Instructional Control in Autism: Building Trust, Reducing Stress, and Creating Safety

In this episode of Autism Labs, Mike Carr shares his struggles with gaining and keeping instructional control—getting his profoundly autistic son to follow directions without resistance. He contrasts his challenges with others' success and stresses that instructional control is about trust, not compliance. Carr discusses using consistency, patience, and positive pairing to become a reinforcing presence, the strategic use of reinforcers, and the need for caregiver consistency. He also outlines seven steps to build instructional control through reinforcement, engagement, and routine.

Transcript

Mike Carr (00:03):

Well, welcome back to Autism Labs, and this week I'm going to talk about something that is one of my personal biggest problems. I mean, as a parent of an autistic severely autistic son, 35 years old, I have fought this battle for decades and I'm not very good at it, which is the reason I need to talk to you guys about it, especially you dads out there. It's about instructional control. You say what in the world's that, well, it's an A term applied behavior term, but really it's about how you get your kiddo to do what you ask 'em to do without undue stress or angst on your part. Joint emotions smack them in the head or on their part, especially like our son who's nonverbal and doesn't necessarily understand. And the reason this is so challenging is it requires patience, it requires consistency, and it requires sort of understanding the process for how you establish instructional control.

(01:07):

For someone that doesn't really know necessarily everything that's going on, but still is a real human, has definite preferences, certainly wants to do particular things and not other things at certain times. And that's where I get into all kinds of problems. So I'm going to take you through some definitions and talk to you about from an academic standpoint, some of the terminology and practices, and then I'm going to try to translate them into what I've learned as probably a student of instructional control that has received an F and then maybe a D, and then maybe finally a C. I'm certainly not an A, and I'm probably not even a B, I'm probably a C parent right now when it comes to getting this right. And the reason I know that is my wife can go down there and give you an idea and she can ask Michael to do something and look him in the eye.

(01:58):

He'll stop and he'll listen and he won't challenge her and he'll just do it. And then some of Michael's colleagues, they can ask one time from across the room and give him the eye and he knows exactly what is expected of him and he'll go do it even though he may not want to. Whereas if I'm there, if it's dad, I'm sitting there saying, Michael, go do this, go do this, and I'm doing everything wrong. I'm giving him repeated verbal prompts. I'm not giving him enough time to process what I'm asking him for. He enjoys seeing me get all riled up and red in the face and emotional, so I'm reinforcing behavior that I don't want to reinforce, so I'm doing everything wrong when it comes to an instructional control standpoint. Let's do, let's do, let's do puzzle.

(02:48):

Yeah, puzzle, puzzle. Where'd it go? No. Where's it go? Where's it go? Where's it go? Puzzle, puzzle. Puzzle. The definition instructional control I see is the likelihood that an adult with severe autism will follow instructions from a specific person as me the dad stemming from a positive trusting relationship and the adult's motivation to cooperate. Here's the key phrase. This is something you earn dads out there, you cannot demand, doesn't make any difference whether you're the dad and he's the kid and you think you have certain rights as his parent ain't going to work in this space, not with someone that's severely or profoundly autistic or level three autistic. Okay, so why is this important? Well, if you have instructional control, it's going to make your kiddo's life a lot safer, right? In Michael's case, he has no sense of danger. He might run out into the street and if I yell, stop, I have instructional control, he'll stop.

(03:54):

And if I don't, he might just keep on going. It also helps with skill development. According to this paper here, I'm looking at the foundation for teaching daily living, vocational and communication skills, basic skill development. You can get them to do things without as much stress and angst and effort and frowning and yelling. It just doesn't happen. If you have instructional controls, you can remain calm and patient. It helps reduce challenging behavior if you understand how to interact with your kiddo and encourage the right kind of behavior. And if they understand that you're going to do something that they're not going to like, if they don't demonstrate the desired behavior, and I'm not talking about anything physical necessarily, you might take away some kind of a reward or not allow them to do something that they want to do. And if you consistently apply that, guys, this is where I get it wrong all the time.

(04:53):

It's this consistency that's so important in establishing instructional control. And sometimes I'll go in there after a long day in the office or something, I just want to have fun. I just want to screw around with the boy and I'm doing things I shouldn't do and I'm giving him things that he really shouldn't get. And it sort of erodes, unfortunately, all the training and all the education, and you can have a little bit of fun. I'm not saying you can't have fun, but always be aware of, Hey, am I doing something that he's not necessarily going to understand or that's going to diminish the behavior he's already been taught and how he interacts with me and all of a sudden he doesn't really think he has to follow a request that I've given him because messing around with him too much right now, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Mike, let's, let's do this.

(05:43):

Let's do puzzle. So it's tough, but it's so, so important to manage his behavior without a lot of effort and it improves his quality of life, and quite frankly, it's going to improve your quality of life. I mean, this is basic parenting one-on-one, right? Just take a neurotypical, your other kids neurotypical kiddos or adults. I mean, if you ask 'em to do something, you might have a calm discussion about it and either they're going to do it or not, but it's not something that requires a lot of stress. And usually you can sort of go in on, yeah, I can probably get 'em to do this. And so it's that same kind of thing with a severely or profoundly autistic adult. Where does that piece go?

(06:22):

Good job. If you've got the right instructional control without raising your voice, without taking 10 minutes, without having to bribe them with treats or goodies or TV or their iPad or whatevers they want, you can get 'em to do something that you might not be able to do if you don't have this instructional control. Okay, so how do you do this? This is what you really need to do, guys. This is what I really need to do and what I'm trying to focus on in a better way. So it's called pairing. It's building positive relationships. Now, this seems so obvious, but let me read the definition here, and you're going to start thinking to yourselves like I am, well, I'm not really doing this, okay? It's an initial and ongoing process of associating the parent, the caregiver with something enjoyable and it's not too demanding and preferred items.

(07:10):

This turns the caregiver into a conditional reinforcer, making their presence desirable and building trust. So this is sort of the first step. If I pair myself with things that my son enjoys, like we're going to go out and play basketball or we're going to, we're going to eat a meal that I prepared. We're going to take a walk, which he often enjoys doing or we're going to play we together, he loves, we basketball and we bowling actually the hundred pin we bowling. If I pair those things up and I start building trust in him that Hey, dad's coming in, I'm going to have fun. You sort of build that positive, positive relationship. Then what you do is you sort of identify age appropriate reinforcers through observation and preference. You get a handle on what he enjoys doing, what's going to motivate him, right? In Michael's case, I've mentioned some of these basketball, playing sports food and your kiddo's going to have certainly other things, and then you can sort of use those reinforcers to get him to do things that are less desirable.

(08:10):

And so you sort of control access to these reinforcers and you make them available contingent upon their cooperation. So, Hey, I know you want this. I know you want to do that. If you'll just do this one thing over here, which is maybe saying this word that you're having trouble with or finishing this puzzle that you don't really understand, or whatever that skill is that you're teaching him, then you're going to get this thing or we're going to go out and do that thing. And as soon as that's accomplished, you do it right? It's not just about contingent upon creating the activity or completing the activity. It's about immediately afterwards there's the cooperation or the reward or whatever. And so that's a big deal. And then scheduling, you start this continuous reinforcement on a regular basis, and once you've established the desired behavior, you can fade. Some of the prompts. I've seen our staff and our crew do this over and over again, and it's pretty darn exciting. It's pretty amazing. What they're able to accomplish is that they might use food as a motivator or treat, and then once he's doing the desired activity, they'll fade that treat out and maybe just use high fives or great job or whatever. It's then once he's used to that, they might even slow that down a little bit to where it's just, good job, Michael.

(09:36):

Good job, Michael. Give me five. 1, 3, 3, 4, 5. So it's this idea that you're going overboard initially, or you're using bribes initially to sort of get the behavior established, and then you fade those prompts out. You sort of diminish those, but that habit's been established, and I'm reading another book right now. It talks about 66 days is how long it takes to build a habit. Now, I'm not sure that's true, but it's certainly many weeks. Once that habit is established, once that behavior is established, then a lot of those reinforcers, that behavior is going to occur often with or without those reinforcers, especially if you fade them away properly. So I think that's important. And certainly part of this whole thing is uniformity across time and uniformity across everyone that's interacting with your son. And this is another area where I feel really dumb and because everybody else is doing it this way and I come in and I don't have a clue, I haven't read the report or the day's thing or whatever, and I do it my old fashioned way and it diminishes what everyone else has taught our son.

(10:46):

It causes all kinds of problems, and it reduces my instructional control that I have with him because all of a sudden I'm now doing things that he thought he couldn't get away with, but now he's getting away with them again or whatever, and it sort of wrecks the ship. So this consistency in particular in my case, but across all the caregivers, all the colleagues, all the staff in school, out of school, on the weekends, hugely important and tough. But boy, if you can maintain that consistency across everybody, miracles can happen in a very short period of time. So what I want to leave you with are sort of the seven steps, and I've got some references in a paper that we can put in the show notes, but these are the seven steps to sort of think about to maintain instructional control. First of all, you control the reinforcers, right?

(11:41):

So what's going to reinforce a particular activity and you maintain control of those. You just don't give 'em a bar on the table or whatever. You keep that bar, that food motivator or that activity and dole it out as certain things are accomplished and you dole it out immediately and you be fun. You make this as enjoyable and as positive, as upbeat as you possibly can, and you don't reward him for inappropriate behavior. Even facial expressions, right? Our son doesn't necessarily understand the difference between doing something bad and getting me all juiced and doing something good and getting me all juiced. He just sees how he's got dad excited. And so I need not to react when he does something bad because that's just to him like reacting when he does something good. So being fun and pairing it with the appropriate reactions, this consistency, this follow through, show him that if you do this, then this is going to happen.

(12:38):

And then immediately reinforce that cooperation with whatever the reward is or the activity is, know what his priorities are, what you really need to emphasize in what you can be a little bit looser on. I mean, after a long day, everybody's tired. Your son's going to be tired, I'm going to be tired. And certain things you might let slide that are more fun or that aren't quite, but there's certain things like aggressive behavior like yelling, pulling his pants down. You just can't let those go. So being very, very consistent there is hugely important. Those are your priorities. And then what are his priorities? Sort of mapping those up. And then withhold reinforcers if problematic behavior occurs. We all have our bad days, and when Michael has a bad day, he's going to get less of what he really wants. And I'm not sure he always understands that, but over time, he probably will.

(13:30):

It sort of builds that consistency and that understanding over time, regardless of how sharp your kiddo is. I'm going to go down to the conclusions and I'm going to just try to wrap this up. But again, if you want this paper, I'm going to put some notes in the documents. You can sort of see overall a much more detailed explanation of this. And if you're interested in me talking more about this, just leave me a note in the comment section or go ahead and email me at mike@autismlabs.com. So it's just m my k mike at Autism Labs with an S on the end of it, all one word.com. And I'll get that email and I'll be happy to respond to questions you have about this, or if you would like me to do another follow-up episode, I'm going to be happy to do that. But I think the biggest thing in terms of conclusion is if you're suffering from lack of attention or desire to do this on a consistent basis, all I can tell you is when I go downstairs and our son lives downstairs in his apartment in the first floor and I watch how some of his staff or his mom can get him to do things almost effortlessly, and then I sit down at that table and I can't get him to any of it.

(14:42):

I've got to go through multiple requests and raise my voice, and then he thinks that's fun. So I just get off the rails so quickly. So the biggest thing is it's not a quick fix. It's going to take some effort. It's certainly going to require patience, which I have very little of, but I'm getting better. Hopefully, consistency and this thoughtful application. Think about what you're doing. Think about something before you utter the words or before you give him the treat, or before you say, yeah, we're going to go outside and play some basketball, but hey, is this the right time to do it? Has he done what I've asked him to do? If you start really, I think exercising just some simple principles when it comes to instructional control. You're relationship with your son or daughter is going to be amazingly better. You're going to feel more joy. He's going to respect you more. He's going to get a sense that you mean business when you say something or do something. And I think the interactions that you have with him or her are going to be much more fulfilling for you and for your son or daughter. At least it has been for me those few times that I've been able to maintain instructional control. That's it for this week. Talk to you again soon. See you.