Reasons Why My Kid is Crying - A look at the functions of behavior

We’ve all been there. Standing in the kitchen looking down at our little bundle of joy who is red in the face, screaming, and flailing about like a fish out of water. In that moment, we look down and wonder “why are you doing this” as we take a long, slow sip of our coffee and contemplate sandy beaches and grandma watching the kids. OK that last bit might just be me, but hey, you get the point. Tantrums and behavioral issues are a part of childhood and unfortunately an equal part of parenthood. This post is going to go in to the four main functions of behavior to help you better understand the why to better plan for the now what do I do phase.

 What is behavior? Everything we do is behavior. If a dead man can do it, it’s not behavior (shout out to all my grad school professors who thought they were so funny whenever they said this). Behaviors come in all shapes, sizes, and functions.

What are functions? In behavior speak they are the maintaining force behind a behavior, or the why. All behavior, regardless of what looks like can be boiled down to one of four main functions; escape, access to attention, access to tangibles, or sensory stimulation. Let’s take a look at each one.

Escape – this is a behavior that serves to get a person out of something or away from something. For example, when you tell your kid to brush their teeth and they run out of the bathroom. Most commonly in my house is when it’s time to get ready for school in the morning my daughter becomes quite the escape artist finding every excuse in the book to get out of getting dressed. “But mommy, my baby doll isn’t finished with her tea party!” This behavior is maintained by escape from getting dressed but more notably, escape from having to go to school.

Access to attention – this behavior is maintained by attention from others, and it’s important to note that attention is attention, no matter the form. To some, being yelled at is the same reinforcing attention that praise is, so yelling is not necessarily a punishment, it can be considered a form of attention. More on that later.

 Access to tangibles – this is a behavior maintained by gaining access to something. This is the kid throwing a fit because you cut them off at 3 cookies. We see this behavior most often in toddlers as they develop language and learn how to ask for things, and then are denied those things they just learned how to ask for by name. Way not fair, if you ask them.

Sensory Stimulation – this one tends to be the most confusing when you’re looking at a behavior. This is a behavior that is not maintained by any outside forces, we engage in these behaviors simply because we like the sensation we get from doing them. In children this takes the form of thumb-sucking, spinning in a circle, walking on toes, sucking on a pacifier, etc. These behaviors don’t end when we get older, in adults these behaviors take the form or biting fingernails, shaking your leg when sitting in a long meeting, or even listening to a favorite song on the radio as you’re driving.

 Now that you have a better idea of what the four functions of behavior are, think back to the last time your child threw a tantrum, or engaged in a behavior that was less than great.

OK fine I’ll go first:

 My 1 year old son has an enormous toy car that makes some pretty loud noises, gifted to him from a family member with a great sense of humor. He has taken to pressing the same button twice and then yelling “ah!” after the second button press. I could not for the life of me figure out why he was making that noise after every second button press. I sat back and watched for a few minutes. After the third time doing this and looking around the room, my daughter comes running in and echoes back his “ah!”. The two of them erupted in giggles and the game continued. What do you think the function of that behavior was? Go ahead, I’ll wait…

That’s right! Access to attention! The last time he did this my daughter parroted back the noises he was making and he got a lot of attention from his older sibling who usually can’t be bothered with him. The next time he saw that car he engaged in the same behavior in order to get his sister to come and play with him, which worked like a charm. I expect the same pattern to happen so long as my daughter continues to respond. The minute she tires of the game he will probably move on and find another way to get her to play until he replaces that behavior with language because let’s be honest “Come play with me!” seems a lot easier than that whole thing, but I will admit, it’s pretty darn cute to watch.

So now that we’ve discussed the why your child is engaging in a particular behavior, we can move on to the now what do I do portion. Stay tuned for an additional post on this! In the meantime check out my previous post about tantrums in public for a little more information on what do to when faced with problem behavior. And as always, if you ever need more help I’m just a phone call away!