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Key Messages: Shifting Mindset

The traditional behaviourist approach relies on the child having sufficient
desire for the reward and fear of the punishment. 1

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