Coaching Caregivers to Strategically Ignore
By Colleen Harker, Ph.D.
Attention from others is a strong driver of our behavior as humans, given that we are social creatures. Even if it’s not the primary driver of our behavior in a given situation, it’s often in the mix, because attention from others is often a natural by-product of many of our behaviors (even if we aren’t aware of it at the moment and/or doing it ‘intentionally’!). Consider a child who is feeling anxious about entering the classroom. They may run and hide under a desk in the hallway and cry. The function of running away is escape (avoidance) of the anxiety-provoking stimulus (classroom); however, when the teacher comes to comfort them, attention enters the picture as a variable! This can become an unhelpful pattern that gets reinforced over time, whereby the bulk of a child’s interactions with adults involves attention (e.g., comfort, reassurance) when they are avoiding, rather than attention on brave/resilient ‘approach’ behaviors.
One thing that is counter intuitive to many people, is that negative attention is sometimes a stronger reinforcer of our behavior than positive attention is. The reason is because 1. We have more control over getting negative attention; 2. Negative attention is usually delivered with more emotional intensity than positive attention is; and 3. Negative attention usually ‘lasts longer’ than positive attention. I often tell parents, I could give an amazing presentation, but I have no control over getting a positive reaction from the audience- how long and loud their applause is or whether they decide to give me a standing ovation at the end - no matter how hard I try to do a good job!. However, I can 100% make the audience react negatively if I choose to scroll on my phone while speaking, swear, and throw things at them. The same thing goes for kids! If a younger brother asks his sister to play politely, he has no control over whether or not she will respond positively. She may say no or ignore him, but non-preferred responses. However, if he goes up and yanks her pony tail, he is guaranteed to get a negative reaction, which is better than no reaction at all!
My work with parents is focused on removing negative attention from the equation, such that parents are only making deposits of positive attention for their child’s ‘okay behaviors’ and then ignoring their child’s ‘not okay’ behaviors.This approach teaches children what behaviors ‘work’ to get parent attention, and what behaviors will no longer work. Of course this strategy only works when paired with frequent, consistent, and intentional deposits of positive attention.
I break strategic ignoring down into three different categories, using a model informed by the RUBI parenting program (Bearss et al., 2013).
IGNORE THE BEHAVIOR (NOT THE CHILD) when it’s a very frequent, minor behavior like whining, repetitive question asking, or mild disruptive behavior (e.g., continuing to chit-chat with a child at the dinner table, while not acknowledging that your child is kicking your chair).
‘Light switch strategy’ - engage with the child as you normally would, but stop and turn away to speak with someone else at the table when they start kicking your chair. Then re-engage when they stop kicking, and do it over and over again, using your attention like a light switch turning on- and-off. A similar ‘light switch method,’ borrowed from a classroom management strategy, is to shine the light of attention on other children who are displaying appropriate behavior. For example, rather than addressing the child and saying “Stop kicking my chair. You are driving me crazy. If you don’t stop you won’t get dessert!” a parent could turn to siblings and say - “Zoe I love how you are using your fork all by yourself!” “Nate, thank you for keeping your feet on the floor!” The nuance is that in order for this strategy to work, the parent has to immediately re-engage with the target child once they stop kicking or and/or demonstrate another ‘okay’ table behavior, so we teach them what ‘works’ to get parental attention and what doesn’t work.
IGNORE THE CHILD AND THE BEHAVIOR when a child is dysregulated but safe (e.g., not intervening during a meltdown that involves screaming, slamming doors, throwing things).
IGNORE THE CHILD (NOT THE BEHAVIOR) when it’s a dangerous behavior (e.g., physically blocking a child who is chasing a sibling with scissors, but doing it silently with no emotion.
When we first start to ignore a behavior that typically gets attention, the behavior will get ‘worse’ (increase in frequency, intensity, and/or duration) before it gets better, meaning that we’ve successfully extinguished it as a behavior that ‘works.’ The remainder of our session is thus spent troubleshooting and preparing parents for extinction bursts.
Future sessions are spent on identifying antecedent-based strategies for preventing challenging behavior and teaching children functionally equivalent replacement behaviors to help them meet their goals in a more appropriate way. More to come on these strategies in the future!
