Challenging Behavior

Challenging Behavior

Behavior is a way to communicate. Some people who use less words to talk may use behavior to show that they want or need.

Challenging behavior is a name for unhelpful or unsafe actions. These may hurt the person or get in the way of their best life. Unhelpful actions may be dangerous to other people too.

Some people hit, throw, shout or run away when they are upset. Family and caregivers may not know the reason for the behavior.

What is Challenging Behavior?

From the Challenging Behavior Foundation UK

Challenging Behavior Video

A person with unhelpful actions may have many reasons:

They may feel a pain or change in their body.
They may feel sadness, worry, or anger.
They may feel bothered by someone or something around them.
They may need or want someone's attention.
They may be stuck with a bad habit.

image of a person filling out paper on a clipboard in front of a man sitting on a couch

To find out what the person is trying to show, an expert can do a Functional Behavior Assessment (or FBA).

They will try to learn why the person is doing the unhelpful actions.

They will watch and ask questions and look for patterns. Then they will share what they learned with the person and caregivers.

Video

Understanding Aggression and Self Injury from Dr. Clarissa Kripke at UCSF (27.5 minutes)

We can try to help a person with unhelpful behavior to stop it.

We can teach them to do something new in place of the unsafe behavior.

We call this Behavior Management.

The team who helps with this are Behavior Therapists.

Video

Addressing Challenging Behaviors: Caregiver Support for People with IDD - 53 minutes

From Rita Young and Gwinnett County Georgia Public Library

There are many tools that may help the person with IDD, their caregivers, and healthcare team to work on safe behavior. Here are some of our favorites: