TBRI Tip #12: Proactive Strategies

TBRI Correcting Principles rely on connecting first as being the most important factor in being effective in correcting the behavior. By teaching proactively, you can stay connected while correcting. What’s so important about being proactive?? TBRI teaches that being and teaching proactively can do so much to heal your child as well as deescalate behaviors. Being proactive means doing things or teaching a skill ahead of time, while your child is calm and can learn. On the healing side, proactive strategies include:

·       Understanding and meeting sensory needs

·       Teaching and practicing calming techniques 

·       Teaching and practicing compromises, choices and TBRI Life Value Terms 

·       Adapting the environment to meet your child’s needs

·       Using Transition ideas 

·       Building in Rituals

The really great news is, as you use and apply more and more of these healing ideas proactively and on a regular basis, the less there are behaviors to deescalate! But there are always dysregulating situations that occur, so we also need strategies to effectively deescalate behaviors, while staying connected. On the de-escalation side, being proactive would include:

·       Giving food/snack and water every two hours or when a melt-down occurs 

·       Movement/exercise every two hours 

·       TBRI Correcting Proactive Strategies that include, being Immediate, within 3 seconds, and Direct, that is close to and at your child’s level, in responding to your child’s behavior

·       Sharing Power, choices and compromises 

·       Giving Time-ins

·       Giving Re-dos 

Teach and Apply Proactive Strategies 

Most of the ideas above we have covered in previous TBRI Tips, so let’s review a few we haven’t. 

Time-ins 

The old parenting way of deescalating our kids by sending them away with a time out doesn’t work for kids from hard places. Instead we want to give them time in, so that we are close by and can provide felt safety while working through the problem with them. If possible, create a time in place with some of your child’s calming tools, such as a sensory tool like Kinetic Sand, so they have a place to go and some tools to use. Time in is a TBRI concept utilized in the Levels of Response when a child is dysregulated and so can’t respond from their thinking brain and instead react from their fear brain with a survival behavior such as fight, flight or freeze. At this time we need to give them time to deescalate and can do that by offering a time in to ask to think about what happened and what they did. As they begin to calm down and get back into their thinking brain, they can give you a response. You may also need to co-regulate with them to help them calm down before they can talk about what happened. 

Re-dos

If it makes sense for the situation, you can ask your child if they want to try it again with a re-do. Re-dos are a TBRI strategy that gets your child to learn the right way to do it by doing it over and creating a new motor memory of being successful! Re-dos are done warmly and with grace as we encourage our kids to learn new behaviors to replace old survival behaviors. For further, in-depth information go to www.child.tcu.edu.