Ep. 11: Why Targeting Behaviors Doesn't Work & What To Do Instead
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What is the main problem with targeting surface‑level behaviors in autistic kids?
What's up everyone? Welcome to Making the Shift.
Where we listen to autistic voices,
explore new therapy ideas,
and share neurodiversity affirming methods and strengths-based approaches to support autistic kids.
Because we're not here to try and quote fix kids.
We are here to love them, embrace them, and celebrate them for who they are. I'm Jesse Ginsburg, sensory integration trained SLP, founder of a top-rated speech therapy clinic in Los Angeles, and creator of the Inside Out Sensory Certificate for SLPs.
And I'm Chris Winger, also known as Speech Dude, high school SLP and creator of the Dynamic Assessment for Social Emotional Learning. Are you ready to make the shift?
Let's do it.
Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to episode 11 of Making the Show.
That's right. We have made it to episode eleven.
You say that every episode. And I was thinking
about this though. I was like, you know what? There's usually things that come With a significance to a number. You know, but then I was thinking about eleven. And there's not really much that comes in groups of eleven. But then I thought about something recently that did come in a group of eleven. Donuts when I bring them home. They come back with eleven of them. Sometimes ten. Well you know it we are
still getting back into the swing of things. If you can't tell, we took a long weekend, went up north to my hometown, and my little brother got married. And all of me and my two brothers, three of us, siblings, were all engaged at the same time.
That is fantastic. It was my first time up to visit her side of the family too. Um and it was just the town where Jesse grew up in. And it was much different than the town I grew up in. So it's kind of a nice um Uh feeling to get out of town to see. um everything that her hometown involved.
I know it's funny because I grew up in Carmel, which is known to be a beach town. So it has that beachy kind of preppy feel in a lot of places. But then it also like 10 minutes away in Carmel Valley, it's really ranchy and we went to the hay store, hay hay and feed store and Baby Jack played in the hay and we listened to live music with The stage was a Uh pick up truck.
And it was awesome just all around. Everybody had a blast.
Yeah, we did a lot of fun stuff.
We don't get to do that kind of stuff all too often. When you have three children, things can be a little bit tough, but we were able to get out there and just really uh soak it soak it up. The wedding went fantastic for her
and you officiated the wedding.
I was the acting ordained minister.
Fun fact. You guys may not know that about him.
Yeah. So it's uh behind my credentials when I write my reports it says Chris Winger, C C C Dash SLP dash ordained minister.
Slash. DJ slash M C slash. Oh M.
All of it.
So many special things.
Awesome stuff.
So today we are talking all about what not to do when you see a problem behaviors. This is a conversation we have probably every single week. And it's such a great topic because I think there's so much there are just so many misperceptions out there about what to do when you see challenging behaviors. And I think the other thing Is that They directly affect us.
Yeah, absolutely.
How could we not care?
The en you know working in the schools. We see this happen. all the time right when we're working within our field um we see certain challenging behaviors arise and we see how um they're handled and what the Uh outcomes are of those things and we really wanted to dive into that for this episode.
How does the iceberg analogy help us understand the root causes of challenging behavior?
Yeah, and I would say we use the term challenging behaviors lightly. I always say behaviors and quotes because there's such there's I think behaviors are often mislabeled as something that's done intentionally when a lot of the times that's not the case, which is what we wanted to talk about today. So I learned a really great analogy. It was in the book Beyond Behaviors by Mona de La Hook. And she talks about behaviors as an iceberg. And when you think of the tip of the iceberg, it's this tiny part of the iceberg. That's all we can see. So that represents the behavior.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main problem with targeting surface‑level behaviors in autistic kids?
0:08–4:24
2
How does the iceberg analogy help us understand the root causes of challenging behavior?
4:24–9:14
3
Why should we re‑frame “how can we stop the behavior?” to “what is the behavior telling us?”
9:14–13:02
4
What are the hidden factors (sleep, nutrition, health, emotion) that drive observable behaviors?
13:02–17:37
5
How do behavior support plans typically miss the underlying lagging skills?
17:37–22:07
6
What is a concrete example of identifying and teaching the missing skill for a student who hits peers?
22:07–24:14
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)