Supporting Positive Behavior at Home

For an overview of Positive Behavior Support at Home, view this five minute video courtesy of the Association of Positive Behavior Support.

Handouts and Articles:

  • NEW!  Parenting Special Needs Magazine published numerous excellent resources in their May/June issue, including an article titled:  Why Does Challenging Behavior Occur!
  • Supporting Your Child’s Positive Behavior, from PACER Center, provides an explanation of the principles behind PBIS as well as examples of how to integrate these principles and strategies into the home and community.
  • Using positive words to support your child’s behavior, from The National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations, provides helpful examples for parents of how to re-word expectations for children from what not to do to what to do.
  • 8 tips for families to support a child with challenging behavior: English Version and Spanish Version, from The Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for Young Children (TACSEI), provides helpful information for parents struggling with the challenging behavior of their child at home. It provides practical tips and strategies to support parents in supporting their children.
  • Strategies to stay calm when supporting problem behavior from The National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations, provides helpful steps and strategies for children and parents to use to calm down during challenging behavior or when experiencing anger, stress, frustration, or sadness.
  • Develop a home matrix for family rules, from Heather Godwin, provides steps for creating a home behavior matrix as well as an example.
  • Connecting to Your Teen, from the Center for Parent Information and Resources, outlines conversation starters for parents to use with their teens in order build relationships and help promote prosocial decision making.
  • 7 Tips for Rewards and Consequences, from Understood.org, gives families an explanation of what rewards and consequences are, as well as ideas for rewards and consequences to use at home.
  • A Parents Guide to Problem Behavior, from the Child Mind Institute, provides parents with strategies for responding to common but still problematic child behavior. Here, parents and caregivers can find ideas for preventing problem behavior, providing meaningful consequences, and preparing children to make transitions positively.

Helpful Websites:

  • PBIS at Home, from Minnesota Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, provides templates and sample at-home behavior expectation matrixes for students and families. These can be helpful for providing structure and making expectations clear for behavior at home.
  • What is Positive Behavior Support?, from The Association for Positive Behavior Support, provides a description of how to implement positive behavior support practices at home. It also provides multiple resources to help parents understand behavioral principles, behavior prevention strategies, examples, and more.
  • Behavior at Home, from the Center for Parent Information and Resources, provides links to websites and resources that help parents understand and positively address behaviors of concern for their children. It also has links to a variety of websites and resources and includes topics such as child temperament, various disabilities, and mental health resources.
  • Family Engagement Parent Resources, from The National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations, has numerous tip sheets and articles for parents of preschool and elementary aged children.  Under “Related Resources,” check out:
    • “Making Life Easier” tip sheets for parents of young children on how to support positive child behavior at home and in the community. These sheets cover developing routines around naptime, diapering, visiting doctors and running errands.
    • “Backpack Connections” tip sheets for parents of elementary-age children on how to support positive child behavior. Topics include addressing common behavior concerns, understanding emotions, developing routines and schedules, plus social skills routines, and dealing with requests.
    • “Family Articles” tip sheets for parents of young children (birth – elementary age). These sheets cover playtime ideas, addressing biting behaviors, understanding feelings/emotions, having routines, and dealing with requests.
  • Parenting Cue Cards, from Great Schools with Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, provide easy-to-use parenting cue cards to help parents when they have challenging child behavior at home. Topics with links include positive discipline, dishonesty, time and organization, attitude and defiance, motivation, screen time, homework, siblings, peer pressure, and risky behavior.
  • Families, Parents and Caregiver Resources, from the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, provides multiple mental health and parenting resources for families with children of all ages. Resources include tools to highlight family assets and strengths, talk with your children about mental health, and grow parent self-care skills.
  • PBIS for Families, developed by Florida PBIS includes great resources for supporting positive behavior at home.  Their core features of family PBS are easy to understand!

Videos:

  • Cosmic Kids Yoga. This YouTube channel provides engaging and short yoga, mindfulness, and meditation videos for children ages 3+. These can be helpful for practicing self-regulation, calming down, and providing movement opportunities for children.
  • Stop, Breathe & Think. This YouTube channel provides short, guided mindfulness and meditation videos for children and adults.
  • Mindfulness Strategies for Adult and Student Wellness, from Panorama Education, offers daily (at 9am and 12pm EST) live webinars to learn and practice a variety of calm-breathing techniques (e.g., balloon breathing, flower breathing, bubble breathing) to support mindfulness practice. Anyone, parent or educator, can register for these daily 30-minute mindfulness training sessions.
  • Julia Cook on Facebook Live. Each Monday and Friday (at 9am CST), SEL author Julia Cook reads her famous Social Emotional Learning (SEL) books.