School age children often display behaviors that stand in the way of their own day and affect their fun and function. We usually see more behaviors coming from children who have less developed communication skills (Dunlap, Wilson, Strain, and Lee, 2013). Because of this, there is value in using a communicative lens to understand how to work with and support these behavior situations.
The question becomes
“What is this behavior trying to communicate?”
Behavior is a form of communication, and the ways in which individuals communicate through behavior are defined as the function of the behavior or the outcomes of it. Does the student’s behavior lead to:
- sensory situations that the child enjoys,
- situations that the student wants to escape or avoid,
- situations where they want to gain something like attention
- something tangible (Cooper et al., 2020; DEC, 220).
When a behavior has been reinforced repeatedly, the behavior communicates the need and the need is received, the behavior becomes part of the child’s behavioral repertoire, or part of their normal behavioral functioning.
The adults who work with a child can then begin to see that the child is using their behavior to communicate a need and the adults can begin to fill that need instead of focus on the behavior.
Paraeducators are Proactive Practitioners
This makes the job of paraeducators who support students’ communication and behavior a proactive practice. The paraeducator begins to think before situations arise or as they arise so that they can assist in filling those communicated needs in functional ways for the student and potentially avoid or limit the behavior situations.
Being Reactive Doesn’t Work as Well…
When paraeducators are reactive it means they are just responding to the behavior that they see and not thinking through what happened before or after the behavior. By thinking about what happened before the behavior, the paraeducator can think about the triggers to the behavior. By thinking about what happened directly after the behavior, the paraeducator can think about the consequences or next steps and how they often fill the original need.