Functional Behavioral Assessment Short Paper

Nicole Smith

ECE 201 Intro to Early Childhood I

Instructor Dana Bux

April 28, 2012

Challenging behavior comes in various of reasons. Once you have gathered information to understand the behaviors of young children you can diagnose the child with the appropriate behavior and find a solution to fix the problem. I have been receiving some information on different ways on how to diagnose and find solutions through different materials which I will share. They are two linked strategies developed by behavioral psychologist to understand a child’s challenging behavior; this two strategies are (FBA) Functional Behavior Assessment and (PBS) Positive Behavioral Support. These two
Gathering information is very important to teachers. It allows them to find out some things that others may not know about the child. Also, it gives you a chance to better assist the child and helps build a positive relationship with the child. It is tremendously important to collect your own data and review it before any type of intervention. One reason is your perspective of his behavior at school might not be the problem at home. “Collect data until a clear pattern emerges. This usually takes at least 15 to 20 incidents over 2 to 5 days (O’Neill et al., 1997). Be careful not to jump to conclusions or interpret the data prematurely. If you’ve made a substantial effort and things still aren’t clear, perhaps your description of the target behavior isn’t specific enough or your personal biases are getting in the way.” (Kaiser, B. & Sklar Rasminsky, J., 2012). The second reason is the problem you find may cause a serious problem at home if you have false information or bringing it up the might cause confusion at home. In this case you need to have credible information to back up and support your data for the behavioral problem. One common behavior seen in young children is biting. Biting is considered a common normal developmental phase seen in young children. This is mostly to receive attention or to show anger. “Many toddlers display extreme ranges of emotions, both happy and sad, and