Behaviour Therapy focuses on reinforcing desirable behaviours and reducing undesirable behaviours in order to encourage child to participate in age appropriate activities. It majorly focuses on the problem behaviours e.g.: throwing, hitting or biting, low compliance, frequent tantrums and crying. Once problem behaviours are reduced we can focus on skill development, understanding and expression of emotions, cognitive -perceptual development and more.
One of the major issues all parents face is getting the child to listen to them. You may have also faced this issue and tried to overcome it by bribing them with toys, chocolates, tv or phone. However, these are only effective temporarily and over time your child may try to purposely engage in these behaviours to get their way.
In behaviour therapy, we train parents in established behaviour training techniques to change these behaviours and teach skills through:
- Reinforcement
- Chaining
- Extinction
- Modelling
- Shaping
These are practised with the child through various interactive activities and goes hand-in-hand with Occupational and Speech Therapies.
