Challenging Behaviors of Students with Autism: Proactive Skills and Reactive Strategies

If you are an early childhood educator (or an educator of students with minimal behaviors), you have a unique opportunity to proactively teach your students skills associated with each of the four functions of behavior that may preempt and prevent challenging behaviors. However, for those who work with students who exhibit challenging behaviors, once you hypothesize the function(s) that is maintaining the behavior (through a Functional Behavior Assessment), you can proactively and reactively implement interventions to help decrease the behavior. Examples of these interventions include: functional communication training, differential reinforcement, token economies, coping strategies, and more. It is important to collect data before and after each intervention to determine if it’s effective.