Hi, my name is Dana Howell. I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and the face behind BIAS. Throughout my career, I have engaged in various roles within the educational system, ranging from speech-language pathology assistant to special education teacher. My company, Behavioral Interventions And Solutions (BIAS) was created after noticing the lack of behavioral and visual resources that are specifically designed with parents in mind. My goal is to empower parents by providing them with affordable and easy to use tools for increasing independence and managing challenging behaviors.
Behavioral Interventions and Solutions
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This past weekend I had an opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with my niece. We went up into the attic of my parent's house and explored the meticulously saved collection of toys from my childhood. After several minutes, we settled on a bin of magnet blocks (which would never exist nowadays due to safety regulations - but that's a conversation for another day) and brought them down into the living room to play. It was fun to sit back and watch her explore a "brand new" toy. Grace is only 18 months old, so I knew we were working with a limited attention span and began to think of ways that I could extend her engagement with this toy. I gave her a minute or so to manipulate the blocks, before I started to interact with them myself. I narrated my play despite knowing that she didn’t yet understand all the words I was saying, and at that moment my newest visual was born. I quickly realized that it might be helpful for parents, therapists and teachers to have a visual guideline to describe the different ways to talk about toys during play. While this is not an all-inclusive list, it serves as a good reminder that there are many things you can say while you play.
What other ways do you model language for children who are still developing the necessary skills to communicate?
Do you use a behavior reward system at home or in your classroom? If not, continue reading!
This weekend I was tagged on IG by one of my followers. She wrote an excellent post about how she uses my Puff Up Tags in her classroom and gave me permission to share her post.
"Let's talk puff up tags!! Dana, fellow BCBA, created these babies and boy do we love them in my classroom! My students earn these little tags that we hole punch and put on a necklace throughout the day for anything and everything that we want to reinforce. I came from a 3-5 classroom and was skeptical about the buy-in for this concept in my new K-2 class. Well, my students are borderline obsessed with earning and collecting these and have been since September! I wrote a social story to go with them and relate them to a sticker chart and prize box. To be honest, they don't even care about the prize box. They just want these tags! I have even been able to use them to help potty train one of my Kindergarten students."
Reward tags are an easy, tangible way to reward positive behavior and will help increase the likelihood that those behaviors will occur again in the future! Click the link in the comments to see this product and more!
Did you know that Boston Parents Paper puts out a yearly resource guide entitled, “Your Child with Special Needs,” featuring a variety of articles written for parents, by professionals in the field? This year I was asked to contribute a column about Addressing Challenging Behavior and How it Relates to the IEP Process. You can find it on page 36 of the guide. Read about this topic and more via the link in comments.
Spending my Saturday at the NHABA Conference! #nhaba2019 #biasbehavioral #foreverlearning #bcbalife #appliedbehavioranalysis #collectthoseceus #continuingeducation #behavioranalyst
Everyone knows that grandma's rule is to eat your veggies before you can have dessert, but did you know that this is a behavioral concept known as the Premack Principle?
Many of you are probably already using this strategy without even realizing it. Premack Principle, which is also known as "grandma's rule" or "first/then language," occurs when a preferred activity is used as reinforcement for a non-preferred activity. It is an easy way to increase motivation and provide access to preferred items (reinforcers) in a controlled way.
When using this strategy, make sure that your child (or student) completes the "must-do" task BEFORE, gaining access to the reinforcer. It is also essential to make sure that the reinforcer is something the child REALLY wants and ensure it stays powerful by limiting free access to it.
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