Disabilites, Behavior and how misguided the approach may be

While many professionals perceive parents as a biased and uniformed source of information regarding best practices, some parents do try to inform themselves regarding challenging issues dealing with their children. Imagine the response a parent might receive if they provided the below article to their IEP team. The "knowing looks" among the professionals as they perceive the information as just another form of parental denial of the child's disability may be one response. Or perhaps the often heard reassurance that the professionals know what is best for the student and the parent understandably is overwhelmed and is to simply trust the educators. All of this while the student's behavior continues to impede their's or their peer's access to their curriculum.

The thought that the professionals are part of the issue just never seems to be part of the solution. If one reads for content, simply taking a student out of one classroom and putting them in another does not cure a defective system. What really happens all too frequently is that those who think they are doing right are misguided. Their inability to encorporate new concepts leads to poor educational settings.

Below is an excerpt in hopes it will intrigue one to read the complete, professionally written, article. It isn't written by an overwhelmed parent who must just trust, despite the reality. It even speaks to how Districts could save money. Italics are mine.



Click here for full article: Ethics Of Behavior Change by Nancy Weiss

There is no question that some people with disabilities have behaviors that are dangerous, disruptive or otherwise difficult. I am not one who believes that because all people are to be valued and respected equally that all behaviors are equally acceptable. Some people (both with and without disabilities) exhibit behaviors that interfere with the quality of their own lives and the lives of the people with whom they interact. We have a responsibility to offer supports for people to change behaviors that are dangerous,disruptive, or interfere with their ability to achieve goals they have set for themselves. Our responsibility, however, is to do this in ways that value, enhance, and include people rather than through the use of methods that are coercive and too often, come dangerously close to revenge.


We Americans have a strongly held ideology that supports the notion that people who work hard and do right should be rewarded and those who do wrong need to be punished. The roots of such thinking go back to the very earliest days in this country; the Salem witch trials being a good example. Often when I speak with people who work in residential settings or schools, there is resistance to the basic principles of positive behavioral supports. They say, “So we’re just going to let her do whatever she pleases? Surely, there have to be some consequences for her behavior!” It’s hard for people to let go of their need to punish behavior they find troublesome and even harder to forgive someone who is making one’s life more difficult day-to-day or has caused one physical harm.

Many ethical issues in the design and implementation of behavior programs relate to issues of control. Whenever one person is trying to change the behavior of another, there is an inherent and unavoidable imbalance of power. People with disabilities are often denied opportunities to make basic life choices and are subjected to unreasonable amounts of control as a matter of course. Layering additional controls must be carefully weighed. There is an unfortunate cycle that operates in schools and programs that seek to control too many aspects of people's lives. The cycle starts with a person who is receiving supports attempting to assert a degree of control over aspects of his/her life that are in the control of others. This is a natural response, characteristic of all people who are made to feel powerless. Having few other options, people in restrictive environments protest the control by behaving in ways that are challenging. Teachers and staff conclude that additional restrictions that will serve to limit challenging forms of self-expression must be needed. Because it sounds more pleasant, we prefer to say “a more structured environment is needed” rather than "we need to apply additional controls or restrictions".

In response to the added restrictions, people can be expected to escalate behaviors in further attempts to assert themselves. This leads caregivers to determine that they were correct in assuming that more "structure" was needed; they now conclude that since behaviors have gotten "worse", even more control measures are called for, and the cycle continues. There is irony in the fact that in the effort to eliminate aggressive and impulsive behaviors, practitioners employ techniques that have been proven to result in precisely these kinds of behaviors. Caregivers rarely emerge victorious from such power struggles. It is not only unethical but downright illogical to respond to people’s desperate attempts to assert a degree of control over their lives by responding with efforts to impose greater and greater amounts of power over them.

It helps, if you’re going to prevail in these one-upmanship battles, to convince yourself that such interventions are necessary and to detach yourself from the people with whom you work. This depersonalization makes it easier to continue the use of demeaning procedures. Danger abounds here for everyone concerned. Not only are the basic human rights of the people subjected to such approaches threatened, but we also compromise the public's perception of all people with disabilities when our treatment implies that these are dangerous, unpredictable people whose extraordinary behaviors need to be controlled through extraordinary means. Finally, we are only beginning to understand the effects that participation in demeaning and coercive behavioral programming has on the staff who implement the procedures, but we know something about the effect of torture on the torturer. Ironically, the use of coercive techniques requires the studied avoidance of a personal and caring relationship – when it is that very thing people with challenging behaviors most need in order to change those behaviors. con't..

One more hook:

..."I sometimes get asked how positive approaches can be used in institutions or other restrictive settings. They can’t. People can’t have good lives in bad places. If the first step toward changing behavior is helping people find meaning in their lives, prerequisites are living, learning, and working in places that people choose and that are fulfilling. Positive programs in negative settings probably do little beyond making the staff feel better.

Laura was in a segregated classroom. Her teacher didn’t include her in many of the learning activities in which the other children participated. The teacher had selected a few activities for Laura that she felt were better suited to Laura’s abilities. These included sorting pegs by color, putting together a puzzle, and matching objects to pictures on a grid. Laura showed curiosity about the activities of the other children. Their activities were more interesting and generally of a more active and participatory nature. Laura would wander around the classroom disrupting the work of the other students. When she was redirected back to her seat and her activities, Laura would often become upset,throwing her materials on the floor and occasionally even pushing and hitting the teacher. Laura’s teacher enlisted the help of the school’s behavior specialist to develop a program to encourage Laura to stay in her seat, attend to her work, and to reduce Laura’s aggressive behavior. She told the behavior specialist that Laura was noncompliant. The behavior specialist got right to work on a careful system of reinforcement to assist Laura to achieve these behavioral goals.

Simply because the technology exists to train Laura to be compliant doesn’t make it acceptable. Maladaptive behaviors are exhibited in response to maladaptive environments or expectations. Viewed from this perspective, behaviors labeled as maladaptive are, in fact, perfectly adaptive responses to inappropriate environments or expectations. Attempting to change behavior to adapt to inappropriate demands is at best ethically suspect. An astute teacher or behavior specialist would recognize Laura’s behavior as one of the most objective critiques of service quality that is ever likely to be received. We could save money on hiring expensive consultants to do complex program evaluations if we simply listened to what the people we support are telling us."