Choosing Your Battles Wisely
One last point: It’s important to remember that children who are healthy, well rested, and well fed are at their best. Children who are not feeling well, or are tired or hungry will be at their worst. Make sure that your child gets a good night’s sleep and eats a healthy diet. These are both very important.
But there are times when things won’t always work out as you would like them to. If you know, for example, that your child didn’t sleep well the night before, try to put fewer demands on him that day. And, try not to teach your child new things just before a meal when he is probably getting hungry. And very importantly, when your child is not feeling well, be sure to make his life as easy and as comfortable as you can that day.
It’s wise for all parents to choose their battles carefully. For children who become easily frustrated and who have difficulty communicating, this is especially important. If your child is not making progress in one area of development or behavior, back off and come back to it later. Be sure to give him plenty of opportunities to succeed and be reinforced by you or others.
We have covered a lot of information about preventing and managing problem behavior in this module. Now we are going to ask you to answer some questions about what you have learned. Some of the questions will have choices and some will be true or false questions. A good way to work on these questions is first to read the question and the choices, then think about the best answer. Then scroll down to have the right and wrong answers explained. There will be 10 questions. If you answer all of the questions correctly, you are probably ready to try out some of the ideas in this module. But if some of the questions seemed hard for you, or, you feel you could learn more from reading this section one more time, then you might want to read this section again, part by part. This is a long module and it might be best to read each part separately. This might be a good idea especially for the parts on Functional Communication Training, Cooperation Training, Visual Schedules, and Play.
For more information on the prevention and management of challenging behavior, see the “Challenging Behaviors Took-Kit” on the Autism Speaks website.