So, I get several messages a week on my Instagram and sometimes through my email, through my website and constantly the theme of the message is, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried this and nothing is working and oftentimes in those few things that they've tried. They’ve tried to ignore it and it just does not work. So, today we're going to talk about consequential and inconsequential behavior and why we cannot just ignore the junk and hope that behavior goes away.

So, let's just start with the definitions of consequential and inconsequential behavior. Consequential behavior is any behavior that needs a consequence.

Consequential behaviors include any behavior that threatens life or health or injury to a child student or others. If behavior is consequential, then the parent or teacher needs to intervene. So, this is physical aggression. This is you know throwing pencils at the teacher. Whereas inconsequential behavior is behavior that is not harmful or damaging but it's simply annoying. 

This behavior a lot of times behaviorists especially dealing with ABA, suggests just ignore this behavior. So, that it will not be reinforced. Okay. So, inconsequential behaviors would be things like whining, crying, tantrums, complaining, talking back, rolling your eyes, sarcasm, muttering under one's breath. All of these behaviors make up about 90% of inappropriate behaviors. That’s what research has found that most behaviors that we're dealing with each day are actually inconsequential. So, they do not need a consequence. Okay. I agree with that. I agree that most of these behaviors do not need a consequence. So, the definitions of consequential and inconsequential behavior I’m on board with.

However, when people start to then say just ignore the inconsequential behavior and they call it junk behavior and they just say just ignore the junk behavior. Just ignore the junk behavior it's going to go away. 

That is where I start to have a problem. Okay. Before I get super far into this I’m not going to go on this like 500 hour tangent but I do just want to say that positive reinforcement is such a powerful tool but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know you have to do everything else that ABA and positive parenting and behaviorism is. Okay. You don't have to just ignore the behavior. You don't have to change behavior shift behavior because when we just focus on behavior and we don't focus on the child and the child's needs and all of this. We're missing an opportunity to attach with our children. We’re missing an opportunity to really understand our child's sensory needs our child's temperament that kind of thing. So, I do think that it's a bigger picture than just oh this is our child we're going to teach it to sit-stay you know they're not dogs. They’re not pets. We want to create opportunities where we can create bonds with them. Where, we can understand their emotions, their feelings, that kind of thing.

Junk Behavior

So, I’m going to get into the junk behavior. Junk behavior is exactly what inconsequential behavior is and a lot of parent experts say, ignore the junk. If you ignore the junk the junk will stop. Here, is where I have a problem with that first of all sometimes if we ignore the junk if we ignore the crying the complaining, whining, tantrums- It’s telling our child we don't value your feelings and so just you know get with it because you know if you cry here I’m not going to do anything about it, type of thing.

Yeah. Sure, the crying's going to stop of course if you're not going to pay any attention to the crying and they're trying to have a connection with you and you're just ignoring it. Of course, it's going to go away. But, is that what we ultimately want? We want to hurt our child's relationship with us to avoid the discomfort of hearing them cry hearing them whine that kind of thing. I’m going to talk about some strategies you can't do when the junk behavior happens so, we don't just have to deal with crying all of the time but just it's important to know yes the behavior will stop but that doesn't mean that they learn the skills that they need to get through that behavior appropriately. 

So, if the tantrums stop that's great but maybe next time instead of kicking the seat to get your attention. They’re just going to throw something up to the front seat of the car to get your attention. Sometimes that behavior will just shift because they're like okay kicking the seat doesn't work I’m going to try something else. They never learned a new skill. So, if we're just ignoring that junk behavior that behavior where it's just annoying they're just kicking the seat oh pretty soon it's going to actually turn into consequential behavior because they're throwing something up to the front seat of the car and that's not safe. Okay. So, if we ignore it sometimes it's going to shift into those worse behaviors sometimes it's going to shift into more annoying behaviors but the bottom line is they are not getting the skills that they need to be able to function appropriately and move on and learn what they need to learn to develop into great humans. Okay.

So, again a lot of parent educators and researchers will say just ignore the junk behavior. 

The problem with this is not all educators and researchers on this actually mean to completely ignore it. They have like different strategies like accept it but then move on or something like that. That’s not ignoring. Ignoring is like turning your back walking away and a lot of educators take this research and be like oh they say ignore the junk behavior.

So, I’m just going to like say just walk away just don't do anything about it like completely ignore it and so that's where it's misconstrued and a lot of parents are coming to me frustrated like okay, this person said to ignore it, that's not working. What do I do now because it's supposed to work? It works for you know all of these kids I just think ignore is too strong of a word and I’m going to give you some suggestions of what you can do when the behavior is junk behavior… When it's inconsequential behavior… That does not include ignoring at all, no ignoring.

01. Redirect

The first thing we can do when a behavior is a junk behavior or just inconsequential behavior, whining you know fighting with siblings not to a level of aggression that kind of thing is to redirect the behavior. Redirection is such a powerful tool and a lot of educators actually do include this. they're saying ignore the junk and then redirect to positive attention that's not ignoring the junk that's saying oh we got to do something about this junk behavior by using our creative forces in our minds to be like oh let's redirect to something that we do want to see. We’re not actually saying oh stop doing this but we are acknowledging that we don't like this behavior in our head and then redirecting it with something we do like. So, redirect it and then reinforce the appropriate redirected behavior. I’m going to give some examples in a second.

02. Respond Empathetically & Make a Plan Together

Okay. So, the next one would be to respond empathetically and make a plan together and you're going to see why this is one of the ones that I suggest instead of ignoring inconsequential behavior. because a lot of times inconsequential behavior is a child's feeling or emotion that is trying to be communicated through you know crying or a tantrum or complaining and if we just ignore it then we're not valuing our child's feelings and I feel like that is the most important thing that we can do is value our child's emotions and feelings and help them understand, how to react to those emotions and feelings in appropriate ways. 

Okay. And I’m again going to give an example in just a sec and then the last one is to

03. Respond Neutrally.

Okay. So, you're going to see what that is instead of being like I really don't like it when you are hitting your sister there's going to be a neutral response.

Examples

Making sounds in the back seat of the car

For me, I have kind of a low sensory threshold when it comes to sound. So, if like multiple children are making sounds the music's on car honks at me I get stressed I get frustrated. This could potentially be a really annoying thing for me and other parents and it does come up especially like if another child is screaming and then the other child starts making sounds and then one child's like so mad that all these sounds are happening. Anyways, it can be really frustrating and unsafe in a car but still, it's inconsequential. 

So, if this is happening in your car you don't just have to keep driving like with your hands like turning white because you're gripping the things so hard and you're frustrated and you're on edge like you can redirect the behavior. So, what this would look like in my car if one child was like and that show was like no I hate this. I’d be like hey; Charlie it's your turn to choose a song. Would you like to listen to wheels on the bus or do I like to listen to frozen or something? I always use frozen as an example because my kids love frozen. Anyways. So, then I could you know turn that on and then we could start singing frozen. I didn't even have to ignore the behavior because then I would just have to grin and bear it and I also didn't have to like address the behavior that I didn't want because yeah, sometimes drawing attention to it can create more of that behavior. So, instead, I redirected the behavior and here we are enjoying a song altogether like the sounds never even happened.

Crying Every Night at Bedtime or Going to School

Preschooler: My next example is crying every night at bedtime or crying when going to school. Let’s just talk about crying when going to school. If we ignore the crying when they go to school and just say okay, go to school. You’ll be great and just send them off every day. We’re probably missing a lot and I’m going to tell you a few different stories about some different friends but one is a preschool-aged girl.

She’s four years old. She’s having a hard time going to school every single day, why this is so hard? We could just ignore it because it's inconsequential behavior. She’s sad but she'll be fine, if we ignore it'll go away, right? This girl ended up — they found out that she was getting abused at preschool they were holding her mouth shut when she was crying. 

So, every day her parents would send her to preschool and the teacher didn't like that she was crying and would hold her mouth shut and so every day it reinforced this fear inside of her that you know like I can't cry but I’m scared and I’m going to cry and then they're going to shut my mouth whatever.

So, then this girl starts into a new preschool and the new preschool teacher can't just ignore the crying right because it's disruptive. It’s filling up the whole class she knows this child has trauma and so she talked to the parent.

She said hey, what are we going to do this child keeps crying and the parent realized that okay, this child has anxiety from a past trauma and she has fear of like making friends and knowing how to interact with this new class because she's brand new and everyone already started this and that. So, the parents set up play dates she worked she got a book on anxiety. She did like a bunch of role-playing to get into the preschool every day and this child doesn't cry like that anymore. 

So, if we just ignore the crying it's not going to get better especially if they're crying for a reason.

Kindergartener:

Another example of a kid crying every single time when it's time to go to school. She was in her first year of kindergarten and was having such a hard time getting ready for school every day and she would start just kind of complaining and be like I don't want to wear this, I don't want to wear this, I don't want to wear this and this is inconsequential behavior. Right. They just don't there are all these clothes they don't want to wear and so, it's not like you're going to be like you know what no screen time today because you won't wear this dress like that's just not a consequential behavior. But it is frustrating and it is time-consuming to just keep going through outfit after outfit, after outfit each day.

If the mother ignored this behavior, then you know maybe the child would wear the same sparkly skirt every day or you know something like that but if she just ignored it, she wouldn't have ever got to the root cause of the behavior which is anxiety that what she was wearing should be made fun of for at school because she has this anxiety of what others think of her and this anxiety of making friends.

So, both these cases kind of ended up in an anxiety scenario but a lot of times when we ignore these crying and they're afraid of something and we just ignore it and it just like okay, well, they'll stop crying eventually.

Yeah, they probably will but also then they won't feel safe to open up and share and tell you. Whereas these two experiences the mom considered the child's feelings. They worked with the child's feelings. They helped them develop new skills and now they're in such a better place going into each day because there's open communication. There’s an understanding of feelings and it's just so much more productive.

So, if we in this situation respond empathetically and make a plan together then we're going to get so much further than just ignoring it and hoping that it goes away.

Our goal is not to just stop behavior right- that's not our goal. Our goal is to understand our child's behavior.

So, sure we can stop those negative behaviors that we don't want but if we're not teaching them anything new if we're not helping them understand their behavior and why their body feels so deregulated and uncertain and all of these things. Then they are going to continue to have anxiety. It’s going to feed that fire. They’re going to continue to have these undesired behaviors because they don't understand themselves. We don't understand them and it's just a mess. 

Okay. So, that was strategy number two.  Respond empathetically and make a plan together. So, if your child cries every single night at bedtime, maybe they're afraid of the dark maybe they're afraid of being alone maybe they want you to lay with them. If we can respond empathetically and say hey, it looks like you're feeling really sad right now. What can I do to help you feel better at bedtime each night? I have this time to this time where I can help you feel better. What would you like to do during that time and make a plan together with your child it's individualized its set to what they need?

Saying “Bad Words“

Okay. Another example is if a child is like I hate this freaking homework and in your house maybe freaking's a bad word. maybe it's a different word that they're using I’m not going to say a different word on my podcast but maybe they're saying I don't like this freaking homework and you're like you know like no we don't say freaking in this house and you start to lecture them and then they start to feel shame and it's like oh my goodness, that's going to stick with them forever believe me. 

Anyways, instead of just ignoring it and being like oh I’m just going to ignore that they said freaking and hope that they don't ever use it again. No, they're going to use it again if you ignore it. Respond empathetically and make a plan. So, I would say oh man, yeah, this homework really is frustrating, what's a word that you would use to describe it. Would you use the word frustrating? Would you use the word difficult? Would you use the word annoying like what word would you use to describe this homework? I’m just really curious what word you would use and talk about different words and their meanings and being like man, yeah, this homework is super annoying. I don't like this annoying homework either but maybe it will help us learn this. do you think that'll be helpful and just kind of acknowledge the feelings validate those feelings and then kind of redirect into what this homework can do for them or something like that.

Siblings Fighting

Okay. Next example we are going to talk about siblings fighting. So, if your siblings, you know sibling group in your household or whatever sibling group that you nanny, sibling group in whatever maybe it's even just peers. If they're fighting they're just bickering all the time they're you know sometimes it's like teenagers bickering, sometimes it's little kids honestly if you have siblings they're going to fight that is part of figuring out where they fit in the mix, how they fit in the family? You're going to have sibling fighting and just negative interactions between siblings.

My twin sister is my best friend and we fought our entire lives. Okay. Fighting with our siblings is how we learn conflict resolution. It’s how we learn to stand up for ourselves. It’s how we just figure out our own selves. So, it's actually a super important thing to kind of figure out and a lot of times if parents get involved in sibling fighting over and over and over again. They’re kind of choosing sides. They’re favoring one side over the other and then it can create more of a sibling rivalry or resentment against a certain sibling.

Like if you're like, oh, this person's always the peacemaker and you're like what are you kidding me have you seen this person. Anyways, that creates resentment and so then you like are like no I’m going to prove them wrong she's not the peacemaker and then you know it's just it's this awful spiral. 

So, when siblings are fighting we need to respond neutrally. We can't just ignore it every single time that they do it but we can use it as an opportunity to respond neutrally and try to teach instead of a referee. So, we are the coach and not the referee.

So, in a situation where your siblings fighting to be like oh hey it looks like melee really wants that block and it looks like you really want that block. What could we do to like work out a system? So, that you could both have a turn with the block and you just talk them through it. You’re not saying that one person's right one person's wrong. you're not saying give it back after five minutes but you're helping you're acknowledging that fighting's happening and you're helping them learn how to resolve this conflict on their own. It’s actually super awesome and I can do a whole podcast episode on sibling rivalry and like just getting along with siblings. It’s such a great topic.

Complaining

So, if for example we schooled a child for complaining and repeatedly lecture him about his unwanted behavior be like okay, we came to the school today. You've complained the whole time. This is not okay. Dad took the day off. We spent all this money we're putting like all this like pressure and guilt on our child and yeah this is inconsequential behavior because it's just complaining. They’re not actually doing anything that deserves a consequence. However, if we just ignore the complaining and withdraw our attention completely. One of the blogs I was reading said, ignores your child's complaining and then walk away don't look at your child or act busy. I’m like, what? Can you imagine your four-year-old’s like mom, I don't want to walk and you just like walk away and you're like just leave like yeah it doesn't deserve a consequence but also we're not just going to act like we're busy when our child's talking to us that is so rude.

Anyways, when we ignore our child's thoughts and complaining instead of acknowledging about acknowledging validating, and understanding we're implying. We don't value your feelings. We don't care what you want to do and yeah maybe the behavior will stop because you're ignoring it and so they're not going to keep doing it if no one's there to listen because you're acting busy or whatever. But it's at the expense of your child's relationship with you. It’s at the expense of you know your trust level with them. They’re not going to trust you with the things that they want to complain about in their life. When they can't even talk about how they don't even want to walk at the zoo anymore.

So, we have to in situations like this not just ignore it but respond empathetically to make a plan together. So, we can briefly acknowledge just be like you know what sometimes I don't want to walk either. Walking is really hard. Right now, I really need you to walk because I have to carry your sister but how about when we get to that stump over there. We take a rest and it’ll sit and it’ll hold you for a minute and then we'll get up and we'll walk again or something like that you make a plan together. You respond empathetically. You validate those feelings and you try to work out like okay. If they don't like walking so badly or if they don't like the zoo so bad, what is it about the zoo? Maybe it's the smell. 

Maybe your child has a sensory need where like smells are really like nauseating for them and if they have all these smells around them, it's really hard for their body to be there. or maybe your child doesn't like it when their hands are dry and so after the pool, they always cry and you're like I’m not going to bring you to the pool anymore or you just like ignore the cry and put them in the car but if you can figure out oh, their hands are dry that's a sensory need that they have. Bring lotion. There are so many little things we can do to help with these inconsequential behaviors if we can understand them.

So, I want you to remember that all behavior is communication. We cannot just ignore the behavior and hope that it goes away. We need to either redirect respond empathetically and make a plan together which may include working on some new skills later or respond neutrally and just try to be a coach and guide them through these situations.

As always you know the intention of ignoring the junk behavior is to focus on what we want more of an absolutely I agree with that try to always catch your child behaving well and watch for those appropriate behaviors. Use positive reinforcement. Point them out make a big deal out of them thank them give them a hug repeat because if you do focus on the positive you are going to see more of it.

And that is all for today if you would like more on ignoring the junk behavior and that kind of thing consequences. You can check out my XO parenting academy where I go so much into detail on temperament sensory preferences all of that. It's on my website xolaurenpace.com/behavior