De-escalation

What goes up must come down--after a two-part series on the idea of an 'escalation cycle,,' Dan and Mike could only follow up with a discussion on de-escalation. In this follow-up episode, Dan and Mike continue to utilize the notion of 'crisis' or 'assaultive' behavior and its management as a means to better understand and elucidate strategies for addressing day-to-day challenging behavior. While the behavior being emitted by the client or child is often the focus of intervention, perhaps a more important variable is the behaviors or stimuli active around that person and in their environment. Dan and Mike work to explain the key aspects of the de-escalation range of the full cycle and more importantly discuss what not to do as well as what to enact as a parent or professional working to help an individual come back down to baseline.

Sit back, stay observant, acknowledge, empathize and ALWAYS analyze responsibly.

And if you are ready to start your own podcast today, please try Buzzsprout by following the link below.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=721496

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Hey Mike, how do you feel about today? Feeling pretty good about it?

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

I think today's a great day, Dan.

SPEAKER_02: 0:06

I couldn't agree more. Like you say, any day that you wake up and your name's not in the obituary, you're off to a good start. Speaking of which, today's also a great day to start your own podcast. Whether you're looking for a new marketing channel, you have a message you want to share with the world, or just think it'd be fun to have your own talk show, like we did. Podcasting is an easy, inexpensive, and fun way to expand your reach online. Maybe learn something. Now, Buzzsprout is hands down the easiest and best way to launch, promote, and track your podcast. It's what we use. Your show can be online and listed at all of the major places podcasts can be found, like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc., within minutes of you finishing your recording. You know, podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners. And the team at Buzzsprout is passionate with helping you succeed. Join over 100,000 people just like us sharing their message, already using Buzzsprout as the conduit to get their message across the world.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

We use Buzzsprout and we love it. Buzzsprout will give you a great looking podcast website, audio players that you can drop into other websites, detailed analytics to see how people are listening, tools to promote your episodes and much, much more. So here's what you'll do if you want to start your podcast today. Follow the link in the show notes. This lets Buzzsprout know we sent you. It gets you a$20 Amazon gift card if you sign up for a paid plan, and it helps support our show. So make it a great day today. Get on to Buzzsprout and start your podcast. Inform the world. And of course, always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:46

Cheers. Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table so without further ado sit back relax and always analyze responsibly

SPEAKER_00: 2:41

all right all right Welcome yet again to another installment of ABA on Tap. I am Mike Rubio along with Dan Lowry. Mr. Dan, how are you doing today, sir? Doing great, Mike. How are you feeling today? I'm feeling okay. Feeling okay. Feeling magical, actually.

SPEAKER_02: 2:59

Any reason why?

SPEAKER_00: 3:00

Yeah, we're making a quick and ridiculous allusion to the fact that we've been approached for sponsorship by a brain performance drink company. Supposed to make you feel magical in your mind. We won't exactly name the drink yet. But I'm feeling full of my nootropics, my adaptogens. Yes, yes. My matcha. Yes. Feeling good. I actually think this stuff works. I feel pretty good about it. So I hope we can make a partnership. More about that later. We are very excited to come back and try to present a third installment, although we're going to name this something different and not part three. But over the last two episodes, we've been discussing the escalation cycle. sort of using the idea of crisis management or so-called assaultive behavior in the escalation cycle and see what we can extract from that information toward daily behavior management of things that we also call tantrum, for example. So looking at escalation as any sort of deviation from baseline and using all that information to examine how we might keep things at bay before they actually spill over or trip over into a full crisis mode, at which point then you kind of have to wait things out, to use that old ABA phrase. You're going to have to wait things out, but more importantly, what are you doing to manage or to help de-escalate as you wait things out? You're not just sitting passively, and that's what we're trying to talk about here, is not sitting passively, but what are you doing actively to try and help the de-escalation or the return to baseline or the maintenance of some better learning status? And then more importantly, as oneself, as the professional as the parent who is in the face of said behavior, how to maintain one's own calm and ensure that you're not exhibiting further escalation or adding energy, as Dan likes to say, to the situation. So this will be sort of a third part of the escalation cycle, although it's its own freestanding episode on de-escalation. So without further ado, Mr. Dan, why don't you kick us off here on this conversation? We all know about the upward swing here. Maybe this is the most important part of this conversation is how to come back down and then back to baseline so that you can move on with your daily life.

SPEAKER_02: 5:21

Yes, sir. So just a quick brief recap before we get into the new material. Of the phases, we started talking in previous episodes of this series about the baseline phase. Again, baseline is just where any individual is at without any task demands or anything like that. Basically, kind of left to their own devices. We talked about the importance of really focusing on the baseline while no parent ever comes to us and is like, hey, when my kid's a baseline, that's where I'm most focused at. If we can figure out what makes these situations good, if we can figure out the do's, then we can spend less time on the don'ts. So really spending time figuring out why the individual's a baseline. Talked about that between episode one and episode two. Episode two, we got more into the triggering event, how you may or may not notice that. But if we do, we really want to identify that. and try to match the individual where they're at at that triggering event. And number three, we started to, or in the second part of part two, we started to get into the escalation part and how when an individual's escalated, there's an extra or an excess of stimuli in the environment. And the last thing we want to do is start adding a lot of additional stimuli. So we talked about some good strategies when individuals are escalating. Number one, acknowledgement, not dismissiveness Yeah, I hear you not wanting to wear the Halloween costume, but you need to wear it anyway. Hey, I understand you don't want to wear the Halloween costume or what have you. Trying to work collaboratively to figure out a response to that that benefits both parties authoritatively, not in an authoritarian manner. And also not offering too many options. During escalation, we talked about in episode one how cognition runs exactly inversely proportional to behavior. So as one is starting to emit more overt behavior, their cognition is inversely going to be going down. So we talked about trying to limit the responses, maybe even labeling your responses and what you're going to do. Okay, I'll... Give you a hug. Oh, it looks like you don't want a hug. So you're maybe giving options or labeling what you're going to do as the individual is hopefully starting to deescalate. But as they continue to escalate, you're going to give more and more space because as we talked about in the first episode, it's all about getting blood back to that prefrontal cortex. It's not that the individual is consciously saying, I'm going to escalate and make your life uncomfortable at this moment. That individual has not enough brain in their prefrontal cortex and their hippocampus to process what's going on. what's going on in the environment. So until we can get that individual in a state where they're going to be able to get that blood back in their brain and their prefrontal cortex or prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, we're fighting a losing battle. So that is always our goal. How do we stop this and get it in a better trajectory so we can then start to present the strategies and things like that? Before I move on, let me

SPEAKER_00: 8:18

pass it back to you, Mike. Well, just for a reference point here, too, we're recording this a few days after Halloween, hence your allusion to, I think, a recent account that we heard from a parent about tantrum behavior during Halloween and best laid plans. You've got the costume. You're going trick-or-treating. Your child has been excited about Halloween. Suddenly, they don't want to put on the costume, or it's uncomfortable, or they realize they don't look exactly like Spider-Man with the costume or that the costume doesn't shoot out webs. Whatever it is, a million different reasons why your child might escalate during something like Halloween, which is supposed to be fun. And now as the adults, you're sort of in a disconcerted state of mind. I'm trying to do something good for my child. I've got all these plans. And now my child is fighting those plans. What is it I can do? I can become very upset. I paid money for the costume. We've got guests over. The friends are waiting. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of reasons why you might lose that blood to your Yeah. One of the really key pieces that we'll be talking about here is oxygenation, right? So the one thing that blood does for your neurons is it brings oxygen, right? For those neurons to be able to function and to work. So from a fight or flight or an autonomic arousal response, you hit a de-escalation and naturally your body can't, provide blood flow and energy to every aspect of its functioning, something's got to give. So as you deescalate, one of the things it gives is your cognition, your ability to reason because of lack of oxygenation or blood flow to your frontal cortex, and it's going to everywhere else that you need it to go to in order to escalate If it's an appropriate time to escalate, like you actually need to defend yourself, then your pupils are dilating and you're getting more blood flow to your extremities to be able to run if you need to or to fight if you need to or so forth. So this all makes sense. It's not that the child is hoping this happens or that they're trying to make this happen willfully. This is an autonomic response or automatic generic response of the human body.

SPEAKER_02: 10:54

Yeah, it's kind of like if you work your phone too hard, it's going to start overheating. Or sometimes you put your phone on the charger on the window, and then the sun makes it overheat. When it starts to overheat, your programs start running slower. And when that happens, the phone actually sometimes has programs to start cutting or a program built in to start cutting some of the programs because it can't run at optimum capacity because everything's overheating. And that analogy is kind of relevant, too, to this situation. It's like the body's overheating. It's going to start shutting things down until it can get a grasp of it and then start operating at maximum capacity again. So that's what we're trying to do. And same thing with the phone. When it overheats, you can try to run as many programs as you want, but it's not going to do it. You have to let that phone cool down, and then it will run the programs the way you want to do it. And same thing with human behavior. We're going to have to let this individual calm down before we're able to bring things back to the table.

SPEAKER_00: 11:49

So I think one key difference here, and I know we're using a lot of analogies not to get stuck on those, but it reminds me of that old traditional phrase in ABA to sort of wait things out, right? Or we mentioned a little bit about the old version of extinction, which is sort of this planned ignoring. Now, I think an important difference we want to highlight here is that if you ignore, then you're not paying attention. And I think what you're going to talk about today is, in fact, these are the moments where we have to pay the closest attention. So we may not be saying anything. We may not be actively doing anything other than and acknowledging and trying to help that individual de-escalate, but we have to be paying careful attention. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02: 12:31

Absolutely. Even in the phone situation, right, you're not going to be like, well, until the phone operates on all of the programs I want, I'm not going to use it. You're going to check on it and check on, okay, it can operate one program and two programs, and you're going to work that up, and that's differential reinforcement, which we'll continue to talk about. Going back to the escalation cycle, one thing that I do want to mention, the last thing in the escalation stage is, again, those can be behavioral excesses or deficits. I know we talked about this, but a lot of times, especially with adults and individuals as they get older, the escalation actually takes the form of behavioral deficits, withdrawal, things like that. So when parents are like, oh, my kid went from zero to 100, they probably didn't. You just didn't notice zero to 70 when it was a withdrawal, withdrawal. And the kid went to a different room or got quieter, put their head down. And then when they couldn't take it anymore because the task was continuing to be presented because you were ignoring all the withdrawal, then it comes out and then it comes into the behavioral excesses. But you can absolutely escalate. And that can show behaviorally through behavioral deficits that we talked a lot about in behavioral episode part two. So if that doesn't ring a bell, please go back, check out the previous episode. We'll talk about that a little bit more thoroughly. So as

SPEAKER_00: 13:47

a parent, that can be difficult then because we tend to, or for anybody that's in the field, this could be difficult because we tend to pay attention to what we can sense and perceive. So when somebody withdraws, especially for a child, and now they're being quiet, as a parent, you might say, okay, whew, great. They're doing just fine, right? So how might we tell that difference? Again, you have to pay attention. It seems like you really have to pay close attention. Also, when somebody withdraws, we tend to add a lot more energy in trying to control them to interact. And what you're saying here is that energy is only going to serve to exacerbate that prospective escalation.

SPEAKER_02: 14:28

Yeah, and it's not even just as a parent. That's a constant battle I have with my girlfriend. When she gets upset, what does she do? She doesn't yell or scream. She withdraws. And what do I do? I want to try to

SPEAKER_00: 14:37

solve the problem. What's wrong? What's wrong? Let's

SPEAKER_02: 14:39

figure it out. Let's solve it. And a lot of times people, maybe her cognition or whatever, isn't ready to solve the problem at that time. And the only thing I can do at that point is make it worse. So, again, those behavioral deficits, not just relegated to individuals with autism, kids, whatever, it's across the board. So being aware of those things and, you know, check-ins, like Mike said, we're balancing. We're not completely interacting and giving demands and things like that. We're not completely turning our back and ignoring. It's the balance between, hey, did you want to chat? Okay, cool. No, you don't want to chat? Well, I'll still check in on you in a little while. We need to chat and talk about it right now. Or not, well, I'm not going to talk to you at all until you do exactly what I want you to do. That intermediate balance

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

is really important. Our kinder selves in this moment, too, are going to ask a lot of questions, right? Which you keep alluding to this idea of a demand. Well, a question, in a sense, demands an answer. So we might say in this point in time, then, you might lend some more declaratives, some observations. Yeah, I can see you're still sitting over there with your hat down. Just taking a look. There's water available. There's something available for you if you'd like it. Let me know if you do. You're not asking any questions per se, but you're checking in here and there. You're sort of reading the mood. You're reading the physicality of the situation. You're keeping your distance to a certain extent. You're offering acknowledgement and then maybe some declaratives. The idea that I am here to help you. I understand what I'm seeing you do. I understand what you may have communicated you're feeling. And now I'm going to take a step back. but also let you know that I'm here to offer you things to help at the same time. And I'm doing so in a very parsed fashion. So I'm not speaking a lot. Every couple minutes, kind of checking in, maybe not saying anything but making my presence known in some way. shuffling around the room, but still keeping your distance. And again, I think this is important to talk about and really spell out because we tend to do things that are contradictory to that in those moments. If somebody's escalating and yelling, we tend to match them. If somebody withdraws, we tend to barrage them with questions. And what you're talking about that's really important here is you're acknowledging, you're staying attentive, you're staying alert, but you're also removing your energy from it as much as possible.

SPEAKER_02: 16:59

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, would you rather him be yelling and screaming or would you rather him withdraw? So it's not necessarily that the individual is being rude. They literally don't have enough blood in their prefrontal cortex to process what's going on. Heard a good quote on Dr. Phil the other day. And he said, we tend to judge other people by their behavior and ourselves by our intent. And we're not able to judge other people's intent when they're getting quiet. So we look at their behavior and they're, well, they're ignoring me or they're being rude. Well, maybe they're just trying to process what in the heck is going on because their environment is too stimulating and overwhelming right now. So the best we can do is maybe give them some information to process or just let them process it because if they're already overwhelmed, the last thing you want to do in an already overwhelming environment is add more stimuli. So that's the last thing I'll say for the escalation. I'll pass it back to you if there's anything

SPEAKER_00: 18:14

you wanted to add, Mike. Yeah, one of my favorite things is that... or least favorite, I'm speaking sarcastically now, is that notion of the rude child, right? Which you can't get away from. So if you're yelling as a child because you're a little bit escalated or frustrated, you're being rude. If you don't greet the guests, you're also being rude. And then we have to remember that if you're a five-year-old, you're actually still learning what it is to not be rude and to use etiquette. And if you take too much of their attention, you're also being rude. So we tend to give these general labels. We tend to have certain expectations based on what We think we want our children, our clients, intent to be. And we're always sort of translating those things. And what we're saying here is take it at face value, see what's happening, and understand that it's a teachable moment, right? So I can speak as a parent myself and as a professional, that whole rudeness assignation is very difficult because you're really making an attribution at that point in time that's an overgeneralization. And if you're not careful in your own mind, you can run with that socially speaking people can run with that too oh that child was rude oh that child didn't say hi well especially with some of the clients that we work with, some of the kiddos we work with, some of those basic parameters socially are still being picked up for any five-year-old. The idea that I might be socially interested, but now I'm so interested that I'm actually a little bit overwhelmed by it, so I'm withdrawing. So you're not, in fact, being rude. I mention that only because I think there's a lot to learn from that maybe in a future episode in terms of those designations or attributions we make that may or may not affect our kids, but it certainly affects our internal state and our frustration and how we react to our kids. Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 20:02

Definitely. So moving on to the third step, baseline being kind of the baseline step and then the first step being the triggering event or what gets the individual to start to escalate. Then we've got the escalation as we're kind of moving up the mountain there. The third is going to be the climax or the peak, the top of that mountain. So you've summited and now you're at the top of that mountain. At this point, It's basically just safety and space. If those two can be done at the same time, great. If not, if you need to be next to your child, if they're banging their head or something, then maybe you won't be giving them space. But you're trying to intervene with as little energy being added to the situation. And at this point, it's just safety. It's like this wave is already peaked, so it's going to be crashing at some point. We're just trying to ride this wave as far as we can and not get it any higher. We just want to try to minimize the damage. Again, let's say the issue is overdoing homework. At this point, I guarantee you the homework's not going to get done. Our goal is how do we not have the vase broken? How do we not have the homework ripped up? How do we not have the computer slammed and things like that? At this point, when we're at the maximum, so they've been escalated and they're continuing to escalate, continuing to escalate. At this point, I'm going to prioritize safety. I'll tell you, as somebody who's been in the field a long time, I Having coffee spilled on you, scissors thrown at you, being stabbed with random scissors, pens, things like that doesn't feel good. So really start to be hypervigilant. I'm pretty hypervigilant when individuals are really escalated because it's not so much that an individual's like, I'm going to attack you with the scissors, but it might just be a five-year-old knocking everything off the table and your coffee happened to be there and now you had coffee spilled on you and that's terrible and uncomfortable. And it's going to cause you to escalate more, which is going to cause the client to escalate more, your child to escalate more. So when they're at maximum escalation, the climax, when they're really, really, really worked up, at this point, even more or less is more giving space and just giving the individual whatever they need to try to help them calm down. And when I say that, I don't mean if they're tantruming about the iPad, give them the iPad to help them calm down. But give them space, give them water, give them a pillow, whatever you can do to try to minimize the escalation because behavioral strategies are going to take a backseat to safety at some point. If a kid's running into the street, I don't really care if they're using their words or if they did their homework. That's a serious issue if a kid's about to jump off the house, like the grenade example, right? If somebody has an open grenade, I'm going to be a lot more attentive. So you want to be really attentive and give the individual the time, space and wherewithal to be able to start their de-escalation process as safely as possible.

SPEAKER_00: 22:49

So in those moments of withdrawal, for example, if your child, your client is prone to throwing things, that's a good moment to start. getting things out of close proximity, especially sharp or breakable things. And knowing that you're doing so, again, calmly, systematically, not bringing a lot of attention to it, really still trying to acknowledge the client or the child as far as what they might be feeling and removing that energy, but also clearing the space.

SPEAKER_02: 23:17

Yes, and you bring up withdrawal too. We do have clients, usually older clients, that during the withdrawal will either threaten or attempt suicide. So it is always important during withdrawal. Just because somebody's quiet doesn't mean that everything's okay. Citing Proact here, but the three most common causes of death in common care facilities are hanging, overdoses, and cutting. And what's the similarity there? Silent. They don't make noise, right? So just being aware of that as well, just because somebody's calm and withdrawing doesn't mean that everything's okay. So a level of attention, again, not necessarily intervention, but attention is going to be paramount in these situations to try to help these individuals be as safe as possible because they may make decisions because, remember, they don't have as much blood in their prefrontal cortex, so their decision-making, rationalization, cognition center of their brain is not working. They may do things that they otherwise wouldn't have done And so making sure that we're observing and we're helping these individuals de-escalate in as safely of a manner as possible.

SPEAKER_00: 24:25

I think it's important to recognize the idea of a basic, frustrated response as the father of a toddler right now. That doesn't want to sleep. You know, a lot of times we look at... And we assign intent, right? So you're throwing objects during your escalation in order to damage me or to hurt me or to damage those objects. Exactly. But really, it's a basic, frustrated response. I see my toddler go through it all the time. She's trying to do a puzzle. She gets a little frustrated. fusses and grunts and she swipes it off to the side. She's not really trying to harm anything as much as in her own mode of escalation, she's kind of saying, get the stupid thing out of my face. I'm upset about the fact that I can't manage it well. So I think it's good to sort of pare down and remind that we're all capable of these behaviors and really empathize in that moment. What would I want somebody to be doing for me if, in fact, I was in that state of mind? And there's so many attributions that get made in those moments because for better or for worse, our authoritarian selves, we want our students, our clients, our kids, as parents, to do exactly what we think is best for them. And they don't always agree with that. So in those moments, we make those designations. And I think we have to consider and empathize in saying, and really step back and say, well, I may not want them to be doing that. They want to do that. Now, is that something dangerous or detrimental? And if it isn't, then the question that I've been asking myself as a parent is, why not then? Why not? Why can't I allow her to go ahead and toss her puzzle pieces a little bit? OK, they're going to break. OK, that's the worst that can happen. Let's let that play out, knowing that if I try to stop her in that moment, I'm not allowing her to express her frustration. And I'm also now engaging. I'm also adding energy to the situation. So sort of taking this back to less of a crisis situation, at least in my perspective, maybe not for my toddler. But in that moment, there's a lot to learn about emotionally for oneself too, right? So we think about de-escalation as a means of stopping the crisis or avoiding somebody from getting hurt or things from getting damaged. And yes, that's all true. But we seldom talk about it from the learning piece because there's little learning to be had if we escalate or get into crisis mode. But in that moment, there's a lot of self-recognition to be had in terms of not just the person who's helping, but the person going through the escalation and understanding one's emotions, understanding how that feels, and then having some experiential outcome to say, when I did this, this and this prevailed. When I did the other, this and this prevailed. I think there's a lot of discriminative learning to be had there, and that's not something that we can always talk about because we're always so focused on making the tantrum stop, making the crying stop. And again, that's not... That's definitely within reason, but maybe if we stop and empathize a little bit more or stop and think about the importance of the emotions that are being managed and the learning that is happening in terms of that self-regulation, we can take a different approach to this as well.

SPEAKER_02: 27:31

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think in the puzzle example with your daughter, the more times she knocks it over and you pick it up, the more likely you are to attribute that as, oh, now she's being like, screw you, dad. Like, go pick up those pieces again, right? It's going to be more and more frustrating, but it's back to that. We judge others by their behavior and us by our intent. We don't know what their intent is. So we're almost just going to put our frustration. The more frustrated we get, the more likely we are to misjudge their intent because our blood and our peripheral is going to be not where it needs to be. So in that sense,

SPEAKER_00: 28:06

you're right. You're absolutely right. What are you doing? You're going to break the puzzle. Or I just picked it up three times. Or you're making a mess. Yes, those things are certainly true. A mess is probably being made. Yes, there's a risk of breaking the puzzle. But if I'm to intervene and try to stop and add energy, then I'm actually walking right into that mess or that further risk of those puzzle pieces being broken. If I can sit back and do some acknowledgement, which I've been getting better at. Again, I can preach this stuff all day. I still have to father my 22-month-old. But the idea that, oh, mama, that made you frustrated. Oh, we can try the puzzle again. Okay. I'll leave it for now. It's okay. Oh, you threw it. Okay, it's over there now. We're going to have to pick it up later. It's almost a lot of matter-of-fact mapping, right? I'm linguistically letting her know I'm here for you. I'm staying calm. I understand and acknowledge what you're going through. Now, a lot of people would think I'm crazy for saying that, right? You're not disciplining your child. Well, discipline takes sort of a funny traditional stance in terms of we have to be authoritarian. We have to make this undesired decision. behavior stop immediately. And what you're talking about here is going to be a much more gradual step-by-step process.

SPEAKER_02: 29:19

Absolutely. And it goes back to the Halloween costume example that maybe you went to Lakeshore. You went to a place to get her the puzzle, right? So you're like, all right, we're going to learn puzzles. And you come home all excited. And then she knocks it over. And then that's now your expectations are being violated. And that's what's going to cause increased frustration. Not even necessarily what she's doing, but the fact that your expectations are being violated Bye. Bye. Bye. And she probably doesn't care about that. But now because your expectations of what the completed product are going to look like are no longer sustainable or they're no longer possible, now you're going to get more frustrated, right? So notice how a lot of it, again, comes back to your frustrations of that whole situation, not even the kids' behavior. So, again, I think it's always important that we reflect back on ourselves in those situations because oftentimes we can make it so much worse. You know, she destroys that. Well, fine, now you won't even see what that puzzle looks like. well, is that going to help that situation anymore? And we're getting mad at the kid for doing the same thing that we're now doing.

SPEAKER_00: 30:29

This reminds me of a recent incident with an early intervention situation where I walked in to observe a session, and there was certainly a battle for cleaning up a bin of toys that had been spilled over. So we were able to resolve it. I won't get into that. But then when I was able to reflect back with the staff about this, I said, so what happened? How did this start? And how did the battle over over... please help me clean up, and if you don't help clean up, I'm going to withdraw. Again, sort of an erroneously applied traditional measure here, in my opinion. But whatever, it led to a bit of an escalation, and I proceeded to learn from the staff that they had handed this two-year-old a bin, a plastic bin, full of toys. And the two-year-old proceeded to take those toys out of that bin and just spill it all over the floor, right? Only to spite the people around them, right? That's the only reason they did it. So that's what happened to the adults in that situation. What are you doing? You're making a mess, right? Where the real question in that sense from a developmental perspective is if you hand a two-year-old a bin full of something, they're going to spill it. And they're usually going to spill it pouring it over toward them. So if it's water, they're going to get completely wet. But that's what two-year-olds do. And I think a lot of times if we're not careful, we might mistake in those very, very common behaviors that any child at any given age is going to do as part of their developmental learning progression. But you're right. As the adults now, it's a mess. It was a loud crashing sound. You're going to break those toys. So now instead of allowing you to explore those toys and clean them up Little by little, as you look at them, now I'm creating this demand, and now we're adding energy, and now we might have an escalation, which we're going to maybe attribute to some sort of diagnostic label when, in fact, we've got a very, very typical situation happening here. So the moral of the story there is it's kind of like if you give a mouse a cookie, if you give a two-year-old a bin full of toys, they're going to spill it. And if, as the adult... You get upset about that, it's kind of on you. So my resolution there for the staff was, go ahead and give her the bin. Have fewer toys in that bin. and just be ready to address the fact that it's going to get spilled. So when they're on the floor, explore the toys one by one. As she denies that toy, you just put that toy back in the bin, and you're modeling the cleanup all the same. But our authoritarian selves won't allow for that sometimes. We want to resolve the issue. And again, we make a lot of attributions that end up being false.

SPEAKER_02: 33:05

So before we change their behavior, we need to change our expectations is kind of what you're saying in that we would call an RBT, the staff. So yes, the child will change their cleaning up behavior, But before that happens, we need to change our expectations of what handing them a bin with toys is going to end up with, so we can teach that.

SPEAKER_00: 33:25

Yeah, you're right. With the attributions there, for anything, right? The idea that until the intent is clearly assaultive, any sort of behavior that may seem like an escalation, we need to sort of limit ourselves from making any sort of overgeneralizations or interpretations, and just stick to observing, acknowledging, and trying to remove energy from that situation.

SPEAKER_02: 33:46

So before I move from that crisis or peak, Mike, anything you wanted to add before I move to de-escalation? Let's keep moving, sir. All right. So now we made it all the way up the mountain. And the mountain is now we're going to start going down the mountain. And I really want to highlight that analogy because when you're at the top of the mountain... And you take two steps down, right? You're starting your traverse back down the mountain. That's still a long way to go, but you're going down. So that is a de-escalation. So often when I talk to staff or parents about, tell me what the de-escalation looks like. Oh, so they went back to sitting down and doing their homework. That's the end of de-escalation. There's a lot of stuff that happened between them being maximum mad and them doing their homework. And that's all of the de-escalation, right? You made it all the way to the top of the mountain. You got to All the way back down. And that's the de-escalation. So the de-escalation is going to be a lot of behaviors that you saw during escalation. But think about it. I want you to plot these behaviors on a mountain. And if it's more than the last behavior, then it's escalation. If it's less than the last behavior, then it's de-escalation. So think about cussing, right? Cussing is escalation if I was sitting there quietly a second ago and now I'm cussing at you. But cussing is de-escalation if before cussing I was throwing things and hitting at you and trying to run around and stab you with a knife. And now I'm not doing that, but I'm cussing. So the same behavior, and this was very enlightening for one of the parents in my parent groups, to show that the same behavior can be both escalation and de-escalation just based on what happened before it. So I want you to think trend, not level. Think about what happened before the behavior and the behavior they're doing now, is it better or worse than the behavior that happened before? So cussing could be de-escalation. Maybe a kid's going from hitting you to hitting the wall. And a parent might freak out, why are you hitting the wall? Well, a second ago, they were trying to hit you. So hitting the wall is actually a de-escalation. Maybe they've gone from hitting the wall to cussing. Maybe they've gone from cussing to withdrawal. These are all de-escalation. So it's really important to understand, I want to highlight, that de-escalation doesn't mean the desired behavior starts happening. There's probably going to be a whole lot of undesired behaviors during de-escalation. But if they're slightly less undesired, as Michael talked about with differential reinforcement, we're looking at the magnitude, if it's slightly less undesired than the behavior that happened before it, let's acknowledge that and keep it on that same trajectory. So we only have one peak and we don't have a whole mountain range of that kid starting to calm down and that kid escalating and starting to calm down and escalating and starting to calm down and escalating. So before I move on, let me pass it to you, Mike, and see if there's anything you wanted to add there.

SPEAKER_00: 36:27

So from that perspective, just to clarify, and this is really hard for parents and professionals alike because we have a general bin or category of inappropriate or undesired or unacceptable behavior. And what you're saying, to kind of use a loose example here, is you've got a child or a student literally physically assaulting you. You have that same student in a different situation. Now punching their desk or throwing things about the room away from you, and you get that same child in a different circumstance telling you to F off repeatedly. In that progression there, that F off repeatedly is actually a desired response in that sense. But we would quickly... assign it as undesired and might end up responding to it, if not reacting to it, in an escalated sense ourselves, or with some level of punishment. I think of, you know, have a long career and worked in all sorts of settings, and I would say that all three of those behaviors might be classified under the same level of consequence, meaning you're going to lose something, you're going to lose some access, you're going to be demoted on your points system, but what we're saying here is that would be incorrect.

SPEAKER_02: 37:37

Absolutely. Yeah, we don't want somebody to Yeah, that's not... and where the behavior is at now. Again, it's either going up or going down. You're either hiking up the mountain or down the mountain. Where is the behavior compared to what was happening ahead of time?

SPEAKER_00: 38:07

And by no means are we saying ripping paper or being told to F off is desired behavior. But what we're saying is comparatively, we have to look at it in contrast to the other undesired behaviors that may have been occurring. And that's going to help us determine, are we on the way up or are we on the way down this hill toward now de-escalation?

SPEAKER_02: 38:27

Exactly, right? It's all relative. If I buy my girlfriend flowers twice this week, is that good or bad? Well, it depends on how many times I bought it last week, right? If I bought it five times, she might be like, where the heck's the other three? If I bought it one time, it might be like, that's awesome. So it's all compared to what's happening prior. Now, I want to talk about the response, like you mentioned earlier, and how our responses affect that situation. Because oftentimes we intervene later because we don't observe the triggering event. We observe the escalation, right? So the kids do whatever they want. they're doing, they get triggered. We don't notice that. They start yelling and screaming or crying and how much our behavior is affected by that. So because we interject later, our bell curve is going to be skewed to the right compared to their bell curve. So what happens, I wish I had the visual. Hopefully we'll get on YouTube and I can present these visuals. I'll also see a proact. But as the individual is actually starting to de-escalate, We're escalating because our bell curve started after their bell curve. So we're much more likely to take that kid saying F you because we're starting to escalate as, oh, that kid's really starting to escalate. And now we're going to intervene. We're going to say, what do you mean F you? F you too. And then now we're causing the behavior to escalate. Now we're back at the mountain range, right? Because the kid was actually starting to calm down. And not that we would cuss back, but I've seen this happen countless times with parents. They cuss back or they make the situation worse. Now we're back at the mountain range instead of the mountain because the kid's starting to calm down. The parent does something that triggers the kid and now they're back escalated again. So it's really, really important that we look at our behavior during de-escalation because Typically, the less we do, the more that individual is going to be able to come down that mountain. But we can sure as heck get them to escalate right back up that mountain if we respond wrongly, if we respond with some incorrect strategies. Before I get into some of the incorrect strategies, anything you wanted to add, Mike? Nope. Okay. So some things that we really want to avoid when an individual is de-escalating. Number one, talking about consequences. So, so often I'll see a kid start to de-escalate. They're still really escalated, but they're starting to deescalate. They're like, I didn't lose my video games, did I? And the parent's like, well, of course, you just hit your sister. Of course, you lost your video games. And then the kid's going to escalate again. Why not, right? They've already lost their reinforcer or things like that. So this isn't when you want to talk about consequences. This isn't where you want to highlight the behaviors that they did wrong. Again, a lot of times parents, why did you hit your sister? Why did you cuss at me? You know you shouldn't cuss at me. Again, there's not enough blood in their prefrontal cortex. They're starting to get some blood back. But if we start to address everything now, they're going to escalate and the blood's going to leave again. We got to get more blood back in the prefrontal cortex. So we're not going to talk about all of the behaviors that they did wrong or what they should have done yet. We're not going to talk about consequences. In my professional experience, what I typically say is, You know what? I'm not ready to talk about that yet. We'll talk about that when I'm ready. Some kids know that that means that they've lost it, but you do as much as you can. I really try to avoid you statements. I try to avoid when you're calm, we'll talk about it because then the kid will be like, I'm calm. I'm calm. Did I lose my video games? I'm calm. I'm calm. So that's why he's I statements when I'm calm, we'll talk about it. So we're avoiding talking about that. And we also want to avoid blaming or name calling. I see this happen a lot with parents too. Why do you always do this? You know, you're not going to Get out of doing homework. You have to do homework. You want to work at McDonald's forever? Nothing wrong with McDonald's. But this, again, isn't the time to do that. And lastly, forcing an apology. So often I'll see parents try to force an apology when somebody's already escalated. And one of two things is going to happen. Either the kid's not going to do it and then they're going to escalate back up. So you just kind of shot yourself in the foot there. Or the kid does it, but if they do it, then they didn't mean it because they would have done it independently if they meant it. So either they're going to give an apology that they don't mean or the apology is going to cause them to escalate. So those are just four or five things that I really recommend doing during the de-escalation or to avoid doing, avoid blaming, avoid recapping the incident that just happened right now as the individual starting to de-escalate. Try not to force an apology. don't blame the individual, and don't talk about consequences.

SPEAKER_00: 42:59

So again, as you talk about these things, we're able to... more clearly delineate what not to do, and it's much more difficult to delineate what you should be doing actively. But we covered that already, which is you're acknowledging and you're monitoring. You're watching. You're moving about. You're offering declaratives. You're offering support. And I'm going to say you're empathizing. You're trying to understand in that moment, why is my child doing this? Why do they feel that way? Now, I might feel like the homework is easy, and you could have been done with it already, and I'm offering you this or that reinforcement, but but clearly that's likely not what they are feeling, right? So in that sense, we have to consider, you know, it's almost like the paranoid schizophrenic. We may not see the men in the black cats that are chasing them, but they do. They do see those people. So your child is, you know, whether we see it as valid or not, whether it's your child, individual, an adult that's in this crisis mode, I think that sitting back and monitoring, acknowledging, and then actively trying to empathize or think for oneself, why is this so important to that individual? Yes, it may not... ring or resonate with me. But it's not about me in this moment. It's about why is this making them feel the way they're feeling. And I like the point you make, which I think is something that we like to tell parents or professionals or advise on what to do. But this is one of those moments where saying, don't do that, is super important. Don't be threatening with consequences. Don't be talking about what the child always does. And you're always doing this. Because at that point, then, now, you're on your escalation cycle. And all you're doing is adding energy. And it's not going to work. Now, you said something very important that I want to offer some clarification for. And I like the way you discussed it. Because in that moment, that child might know the consequences. And they're asking you, did I lose that? Did I lose the other? And you're advising, instead of even acknowledging that, you're putting that to later. You're saying, you know what? We're not ready to talk about that. As a parent, you might want to be like, that's right, you lost that, right? You little twerp. I'm very upset. But if you do that, you're going to feed back into the escalation. Now, one thing that I would advise in that moment, feel good about the fact that you must have implemented this system consistently because if your child knows what they've already lost, then you've done it consistently. So breathe easy in that moment and feel good about the fact that not that the behavior's happening and that you're dealing with a tantrum, but more importantly, that you probably have a consistent implementation of your behavior management system and then do like Dan would do and just say, you know what, we'll talk about that in a minute. I'm not ready to talk about that.

SPEAKER_02: 45:42

Yeah, and because if you have been consistent, then you don't need to give the response because the child already knows what the answer is. If you give a response, then maybe that child will show that, well, maybe sometimes mom does take the video games or dad does take the video games and sometimes they don't. So as long as you're consistent, you don't have to respond in that moment, just like Mike mentioned. I do want to talk about one do. The big do during differential reinforcement, or I'm sorry, the big do during the de-escalation is differential reinforcement. We're always trying to find something we can reinforce you know think about that that person going down the mountain they're like well I can't I don't think I can get down the mountain soon as they start to take some steps oh good job even though it looks you know it's eight miles down that mountain oh you're getting closer you're getting closer you're getting closer that's what you're doing for your kids I'm not saying that your kids like F you I hate you and you're like hey thank you for saying F you you hate me no but you're reinforcing something hey thank you for the quiet hands thank you for sitting down whatever they're doing that's better than what they were doing two minutes ago, that's what you're going to reinforce. And it could even be the absence of some behaviors, what they're doing instead of that. So while you're not saying thank you for cussing at me, again, find something that you can reinforce, even if it's a deep breath. That's usually the one I start with because eventually somebody's going to have to breathe. Hey, nice deep breath. And sometimes kids, when they are really upset, they don't want to do something that'll please me. So you'll see them try to hold their breath, but eventually they have to breathe. So finding some form of different reinforcement something that you can reinforce as they start to calm down more and more reinforcement until they get to a level where there's enough oxygen in their brain that maybe you can represent the task but again we're not representing the task until there's enough blood in their prefrontal cortex for them to process the task so do differentially reinforcement do differentially reinforce don't talk about consequences force an apology discuss the incident that just happened or get frustrated and blame the individual a

SPEAKER_00: 47:40

couple of things. Hopefully I can remember both of them because you just made me think of a couple of good points here. Hopefully they're good points. Representing the task. A lot of us professionally or as parents, we are able to successfully help our kids de-escalate and it might be in our minds that the only way to really get the victory is to represent that homework and get it done. But in fact, the victory comes in learning to de-escalate. It could be that that day's homework is done. I mean, lost. In other words, it could be that. So as a parent, as a professional, you might have to be ready to learn that the de-escalation has occurred, come back and then accept the no as a reasonable answer to that representation of the task.

SPEAKER_02: 48:26

Sure. Some days, you know, maybe I got a work task I want you to work on and I'm all excited and you're sick. Well, I'm going to have to accept that you're not coming to work that day. That is what it is. I can try to force it. It's not going to make you any less sick and more cooperative.

SPEAKER_00: 48:41

The other thing that I want to mention, it's hopefully the first time I've mentioned it on the show, but something else that we'll talk about a lot in the future with regard to breathing is this idea of... the physiologic sigh, and you just kind of alluded to that, right? So something good to look out for for our kids, something good for us to think about in terms of keeping that distress response at bay, all right? And it goes like this. It's pretty simple. Two quick inhales through the nose, one prolonged exhale through the mouth. So think about somebody that just did a lot of crying, and all of a sudden they go... That's the physiologic side. activates your parasympathetic response, meaning it's able to start you back down that hill after a moment of distress. And I presume that it's also a good way to keep yourself from dipping over into distress. So it's one thing that I want to talk more about in the future here on the podcast, this idea of self-regulation. We talk a lot about breathing in our field. I think I've alluded to the fact that I think a lot of the breathing we talk about, we've been doing incorrectly. But something that I want to present now for parents more than anything, is that idea of a physiologic sigh. Look it up. Google it. You'll find plenty of information. But again, it's akin to somebody who's been crying for a long time and you hear that sigh. Listen out for that with your kids. That's a sign for you that they might be on that downhill slope now. And it's also something that you can do voluntarily in order to keep yourself from matching that escalation response. So just one more time.

UNKNOWN: 50:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 50:23

There it is. The physiologic side. Keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_02: 50:27

All right. So that's de-escalation. We'll get into the fifth part here real quick, the post-crisis depression. So think about the backside of the mountain actually goes into a little bit of a crater. And that's the post-crisis depression. This is where an individual has exhibited so much energy for so long that they're Fatigue. They're legitimately tired. I mean, every behavior will come to an end. This is a really important understanding. A lot of times parents will give in because they don't want to deal with the behavior. It seems like it's never ending, right? Your kid's crying at Target. It feels like your kid's never going to stop crying at Target, and people are never going to stop looking at you. Every behavior that's ever happened will come to an end. Even look at boxers or UFC fighters. They go three, five-minute rounds because they get tired. We're talking about kids here. We're not talking about professionally trained fighters. They're going to get tired. That being stated, I'm sure you as a father of a 22-month-old, me with 20 years in the field, there have been many a times where I'm like, all right, I'm going to ignore this kid and they'll be done in 10 minutes. Meanwhile, 45 minutes later, they're still crying. And I'm like, whoa, that's impressive. But that behavior came to an end as did every other behavior. And the post-crisis depression is actually when an individual is fatigued or has less energy than they would. So some behaviors that you'll see from individuals with post-crisis depression is falling asleep, more withdrawal, sometimes over-affection where they'll come and try to hug you and try to make it right or you still love me or you're not mad at me or things like that. You might see depressive statements or I'm just a bad boy or I can't control math or I suck at math or I'm stupid or stuff like that. You'll hear some self-disparaging remarks. That's the post-crisis depression, when an individual has less energy than they would at baseline.

SPEAKER_00: 52:16

Quick question about that because I know that one thing that's challenging, behaviorally speaking, from looking at a contingency of behavior and then consequence, and it's difficult experientially for a lot of our parents, during that Post-crisis depression, literally a dip below baseline now, right? Yep. You mentioned over-affection, right? So it could be very, very easy for a parent who's still a little bit escalated themselves in dealing with this to not... pay into that, to not play into that affection and to be like, no, not right now because I'm upset at you.

SPEAKER_02: 52:50

I'm sure we had some, we were complicit in that in ABA in the refrigerator parenting, right? Well, no, you can't talk to them yet. So

SPEAKER_00: 52:58

I'm going to say something. I'm going to say that's a perfect time

SPEAKER_02: 53:00

from

SPEAKER_00: 53:01

a parenting perspective to go ahead and embrace your child and say, wow, I'm glad you're feeling better. You know what? I love you too. You know what? That was rough. I agree. That was rough for you. It was rough for me. Now that can be tough. I can say that professionally right now And then even for my 22 month old right now, you know, she's being a little bit fussy. That's frustrating. The last thing you want to do is be affectionate to your child, towards your child. But we're saying here, you know, sort of going against maybe years and years of traditional ABA and the extinction model. No, this is the time to differentially reinforce that behavior. Absolutely. Because now you're saying what you're reinforcing isn't the tantrum. It's the de-escalation.

SPEAKER_02: 53:42

At the end of the day, they're still an individual, right? And they still are seeking some sort of empathy and sympathy, and it doesn't mean that you're going to get rid of the homework assignment, but you can still say, hey, I love you, and we're going to get through this together, and I'm here to help you. Some things, the same things in post-crisis depression to avoid are the same things that were in de-escalation. Not going to try to force an apology, not going to discuss the incident. This is a big one that I see a lot, a big issue for parents and kids that one or the other will be over the incident faster and that will create an issue. Sometimes it's the parent and they're over the issue and the kid's not over and the parent will want to go explain. We need to talk about what we're going to do and how next time I give you homework, what you need to do differently. Sometimes it'll be the kid. The kid will be over it and the kid will come be like, hey, mom. And the mom will be, I'm not ready to talk to you. And the kid will be like, what's going on? So sometimes that's incongruent. But again, we're not going to discuss that during post-crisis depression. We're not going to force an apology. We're not going to talk about consequences. Again, this is where an individual is physically fatigued. they're not ready to talk about that. We pass it to you and then I will finish up this podcast talking about when we do talk about these things.

SPEAKER_00: 54:54

So... In essence, you're also not expecting them to get right back to the homework. Again, just to reiterate that, in this post-crisis depression, this is really the soothing and work yourself back up moment.

SPEAKER_02: 55:04

Sure. If you're a boxer and you just fought 12 rounds and you're fatigued, you're not getting a step right back in the ring. You've got to build your energy bar back up.

SPEAKER_00: 55:13

And your manager shouldn't be expecting you to do that either. In fact, they should be soothing you. Again, really driving home that point that we may not be ready to deal with that over-affection, but it's a really good time. I'm going to add one more thing. Because you keep talking about the forced apology, which I think is a super important topic. This might be a good time for you to model your own condolences or saying, I'm really sorry that happened. That's tough for both of us, right? So I think that's a really good point that maybe we'll talk about in a later episode. But the forced apology, pretty useless.

SPEAKER_02: 55:44

Pretty useless. But again, it's that authoritarian thing. I've been wronged as the parent. We don't care that the kid might have been wronged because in ABA, right, behavior is a product of the environment. So if they escalate, We wronged them by setting up the environment incorrectly. We don't care about that. We've been wronged because you exposed me to this crying or ripped up my homework or threw my puzzle away. So I need an apology. The

SPEAKER_00: 56:05

authoritarian. That's really interesting the way you just said that. I think something else we can think about. So behavior is a part of the environment. But when the behavior emitted is undesired, there's no way that was part of the environment. That's just on the emitter of the behavior, right? Exactly. Exactly. We got to think about that. All right.

SPEAKER_02: 56:23

So the thing I'll finish up... chatting about is when to discuss the behavior so i get this all the time while parents are like you just spent 45 minutes telling me i can't address the behavior i need to address the behavior the child needs to know that they're wrong well the first thing i'll say is do they behavior is a product of the environment so it's really just on us to change the environment if we change the environment the behavior will follow so really we don't need to especially with three, four, five-year-olds, six-year-olds, we don't need to sit down and have a diatribe about what went wrong and how they need to behave differently. We can just set up a different environment. That being stated, I'm not saying that there's no value in debriefing a situation. So if you're going to debrief it, number one, make sure that the individual is fully at baseline. Everybody is fully at baseline. Otherwise, it turns into a you did this and you did this and you did that and I feel this way and you need to do this differently and it becomes very authoritarian. So make sure that everyone's at base because that's when cognition is highest. We need as much blood in the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus as possible. If you want them to remember what you're talking about, wait until it's at baseline. Also, let all parties speak because so often, again, I have my teenage parents say, well, they never want to go over the incident. Well, why? Because every time you go over it, it's just everything they did wrong and you as a parent did nothing wrong. Let everybody speak because like Mike said, they're the one that had the behavior that escalated. We should probably solicit their perspective. Let everybody speak, do so in an empowering fashion, and then figure out what you're going to do differently, right? It's hindsight. It's 2020, that Einstein, right? Like, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. That repeating the same course of action and expecting a different result is insanity. So often, I'll steal a line from Mike, that parents will say, every time my kid does something, what usually precedes that, Mike? My kid always does

SPEAKER_00: 58:15

this. Yeah, my kid always does this. Well, that means that... you're probably, as the parent, as the professional, always doing something the same way. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 58:23

You're preceding it, right? So if your child is always throwing a tantrum with homework, we need to proactively change up how we're presenting the homework. And that's what the debrief is good for, is we're going to figure out how we can solicit everyone's input and figure out how we're going to change it. And that's only going to be done... Well, it can be done anytime, but it's only going to be effective if it's done at baseline, when the individual has as much cognition... Or if they've consumed Magic Mine, could be another time to... to do the debriefing because they will be in the best neurological state. But that's the most important part of the debriefing is I would say at least seven times out of 10, probably closer to nine times out of 10, it doesn't even need to be done. And if it is going to be done, make sure you utilize those guidelines. Let me pass

SPEAKER_00: 59:10

it to you. In terms of the debriefing too, I think one final point here as we reach the end of our time, I think that parents oftentimes, professionals oftentimes expect that during that debriefing, that child, that client is now going to speak Exactly what we expect them to do. So I would just advise that one has to be ready to get some new ideas to expect that person who was just in crisis to reiterate the very same things they were saying during crisis. It doesn't mean that their perspective or mindset has changed, but it means that they're now in a more. amenable state to be able to discuss that. So please don't go into that debriefing thinking that now you're going to be able to enforce every single rule you came up with. In fact, it's a really good time, I would say, to now learn some new rules that are going to be amenable and acceptable, agreeable for both parties and the circumstance such that now you really arrive at a behavior plan that has been constructed by both parties.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:08

Yes. Collaboration, right? Collaborative and compassionate. We really want to focus on that. And empowering, empowering. The debriefing in a way that the individual feels empowered because they're probably not happy about the way that they... I don't know many people that are like, yeah, you know what? I just escalated and I lost my cool for an hour. I feel good about that. If your four-year-olds could say that, they would probably not feel happy about the way that they responded in that situation. So trying to bring them up rather than beat them down even further so that we can find a constructive way to collaboratively work on it or... conquer that, whatever that hill is, that mountain to them the next time that it's presented.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:49

So soothe versus punish. Absolutely. Edify versus continually remind what they did incorrectly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:56

All right, so I'm going to make one last statement here. I'm going to make a quick call for... our listeners here to go at us and send us in some anecdotes. Tell us a little bit about some of the behavioral situations that you're encountering. Now, as a disclaimer and a caveat here, we can't claim to analyze those because we're not observing them directly. But if you send us some good descriptions, we can always give more specific suggestions as to what you might do in response to those behaviors. So we're putting a general call out here for all our listeners. Please hit us up on Facebook. Give us a call. Send us an email. Let us know about some of these more challenging behaviors that you're dealing with such that we can have a little bit more content to decipher and to discuss here on ABA on Tap.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:44

And that'll lead us greatly to behavioral prescriptions in the near future, so stay tuned for that. That'll be our next episode. That was a great, great hour. Great way to wrap it up. Any particular reason you feel like you stayed so sharp for that entire hour, Mike?

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:58

I felt a little bit magical in my mind, I would say. Hopefully, we'll be coming back next season with a new sponsorship partner. We're excited about this opportunity. It's been a really, really good run over the last three episodes. The first two parts on the escalation cycle and now looking at about resolution and de-escalation. Really, really good to have everybody on board. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening and

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:26

always analyze responsibly. Cheers, brother.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:31

ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.