So today's is called come early, stay late and this is a strategy that I learned from a national conference that I went to when I was a teacher for preschool and I had a really difficult class as I've talked about before, but there were some kids who like, they didn't need a behavior plan. They didn't need like positive behavior support, individualized interventions, but still I would say something and they just wouldn't listen. It's like, they couldn't hear it, they couldn't tune into it. So for example, I'd be like, okay, we need to use walking feet and I like stop him and be like, Johnny use walking feet, Johnny use walking feet and I would say that in two seconds later, Johnny would be so excited to be running again.

What I realized in learning about this and learning about regulation and stuff like that is IT WASN'T A LISTENING PROBLEM. HE HEARD IT, HE TRIED, AND THEN TWO SECONDS LATER HE WAS DOING IT AGAIN. IT WAS A SELF-REGULATION PROBLEM.

We can't just remove the hurdle when anxiety is happening. So Charlie doesn't like preschool, great, fine, you don't have to go to preschool this year or, oh you don't want to go to school, okay, fine, stay home today. So then they stay home one day and the next day they go to preschool and they're like, no, I don't want to go and so it's then a constant fight because when they're anxious one day you let them stay home. Obviously, there are situations where a child needs to stay home for whatever reason, we're not going to go into that. But more times than not when our child is anxious about something, we remove the hurdle.

"Don't remove the hurdle, teach them to jump over it." We need to help them learn the skills to jump over that hurdle and not get stuck in the content trap.

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.

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 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.

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