Page 39 - EA Handbook Course 1 Shifting Mindset

Key Messages: Shifting Mindset

The traditional behaviourist approach relies on the child having sufficient

desire for the reward and fear of the punishment. 1

It also needs the reward or punishment to remain at the forefront of the
2 child’s mind.

The behaviourist approach assumes the child has the skills to manage in the
moment; it assumes their difficulty is a matter of‘will not skill’. 3

Using‘carrots’and‘sticks’can seem effective in the short-term, but it does
4 not address unmet needs and missing skills and thus secure long-term,

sustainable improvement. Children’s difficulties can keep ‘popping back up’.

Expectations of children can still be kept high in a therapeutically and
neurodiversity-informed approach. We can be ‘insistent, persistent, 5

consistent, with a bucketful of kindness’.