My name is Matt. The purpose if this post is to introduce myself, give a little information about my background, and lay out my general goals for this blog. I will also describe a few underlying values and beliefs which inform much of the content that will appear on this blog.
Firstly, again, my name is Matt. I am a School Psychologist by training, but currently I work as a Consultant on a team which serves students with challenging behaviors and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Much of my work focuses on things like Applied Behavior Analysis, teaching and learning, designing instructional and behavior plans, and problem solving when things aren’t going well.
I also happen to be a father to fraternal twin girls. My daughters are about 15 months old at the time of this post. When my wife was pregnant with our girls, I joined a couple of Facebook groups for dads of twins, triplets, and other multiples. These groups are powerful places, and I have personally seen fathers providing each other with answers, guidance, and emotional support.
One other thing that I noticed is that there were a lot of questions like, “My kid does this, what are some ways to handle it,” or, “How do I do this?” Something that I quickly realized is that my background knowledge from my work was very well suited for providing answers to many of these questions.
And so, over the course of the last year, I have toyed around with the idea of starting this blog. Originally, I thought I might write a book. I wrote out an outline, I started to compile sources, and I . . . Did nothing with it. After some thinking, I decided that structure this project into a blog made more sense.
My goals for this blog are as follows:
- Describe evidence-based, effective strategies that are used in schools that could have great value to parents trying to raise their kids.
- Give parents usable information about ways to build their children’s skills and reduce their problem behaviors
- Through the above, decrease negative interactions and increase positive interactions between parents and their kids
- Provide parents with tools that will facilitate the development of positive, caring, and supportive relationships with their children
In addition to writing for parents, I also want to use this blog to write for educators. The field of education is full of tools, materials, curricula, etc., and many of them are amazingly effective. Unfortunately, there are also many which are not effective. I believe that it’s the ethical responsibility of educators to use practices which are evidence-based.
As I stated above, there are a number of underlying beliefs and/or values that will guide the content of this blog. I want to describe these with enough detail so that you understand them, but not so much that this becomes an extremely long post.
- Skepticism and evidence-based practice: I am a School Psychologist by training, and this means a great many things. One of the things that it means for me is that I consider myself to be a skeptic and an empiricist. I value strategies which have been shown to be effective more than those which sound like they should be effective but haven’t been shown to work. Everything that I discuss on this blog will have at least some empirical backing. The strategies themselves may not have specific research written about them, but they will, at the very least, be built upon theories and practices which do.
- Behavior as Communication: I firmly believe that all behavior is functional, all behavior is a form of communication, and all behavior is learned. By functional, I mean that all behavior serves a purpose. If a child is ‘acting out’, there is something that that child is gaining or avoiding through that behavior. It’s not random. When I say that behavior is a form of communication, I mean that behavior is a way to interact with our environment and the people in it. Speech is a form of behavior, as is a thumbs up, a high-five, and a hug. Even behaviors which are ‘problematic’ serve some purpose. Lastly, behavior is learned. If a child engages in a particular pattern of behavior, then that behavior has been learned and reinforced over some period of time. This also means that behaviors can be unlearned and new behaviors can be learned to replace them.
- Who we are is defined by a complex interaction between genetics and our environments / histories: Over the course of the history of Psychology, and even Philosophy, there has been debate about how much of who we are is in place when we are born, and how much of it is from how we were raised. This is the ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ debate. After decades and longer of discussion and research, it seems likely that the answer to the question is: a little bit of both. Parents can’t do anything about their kids’ genetics. They also can’t do anything about their kids’ environment or learning up to the current moment. But they can most definitely do something about their environment and learning from the current moment forward.
- Mental Health Matters: My wife is actually a Licensed mental health counselor. If I thought mental health was important to me, it is significantly more important to her. In discussions with her about mental health, I have come to appreciate just how important and ever present mental illness is and struggles with mental health are. Much of what I discuss comes from Applied Behavior Analysis. To some, ABA is heartless and unfeeling, and it doesn’t appropriately address mental health. I think that this is both a potentially earned perspective, but I also think that it is an incomplete one. I know that ABA and related strategies/approaches can be implemented in ways which attend to and even support mental health. I hope you will give this blog a chance by being open minded and letting me show you how well ABA strategies, when done in particular ways, can lead to better mental health outcomes.
I appreciate you reading through this post and giving this blog a chance. Now that I have introduced myself and given you some background, let’s get into the actual meat of this blog, with the first article, “How do I get my kids to clean their rooms (or clean anything else for that matter)?”
