"It worked for a little while..."

This story is really about two behavioral concepts that often surprise and frustrate parents: the "Extinction Burst" and "Spontaneous Recovery." First off, when a child is continually engaging in misbehavior, we know that we must change our response if we want the behavior to change. After all, why would behavior change if it seems to be working for the child? So we develop a plan (a "behavior modification plan" or a "behavior improvement plan"), start applying it, see a change in the child's behavior, pat ourselves on the back, and then become shocked and discouraged when the behavior comes back worse than ever before. These events are frustrating, but they are also typical and expected.

An extinction burst is what happens when a behavior the child used to do reduces in severity for a while, but then comes back worse than it was before. There are a lot of ways to think about how and why this happens, but one of my favorites is to consider what people do at elevators or crosswalks. If there is a button that can be pushed to activate the elevator or the "walk" sign, then we often see someone push it once. If the machine doesn't respond in the time we expect, we might push it again. If we're frustrated, we are likely to push it again many times and maybe even harder. This is similar to what is happening with the child. A good example of when this happens is with tantrums.

Initially the tantrums will often reduce as the child has noticed that the way you're responding has changed. We think, "Oh wow, it's gotten better already, that's great!" However, the child is responding to the change because it is new. Once the child has figured out that the change is long-term and gets used to it, the "new" has worn off. Now the child wants things to work the way they did before. She wants something, you say "no", she gets mad and is going to punish you for your behavior. The tantrum starts up and you don't respond. Knowing that tantrums worked before, she's going to go past what she has done before and make a more severe tantrum. The idea, essentially, is that if this worked before, then she just needs to push the button even harder to make it work again. What is critical is that you maintain the same response and plan as you have been doing. That is incredibly hard to do at times because a really severe tantrum is hard to ignore.

Spontaneous recovery is kind of like an extinction burst, except it occurs much later. In spontaneous recovery, we've managed to get a behavior to reduce and it has stayed that way for a long time. We feel pretty good, like we're out of the woods and the behavior is simply "better" now. Suddenly the behavior comes back without warning and we're surprised. It isn't necessarily as severe as an extinction burst, but it surprises us because it has been so long. What we have to remember is that a behavior is never truly completely gone. There is always a chance that it may occur, even if we've managed to reduce it to a very small chance. Just like with the extinction burst, we need to maintain our same response plan, exactly as we did before, and things will continue. It's hard to remember these things, especially if a child is going into a full tantrum and we're stressed out, embarrassed, or frustrated. If we can remember our plan and stick to it, though, we'll help the child learn the appropriate behavior and get things going in the direction we want.

(This is an excellent picture showing the typical pattern of Extinction Burst. It is from another blog, which also has good information about behavior! http://www.iloveaba.com/2011/12/extinction-procedures.html)