How to Use Positive Behavior Supports to Control Teenagers' Behavior

Postive Behavior Supports (PBS) are a preventative approach to disciplining children. It is becoming greatly used in classrooms of students with extreme discipline issues such as emotional disorders and behavioral disorders. This guide can help you incorporate this approach in your home or classroom.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. 
    

   Establish desired behavior
   This approach is intended for extreme behavior problems that have been consistent for a long period of time. Find 1-2 main problem areas that you would like to address such as shortening time the child spends in the office at school, or increasing their grades in Math. Remember focus on reachable expectations of the child, don't expect a child to not ever go to the principal if they have been there every week this year.

2. 
    

   Create an awards system
   This system should center around the troubling behavior and an award the child would like to have. For instance if your teen is not doing his homework and his grades are slipping, the awards system should focus on his improvement of completing his homework successfully. A good awards system for this example would be if you spend at least 30 mins a day 4times a week on homework then you can spend the night with a friend on Friday. Asking this child to make straight A' s when he is not even completing his homework is not a good expectation.

3. 
    

   Make it visual
   create a chart or use a calendar to initial the days the goal was reached. This visual reminder will help the child visualize their goal in a reachable way. As soon as the child completes the desired behavior place your initials on the chart to signal that you remember your promise and you acknowledge they have completed their promise.

4. 
    

   Don't overlap punishment and positive supports
   When a child earns their award for completing the desired behavior there is a sense of great accomplishment and pride. If a child needs to be disciplined for another action their award should not be taken away. For example, a child completed the homework as asked and is now given permission to go to a friend's house, but earlier that week his teacher called to tell you he threw a spit ball in class. A discipline must be given for the spit ball such as no video games for a week, not the taking away of a promise you and him have made in the award system.

5. 
    

   After desired behavior is accomplished
   When a child has mastered the desired behavior and the PBS is no longer needed, you should slowly ween them from it. Slowly remove the reinforcement, increase timeline for desired behavior, or create a new more challenging PBS. In the example given it would be appropriate to ask a child who has mastered completing his homework to now show an improvement in his grades to earn his awards.

Tips & Warnings

• BE CONSISTENT
• BE POSTIVE
• ASK FOR SUPPORT FROM TEACHERS, PARENTS, NEIGHBORS

[mmetro]

on 8/11/2009 Wonderful article! I'm sure a lot of parents out there could use this. I bet it could be used for younger children also!