Learning to Tolerate Preferred Activities

Finishing playing with a preferred item before you are ready to end is never a pleasant experience, but for our students with limited speech, it can be a frustrating, overwhelming one. At the Day School we often encounter students who have difficulty tolerating the removal of their preferred items, or demonstrate difficulty waiting for those items to be delivered. For one particular student, this posed a great problem, and impeded his ability to work and participate in classroom activities with peers.

Johnny was a student who initially preferred creative activities of cutting, coloring, and pasting. His love of art led to many difficult problem behaviors, primarily when asked to end the activity. His behavior escalated, both at home and in school, to unmanageable levels for one adult to handle. Specifically, the student would become extremely agitated and frustrated when denied access to paper and cartoon cut outs.

Initially, we decided to teach Johnny to play appropriately with the art materials. Once this was achieved, we began to slowly intervene throughout the play session by requesting for a crayon or a marker and immediately returning it. This continued until we were able to request for a crayon and hold on to it for 30 seconds before being returned. At this time Johnny was allowed free access to these materials, and we knew that we needed to implement a way for him to request them, and then tolerate a delay in receiving them. This would then mimic the natural environment more accurately. We began with conditioning a token system, which would eventually be used throughout programming. This would create a system where Johnny would complete a number of trials before being provided access to the terminal reinforcer. Additionally, every time Johnny requested for an item, we would delay the time between the request and when the item was received. This time interval was increased systematically until Johnny was waiting appropriately for forty five minutes before receiving his preferred item. This was ideal, but still not solving one major obstacle: What happens when the toy Johnny wants is not available? Or the printer is out of ink and he cannot print a cartoon character? These are obstacles families face on a daily basis, and just increasing the interval he had to wait would not be enough.

So, our final objective was to teach Johnny to tolerate an alternative choice option, following a request. We started off with offering a highly preferred alternative item immediately following the initial request. If Johnny requested Play Dough, we offered Moon Sand. If he requested a crayon, we offered a marker. If he accepted the item and played appropriately for five seconds, we would immediately offer the originally requested item. This strategy aimed to teach Johnny that if the requested item was unavailable, he could still have access to other items, and then when the item became available, he would receive it. Throughout the following months, we began to offer items not as close in form or function as the originally requested item. We also increased the amount of time that elapsed before Johnny gained access to the original item.

Today, Johnny is able to work for long durations of time without receiving constant access to his preferred items. He now tolerates delays in receiving items, and allows other students to interact with his toys. He is able to tolerate alternative items when the items he originally requested are being used by other students or unavailable. Working towards meeting these types of goals is a long term project, but with dedication and perseverance they can be achieved.