Surviving a "New Normal"

While I am sure you all have seen or heard at least 100 commercials that mention “during these unprecedented times” or “we’re in this together,” some of us (guilty!) may have rolled our eyes or laughingly shrugged in response. As a parent of a child with special needs, these times are not unprecedented… they are times of survival! (Cue Hunger Games Jennifer Lawrence’s 3 finger salute.) For those who have children with special needs, we may not feel as if we genuinely are in this together. This is where our community needs to unite and share the tools we have, to help support our special-needs families who are struggling. As a mother of a child with autism, I can relate to the struggles, and I understand the stress that has been added to an already stressful life… Though, I have an advantage. I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, which means I study, live, and breath all things behavior. Prior to embarking on my journey to become a Behavior Analyst, life was already tumultuous raising a child with special needs. I imagine that adding a pandemic to my then situation would have most likely resulted in something similar to a Quentin Tarantino flick: A lot of screaming, running, manic laughter, and unpredictability. Due to my profession and research, I have been able to use the evidence-based interventions from the study of Behavior Analysis to make this “unprecedented time” somewhat more precedented. With that said, we at The Behavior Co. will freely share some of the strategies that have worked for us and others during this unprecedented CHAOTIC time. We have created a page of resources that provide user-friendly strategies that parents can use to help deter, prevent, and alleviate some of the behaviors we want to decrease, and increase the behaviors we want to see more of. First, we need to understand why the behavior is happening. We provide a brief training and presentation on how to do this. Once we know the “why” we then need to match it with the strategy that will be most effective. We have listed and explained some research-based interventions that can successfully treat these behaviors, in addition to providing some useful visuals that also may help motivate your kiddo to do so. We also selected interventions that can be implemented in the home and by those who may not have experience in treating behaviors. We will do our best to keep adding more information to this page, as we are still unaware of how this pandemic may affect us in the long run, nor its' timeline. If you have questions or concerns, or perhaps need some clarification on the resources we have shared, then please feel free to reach out to us. This stuff is hard, and we get it, so let's really be in this together. Brighter days start now.