I'm a skeptic by nature. And years of following one dead end after another in an effort to help my kids hasn't helped.
That's why, when our in-home team introduced us to the
Beyond Consequences intervention model, I took this information with not one, but several rather large grains of salt.
That said, I've tried to keep an open mind. But that hasn't stopped me from doing my due diligence. I researched the the model and the people behind it. I also checked into possible critics and spent a lot of time perusing the website.
While the press was all quite favorable and the general model seemed to make sense, I have to admit, I was taken back by the somewhat hard-sell nature of the site. I am always wary of unscrupulous and unqualified people trying to make a buck on our miseries. I also used be in advertising way back when, and I can sniff out a sale pitch a mile away.
So when things are presented in a salesy way, red flags start shooting up everywhere. After all, this isn't laundry detergent we're talking about -- its our lives. And in the end, I didn't want to invest any time or effort into a strategy that's main purpose is to make money, not help others.
Since we didn't have the money to buy the books or travel to the conferences anyway, we just decided to pick up whatever tips and hints we could from our therapist and team.
That was until Saturday. Both my husband and I attended a free one-day seminar in our area. Yes, it was a bit hyped at times, but we really liked what we saw and heard.
The basic premise is a sound one. Focus on the relationship with your kids, not the behavior. Sounds simple, right? Well, its a little harder than it seems. You see, most of us have grown up on consequences. Act nicely and you get attention. Act badly and you don't.
This model advocates looking past the behavior and to the heart of the child. What is going on within them to cause such drastic measures? It also promises that once a child is heard and knows he or she is loved -- and once the relationship is repaired -- the behavior will change.
While Beyond Consequences was originally built around children who were adopted or had other traumatic backgrounds, but I am told it also works well with kids with mental illness and autism.
Again, this is wonderful, but a huge paradigm shift, especially for anyone familiar with standard autism treatment. So much is based in behavior modification.
So now we will embark on looking at things differently. I'm afraid of failure yet again, but will give it a shot. I'll keep you all posted as to how it goes.
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Comments (2)
If you've ever read Steve Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", it carries many of these same ideas. The elementary school my kids were in when we lived in Florida, based their "social" curriculum around the seven principles in the book. I don't know them all off the top of my head, but they involve both priority setting and communication habits that are very easily adapted to children.
I also feel "behavior modification" models fail because they're timed based.
"Go sit in the corner for seven minutes" because the child couldn't sit still for three minutes in class and acted out? How does that work??
I love Dr. Cary Chugh's book because the behavior mod is BEHAVIOR based, not time based, and not everything deserves a consequence, etc. The book is called "Don't Swear With Your Mouth Full!" and it's a lot cheaper than most books and it doesn't require a seminar to learn ;)