EP137: Decoding Our Children’s Behavior Through ABA Therapy

Interview with Alisha Simpson-Watt / Collaborative ABA Services

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Why do kids behave the way they do? How can we as parents guide them effectively? Alisha Simpson-Watt—an expert in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and founder of Collaborative ABA Services—shares insights on understanding children’s behavior, and offers great advice on reinforcing positive behavior, handling challenges, and supporting your child’s growth.

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Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;29;25
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
How the ABCs of behavior helps is that we look at the antecedents or what we call triggers to the behaviors occurring, and that helps us prevent challenging behaviors or come up with strategies to be preventative. And then the consequence part of what happens after the behaviors kind of lets us know, okay, what's the function? Or what are some things that might be maintaining this behavior occurring?

00;00;29;28 - 00;00;51;26
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company Dads podcast. After 120 plus episodes, we're doing something different this season. I'm still your host, Paul Sullivan, and we're still focused on lead dads working moms, and how small changes at home or work can have a big impact on their lives. What's new is each episode now promises to deliver actionable advice on some area of concern at home or at work.

00;00;51;29 - 00;01;27;09
Paul Sullivan
Short. Direct. Again. Actionable. Five questions. Five answers. This week, our guest is Alisha Simpson-Watt, a licensed social worker and the founder of collaborative ABA services. We're going to talk parenting tips today. Alicia runs an accredited behavioral health practice that specializes in applied behavior analysis. More on that later and offers a variety of services to children and families such as diagnostic evaluations, speech language therapy, occupational therapy, and parent guardian training.

00;01;27;11 - 00;01;30;11
Paul Sullivan
Welcome, Alisha, to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;30;13 - 00;01;32;17
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Hello.

00;01;32;20 - 00;01;41;04
Paul Sullivan
First question. What's applied behavior analysis therapy and how does it help parents and children?

00;01;41;07 - 00;01;59;13
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Sure. So Applied behavior analysis Therapy is actually a scientific and evidence based approach to looking at behaviors, and using applied behavior analysis. There's different modalities or different approaches to teaching new skills, as well as reducing behavior.

00;01;59;13 - 00;02;10;27
Paul Sullivan
Challenge it. So give me some examples that when you say teaching new skills, what are the skills that are being taught to either the children or the parents to make a more harmonious family?

00;02;10;29 - 00;02;40;18
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Sure. So like some skills might be, you can teach a child to request help or you can teach a child, who may be nonverbal. Working with them on increasing their communication. And that communication could be being able to identify items or things that, they may want to help express their or communicate their wants and needs or even teaching a child something, like tying their shoe.

00;02;40;21 - 00;02;44;25
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. At what point do parents, you know, generally come to you.

00;02;44;28 - 00;03;13;12
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So parents generally come to us when they may have a child that may have for example, autism and has been very associated with applied behavior analysis therapy because a lot of research has been based on that population of individuals. However, applied behavior analysis therapy does benefit other populations as well. And a lot of times we might get calls from a parent, who may have a child who they think, hey, my child is a little bit delayed.

00;03;13;12 - 00;03;32;20
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And, you know, I want to actually evaluate or see if my child may have autism because we also do autism evaluations as well. So we might get a call to do a autism evaluation, or we might even get a call from a parent saying, hey, you know, my child, you know, is not communicating. Like I would like them to.

00;03;32;20 - 00;03;55;01
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
They're pointing, they're grabbing. They do have a diagnosis of autism, but I'm also noticing that they're having meltdowns at school because they don't like loud noises. What can I do to help support them? You know, can I get them into therapy? And that might be, you know, a referral, for applied behavior analysis therapy or we might have a kid that has sensory needs.

00;03;55;04 - 00;04;00;07
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So that might even be like a referral for our occupational therapy as well.

00;04;00;09 - 00;04;23;19
Paul Sullivan
That's great. That dovetails right into the second question. And that is how do you go about helping specifically the children? Who you work with and how do you help their parents? Because, you know, you have this expertise, in ABA therapy. But, you know, for most parents, if they have a child who's autistic or on the autism spectrum, it may be their first time with this.

00;04;23;21 - 00;04;35;04
Paul Sullivan
They don't have that wealth of knowledge that you do. So. So how do you, you know, in a concrete ways, you know, help the parents and children kind of, you know, smooth out their relationship.

00;04;35;07 - 00;04;54;25
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So we do have an intake process. But the first part and connecting with us is they actually call us, and we get a lot of calls from parents themselves, as well as maybe other doctors offices or schools. And our main thing is to find out what the presenting concerns are and if it's something that we can help.

00;04;54;27 - 00;05;12;26
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
We will definitely say, hey, we can help out. We can put you on our list where we can, you know, coordinate and do an intake if we have availability or if we're not able to help that family, we will refer them out to other providers, but we also will educate them on because we do get questions about applied behavior analysis therapy.

00;05;12;26 - 00;05;39;28
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
What is it? What does it entail? So we do like to give them that information upfront. As well as the other services that we provide and how they can help them, with their situation. But once we get the family and to start services, we do do an intake, which does include us going out and meeting with the family, doing observations with the child, working with the family to figure out what are the treatment goals, what is it that you are looking for that we can help support you on?

00;05;40;00 - 00;06;04;01
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And again, if it's something that is outside of our scope, we will collaborate with that family to connect them to other resources in the community, such as, for example, we might have a family that may need, that is interested in and music therapy or something like that that we might not offer. So we will collaborate with music therapy or, you know, another provider as well that we might not be able to provide or even med management.

00;06;04;04 - 00;06;23;00
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And what would it look like? You know, you're that you're that family. You're listening to this this podcast now and you're thinking, okay, I understand this is an intake process. I understand that can help us are going to collaborate with those. But what would it look like for that? You know, the mom and dad, the child children, what is it going to look like to them when they actually come to your center and they begin working?

00;06;23;00 - 00;06;28;27
Paul Sullivan
What are some of the specific things that you might do, to help, help the children in that family?

00;06;28;29 - 00;07;05;29
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Sure. So we do provide services, in-home as well as clinic based. We have a preschool age program, so that might look a little bit different than in-home. So in the clinic setting, in the preschool age program, that child would get occupational therapy services, speech services, as well as, social skills and working directly with the board certified behavior analysis and behavior technician and what we would do is we would work on their language, working on their their ability to interact with peers and maybe working on reducing behavior difficulties, helping with potty training.

00;07;06;02 - 00;07;45;06
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Each child's needs are very unique and it depends on what the presenting concerns are. But we also do an assessment at the beginning to also look at the child's strengths and limitations. And that assessment, in addition to feedback from the parents, helps guide our treatment planning and what the goals are going to be. And an in-home setting is similar in regards to they might not be in a group setting with other peers or other kids, but it's more of that like level of 1 to 1 where we're working directly in their natural environment, with the family, with the child, and we're still working on building those skills of language communication, those social skills.

00;07;45;09 - 00;08;06;06
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
But we may be able to work on some social skills with the sibling that's in the household or another family member. We can also work on if there's some sensory issues, we can collaborate, with other providers. So like what we have in home, we may not have a speech in OT that goes in home, but they may come to the clinic and get those services here at the clinic.

00;08;06;08 - 00;08;13;29
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And the behavior technician and bcba that works with that family may meet them at the clinic, because we are very big on collaborating with other disciplines.

00;08;14;06 - 00;08;33;09
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. You said something there that I want to go a little deeper into that. So it's so important and that the siblings if if a child has a neurotypical sibling, perhaps that that that sibling doesn't quite understand what's going on or can understand it on some level, but can't understand, you know, the different behaviors throughout the course of a day or a week.

00;08;33;15 - 00;08;46;25
Paul Sullivan
What do you do specifically to help the siblings, particularly when they're young, particularly when they're six, seven, eight, nine years old? How do you help them understand what's going on in their family and how to best be a contributing member of that family?

00;08;46;27 - 00;09;04;17
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Sure. So we do have a lot of those instances where we do have siblings that are part of the family, and they want to be part of the sessions because they're seeing, hey, my brother or my sister is getting these services. They got this cool person coming to the house and playing games with them, and they seem to be having fun.

00;09;04;17 - 00;09;40;01
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
What about me? And so a lot of times, what we may do is use them as a peer model and incorporate them, for example, or social skills. We may do some activity where we're working long term taking, and we incorporate that sibling into a turn taking activity. The other piece is there are stories out there that the parent can also share with them, separately in regards to autism, if the child has autism, and also how they how they can actually be kind to their sibling or, you know, their sibling might be different, but they're still the same person.

00;09;40;02 - 00;09;46;27
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So there are like children's stories out there specifically for family members and helping them understand the spectrum as well.

00;09;46;29 - 00;09;57;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Question three you talk about the ABCs to understand behavior. What are these ABCs and how do they work?

00;09;57;25 - 00;10;33;01
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Sure. So looking at ABCs, it helps us identify what happened before behavior, which in other words, the H stands for. And to set it B stands for the behavior that we're interested in in regards to the behavior that we're looking to observe. And C stands for consequence. So that is something that happens immediately after the behavior. And how the ABCs of behavior helps is that we look at the antecedents or what we call triggers to the behaviors occurring, and that helps us prevent challenging behaviors or come up with strategies to be preventative.

00;10;33;08 - 00;10;44;19
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And then the consequence part of what happens after the behaviors kind of lets us know, okay, what's the function? Or what are some things that might be maintaining this behavior occurring.

00;10;44;21 - 00;10;56;13
Paul Sullivan
And of course the idea being is that if you can figure out what that antecedent is, what that trigger is, you can minimize it, you can prevent it, you can stop it so that you don't have the B and C happening. Is that correct?

00;10;56;15 - 00;11;15;08
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Yes. And it helps us when we're developing behavior plans. And also do I when we do a lot of parent training or even trainings in the community working with other professionals. ABC data collection is huge because it lets us it helps us look at the environment and kind of see what are some variables in the environment that are impacting this child's behavior.

00;11;15;15 - 00;11;37;18
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And I'll give you like an example, example might be, child going into the grocery store. And every time dad brings his child to the grocery store, this child has a meltdown. Every time they go down the candy aisle, because each child wants their favorite lollipops. And as a result, what dad does because he doesn't want to hear the screaming and crying, he gives the child a lollipop.

00;11;37;21 - 00;11;59;12
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So when you're looking at the ABC data, the A is they went down the candy aisle, the B is the child starts screaming a cry for a lollipop. The C is that he gets the lollipop from dad. So when you're looking at the ABC information, how we prevent or how we look at strategies to help, this scenario is okay.

00;11;59;12 - 00;12;27;26
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So what may need to happen is when we go to the store, maybe we need to talk about our expectations in advance of what is expected of that child. And the other strategy might be that we might just not go down that candy our next store. And the consequence or the strategy to help, if you know, in regards to the behavior, is that not giving in to the child when they cry for the candy bar or the key or the lollipop that they don't give them the candy?

00;12;28;01 - 00;12;45;04
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Because what happens is the child learns that, hey, if I'm crying when I go to the store and I go down the candy aisle, I'm going to get a lollipop. So guess what's going to happen in the future? I'm more likely to cry when I go down that aisle, because I know dad's going to give me a lollipop for me to be quiet.

00;12;45;07 - 00;13;00;16
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, and you can see both sides of it, obviously. You know, that child is it's it's learned behavior and it's being reinforced. And so I throw a fit, I get a lightbulb. But if you're the dad, you're thinking, okay, I'm just trying to get my grocery shopping done. There are dozens of other people here. How do I move this along?

00;13;00;16 - 00;13;39;04
Paul Sullivan
But but that's really good because I think often if you can break it down and intellectualize it, people say, okay, I understand that what I'm doing, which I think is a good thing, giving the lollipop, is actually reinforcing this, this, this behavior that I don't want to to reinforce. So yeah, that's on point. But you know, that kind of leads into question for, as parents, you know, if we're dysregulated ourselves, if we are super stressed out, either from the behavior of a child or just life in general of our job or something that's going on, how do we then help our children who might be sensing, you know, that we're a bit off ourselves?

00;13;39;06 - 00;13;44;16
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Yes, being a parent can be challenging. I mean, we have to understand.

00;13;44;16 - 00;13;47;13
Paul Sullivan
And that's the understatement of the day. Alicia. Come on, that's the understatement.

00;13;47;13 - 00;14;07;03
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Yes. And I honestly, as a parent myself, I totally get it. You know, you have to manage the children. You know, you have to manage your job. You have to manage other, other things that might come your way throughout the day. And I think the most important thing being a parent is you got to be kind to yourself and give yourself grace.

00;14;07;05 - 00;14;36;16
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And and doing that comes self-care. And you have to take care of yourself. Because if you can take care of yourself, you can be there better for your child. And this might look like ensuring that you get adequate rest, eating healthy, or even taking some time for yourself throughout the day. Even if it's like five minutes where you can, you know, take some time to listen to some music, maybe just sit in silence for five minutes.

00;14;36;21 - 00;15;04;09
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
You know, go for a ride. Just doing something that you enjoy doing just to kind of get yourself grounded, as well as helping you with managing stress. And it also when we do some self-care and we manage our own stress, it helps us also manage our own emotions, which helps us in turn respond better to challenging behaviors and have more patience with our kids.

00;15;04;11 - 00;15;27;01
Paul Sullivan
That's good. That's good advice for anybody. Any parent. You know, question five you touched on this in parts of the podcast so far, but I really want to nail it at the end. You know, what are the best ways to reinforce the behavior we'd like to see in our children as parent? And then the flip side of that, what are the best ways to prevent the behaviors that we don't want to see?

00;15;27;03 - 00;15;49;27
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So I think when we're looking at reinforcement, right. Or reinforcers, those are things that increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur in the future. And one thing to think about is every child is different. So what might be reinforcing for one child may not be for another child. So we have to look at what is it that the child enjoys.

00;15;49;27 - 00;16;16;06
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Does the child like praise or attention from the parent? Does the child prefer a sticker chart? Does the child prefer getting extra screen time? So I think the most important thing is kind of knowing your child and kind of seeing what are the things that are going to motivate them. Because if you don't have a motivator, then whatever reinforcer that you're going to try to provide to increase that behavior is not going to be effective if it's not effective for the child.

00;16;16;08 - 00;16;42;08
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So I think that the most important thing is, is kind of figuring out what motivates your child. And when we're looking at reinforcing behaviors, you want to try to be very clear and concise in regards to what it is that like the boundaries is forward expectations that are age appropriate for that child. But also when a child does something great, you want to provide what we call behavior specific praise.

00;16;42;08 - 00;17;15;19
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So being very specific on what they're doing, that is what you're looking to increase or to give them praise. So for example, if a child is sitting down and eating their dinner, you can say, oh, you're doing a great job sitting and eating great job. It's very specific. To reinforce the behavior that you're expecting. And on the downside, or in contrast, when you're looking at behaviors that you do not want to increase, like those are more of like what we call maladaptive behaviors or challenging behaviors.

00;17;15;21 - 00;17;43;26
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
As parents, we just have to be mindful that we're also not reinforcing the negative behaviors. So that means in regards to if a child is misbehaving and say what misbehaving might be is they're running around the kitchen and you want them to have a seat. So reinforcing that behavior for a child that may seek praise or attention, it could even be in the form of reprimand because it's still some type of parent attention.

00;17;44;04 - 00;17;44;29
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So it could be.

00;17;45;02 - 00;17;48;07
Paul Sullivan
Even though it's negative parent attention, it's still attention.

00;17;48;09 - 00;18;07;10
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Right? It could be sit down, you know, have a seat. And even though, you know, for you, you're thinking that, hey, I'm just telling them to sit down for that child that might be wanting that parent attention. You're kind of reinforcing that behavior, as opposed to how I would respond in that situation would be maybe pointing to the chair, not saying anything.

00;18;07;10 - 00;18;15;23
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So it's like you're acknowledging the behavior, but you're not reinforcing the child's wanting attention, if that makes sense.

00;18;15;29 - 00;18;41;10
Paul Sullivan
Does. And, you know, you talked about it earlier and that's about, you know, parents giving themselves grace. I'm listening to all of this. This is not, easy stuff to do. You can imagine. I mean, you as a parent, you're going to make mistakes. You're going to fall short. But when a parent like, how long does it typically take for in a parent and children to get, better aligned so that they're, you know, the children aren't having these these outbursts.

00;18;41;10 - 00;18;50;20
Paul Sullivan
They don't want to have those outbursts. They're they're more regulated. And the parents, feel like like things are, you know, more or less going smoothly about how long does that take generally.

00;18;50;22 - 00;19;17;16
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
So I can't really give you a quantity because each child in each family is different. Some kids learn faster than others, and some kids learn slower than others. But the most important piece is with parenting is consistency. So if you determine that, hey, I'm noticing that Johnny does not like going to certain stores because he might have a meltdown.

00;19;17;16 - 00;19;41;14
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Just give an example and you're saying, hey, we're just not going to go to certain stores. Then that message needs to be consistent across all caretakers. So that way everyone is on the same page. Or if we're going to give praise to Johnny for every time that he's sitting in his chair and he's not running around the house, then it needs to be consistent across caregivers as well, that everyone's doing the same thing.

00;19;41;14 - 00;20;00;27
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Or if we all agree that, hey, we're not going to yell at Johnny anymore, we're just going to point to the chair instead of yelling at him to stop running. Then everyone needs to respond to the behavior and be on the same page. So that's like a huge thing with with children is consistency. And that also helps in regards to, managing behaviors.

00;20;01;04 - 00;20;17;10
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
And like I said before, each child and family is different as far as like time wise, it can take someone, you know, as short as like a couple of days to learn a skill in someone as long as weeks or months. Each person is different.

00;20;17;13 - 00;20;28;11
Paul Sullivan
Alicia Simpson was a licensed social worker and the founder of collaborative ABA services. Thank you so much for being my guest today on the Company of Dads podcast.

00;20;28;14 - 00;20;29;28
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Thank you for having me.

00;20;30;00 - 00;20;37;16
Paul Sullivan
And one last thing you know, give us, give us your website. How can listeners find you and find out more about your services?

00;20;37;19 - 00;20;54;21
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Sure. So we have a website you can, check out our website at UW that collaborative ABA services.com. You can also check us out on Instagram, a collaborative ABA services as well as LinkedIn and Facebook.

00;20;54;23 - 00;20;57;16
Paul Sullivan
Thank you again, Alicia. I appreciate your time today.

00;20;57;19 - 00;20;59;09
Alisha Simpson-Watt 
Thank you.

00;20;59;12 - 00;21;28;04
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the company that podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do. The company of dads possible, Helder Mira, who is our audio producer, Lindsay Decker and all of our social media, Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me on many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads.

00;21;28;04 - 00;21;42;13
Paul Sullivan
It's a great team. And we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop Shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.