Under construction, but here is the start of it!

Always keep in mind behavior can and usually is their only way to communicate, since most people with AS cannot talk, we at our house, let the chart "talk" for them.

What is behavior modification?

Behavior modification means to replace or extinguish an undesirable behavior.The first step in doing this is to discover not only what the behavior is, but what causes it. With AS, this can be very difficult since people are usually non verbal. At our house, like so many others, we use a behavior chart to document the behavior we want to change. Completely getting rid of a behavior doesn't work some of the time so we replace, or redirect the behavior to something more acceptable. There is a copy of the behavior chart under the "Document" section. As of right now it is a very simple one, and at some point in life will be updated, and I will try to put a copy at the end of this.

Explaining the behavior chart

There are three columns. Antecendent, Behavior and Consequence.

Antecendent is what happened right before the behavior. Was he/she watching tv? Playing with a sibling? Eating?

Behavior is the behavior that occured that was undesirable. Hitting somone? Kicking someone? Throwing something?

Consequnce is what happened because of the behavior etc. because he-she hit the sister, the sister dropped the donut and brother ate it.

Intervention somewhere you should document the intervention that took place. Was there a time out? Loss of priveleges?

We documented the kids behavior for about 30 days. After the time from that you document, overlook the chart and see what behavior happens the most frequent, what causes the behavior, what consequence happened most frequent and what intervention was most effective. If you see *donut* in the consequence column many times you know the behavior has something to do with the donut. From the data we recieved from the chart we could tell what triggered certain behaviors. For example, one of Mandy's behavior outbursts were when one of the other kids needed something, fed, diaper change, etc. (again, the chart is "talking" for her to say this is unfair). We deal with this a few ways. When Rocky was an infant and was still bottle fed we would spend a few minutes with Mandy doing activities with only her, this way, when Rocky had to be fed she had been given attention previously. Or, we always save "special" toys when we need to do something. For example, cooking dinner used to be next to impossible when i had all three kids alone. I would save a magazine (mandy loves to look at magazines) and let her look at that only when I had to prepare the food. This kept her occupied so i could finish dinner, and she thought it was a real treat to look at the magazine. Time outs was not effective in this situation.