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The ABC's Workbook:

Achieving Acceptable Behavior Changes

ISBN: 09656353-5-x

Book Description


 The ABC's Workbook offers answers when typical discipline strategies fail to achieve the ultimate goal of changing behavior.

 

Ms. Divinyi uses the simple acronym ACT. A: access, C: construct a plan, T: teach a skill to help parents and educators create customized highly structured procedures and strategies for helping even the most troubled child learn new behavior. This book gives a simple explanation of the E-T-A (emotions-thinking-action) centers of the brain must work together to achieve behavior change. This is a valuable tool to special educators and others working with problematic behavior in children and teens.

 

About the Author


 Ms. Divinyi has an Atlanta-based private practice in individual and family therapy and is the owner of The Human Connection, a company dedicated to Improving People to People Interactions.

 

In addition to training parents and professionals in behavior management and strategies for communicating with troubled children, she has trained employees of Fortune 500 companies in the areas of defusing hostile customers, stress management and self motivation. She has appeared on television and radio and in a variety of publications discussing issues such as school safety, potentially violent children in trauma.

What Does A Behavior Change Plan Do?

 

A customized plan has to be developed that will do the following:

 

◊ Target a single, specific unacceptable behavior.

 

◊ Provide a clear and detailed description of the desired behavior.

 

◊ Provide a significant incentive that will function as  a focus point for the child.

 

◊ Teach the child an alternative behavior.

 

◊ Identify and utilize the child's natural gifts and  strengths.

 

◊ Help the child use words instead of actions to express feelings.

 

◊ Walk the child through the thinking process necessary to choose appropriate behavior.
 

The ABC's Workbook is designed to help educators create such a plan. It provides a step-by-step outline for Creating a Behavior Change Plan That Works. Educators who are willing to take the time to plan for change will see positive changes occur.

 

The Workbook is a companion to Successful Strategies for Working (or Living) With Difficult Kids by Joyce E. Divinyi (see order form at the end of this workbook). However, all the elements necessary to design a comprehensive behavior change plan are outlined in theWorkbook.

 

The Workbook is divided into four sections that correspond with the four critical components of a Behavior Change Plan That Works. Understanding all four components and answering the questions in each section is necessary to optimize the potential for success. These four components will form the basis of the Action Plan. The last chapter of this workbook will walk you through the steps of actually forming the plan. The four components of an effective Behavior Change Plan are:

 

Connection

The ability to emotionally and psychologically connect with the child in a positive way that allows the adult to separate the unacceptable behavior from the true spirit of the child.

 

Compassion

The ability to recognize emotions and needs that underlie inappropriate behavior, to communicate empathy by recognizing simllar feelings and needs in one's self and to apply that knowledge to the change process.

 

Commencement

The ability to choose a starting point that will maximize the possibility of building a momentum for change by setting the child up initially to succeed.

 

Communication

The ability to convey the plan to the student in a way that encourages him to believe behavior change is possible and preferable, and in his best interest.

 

The Behavior Change Plan requires educators to be creative and to skillfully communicate two things that most educators do well by nature. More than anything else though, it requires abandoning the idea of punishment as an implement for change. This does not mean that discipline should not be used in the process of developing and working the plan. It simply means giving up the idea that a disciplinary action (ie: suspension, detention, time out, loss of privilege) is going to ultimately change the unacceptable behavior.

 

Customary disciplinary procedures can remain in place while you

and the student work the plan, unless it is evident that the discipline is aggravating the behavior. Then, it is best to suspend discipline until the plan has a chance to work. Sometimes disciplinary actions are useful for simply giving the teacher and student time out from each other. This is sometimes necessary and advisable. It is best to be clear that the cause/effect link between punishment and behavior change is not going to happen.
 

 

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