Argumentative Draft

       Every behavior has a function. When you cannot communicate your needs, you may hav a different way of showing these behavior's. If you have not really been around, or understand what Autism is, you may think that their behavior's are random. My point of view, and many psychologist's, or people who have expirence with Autistic children can prove otherwise. In the end you will have a better understanding, and see the reason behind these behaviors. It took me a year, but I too figured it out. It has really helped me to become a better person.

     Mary has always been a very caring child. She is very effectionate, and happy. She began to become more and more upset every day. She is a non-verbal student, so she could no tell anyone why. She started to show signs of anxiety, by pacing, loud vocalizations, and stareing at my male counter parts when they were near. This especially happend when a male staff would monitor her in the rest room. Then she would become agressive. We kept reporting these behavior's, and my superiors looked into it. Nothing was found on our part.

     This went on for months, and eventually, we had to stop putting her with male staff. This was due to severe agression. Finally about six months into these behaviors she had an exam at the hosptial. She had shown signs of sexual trauma. After a long investigation, she had been being abused by one her male care takers at the placement that she was living at. The issue was it took six months to figure this out. She now is back to her self. She has began to trust men again, and has learned that not all men are a threat.

     Jacob has a hard time around people. He prefers to stay in his room, alone most of the time. He has social anxiety. He was not born with this, but has reason in his childhood that have brought him to this. Jacob comes from an abusive, sexual, physical, and emotional home. His guardians would make fun of him in front of friends and family. Then at night he would endure sexual abuse from them, and was beaten to keep quiet. He didn't trust people to care for him, and expected everyone to be a predator.

      Jacob starts to get nervous, and wrings his has in classroom situations in which he has focus on him. A lot of the time it is hard to get him to leave his room to go to school. He is still looking for that ridacule, and abuse. Also, he too himslef is now a sexual predator. He seeks out children that look young, and lower fuctioning. This is believed to come from his mental processing, thinking it's ok to abuse smaller weaker children. He constantly tries to get staff engaged in conversation about younger kids. Per his safety plan, we are suppose to ignore him, and report to oyr superiors when this happens. As far as trusting adults, there are only certain people he trusts. It takes a lot to get him to break down his barriers.

     Lenord has sensory issues. He needs a lot of sensory input throughout the day. He needs fidgets for his hands to keep his hand's busy, the reasoning behind this is to keep his hand's busy from doing other things. By other things, I mean from private things, amd also to stop him from hitting others. He also needs sound mufflers on his ears, as he is very sensitive to loud noises. When things get to loud for him, he will become angry, start throwing a tantrum, and then begin hitting others. When he starts to have loud vocalizations it means one of two things: he needs to use the restroom, or he is seeking attention.

     Lenord has many other behaviors that are attetion seeking in nature. He will vacate the classroom, and run down the hall to see if you are paying attetion to him. He will pound on his desk loudly to get you to react to it. Lenord will sit down in the hallway and not move if he is going to a non prefferd activity, as we are not allowed to move children if they are no being agressive, or in direst harms way.  With Lenord, he has a reason for everything.

     Every behavior has a function. You just have to understand the kid to understand why they are doing what they do. It is very important to document new behavior's, as you see in Mary's case, although extreme, it was something very important for us to catch. So if you ever have expirence with an autistis child, please understand that they are doing these things for s reason or purpose. They are human also, and re doing these things as a way to communicate.

Works Cited:

www.educateautism.com/behavioural-principles/functions-ofbehaviour.html
Funtions of Behaviour. By: Gavin Cosgrave(2009).

Cooper, J., Heron, W. (2007) Applied Behaviour Analysis. New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Miltenberger, R. (2008). Behavior Modification. Belmont, CA. Wadworth Publishing.

O'Neill, R., Horner, R., Albin, R., Sprague, J., Storey, K., & Newton, J. (1997).
Functional Assessment and Programme Development for Problem Behavior: A Practical Handbook.
Pasific Grove, CA. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.