they were unable to make a connection between the behavior and the consequent reward or punishment. For example, if the time interval between behavior and consequence is too long, then the younger or less able child may not be able to connect the two.

So, when you see that your system is not working. You step back, have a think about it, modify it, and then try again. Ultimately you will either succeed in changing the behavior, or you won’t. Which leads to the second question:

2. What do you do when all your best efforts to change a behavior have failed? Richard (the Dad) has been struggling with his child, Tim, who has PDD. Tim is supposed to do a few hours of physical therapy each day. But guess what? Much of the time he is not too keen on the idea!

You try everything in your bag of tricks and read the book thoroughly. You try different reward and punishment systems to no avail. You have struggled to make physical therapy appear like a fun time. No matter what you do, you are not accomplishing the physical therapy session every day.

What can you do to fix this? You have two options including:

a. You could become all bent out of shape about it. You get mad at yourself for your apparent failure. You feel like you are no service to your child. You want to find the magic cure that will help your child do his physical therapy.

b. He can step back, look at the situation, and take a calmer, more pragmatic approach, accepting that maybe 50% of the time is all he is going to get, and that that is better than the 30% that Tim was doing a year ago.

Which is better?

The downfall of (a.) is that you will amp up your stress level which affects everyone negatively. You are not having a good time and your results won’t improve this way.

Sometimes you just have to understand the fact that your child may never be fully motivated to complete the physical therapy. It’s sad, but true. It is better to work with what you have then cry about not achieving perfection.

Is it not better to dial back the expectations and the striving, and aim to achieve the best that you can GIVEN THE LIMITATIONS YOU FIND YOURSELF UNDER? And, surprisingly, often when the stress is relieved, and the fun returns, then performance improves. But even if it doesn’t, which would you rather have: a) 50% performance and everyone is miserable or, b) 50% performance and everyone is happy?

The important thing to remember is to not try to compete to an unrealistic level. Strive to achieve the small successes and accept that things might never totally be the way you want them to be.

Worried about your child struggling in school? Thinking about special educational needs? Read more of Dr. Noel Swanson’s parenting tips and articles, and get a FREE gift, at his parenting advice website, and check out his acclaimed GOOD CHILD Guide and free newsletter. About Behaviour

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