In preparing this information for autism parents, I conducted a survey to find out what concerns and issues were pressing for parents. The responses gave me insight into parents' concerns and goals for their children and family. One thing that I noticed right away is that most people describe their goals in emotional terms, such as less anger, and more empathy and happiness. My goal is to teach you specific skills that will help your child achieve these emotional goals. It is not possible, however, to teach "emotions," and very difficult even to define or describe them--since they mean something different to all of us and they are ever changing.

The approach in these lessons is to guide you away from thinking in terms of emotions, and toward thinking in terms of behavior that you can define, observe and track. To take it a step further, I will show you how to look for productive behaviors, or physical actions, that you can define, observe, track and reinforce. When you reinforce productive behaviors, your child will perform more of them, and the unproductive behaviors will be displaced and, over time, become less frequent and less severe.

The teaching method that you will encounter in this course is called TAGteach (Teaching with Acoustical Guidance). This is a scientific method based on the same principles as those underlying Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). TAGteach provides a structured way to observe, break down and teach behaviors and gives a simple way to provide effective and timely positive reinforcement. We will talk about this in more detail later in the course.

When you have reviewed this lesson and completed the activities you will be able to:

1. Understand the definition of behavior
2. Observe your child and record observations of desired behavior
3. Understand the function of the consequence and how TAGteach applies to this
4. Apply TAGteach to improve the attention span in your child

Activity #1 – Definition of Behavior  -- Child Observation Chart

The first step in applying TAGteach to the process of teaching children with autism is to think, in detailed ways, about our children’s behavior. Here is the key fact about behavior:

Behavior is physical movement of the body.

When our children scream, have tantrums, refuse to do things, get upset at a change in plan, ignore attractive toys or turn away from relatives, they are behaving: they are moving parts of their bodies. 

They display these behaviors by moving their hands, legs, vocal chords, and torso in certain ways. A child who is jumping up and down, waving his arms, screaming and jerking his body is having a tantrum. Another, child who has both feet on the floor, his arms at this side, and is speaking quietly (or being quiet), is calm. We can see with our eyes and hear with our ears the difference between these two children.

Using the concept of physical movement, we can look at big, multi-component skills like “following directions” or “playing with toys” or “adapting to a schedule change”, and think of the physical movements necessary to achieve those goals.

Here is an activity to practice observing our children’s behaviors in terms of physical movements of the body. Please take five minutes to observe your child and take notes on the physical movements of his or her body. Write down what your child is doing with his or her feet, legs, arms, hands, torso, head and vocal chords.

There is a Child Observation Chart on the Chaos to Calm blog. Click on the button here to download it:​

Activity #2 – Review the ABCs of Behavioral Science – the Consequence

The second step in applying TAGteach to autism, is to keep in mind the ABCs of behavioral science: Antecedent, Behavior and Consequence. Behavioral science tells us that the consequence of an action determines the course of that action in the future. If a physical movement results in a pleasant consequence for a child, the child will be more likely to perform that action again.

TAGteach is all about the consequence! TAGteach is unsurpassed in delivering precise, timely consequences -- positive reinforcement.

If a child continues to perform a physical movement (whether we like that movement or not), that child is experiencing reinforcing consequences! We may not understand what the consequence is or why it is reinforcing to the child, but if the child keeps doing a physical movement he or she is getting something out of it. For this reason, the best way to reduce a difficult behavior is to reinforce and increase, another behavior. Giving the child lots of reinforcement for the even the smallest productive physical movements will create a foundation for new, functional skills.

To brush up on the ABCs, please take a look at the free download on Behavior Basics: A Primer for Autism Parents. You received a copy when you registered for this mailing list. Here is the link again in case you didn’t get a chance to download this.

Since a number of parents responded that they would like to help their children increase their attention span, here is an example of using TAGteach to increase "attending" behaviors.

“Attention” is defined as the ability to focus on something, and to maintain that focus in the presence of distracting stimuli. For the purposes of our kids with autism, we will start by observing very short episodes of attention, reinforcing them, and building them up into the ability to remain focused on more complex activities for longer periods of time.

This is your first chance to use TAGteach with your child!

Parents expressed concern about their children’s happiness, and respecting the children’s emotions and needs. TAGteach, with its emphasis on breaking tasks down into small parts that the child can accomplish, and providing timely reinforcement for each task, is both successful in teaching and respectful of the child. TAGteach delivers success, praise and reinforcement to children. Kids like it because they accomplished something! They learned something, they were supported and encouraged during the process, and they could go at their own pace. When our kids feel successful and feel that they are learning, they are happy! The world is working for them instead of against them.

The simple, step-by-step TAGteach approach made a big difference in our lives. My son has severe autism and is profoundly nonverbal. In the early years, he was wild, chaotic and aggressive. Now he is perfectly willing to help out with chores and follow directions. We can talk to him and he understands. Most importantly, he is cheerful, lively and enjoys life. He is able to communicate his wants and needs and to show us his personality. Did it happen overnight? No, it took time and effort. This shows what behavioral science, and a great application like TAGteach, can do for a child -- even a child with a tough diagnosis like autism.

Here is a short video of Douglas doing two things that he loves: listening to music and going for a walk:

If you have any questions or any comments about what I have discussed here or any requests for me to cover other topics related to TAGteach and teaching functional behaviors please join the discussion below.