Rethinking Maladaptive Behavior

As ABA professionals, we are often called upon to reduce the occurrence of so-called 'maladaptive' behaviors. Terms like protest, tantrum, elopement or escape are all too common though they don't provide clean description of the behavior or its function. Often times, what we mean is that a child or client spent a certain amount of time crying, for example, and suddenly we run the risk of missing the adaptive value of an instinctive and reflexive behavior. While we don't want our clients to 'cry' extensively, we can't simply cite the emission of such behavior as undesired or lacking value. In this episode, Dan and Mike explore the premise of understanding the full function of such behaviors historically deemed for reduction only. In other words, what might be the communicative value of leaving the designated area or crying? While  a solely adult-directed, more traditional  approach to ABA intervention might see interference, the idea presented here is more about seeing the shift in motivating operations present in such occurrences of behavior, and re-evaluating our procedures in response.

Sit back back, behave 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: 2:42

All right. Welcome back to ABA on Tap. I am Mike Rubio, along with your gracious co-host, Dan Lowry. Dan, how you doing?

SPEAKER_02: 2:52

I'm doing well, man. How you doing? Fresh off the old COVID tip.

SPEAKER_00: 2:56

Oh, man, that's a good question. So you've avoided, you've successfully avoided this now for over two years. Yeah, you better knock on something quick. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:06

I got this microphone nice and desanitized or sanitized

SPEAKER_00: 3:11

for me. I think it's a good question. Can you get it from the microphone? I don't even know.

SPEAKER_02: 3:15

And do I want it sanitized or desanitized?

SPEAKER_00: 3:17

So we're recording. This is somewhere close to mid-August here, 2022. Dan's alluding to my mid-July experience. I did the whole family plan. So five for the price of one. Nice, nice. Yes. COVID was an experience. I'm glad to say I've had it. I'm glad to say that we all came out unscathed. And I guess I'm feeling a little bit of maybe some false freedom right now, right? I feel like I can't get it or give it, at least for the next 90 days or so. Again, not sure what the current science says or what the current politics say. Anyway, I digress. What we do want to talk about today, though, is this idea of, I guess... in some circles, noncompliance, or much more commonly referred to as maladaptive behavior. And I think what Mr. Dan is going to start us off with here is a really good argument about why we should reconsider the notion of maladaptive behavior, what other function it actually serves, which I think is going to be a very interesting conversation, and then more importantly, should we just Throw the idea out altogether. The baby out with the bathwater. Should we be talking about different phrasing, a greater focus on not reducing said maladaptive behavior, but better yet... enacting so-called replacement behaviors. So hopefully I did that introduction a little bit of justice. Mr. Dan, I'll pass it right over to you to get us started.

SPEAKER_02: 4:48

You did. And I do just want to put a quick disclaimer that nothing that we suggest in this podcast will be resulting about throwing your baby out. That's not the solution that we're going to have in this podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 4:59

Especially not with the bathwater. All right. We got that clear. That's true. Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_02: 5:05

So we want to talk about this concept of maladaptive behaviors because ABA historically has been so focused Thank you. We're focusing on the adaptive behaviors. We don't really need to focus on the maladaptive behaviors. But let's talk just a little bit about that concept of maladaptive first, because I think we're going to be, in the next couple weeks, delving into some language that we talk about and some definitions, neurotypical, things like that, and things that are commonly used. They create an idea. But language is really powerful. So let's talk about this concept of maladaptive behaviors, because from the kid's perspective... Crying might be pretty freaking adaptive. In fact, it's so adaptive that it's actually a phylogenically transmitted behavior. It's not even ontogenically learned. It's phylogenic, right? Kids are pre-programmed to cry. So that's pretty darn adaptive.

SPEAKER_00: 6:10

It's reflexive. It's instinctive as opposed to maladaptive. That's an excellent point.

SPEAKER_02: 6:15

Yeah, absolutely. So I think we need to really... call a spade a spade here. What are we talking about when we're talking about maladaptive behaviors? Who's a maladaptive for? What does that mean? And is there a better way for us to communicate it that might get us to our end point a little bit quicker? So before I continue, let me pass it over to you, Mike. Anything you wanted to add before I continue?

SPEAKER_00: 6:38

So what you're saying basically is, and I think you alluded to one very specific behavior that fits this category, this idea of crying. And I know that at least once on this podcast, we have reframed the idea of crying in terms of excessive to the point of intolerance, meaning that we're looking at a certain viewpoint. We're looking at it from the adult's perspective. As a parent myself, as parents are, sort of instinctively wired, hardwired to respond to their child's cry, and you're absolutely right. That's a very adaptive premise. Now, If we fast forward a little bit to say some of the clients we serve, this idea of crying now not necessarily being replaced or there not being a competing stimulus or ability like... the start of communication or vocal behavior, which would naturally, we would think, reduce said crying and then avoid this whole response that we're having when parents come to us, right? One of the first things that parents might see in their young child is, well, my kid's not talking a whole lot and they're crying for extended periods of time to the point of my discomfort as a a parent as an adult that's in the vicinity. And I think that's where maybe this idea of maladaptive comes in. So not maladaptive for the child, you're absolutely right. At some point, based on certain developmental features, maladaptive for the household, for the environment, certainly for the parent's reaction. And I'm saying that term loosely or using it in interpretation And knowing that as a parent myself, and we alluded to our COVID experience recently, or just at the beginning of the show here, my 19-month-old fussed a lot. She cried a lot. And did it feel maladaptive? Absolutely it did. At times, I'm sick. My wife is sick. My other two kids are also sick. This toddler's moving around with the energy of a toddler and then suddenly breaking out into these fits of I'm clearly uncomfortable. So let me stop there and kind of help let you interpret a lot of this because I think a lot of this is related. Yes, there were many times where I looked at my 19-month-old and I hit a point of frustration. Oh, wow, I wish you'd stop crying. At the same time, I had to step back and say, well, she feels like I do. She feels horrible right now. And She's telling me in all the words she has that she feels horrible. And then there's no other way for her to tell me other than to fuss and cry, despite it being shrill and like, you know, nails on the chalkboard for me after the 45th, 46th minute. At some point, I also had to empathize and realize she's just letting me know she feels crummy, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 9:33

Sure, which is also interesting when you combine theory of mind and, you know, your daughter probably starting to develop that, but still being a little maybe premature for that, that she would think everybody around her understands she feels upset about something. And without the ability to communicate that, that'd be really frustrating for an individual. I do want to highlight a definition that I pulled up here, I think from dictionary.com, but it said maladaptive, not providing adequate or appropriate adjustment to the environment or situation. So that's kind of a little bit interesting, talking more about that individual's adjustment to the environment, more maybe in the context that we use it. So I'm curious if the definitions kind of gain the context as we've given it context, or if somehow maladaptive has a different premise than adaptive. That's a thought I had. And then the second thought, you talked about crying. Crying certainly being a genetically predisposed behavior, right? It was really eye-opening to me when you were talking about on a behavior plan, maybe like a year ago or something like that, really defining crying on a behavior plan. And I thought that was really useful, right? Because we watch a movie sometimes when we cry or you slice an onion and there's all sorts of different variations of crying.

SPEAKER_00: 10:51

I've laughed myself. I've laughed so hard that tears have come out.

SPEAKER_02: 10:54

Absolutely. Right? And are we trying to stop that? But sometimes in a behavior plan, we might see the word crying. So there There's clearly a differentiation between crying and protest. And I wonder what that is. So that could be the first thing maybe we talk about. And then I want to talk about crying or what would lead us to maladaptive behaviors, you know, if we're in... China and can't speak Chinese and we're really hungry, we're probably going to engage in some maladaptive behaviors from other people's perspective to get our needs met. But before we get there, I want to pass it back to you, Mike, in this differentiation or non-differentiation or overgeneralization of crying and protest. Um, thoughts on that? The only thing I can think of is a protest is crying in response to some stimulus. Um, Now that kind of brings us into the play, but what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00: 11:49

That's a really good question, and I'm actually going to expand the question a little bit because you bring up another point that's been very traditionally common in ABA practice with regard to autism treatment, and it's these words like protest, escape, elopement. I'll leave it at that for now. We'll come back to that. But crying, I guess, is part of protest. Crying as a means of, yeah, refuting, saying, I don't want what's being presented to me. I'm at a point of frustration with what is being presented to me. It's actually crying, I would say, in its most basic sense, for a largely non-vocal child is going to be some sort of negation.

SPEAKER_02: 12:39

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 12:40

So the child basically saying no. As a parent, there are circumstances in which I can accept no, and then there are urgent or dangerous circumstances in which I can't accept no, even if it's expressed politely, which is another point I want to make quickly. I think that oftentimes crying has been related to now something that is persisting, that is almost keeping the vocal behavior. And again, I think this is what it's been perceived as. I think this is largely a misinterpretation. So we see it as something undesired because it represents... where the words should be and in trying to teach those words and not getting them then crying gets slotted into this idea of a behavior for reduction by and large so why

SPEAKER_02: 13:32

do we even so in your example then why so if as a parent like sometimes you can't accept no right the thing has to be done right so why are we so focused on what's happening when it's not getting done as opposed to maybe counting the times that it is getting done and maybe looking at the latency of it getting done rather than focusing on the things that are happening when it's not getting done.

SPEAKER_00: 13:56

That's a really good point. I'm going to... I'll answer that in one layer, which is something to do with the amount of time and the amount of energy being expended by the adult or by the parent. And what I mean by that is, not only, to your point, not only do we focus on when things aren't getting done, but we're focused on having those things be done immediately after we say they should be done. And the moment there's any sort of delay... now our maladaptive clock starts ticking, right? And I think that you're bringing up a very important discussion here because it would behoove us, it would benefit us as a field, as practitioners, to change our mindset about that. And I know that you're going to talk a little bit more about that, so I'll pass it back over to you. But I think that's one of the bigger problems is crying immediately gets posited as undesired as opposed to posited as necessary, right? but only in certain circumstances. And when you put that together with some level of delay in vocal behavior, now a parent's concerned. Now there is a child who was crying for prolonged periods of time. And then I'll even add another layer. Now maybe as ABA, we come in and we come in with these extrinsic motivators to try and make that crying stop as opposed to looking at how that crying is going to be soothed by the environment, whether it's our soothing in the traditional definition of rubbing our child's back or shushing them or speaking to them calmly and explaining things, which is oftentimes something that fails, that gets the better of us as parents. I can say that as a practitioner and as a parent. Yeah, there's something very instinctive about our child's cry when you can't quell it that tips you over into a point of frustration. And then suddenly, matching law comes in. But you're matching the undesired stimulus by modeling the same stimulus. So it's very counterintuitive. At the same time, it's very human, a very important part of parenting, and something that's very difficult, I think, for us to help parents with in helping them understand you know, what we're discussing today, and accepting it enough to be able to lean into it such that in those moments when you're hitting your point of escalation, you're able to reflect back on this and go, wait a minute, if I start yelling... then I'm only escalating the situation. Now, when would it be appropriate to yell? One of those no's that I said can't be taken as a no, right? I've asked my child not to run into the street where there's traffic to be very dramatic, and now I can yell. And in fact, I know you'll talk about this later, we almost want to reserve the yelling for those moments where it needs to be salient, as opposed to use it so much in response to our child's prolonged crying that it begins to lose meaning. So I'll pass it back to you. I know I unpacked a lot there, but you'll make sense of it for us, I trust.

SPEAKER_02: 16:56

Yeah, yeah. I think there's been a couple of clients that you worked with, I think, and you mentioned that whether it's maybe toileting, or I think one client I can think of, homework specifically, they would battle over it, but it would get done. And I think if we're focusing on the duration of the protest, rather than, say, the latency of the time from instruction to the test getting completed, It kind of encapsulates the same thing. Why do we care if they protest for 20 minutes or take 20 minutes to complete the task? But if we word it in the second way, we've highlighted that they've completed the task. And I think that's something that you've really highlighted that, yeah, maybe it was a battle, but what was the result? Did it get done? All right. I think that can give parents maybe kind of a more positive outlook on of, hey, we did this, but this happened at the end, versus, oh, there was a 40-minute protest, and that's now the focus of the discussion, as opposed to the fact that, yes, we did, but we got through it and were able to complete the task. That's kind of one thing that I was thinking as you were talking there about maybe looking at more latency measurements as opposed to focusing so much on the maladaptive behavior. I don't know why we're so hell-bent in ABA focusing on the behavior that we want to decrease. I think maybe it's because... It's the most uncomfortable or uncomfortable behavior for parents. They don't want to sit there and hear their kid continue to cry. So it's very salient. So you don't want your child to be uncomfortable. And now you have this ASD diagnosis where your child is presumably spending more time in a state of discomfort. And as a parent, that makes you more uncomfortable. So back to the negative reinforcement from the parent perspective. I need to calm this kid down. Yes, because it makes the kid better, but because it makes me feel better and makes me feel more vindicated as a parent that I'm doing the right job, which all parents should have some level of reinforcement that they're doing the right thing. So that kind of crossed my mind there on why we're so focused on that. The last thing I'll say, so that's kind of three things that I'll throw back to you, is historically in ABA, if... If we're looking at data, and historically speaking, we're going to say, hey, we're just going to take some data, or we're going to... An insurance company is saying, we need data for this session. What's the one data that we're like, we absolutely have to have every session?

SPEAKER_00: 19:29

Behaviors for decrease.

SPEAKER_02: 19:29

Behaviors for decrease, right? Isn't that ironic? Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 19:34

well, and we're not saying that it's incorrect as much as it might tilt our focus in a way... that really detracts from our purpose, which is the replacement behaviors, right? And I think that's very wise to consider. So

SPEAKER_02: 19:51

what if the kid has zero protests that day? Does that mean we didn't do session? Because there's no behaviors for decrease that occurred.

SPEAKER_00: 19:57

Right, right. And then if you don't mark those now suddenly in terms of documenting your session, right? So now we have to have some. So let's make sure that we withhold something.

SPEAKER_01: 20:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 20:08

Hey, Johnny, what motivates you? Give me that. I'm going to withhold it from you to make sure that you're motivated. And again, we joke, but that's a lot of the things we're trying to combat against here, speak out against and saying there's got to be a better way, folks. Now, yes, let me clarify something very quickly. By no means are you or I saying it's okay to sit there. So now let's bring up a different piece. By no means are we saying it's a good thing for your child to cry for prolonged periods of time. So that's something that we have to clarify. Because we're saying here, crying is some aspect of communication. It's okay for your child to cry. A lot of this discussion or a lot of these thoughts... came to us from this idea of the early intervention or the early learners and considering, given the freedom of the funding source, and saying, all two-year-olds cry. Do we really want to focus on this from a developmental perspective as a behavior for reduction or Or are we really just talking about increasing the language and the communication and the joint attention such that they can make themselves understood? And then again, naturally, the crying reduces. So you and I are not saying by any means, hey, allow your child to cry. In fact, we've had that discussion here with regard to another big problem in traditional ABA, which is this idea of extinction is blanket ignoring, where we do have children spending a lot of time crying. a lot of time, in this prolonged, escalated state where we know for a fact there is zero learning happening. So what we're saying here is crying is valuable. We agree that prolonged crying is going to wear on the parent, is going to interfere with the learning process in terms of escalation. And then we're also saying with regard to how you deal with that crying, that's where we have to... benefit from changing our mindset and what is it we can do now instead knowing that again that blanket ignoring thing as a definition for extinction we had that wrong for sure for many years and anybody out there that wants to send us a message or would like to discuss that point further we'd be glad to elaborate on that because that's by and large something that both you and I agree needs to go away yes there is room for extinction with some level of ignoring but the way it's been applied traditionally in ABA is Super counterintuitive. And maybe we can talk about that at this point for a little while. So I'll pass it back to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:42

So I guess, Mike, let's say you're in like the Amazon or someplace, right? And you're with your kids. Because I know that's where Papa Bear really gets enacted when the kids are around. And let's say everybody's hungry, right? And you see somebody who's not, I'm sorry, somebody around you who's consuming a lot of food. You haven't had food in a while. Your kids haven't had food in a while. How are you going to go about interacting with that person to try to acquire some food? What are you going to do?

SPEAKER_00: 23:13

I'm going to appeal to their kindness in some way, shape, or form. I'm going to try to communicate as clearly as I can. I'm going to try to keep any sort of frustration from my hunger at bay such that I don't ward them off and work against my plan to get some of that food. I'm certainly going to try to keep my children's best interest in mind to see if that is a good motivating operation toward keeping my cool and getting said food. I don't know if I'm hitting the points you want. I

SPEAKER_02: 23:45

guess kind of what I was getting at is you might go first ask them,

SPEAKER_00: 23:48

like, hey,

SPEAKER_02: 23:48

can I have some food? They don't speak your language, okay? You might start pointing and stuff like that. They don't understand. Eventually, you're probably going to start engaging in some maladaptive behaviors. You might start raising your voice. You might start becoming more boisterous. Eventually, there might be some what we would call assault or something like that, right? Give me that food. Yeah, absolutely, right? When you run out of appropriate ways to communicate, you're going to engage in these behaviors. And is it a protest or... whatever, you're trying to communicate something. And this is all forms of communication. And I think so often what happens is if that, you have a need that's not getting met. And if that person that has the food that doesn't speak your language is just like, oh, this person's protesting, they need to stop. Well, that doesn't help you get those needs met. That doesn't help you or your kids get fed. And I feel like if our goal here is to try to look at the replacement behaviors, historically, the way that we've labeled The maladaptive behaviors and the focus that we've put on them, we've put such a focus on the maladaptive behaviors that we've lost track of why they're doing it. the replacement behavior. Um, you know, so often parents will tell me like, well, what do I do when, uh, what, how should I teach Johnny to not hit his brother? Like, what should I take his video games or stuff? Why are we so focused on him hitting his brother? Let's teach the replacement behaviors and same things with the communication side of things. I think, um, when we label something as a protest, it becomes very dismissive of what's happening with that protest. And we start trying, we stop trying to figure out how we can help that individual. And we start trying to figure out how it affects us and how we can stop the protest. And that's, that's kind of my contention there is that we spent more, if we called it communication by crying, okay, now that individual is trying to communicate, let me help them communicate. But by calling it a protest, it's, The first thing that almost everybody thinks of, whether they want to admit it or not, is we need to stop that. And the fact of the matter is we don't necessarily need to stop that. We need to meet that person's need or figure out how we can get on the same wavelength.

SPEAKER_00: 25:56

Yeah, that's a really good explanation, I think, that idea of stopping it. It hearkens to traditional discipline. This idea that you're crying, you're crying, I already told you no, you should understand why I told you no, and now stop crying immediately. And not that, again, that's incorrect, by and large, not that that doesn't work, but therein lies another problem, is the idea that you might explain to your child, explain to your child, explain to your child, all of a sudden you raise your voice, and maybe by happenstance, the undesired behavior stops for whatever reason. And now, as parents, as practitioners, we have this false sense of authoritarianism, meaning this is the way we stop this behavior. Now back to those ideas, the notion that yelling or raising your voice does have a purpose for emergency situations or urgent situations. Again, the more you use it, the less valuable it's going to become as those things aren't urgent or an emergency. And therein sort of lies the problem with using a more traditional approach. This is where the ABA gets a little tricky, right? You know, the idea that you mentioned this earlier, that it's a negative reinforcement contingency when we're able to get our kids to stop crying, meaning the sound goes away. And for some reason, if we just focus on that, then we lose sight of the fact that this is crying is communicating some level of negation. Crying is communicating some level of distress. And again, if you're thinking of a two-year-old, then there's some aspect of soothing that has to come in. Now, the big fear of that, sort of the quandary, and I'll pass it back to you to help us decipher this, is that's almost unheard of in ABA, right? This idea, so my child is emitting an undesired behavior and now you're telling me to soothe them? Well, that's crazy because now they're getting a desired consequence for emitting the undesired behavior. So let's unpack that for a little while because that can be confusing to people. And it seems counterintuitive, but we have the answers. We know why we're saying this, especially for younger children who are still developing some sort of self-regulatory mechanism. Yeah, you can blow out the candles on your finger. You can do the deep breaths. We'll probably do an episode on breathing on its own in some future because I think we've gotten that wrong in many ways too we're probably making kids hyperventilate more than anything. But let's start with that premise that we're so afraid of this idea. And this even speaks to the tone of voice, right? How many times have you been observing a session and the child's like, okay, I'll do my homework. And then the staff says, well, you better say that in a better tone. Oh my goodness. They just communicated exactly what we want them to communicate. But all because, and back to your point earlier, right? You're in a foreign country. and you're speaking to somebody, they don't understand you, even if we're not frustrated, all of us have the propensity to raise our volume to try and make ourselves heard more clearly. It's probably one of the most illogical premises that exists in human behavior, right? You don't speak my language, so if I speak to you with more volume, then you'll understand me. And the same, you know, premise comes in here for parents in traditional discipline. You're not following my directions. I'm getting a little worked up. I'm using a louder voice. And then again, we run a lot of risks there. So let's unpack that. This idea that by helping your child soothe and then communicate appropriately, That's the reinforcing premise we're looking for, as opposed to the idea that by soothing them, now we might be reinforcing the undesired escalated behavior. Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 29:48

Well, I think that comes from, you know, in ABA, we look at the function of behavior, deceit, right? Sensory escape, attention intangible. And sensory and attention, I think, got so overgeneralized. I think the vast majority of the behaviors which... result in these higher, what we would call higher rate protests or higher magnitude protests are either going to be, they want to escape something. You're asking them to do something they don't want to do, put their shoes on, do homework, brush their teeth, and they don't want to do it. Or they want access to something, the iPad, the candy, or maybe you, which could be a little bit of attention. But by giving them attention, sensory and getting them calmed down, that still hopefully allows us to get them to a calmer state where that motivating operation, whatever they were trying to escape from or get access to, we can then teach a replacement behavior while they're still motivated for it. So that would be the first thing I would say. I think it's just a huge overgeneralization of black and white thinking, which I think can be kind of dangerous. I would also say that Kind of two things, two anecdotes I would bring in. So let's say your girlfriend's, excuse me, your wife, I was thinking my girlfriend, your wife is upset with you and she comes up and she's upset with you. Are you just going to dismiss that and ignore that and be like, oh, you're protesting. I'm going to ignore you until you vocalize it in English. In a different way. Are we going to just blanket extinction our significant others? Is that what we do with people when they're actually upset? Again, I'll just use your wife, you can use my girlfriend, whatever. If they're legitimately upset with you and come up to you Are we just going to chalk that up to a protest and say, like you said, say until you use your nice turns or even more, just ignore that? Is that what we do with non-autistic people?

SPEAKER_00: 31:45

No, no, not necessarily. No, not at all. And if you do, in fact, act that way, then you're probably going to encounter further escalation. Absolutely. Somebody's going to tell you, don't treat me that way. And again, it's not a... It's not an illogical premise. It's very authoritarian. Yes. So you will speak to me only how I define you will speak to me before I will say that you can be heard by me. That's a good point, yes. That is rough. That is rough. So, I mean, you know, again, to turn the example around a little bit, you know, if I'm getting, God forbid, if I'm getting aggressive... verbally, you know, with my wife, she might certainly say, hey, I can't do it like this. Can we take a break and then come back? Right. Which would be then different from the way we tend to practice with our clients, which is, you know, you're younger than me, you're smaller than me. I have some sort of authority that's been assigned to me. And we'll talk about that in some other episode. And now I feel like I have this right to tell you No, you said the right words, but you said them in the wrong way. So try again and then don't escalate further, even though I'm doing something that would likely irk any human on this earth because I'm sort of being very authoritarian. I'm putting you below me and saying you have to say the words I define and you have to say them in the way I define or I'm going to withhold access. That is that's harsh. That's harsh. It

SPEAKER_02: 33:19

comes back to an empathy piece, right? You're clearly upset, and I'm upset, right? I'm upset because the stimuli in the environment, the yelling, screaming, whatever language is either offending me or not pleasing to me, and you're also upset because... You're upset about something which is leading you to bring those stimuli to me. So it's interesting that we've just solely focused on ourselves in ABA of we need to stop everything that's unpleasant to us before I'm even going to attend to you. When it's like, well, maybe I should look at why you're upset first. Again, I really want to specify, we're not saying, oh, so you take an iPad away from a kid or something, and they get really upset, and we just go give them a hug and give them the iPad. That's not what I'm saying. But completely dismissing and saying, oh, you're protesting, that means X, Y, and Z, is pretty dismissive and almost affecting an individual's dignity emotionally. And I think looking at it very, like you said, authoritarian or very... like egocentrically from our perspective. Right,

SPEAKER_00: 34:25

right. Knowing that all of us are born very egocentric. You alluded to theory of mind earlier, and that is one shift from infancy, toddlerhood, early childhood. As we develop a theory of mind, we become less egocentric, meaning that we understand not everybody thinks exactly like us. But yet we might impose that same lack of empathy in the example you're describing, right? So let's see if we can start arriving at some clear-cut answers here. Because I think, back to what I was saying earlier, parents, even some staff in the field, with what we're talking about, some of the techniques we've unveiled to avoid this authoritarian approach, to look at crying as more a form of communication that we want to shape into words, as opposed to a stimulus that we want to truncate or terminate. How do we find that balance? How do we help parents understand or staff understand? You know, you're not training the child that you're a pushover or that you're going to give in to this or that you're always going to respond to that undesired tone that comes along with the desired words. Let's spend some time on that because that can be tricky for people, right? The idea that I think instructional control can be a phrase that can be misinterpreted in this idea that I come in, I say jump, you say how high, and you better not question it. In fact, I've defined this table on this chair. And if you leave anywhere... From this vicinity, now it's escape and elopement, right? Without even understanding that a two- or three-year-old, their mom just got home. All they want to do is stand up and go say hi, which is actually an awesome social premise that we should be very happy about promoting. But we're not careful sometimes to the point of we need to have this control so we can't stop to see what you're communicating. And you made a really strong point there. It becomes this egocentricity from the adult's perspective. knowing that we're really trying to help a young child develop out of their egocentricity.

SPEAKER_02: 36:31

Yeah, it's interesting, too, because we come in with all the MOs, the motivating operations, the iPad and stuff like that, but by virtue of the child leaving the desk, they're saying they're motivated by something else. Clearly, we could just follow them and use that as whatever the motivating operation is, but no, no, no. They have to be at the table with whatever. Hopefully, a lot of people aren't spending a lot of time at the table, although... It seems like that still could be the case. But even with play, like we're like, all right, we're going to play with the trains and they're like, nope, we're going to play with the Legos. Well, that could be the new motivating operation. And the more we start to infringe on that, the more protests come into play. And then the more we don't acknowledge the communication that they're trying to communicate by the protest, i.e. blanket ignoring or something like that. the more they're going to protest because their needs aren't getting met. And then we get hit and kicked, and then we blame the child. Back to your example, eventually you're going to get hungry enough that you're going to hit or kick that person to get food for your kids. You're not going to blame it on... yourself, you're going to be like, no, this person should have understood what I was communicating. And that's what the kids are feeling, too. This person should have understood that I really wanted the Legos. But no, they're blocking access because I have to work for the trains or we have to do colors or something like that, which is probably even decontextualized at that point. I'm not sure if that's what you were getting at. No,

SPEAKER_00: 37:51

no, for sure. I think there's a lot to discuss around here. You certainly hit... Part of the discussion that I had in mind. I think that another part that we can bring in here that is important with regard to what is the child communicating with their behavior, even if undesired. Crying extensively is one thing. Getting up out of the chair to go do something, that's maybe even a better example. Because we don't know. Yeah, you're right. the motivating operation has shifted. I'm holding the iPad, yet you're choosing to walk away from it. And there's a lot of terms that we use traditionally, instructional control I already mentioned, structured versus unstructured sessions. There's always this notion that if we're allowing any semblance of so-called undesired behavior to occur... we're somehow working against the treatment as opposed to acknowledging the communication. You had a thought there.

SPEAKER_02: 38:44

Yeah, yeah, I did. When you were talking about the table situation and withholding the iPad, it all comes back to the matching law, right? We're going to do whatever behavior is most reinforcing for us at that time. And if we present iPad, our attention, candy, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is, contingent on a behavior, and the child doesn't do it, for some reason going back, I don't know whether it's the authoritarianism or what, We felt that we have the ability to block the child and say, no, we're going to try to reconstruct this matching law or force this contingency down your throat when the matching law clearly says that what we provided isn't reinforcing enough for the test demand. So rather than us looking at it because we're the environment and behavior is a product of the environment and we either need to change the reinforcer, the amount of reinforcement, or the test demand, that's on us. For some reason, we've... looked at it as a protest or an escape, and now blocked, which is a really interesting premise when behavior is a product of the environment and we're the environment, so really we shouldn't be doing any of these things. We should be changing what we're doing, but we just kind of blame it on the child and say, oh, it's a protest or an escape. We block, they tantrum, we ignore, and we wonder why we have a 45-minute long tantrum when it was kind of on us to change it in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00: 40:02

I really appreciate you elaborating that example and I'm going to try to expand on it because I think you're absolutely right. And I'm going to hopefully bring up another premise that I discussed earlier about how linear our thinking might be. It's in going back to this idea of, okay, so why is it valuable to have a child sit directly across from you at a table and and do trial after trial, because that would be the most efficient way in which to demonstrate instructional control, but better yet, get all the repetitive practice, excuse me, that we think or that we know is important for encoding a new skill, for example. But we tend to have this idea that any example of that child getting up and moving away from the table now completely derails the whole plan. It's as if we forget our idea of differential reinforcement, our notion of shaping, the idea that as the child becomes more familiar and more efficacious with whatever tabletop task we're presenting, then the desire or the motivation to leave will also be more available. Sure. to stay rather than leave. But it's as if we forget in that moment. We have this notion of, for lack of better phrasing... errorless learning the only way this learner is going to learn what we want to teach them right now is if the exact SD that we've defined is emitted by us by by me or my staff in the exact same way every time leading to a very restricted predefined target behavior with now a predefined consequence whether or not we've tested that in a preference assessment or really found it reinforcing based on the fact that the child's leaving the table sometimes so again I I keep unpacking a lot of dynamic examples, but I appreciate having you here. You're so good at deciphering them for us. What do you say about that? How do we combat that in terms of embracing those other premises still? If you leave the table, then it's as simple as me going to see what you're doing and then seeing if I can motivate you back. Or otherwise, I need to engage with you in whatever it is. you're more interested in because then I'm modeling a certain attention at that time. I mean, I'll pass it to you.

SPEAKER_02: 42:30

Absolutely. I don't have kids, so I can't use kids examples. I have dogs, so I'll use a dog example. You know, I would play catch with my dog and he's much faster than me. So if he didn't want to bring the ball back, sometimes he wouldn't want to bring the ball back. He would want me to chase after him with the ball. And I was like, nope, I want you to come back here. And the more I would try to force him to give me the ball back, the more it would run away and it would turn a chase game. So I have to find something more interesting. Engaging to him than him running around with a ball by himself. And maybe that's my presence. Maybe that's something else. I think that's what we have to do with, because we work with people in general, like not forcing it on them, but finding something that's more engaging and incenting them to come back to us. I do want to just talk a little bit about the language concept, though, because a lot of parents that we work with, I'll say like, oh, how does your kid communicate? And they'll say, oh, my kid doesn't communicate. That's exactly why I think it's so important that we're relabeling what we talk about because your kids are communicating. Crying is communicating. Pointing is communicating. All of these things are communicating. And I think what happens is these parents have an idea of what their child's going to be. The ASD diagnosis throws some sort of wrinkle in that. And now when we're hyper-focused on tantrum and behavior, it also creates more anxiety or a disconnection between the parent and the child or the parent's perspective of what the child does compare to the neurotypical, again, we'll talk about that word later, peers, and then, oh, my child's tantruming all the time. Or maybe your child's actually communicating and they actually have the ability to communicate, which would be really empowering to the parents if we started to use those terminology and said, oh, your child had five tantrums. Oh, your child tried to communicate five times by doing this, but we're working on it. I feel like that would lead to the empowerment that we're really trying to get parents and these individuals on the spectrum and their parents to feel like that they have the empowerment. And the more that we can kind of redefine how we're labeling these things, ABA has terrible terminology. I do parent groups, and it takes me weeks to convince them that punishment, taking the child's iPad away doesn't necessarily mean punishment, right? It's a behavior for decrease. We've picked the worst... vocabulary and ABA for whatever reason. And I think tantrum and protests and stuff like that, a focus on that has been another poor application of terminology when we could be focused on the desired behavior much more so than this maladaptive behavior and also labeling it as well.

SPEAKER_00: 45:03

You bring up an interesting premise here. So instead of protest or tantrum, so to speak, we talk so much about clearly defining or describing the behavior, yet words like protest, tantrum, escape, elopement are so pervasive, right? And now you and I have had some funny encounters, professionally speaking, where you might see a graph on one of my reports that has a really long title because I've made an effort to say, you know, Crying extensively to the point of intolerance from the parent. And so let's talk about that. What else would escape be? Escape would be, I don't want to be here, I want to be there behavior. What is it communicating? I heard something, I'm sitting with you, and you're showing me something, and I'm engaged as a young child. I just heard something. or thought of something by and large, we don't know, but it made me go away from you in a different direction. We don't think of the value of that communication from even a cognitive, I know I'm getting kind of radical in our behaviorism here, but it's as if we're crippled by our own good nature to be objective and observant. Hand leading is another example of that where we might miss the boat. What is hand leading communicating?

SPEAKER_02: 46:27

So I want to go back to your escape question. Escape would be leaving towards a more desired motivating operation. That's what escape is. Perfect. And if we had leading... Think about reading a report and you read escape. It's like, well, no, we got to stop that. But if we read leaving towards a more desired motivating operation, it's like, well... Absolutely. Absolutely. steps on steps on a nail and falls to the floor and cries is that a protest um if the kid laughs so hard that they cry because crying's in the protest definition right so being very specific on what is happening um we have had to label um groups of behaviors into labels which i which i totally understand um so that we can get a better grasp of them but i feel like we've almost we've Got circular reasoning. We've almost created the thing we're trying to avoid by creating these terms like protest or escape or something or elopement. But if we were to say the child's communicating that they don't want to do something by crying, man, that's a lot more dignified than that child's protesting.

SPEAKER_00: 47:52

Well, and the idea that... I love the way you just put that. Going back to our bread and butter, what's the function of crying? to communicate some level of distress undesirability negation right now go back to my premise that unless it's a life-threatening situation it means that when those kids cry what we're saying is you don't get to negate and if you do then we get to start our data and see how long you're negating when we said you can't negate even though you might be negating something that Again, it's not an emergency situation. I'm presenting a new stimulus to you. For example, you're unfamiliar with the stimulus. You're by and large disinterested maybe at the beginning. I am imposing it on you. You begin to cry and say no. And instead of listening as the staff or as the adult, I say, no, you have to do this. So I'm not even going to listen to you saying no. I like the way you rephrase the other one too. So elopement... That means I'm moving toward a different, more attractive, more valuable, motivating operation, right? That's all that means. But because we're so driven, historically, by our trial base, just like removing items from kids in order to make another trial happen, we fall into that trap of, Authoritarianism. No, we have the instructional control. That means I have a right to remove that item from you, even though the appropriate way to do it would be to request it from you, and see if I can motivate you enough with whatever stimulus I have to present next for you to relinquish that item, or better yet, Do you have to relinquish that item? Could it be concurrent reinforcement as long as you're also engaging in a joint attention fashion to the other stimulus I have? What's wrong with you keeping the so-called reinforcer in your hand as you also engage in this new task? Again, there's probably situations where that wouldn't be optimal or ideal, but it's almost like we fail to see all those other permutations because we need this idea of instructional control so much that we forget the function of basic behaviors that we've defined as undesired, but that have a whole lot of adaptive value.

SPEAKER_02: 50:12

Yeah, yeah. I think when... So this concept of protest, right? I think that a lot of parents, it goes back to your English parenting example, right? Yes, mommy. Of course, mommy. I think that if a parent were to say, or an ABA therapist were to say, hey, it's time to do homework right now, and the kid were to say... Hey, you know what? Just two more minutes. I'm finishing up this video game. That would be taken with a lot more understanding than a child putting their head down or a child running out of the room. But most of the kids we work with don't have the ability to say that. So them putting their head down is literally their equivalent of saying, hey, can we have two more minutes or something like that? But for some reason, because we feel more disrespected when they put their head down or when they run out of the room, now that's a slight on us. We're going to respond differently. Whereas if the child would have just been like, hey, can I have a break? We would have been like, yeah. How long do you want? One minute or two minutes? Because they can't, which isn't on them. Why would we want to expect them to do something they can't do? Because it evokes a different response from us or a different feeling from us. Now, we're then putting that back on the child and not allowing them the same dignity that we would have if they had a skill which they don't have.

SPEAKER_00: 51:31

So let me make sure I understand this correctly or that I could re-explain this correctly. What you're saying is, as staff that's implementing intervention, as parents, in your video game example... It's about being aware and about acknowledging and thinking about the fact that any logical child or any logical human, the idea that I'm going to stop something that I clearly enjoy like playing video games in order to go now do something that may not be as valuable or maybe more challenging for me like homework. And then as the adult, I expect you to have no emotional reaction to that.

SPEAKER_02: 52:12

When

SPEAKER_00: 52:13

we would, if it happened to us. Absolutely. Hey, stop doing what you like doing at work, and we want you to go throw the trash out. Shut your computer down? Right, right. Out of nowhere? So another premise there, another point that you bring up, being aware enough to see where your child is. Because when they're playing video games, they're communicating interest in that stimulus. Where are you in that game? So am I going to come in with an arbitrary, in two minutes I'm shutting it off? Or, oh, I see you're almost at the end of this level. So now time and patience in terms of the authoritarian perspective, as the parent coming in, you have to notice those things. Again, these aren't magic wands, but the premise we're talking about today is what is your child communicating with their refusal, with their crying, with their dropping on the floor? And by no means are we saying that those are desirable behaviors, but they have value that if we take the time to understand the function, then it might Give us a more calm approach or better and more divergent approaches to addressing that behavior. Like, okay, I'm not going to say two minutes for the video game. I'm going to say, why don't you finish that level? And then at that point, we'll turn it off. And now I've started with a more... agreeable premise. That's not to say that the child's going to go, oh, okay, you're right, daddy. I'll turn it off now. No, they might still complain, but at least you started the whole sequence on the right foot and saying, I'm acknowledging you. I'm seeing what you're doing. I don't want you to lose this level or whatever it is. I want to give you a chance to finish. I'm modeling respect for what you're doing. And then as soon as I turn it off and you complain, I have to be able to understand that too. Yes, I know. I know that video games are more fun for you than homework, that's okay. I felt the same way when I was your age, but homework is very important. So let's come and get it out of the way now. Let's do it as quickly as we can so that you can get back to your video games.

SPEAKER_01: 54:10

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 54:10

Again, that's a very idealistic description of that. It seldom plays out that way. I should have put my English accent on during that description. But I think the point isn't lost. It is valuable for us to be aware of and to acknowledge and then further understand the function of that undesired behavior such that we might integrate that information toward our own baseline behavior as we deal with our own instincts and reflexes in reaction to our child crying, for example, or being defiant. The idea that you little whatever you want to insert expletive, you did that to me, you're defying me. So much of that... escalated response or reaction from us as parents or staff could come from that basic premise and we have to watch out. Your feelings

SPEAKER_02: 54:59

that are guiding your behavior, not what the child's doing, it's your feelings about what the

SPEAKER_00: 55:02

child's doing. Yeah, not the function, not actually understanding the communication value of the behavior, but now you simply feeling disrespected with regard to your instructional control. And again, I think that's probably one of the more important parts of our discussion today is understanding these things, not because it's going to take your reflex away as a parent in feeling like your child's defying and being upset about that. But when you hit that point of frustration, then all this information might, might help you. I say that knowing that I have to span both sides of this fence, too. I can preach this stuff all day, and then I have to deal with my toddler when she's hungry and or sleepy or has decided she's not going to eat this food she's been eating very comfortably for days now. Well, yeah, of course she's not. She's satiated. If I can sit and understand that by saying, I'm pushing the plate away. Okay, I can offer it two or two more times. But if I continue to fight that battle, it's not on her anymore. It's on me for not listening. Now, the other end of that is not that I want to become a short order cook. But by realizing that maybe I was very comfortable with my daughter now eating this for dinner for three days, and now she's refusing it. looking at that as satiety and not defiance is probably a game changer.

SPEAKER_02: 56:22

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I'll just say two things, um, because you talked about the authoritarian and, um, you know, communication Skinner looks at communication. You've got the speaker and the listener, um, product has a really good analogy and they talk about, let's say somebody is having like a, um, a breakdown in the, in the front of the room. Uh, so we'll, You know, equate that to a child having a protest and the level of authoritarianism, the level of judgment, the level of problem solving that we're going to have. Maybe medium, right? Let's say all of a sudden that person pulls out a hand grenade. Now, all of a sudden, what's our level of attention and problem solving and understanding going to be? It's going to go up tenfold, right? A hundredfold. Now, their breakdown isn't any more or less severe, right? But it's the effect on us that's now changing our whole response to that situation. So, you know, your kids are kind of in that situation as well. And having that same level of problem solving, again, that doesn't necessarily mean giving in, right? That doesn't mean, you know, that the child or the individual with the hand grenade, it doesn't mean you're going to give them everything that they want. But I can guarantee you're going to start listening and you're not just going to be like, hey, stop protesting until you do this. All of a sudden, you're going to really start listening. So that's a good analogy. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_00: 57:40

So before the grenade... listen a little more closely is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02: 57:44

Yeah, they were communicating why do they have to pull out the hand grenade to get you to listen, right? Why do they have to do that?

SPEAKER_00: 57:51

So we're nearing the hour mark here, and I know that we like to keep it around there. Let's play a little game at the end here, unless you have any other wrap-up points you want to mention.

SPEAKER_02: 57:59

Yeah, I do just want to make this applicable, and I'll make it very quick. So the thing to take from this as well is if you have a child on the spectrum or you're in an ABA company or something like that, and there's a lot of behaviors for decrease. Think about why that is and really look at that. And if you're a parent of a child, literally, even if there's one, even if there's protest, Try to get them to explain to you why that even needs to be tracked. Because if our goal is to teach them desired behaviors, does it matter what they're doing when they're not doing the desired behaviors? It doesn't. We just want to teach these desired behaviors. So instead of spending all of our time and energy and stuff timing the protest, we could completely ignore that and focus on the desired behaviors. We're all about replacement behaviors, right? Behaviors for increase. So that might be a discussion to have with But your BCBA or your team is, is there any really useful value that we're getting from this? Does it matter that the child tantrums 45 minutes throughout session? Well, yes, it does because you want to get more things done. So if you get more things done, then presumably the tantrums will be less. So that would be my kind of definitive takeaway. And I'll pass it back to you, Mike.

SPEAKER_00: 59:12

That's perfect. I think that's a really good point. bit of advice there for anybody in the field, anybody who's either receiving intervention actively or managing it and developing it. The notion that if your focus is on the behaviors for decrease, then that's where all your cards are, then what are you increasing? What are you really doing? You're just stopping a bunch of behaviors, but you're not promoting the replacement behavior. So really quickly, What might be a better way to approach? Let's think about this in two ways. Let's redefine commonly used terms for maladaptive behavior, and then maybe talk about some of the important replacements that could be the focus. Okay, so tantrum.

SPEAKER_02: 59:56

Tantrum. It depends on why they're doing it. Communicating for escape or communicating for attention or communicating for iPad or whatever via crying, falling to the floor, Hitting one's head, something

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:11

like that. Communicating negation might be part of that. I'm saying no, and you're basically not listening. You're imposing it on me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:19

Communicating negation or communicating acquisition?

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:21

Okay, there you go. So again, these are very long phrases, and we're certainly not saying that they sound great or that they're easy to roll off the tongue, which is probably the main reason why those other terms exist, protest, escape, tantrum. But... The idea is changing our mindset, redefining the way we think about these behaviors because they have value beyond their reduction. They have more value in terms of their replacement. So we said tantrum. What about escape? Another way to define that?

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:50

Leaving towards a more highly desired MO.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:53

I kind of like that idea. So leaving a quote-unquote designated area to a different area without notifying. Because clearly there is a stronger MO there. elsewhere. Now, again, that's a game changer in my mind right away because now it's not on the child misbehaving. Now it's on us as the interventionists to do something a little bit differently to get them back to this more desired designated area where these predefined instructional materials have now put out. Let's reconsider that. Is it the materials? Is it the difficulty of the materials? Is it the novelty of the Task at hand, why is something more valuable elsewhere? Okay, so we've done tantrum, we've done escape. I think protest and tantrum are probably pretty similar. What about hitting? What about aggression? Communication of negation or acquisition. And probably very, very... What's the word I'm looking for here? Very well-defined, very high-level negation. Absolutely. Right? So if you're getting to your basic instinct of physically defending yourself, then that's probably correlated or associated with your level of escalation. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, if you were pumping gas and somebody came over and began to try and take your wallet, kind of slowly, you might tell them, hey man, cut that out, hey man, cut that out. As they got more aggressive, what would you do? Engage in hitting. Right? You would self-defense the idea that I'm going to match the amount of force you're putting forth against me to grab my wallet in order to preserve my wallet. Absolutely. So, again, that's a game changer. We're no longer putting it on the child and saying, wow, that's misbehavior. Again, yes, it's undesired. Yes, we want to replace it with more valuable, more socially significant behavior. But now, in our minds, it's not just something for reduction. It's something for us to understand the premise of. Acquisition. All right. Okay, cool. So all of this then that we're talking about here actually points back to the notion of communication. We spent our first three episodes this season talking about verbal behavior, non-vocal behavior as a starting premise. And now here we're saying you got to go back to all those pieces, right? Because the child's communicating something in a way that we're saying is... Not the level of social significance we desire. We want to teach them something more socially significant in order to replace those behaviors. Now, the idea that we're going to extinguish aggression anyway, we don't want to do that. The idea that we're going to extinguish a higher volume or tone, we don't want that to go away completely, but we want it to be posited for... the right situations where it's seen as necessary.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:38

Absolutely. That's why, you know, abuse rates and stuff like that are so high because we've completely taught that you can't communicate negation. That's completely unacceptable to ever communicate negation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:48

So you're traipsing now into a future discussion on self-advocacy. I don't know how many times we said for a future discussion in this episode, but we've got our work cut out for us. We are at a good stopping point here. So just as a quick wrap up, listen to those maladaptive behaviors closely. Consider looking at maladaptive from a different lens, using a different word altogether, expanding and further describing the definitions of those behaviors that you're trying to reduce, and then make sure that your focus is on the replacement behaviors, not the reduction of those behaviors. Anything else as we wrap up here, sir? And always analyze responsibly. Cheers, brother. 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.