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Category Archives: BACB CEU

Have you ever taken an on-demand workshop?

02 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, Behavioral Cusp, boundaries of competence, CEU, children, collaboration, Community, continuing education, Cusp Emergence University, CuspEmergenceUniversity, supervision, teaching behavior analysis, teaching ethics, TI-ABA, TIABA, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis, Uncategorized

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BACB CEU, bacb ethics ceu, bacb supervision ceu, bcba-d courses, camille kolu, camille parsons, CuspEmergenceUniversity, ethics ceu, kolu, new course, on-demand workshop, supervision CEU, teresa kolu, trauma sensitivity, trauma sensitivity workshop, trauma-informed behavior analysis

For me, an on-demand workshop does several things: It can be taken any time; one can take it with a group and apply exercises with other people if desired; but since it’s on-demand, an individual will benefit even if taking it solo. It should be expandable if one wants to be able to sit with a chapter for a few extra hours because we simply love the content; there will be resources to grow with and come back to if one can’t do all the exercises right NOW. I’ve been on sabbatical a while; as I return to doing interviews, conferences, talks, and podcasts (including a new one we taped recently for the Atypical Behavior Analyst, with my friend Dr. Eddie Fernandez airing later), it is nice to be able to take something on my own time, when tiny folks are asleep, and I know many parents – and folks going through school and work at the same time – are in the same boat.

So after taking an on-demand online workshop recently, we decided to present some of our own new content in an expandable workshop format instead of the typical course, including several features. Our new Trauma Sensitivity workshop includes:

  1. 30+ exercises with the videos: Because this is an on-demand workshop, we present a TON of exercises packaged with the videos. Teams or individuals can easily do a chapter a week along with exercises for a truly transformative experience in your office or supervision setting. But if they choose to take it all at once in an afternoon, that’s possible too. So it’s customizable.
  2. Scalable applications for team members, supervisors and supervisees: The new content (on leveling up the trauma sensitivity of our staff and client environments) is “scalable”, meaning we include applications for 3 different levels of staff: those in roles that are basic; intermediate; and advanced. Presenting it as a workshop meant that the team members “leading” the discussions and exercises benefit just as much as (but different from) the less advanced team members they are mentoring through it.
  3. Supervision guides and chapter handouts: These come with every chapter video and walk the student through the material, from the main ideas we presented, to definitions for any new vocabulary, exercises, lists of Ethics Code items that relate, thoughtful discussion questions, exercises, and chapter resources and articles. Every chapter comes with its own handout and supervision guide to help BACB supervisors or team leaders support our coworkers and supervisees.

The two things I personally love most about this workshop are:

  1. it addresses tough topics like moral injury with your team members and considering how this ethics area could apply to our supervisees but our clients too;
  2. and we provide resources to follow up on big ideas like this one: there are some behavioral needs that medical providers consider symptoms of trauma-related concerns. (If folks are new to integrating trauma sensitivity in their supervision and client environments, we might miss this huge opportunity to make sure we do no harm by treating behavior needs that are actually related to new abuse.)

Wondering about the content of the new workshop? Here are the chapters (each has its own video, ethics intersections, resources, thought questions, and exercises):

Chapter 1: Principles of Trauma-Sensitive Care  
Chapter 2: Interactions that could help or do harm
Chapter 3: Features of trauma-related responding  
Chapter 4: Defining trauma  
Chapter 5: Risks related to trauma  
Chapter 6: Elements of a potentially trauma-related response  
Chapter 7: Buffers
Chapter 8: Triggers (Then watch integration Scenario Video)
Chapter 9: Neurodevelopment
Chapter 10: Want to mitigate risk? Document it first
Chapter 11: Skills and Stress
Chapter 12: Healthy Collaboration  
Above: Table of chapters from Trauma Sensitivity in the Behavioral Workplace, new on-demand workshop from Cusp Emergence

Did you enjoy this article? Come back soon when we’ll cover a few more related topics including: mentorship groups for those applying trauma sensitivity principles in their supervision sessions; how to get the most out of your workshop experience by doing exercises as a group or dyad; more info on a brand new all-trauma conference coming in April hosted by the formidable Dr. Gabi Morgan; meetups in Denver May 2023; and more!

Read below for final thoughts and some links if you’re in the market for values related CEUs: Recently, when my own CEU cycle was about to turn over, I knew it was time to take a course or workshop in something I could use NOW and am passionate about… so I went searching for three things: supervision CEUs; offerings from people I admire and from folks who literally wrote the books on leveling up mentorship and supervision and working with families; and opportunities to learn about values in a deeper way that would help me level up my own practice. That led me to a couple of great courses and podcasts; one of these opportunities was a workshop with built in exercises that could be taken quickly or over the course of a few weeks and included opportunities to network with other folks. It was a really lovely experience. Included are links to a couple trainings and podcasts from respected folks who continue to inspire, below.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-journey-of-supervision/id1501568747?i=1000485543749

https://evelyngouldphd.com/news/events/20220915-acting-on-a-value-of-self-care-on-demand/

https://www.weareconstellations.com/current-workshops

And here’s the trauma sensitivity on-demand workshop: https://www.cuspemergenceuniversity.com/courses/trauma-sensitivity

New 4h course: Autism, TIBA and Ethics

02 Wednesday Feb 2022

Posted by kolubcbad in Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, behavior cusp, CEU, collaboration, continuing education, contraindicated procedures, Cusp Emergence University, CuspEmergenceUniversity, ethics, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, Uncategorized

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autism, behavior analysis, ethics, TIBA, trauma, trauma informed behavior analysis

Last time I wrote, I shared some ideas about this intersection. Today, the new course is up! Before you go check it out (and claim your February 2022 coupon for 20% off by typing ASD2022)– during the introductory month of the course)- learn why I’m so passionate about screening for trauma in a population so many behavior analysts have been working with (for some, virtually their entire professional lives).

Have you ever worked with someone in pain? How do we know if they’re currently hurting, whether it’s because they are sick, it’s related to interventions we chose, or from experiences we reminded them of? How would we know if that was the case? Did that person cower, freeze, or grimace? Did they flinch, close their eyes, seem to “zone out”? Perhaps someone has run away, played repetitively with the toys they had, or fallen asleep at school? Sometimes, respondent behaviors may be giveaways that people are experiencing fear or in pain, but successful avoidance behavior can hide that pain. Other times people have been through experiences making them more likely to use aggression or property destruction. In the least, we should consider whether our interventions cause harm. This harm could include causing our clients distress or pain, exposing someone to additional risks, detracting from their quality of life, failing to program in sustainable ways that transfer to the maintaining environment, and so much more.

A new training is up on Cusp.University on the intersection of autism, trauma informed behavior analysis, and ethics. By the time we near the end, we have discussed and revisited the idea of contra-indicated procedures. Given that lists exist for diagnoses of autism alone, why isn’t there a list of best practices appropriate for clientele meeting diagnostic criteria for autism who also come to therapy with trauma histories? Why is it so difficult to find articles suggesting best treatment paths for individuals with both autism and trauma related experiences in the literature? In behavior analysis, answers to these questions may be related to our field, its historical publishing practices, and the ethical and pragmatic need to individualize procedures for each client.

In terms of publishing practices, a panelist in ABAI’s “Exploring Publication Bias in Behavior Analytic Research” (which included Galizio, Travers, and Ringdahl, 2021) stated,

“No intervention is guaranteed to work for every individual, every time, in every context.”

They suggested that authors writing about their research should include more detailed descriptions of the conditions under which successful implementation of the intervention occurred.

When we screen for trauma related or aversive historical situations and stimuli, we often learn things that

  • help us prioritize treatment,
  • document risks for certain procedures,
  • avoid or prioritize certain stimuli,
  • detect environmental conditions that are acting as motivational operations and conditioned MOs,
  • and ultimately, perhaps minimize harm to our client.

Screening for trauma can help to identify individuals with prior risk factors who are at risk for experiencing additional adverse events and aversive conditioning. Attendees learn in chapter 1 some facts about how being autistic is to be at increased risk for trauma, bullying, abuse, increased likelihood of experiencing foster care—and in chapter 3, learn about the higher rates of experiencing restraint, seclusion and being excluded from school.

But another effect of screening – one that should affect all behavior analysts—could be an increased awareness of the fact that behavior analytic procedures are being used all the time for this population at the intersection of autism and trauma. Perhaps the least we can do is to begin doing behavior analysis with people instead of to people, and to be transparent, inviting, and open in looking at options—and their likelihood of causing harm either now in the future.

Let’s look at this juxtaposition: we have a great ethical responsibility to do no harm, but also an ability to cause great harm. With using any behavioral procedure there comes a risk that we may do just that. This is especially true when we don’t have literature evidence that a given intervention is appropriate and effective for the person’s needs given their history and current situation. Perhaps they don’t actually need behavior analysis seeking to change their behavior as much as they need a roof, a meal, a bus pass, a blender, a respite provider, a ride to the doctor, a coat, a medication, a trip to the dentist… the list could go on and on. So clearly the first step is to see what the person needs.

When designing an individualized behavior support plan, two things are important to consider:

(1) the risks and benefits for the client themselves, given their needs, values, environment, etc., (e.g., the long- and short-term outcomes of procedures and decisions, and

(2) evidence the procedure is appropriate for our client.

In terms of evidence, when considering decisions in context of the literature, few studies provide sufficient detail in characteristics of the participants. So it is difficult to tell, reminds the panel, which characteristics were present for study participants received successful or unsuccessful interventions. Thus we can’t really tell how many of the massive number of papers on treating behaviors in autism, also apply and were conducted with individuals with autism who also had a trauma background. But statistics suggest many of them must have. In the science of behavior analysis, each subject’s behavior is its own control, so if we control our conditions and try to measure well, we may reveal additional elements of historical and current behavioral environments that exert contextual and stimulus control on the client’s behavior- and that change their needs. At times, historical aversive conditioning experiences may have contributed changes making it painful or inappropriate for clients to experience certain interventions. As we discuss in the new training, some of those conditioning experiences may even have occurred during and as part of behavioral treatment.

We can’t know for sure what our clients have been through. But when owe it to them to honor those experiences if they are comfortable sharing them.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn.

Course Objectives: 

1. List connections between autism and trauma in the research 

2. State different kinds or examples of trauma that may affect individuals with autism 

3. State supportive ways to ask about trauma histories

4. Select examples of how medical history can be related to trauma

5. State examples of repertoires beneficial for practitioners who serve clients affected by both autism and trauma

Ready to learn more? The new training offers hints from Dr. Kolu on how we begin the conversation about informed consent and screening for trauma, why assent is so important, how trauma and autism might intersect with medical needs affecting our clients, and more. And all the resources are available as free content in the preview section, so go grab that now! See you at a conference soon or find us online. And thank you for listening!

Get ready to learn about ASD and trauma

11 Monday Oct 2021

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, behavior cusp, Behavioral Cusp, CEU, children, collaboration, Community, continuing education, contraindicated procedures, Cusp Emergence University, CuspEmergenceUniversity, Education and Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis, learning, podcast, resources, risk analysis, risk assessment, risk versus benefit analysis, TI-ABA, TIABA, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis

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podcast

By Dr. Camille Kolu, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Behavior analysts who treat people with autism probably know that ASD often co-occurs with trauma. But did you know that up to 50 percent or more of people with autism may have experienced trauma, that ASD itself is a risk factor for experiencing trauma, or that children with autism may be around 2.5 times more likely to experience foster care, itself another risk factor for trauma?

These findings are some of the reasons researchers (as well as research-practitioners, including those of us at Cusp Emergence) urge practitioners to adopt screening in order to support the huge group of people affected by both trauma and ASD (see Brenner, Pan and Mazefsky et al. on the need for screening, and special behavioral differences that occur in this population).

ASD and TIBA: Our newest upcoming course on CuspEmergenceUniversity.com

They are also just a few of the things you’ll learn when you take the upcoming course on CuspEmergenceUniversity on trauma and autism (coming Fall 2021). Other topics we cover include:

-client examples from both child and adult populations whose experiences include autism and trauma

-literature references helping practitioners discover more about what trauma related experiences people with autism may face

-how behaviors themselves can be risk factors for additional trauma

-behavior programming examples that may be counterindicated procedures depending on the individual needs of autistic people who faced trauma

-examples of ASD communication needs that have been particularly helpful to target when supporting this population after trauma

-behavioral cusps that can make a huge difference after trauma

-examples of worst case scenarios people face when trauma history is not taken into account for individuals with autism after trauma….

…and much more. We also cover how Cusp Emergence uses the SAFE-T model and Assessment (including our risk versus benefit tools) to be more supportive, mitigate risks unique to autism and trauma, and learn more about the whole person and their needs.

Just can’t wait for the CEU course on autism and trauma to be posted in the coming months? Tune in to The Autism Helper’s podcast. Dr. Kolu’s interview with Sasha Long, BCBA is live and we’re excited to share it with you!

25 Things I Want You to Know: Ways I use trauma to inform my practice of behavior analysis

26 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, boundaries of competence, CEU, children, collaboration, Community, continuing education, contraindicated procedures, Cusp Emergence University, CuspEmergenceUniversity, Education, mental health, resources, risk versus benefit analysis, TI-ABA, TIABA, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis

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behavior analysis, TIBA, trauma, trauma and behavior analysis, trauma-informed behavior analysis

This is the 21st article in a series on Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis by Dr. Camille Kolu, BCBA-D

I often hear from educators and behavior analysts, “What do you actually do differently if your client has faced trauma, given your role as a behavior analyst?” In this bulleted series we’ll get there, but we’ll start with what I would want you to understand about myself as your client (or teammate!) who has experienced adverse experiences. Here we list 25 different things I want you to know. (As a hint, each thing we can understand about a person could be a bridge, if you choose to walk through this difficult thing to a shared place of understanding on the other side. We’ll explain in more detail in future posts, or you can check out our course library over at CuspEmergenceUniversity if you’re interested in expanding your boundary of competence). But first, if I were your client or team member – if my past involved trauma – I would want you to understand that now, with the presence of historical trauma,

I MAY:

  • have difficulties calming down when under pressure
  • have difficulties using “appropriate” behaviors even after years of programmed reinforcement for using them
  • have mental health concerns that have never been appropriately addressed because my behavior masks my needs
  • have medical problems that are going unaddressed because my providers have never asked me about my trauma history, despite it being a fact that it confers serious medical risks. (See the incomparable Nadine Burke Harris talk about her work on this, and the amazing takeaways, in her classic TED Talk– or see some of her research and outcomes on using screening tools)
  • be more likely to use certain “challenging behaviors”
  • and find it more reinforcing, even important, to use behaviors you would describe as challenging
  • use behaviors that are more resistant to change than you are used to as an instructor, therapist, parent, supervisor or friend
  • find certain interventions painful, difficult, or harmful
  • find some kinds of social interactions difficult or painful
  • have trouble controlling some of my bodily functions, but may not be able to describe to you why
  • experience “triggers” in the environment that you can’t see (but that an experienced provider could locate, document, and learn to help me explore or move with, as appropriate)
  • experience some times of the day, week, month, or year that are marked by aversive events for me that you won’t know about
  • may not be able to explain WHY this time is difficult or why I am using an “old pattern of behavior”
  • find it more difficult to perform, or to learn and remember new things than others of my age, skill level, or occupation – even if “on a good day” I can do this just fine. (By the way, have you read The Four Agreements? Do you know how important it is to take nothing personally and know that others are doing their best (and how critical it is for you to do the same)? If not go check it out.
  • use occasional behavior that is mistaken as “ADHD” or “ODD”, or more, but that is actually related to how I was mistreated
  • have been given misdiagnoses, treatments that didn’t work, or medications that made my problems worse or that interacted with each other in harmful ways that hurt my body and cognitive function
  • attempt to advocate but get ignored when I try to communicate pain, mistreatment, or a medical concern
  • be more likely to experience FUTURE trauma because of what I faced before
  • lack a reinforcing and useful repertoire (e.g., full complement of skills and things to enjoy), especially if I faced treatments that just tried to “teach me a replacement behavior” for a few challenging things I did, instead of understand and grow me as a person in the context of my own community, needs and desires for my future
  • be part of a long line of marginalized people or one of multiple generations exposed to trauma
  • have a chance to change our lineage… if you help

After all, I AM:

  • a human being with interests, feelings, and great potential for growth and joy
  • more likely to experience certain risks (I may be at greater risk of losing my educational or therapeutic setting, go through harmful discipline practices, be exposed to law enforcement interaction, for example)
  • in need of understanding, an informed supervisor and system of support, and someone who will document my challenges so we can work on them, but not emphasize them so much they ignore my strengths, needs and skills
  • capable of much more on my best day than I show on a hard day… but I am always doing “my best” at the time, given what I have been through and what I AM going through, and despite what it looks like

Taking these points as a starting place, future posts in this series explore what I NEED as a person who may have faced these things, and what I DO as a behavior analyst who cares. We’ll also share some of what I need from my supervisors or systems administrators! What would you add to this list? What are some of your action items?

Self-paced SAFE-T Assessment Training is here!

16 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, behavior cusp, Behavioral Cusp, CEU, children, collaboration, Community, continuing education, contraindicated procedures, Cusp Emergence University, CuspEmergenceUniversity, Education, ethics, mental health, resources, risk analysis, risk assessment, risk versus benefit analysis, supervision, teaching ethics, TI-ABA, TIABA, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis, Uncategorized

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behavior analysis, behavior analysis CEU, CEU, continuing education, cuspemergence, CuspEmergenceUniversity, ethics ceu, SAFE-T, SAFE-T Assessment, SAFE-T model, SAFET Model, supervision CEU, TI-ABA, TIABA, TIBA, trauma, trauma CEU, trauma-informed behavior analysis

It’s finally here! We have learned so much from workshop attendees, trainees and supervisees in this area over the past several years, and appreciate the attendance, feedback and support of everyone who has taken the training or used a version of the SAFE-T Assessment. Coming on Monday, the booklet and training for assessing trauma-related factors affecting our clients of behavioral services, are available ONLINE as a self-paced course. This course provides a download of the new and expanded SAFE-T Checklist booklet, which contains several tools enabling the screening and documentation of over 200 trauma-related factors, and a Risks and Needs form to help teams understand (and document) how these factors confer risks (and converge in risk factors that must be solved or mitigated to protect our clients, teams, and ourselves). The booklet contains an extensive reference section and team supportive tools as you use your new knowledge to better align your team’s skillset with the Ethics Code, and the individualized needs of behavior services clients after trauma.

Several of our behavior analytic and collaborator clients across institutions, educational facilities and private companies clients have shared that learning to assess risk factors related to trauma, and to apply this information to their teams’ FBAs and risk mitigation plans, took their skillset to the next level – essentially affording them an opportunity to acquire an important behavioral cusp for their teams.

Some new components of the booklet include:

  • An optional buffer/ resilience score to assess whether protective environmental and therapeutic components of a client’s plan are in place (to understand some ways that trauma gives rise to medical and behavioral challenges and some buffering factors that can help, please see the book or scholarly articles by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris (e.g., Oh D.L. et al. 2018), who is the Presidential Scholar for 2021’s upcoming Association for Behavior Analysis International’s conference. She will address the critical topic of breaking the intergenerational cycle of adversity, and screening for ACES (adverse childhood experiences).
  • Table of potentially contraindicated procedures (cross referenced with items and risk clusters assessed in the Risks and Needs form)
  • Information about over 50 risk clusters (groups of related risks in the 6 assessed sections of the SAFE-T Assessment)
  • Cross-reference tables showing, for each item we screen for, the location(s) in the SAFE-T Checklist
  • Infographic on components of a trauma-informed FBA
  • Brief templates for Risk Versus Benefit Analysis and Risk Mitigation Planning
  • The IPASS (Inventory of Potential Aversive Stimuli and Setting Events) tool and instructions
  • References (organized by topics) covering over 40 areas or topics of literature related to trauma (including relationships of ACES to medical problems, ACT and intellectual disability, ACT and anxiety, foster care and adoption, the relationship of abuse to pain, drug use and trauma, and much more).

Time required: The course includes about 4.5 hours of video content in 12 lessons, each followed by a brief quiz.

Price (includes 4.5 CEU course and SAFE-T Assessment booklet download): $189.99

For $20 off through the end of February, use the coupon code “SAFET20”.

To register: cusp.university

Upcoming: Brief webinar series on TIBA in partnership with Connections-Behavior.com

28 Thursday May 2020

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, CEU, Community, continuing education, Education, Education and Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis, supervision, teaching behavior analysis, teaching ethics, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis, Uncategorized

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CEU, ceu bacb, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis

Now that the annual conference for ABAInternational is past (whew!), Cusp Emergence is excited about upcoming webinars and online conferences (New Hampshire and FABA, I’m looking at you!). First up is a partnership with Connections-Behavior.com: We will look at trauma-informed behavior analysis in two parts, on June 1 and 15. Register here for this CEU opportunity!

Connecting Behavior Analysis, Aging, Trauma, and Supervision

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, boundaries of competence, CEU, collaboration, Community, continuing education, Cusp Emergence University, dementia, ethics, mental health, supervision, teaching behavior analysis, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis

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aging, gerontology, janet ellis, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis

Behavior Analysis, Aging, Trauma, and Supervision (or BATS, in honor of Dr. Janet Ellis).

This is the 18th article in a series on Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis by Dr. Camille Kolu, BCBA-D. It includes something new that we have been asked about: Companion notes for students and supervisees working through this information with the support of their supervisor.

I heard Jon Baker give a great talk on advances in behavioral treatment of gerontology the other day at COABA. It made me think of my students at the University of Colorado Denver and our supervisees. (There was also a fantastic talk on supervision and feedback by the incomparable Ellie Kazemi, whose book on supervision is out now). When they ask about clients other than autism who have benefited from applied behavior analysis, my supervisees are usually excited to read stories in which ABA changed the lives of people with dementia, brain injury, medical needs, and more. For example, an article from Baker (2006) Continue reading →

Seeing Snakes and Spiders

27 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by kolubcbad in BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, boundaries of competence, CEU, children, collaboration, Community, continuing education, Cusp Emergence University, CuspEmergenceUniversity, edtiba, EDTIBA10, Education, Education and Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis, ethics, mental health, resources, sale, teaching behavior analysis, teaching ethics, TIBA, trauma, trauma-informed behavior analysis, Uncategorized

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ABA, continuing education, CuspEmergenceUniversity, edtiba, ethics, events, mental health, resources, trauma-informed behavior analysis

This is the 17th article in a series on Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis by Dr. Teresa Camille Kolu, Ph.D., BCBA-D.

spider

What did you do when you saw this picture? Chances are you experienced some additional events beyond just “seeing it”. Did you jump? Experience an increase in your breathing rate? Use some choice verbal behavior? Avert your eyes? (And are you prepared to read on? Fair warning… there’s a snake coming up).

Seeing with fresh eyes

I noticed a couple of things about our culture, and fear responses, this past week.

My young daughter’s love for flap books—the kind where you pull back a piece of paper to reveal something—knows no bounds. So she was instantly drawn to a tattered old library copy (apparently she shares this love with lots of peers) of “Buzz Buzz, Baby”- with poorly rendered babies exploring “bugs”. Around the third page the baby pulls back a web flap to unveil, in the book’s words, “EEK! The itsy bitsy spider!”

Whenever I read the book to her I leave out the “Eek!”.

I think she can come up with that on her own, if she happens to, although chances are she’ll get it from me in a non-mindful moment. (In the 1980’s Cook and Mineka did a classic study in which infant monkeys “acquired” a persistent fear of snakes by watching their scared mothers encounter a snake).

Now that we’ve moved out to the country, we encounter our own “Itsy” (and many for whom that name is woefully inadequate) all the time. (I do recommend this thing called the BugZooka… it does work really well, if you like catch-and-release). Itsy and I go way back, and not necessarily in a good way, although I always appreciate her beauty. But I still want to be warned before you text me her picture, dad.

This summer, one tenacious spider (pictured, top) built a web, over and over, in a windy area outside the kitchen, where we see it numerous times daily. The first few (ok, few hundred) times I nearly jumped out of my skin. When I remembered in time, I was very careful to breathe and compose myself before walking to the sink with my daughter, where I’d point out the spider cheerfully and sing (with all the hand movements) the requisite song. Before long she was signing the song herself. Next I noticed myself no longer jumping when I saw the spider.

THEN… one windy morning Itsy was gone. Gone!

I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief.

I was surprised and curious to feel a strange emotion… like MISSING. I missed her! Was she alright? Would she come back? (She was. She did).

With painful awareness that this is temporary, I often marvel that my daughter’s eyes are not only young… they are unconditioned. They don’t have a lot of pairings with events like scary movies about this deep primate fear, being bitten, or seeing spiders while a parent jumps and screams. They are fresh, curious, hopeful eyes.

Yesterday we chanced upon something rather larger than even the biggest spider. It was this old girl… fat and long, with ring upon ring adorning her useful brown rattle. Depending on my readers, maybe you’ll be happy that instead of grabbing a hoe, I called a guy I read about in my new community’s online forum… apparently this guy LOVES snakes. “ANY snake’s worth my time”, he told me as he jumped in his truck. 35 minutes later he had driven up to our homestead, hooked it and taken it. Now it’s in a quite different rattlesnake heaven than the kind I had sort of planned to send it… blissing out in a protected wilderness area up near Fort Collins, I’m told.

rattler

As he removed our snake into a large vented box and curiously counted the rings (while remarking on how huge it was), the guy’s face was composed; he exuded a strange calm excitement. Normally, the fear response to snakes and spiders is part of our biology. Evolutionary biology has several theories why it’s present even in infancy, and why it might have behooved our ancestral mothers to experience more arousal and get out of there to protect their young in the presence of these critters. I can’t help but wonder what this guy’s history is like. Why does he love something that most of us are scared of?

Kids with traumatic histories

If you’re an educator going back to school, many of your kids are coming in with an avoidance response, or a “get out of there!” escape response, ready to go. Some of them will use these responses in the most annoying ways, dropping all their work on the floor or crawling under desks when you announce the quiz. But some of them have a special background you can’t see. For some, they will use these “fear responses” when they encounter “triggers” that you and I do not think of as scary.

Why is that?

Well, the things that were there when they experienced really bad situations are now “paired”, living together in their past, the same way I smelled an old lady yesterday wearing my own granny’s soap and got emotional thinking about my dear departed loved ones. Or the same way you hear a certain song from your high school dance and think about that year, or that person, or that kiss.

And that’s not all. Psychology explains in anxiety journals why, if you’re a person with an intense “fear” or phobia of spiders, not only do you spot them more quickly and tend to see them where your peers might see other things, like mushrooms or flowers faster in the SAME PICTURE—but to you, they also appear BIGGER.

What can we do about it?

How can we help students show up for their education and get all the learning opportunities they can… even when the school, teachers, and peers accidentally give them “fear related” stimuli all day long? (While psychology explains partly WHY these pairings happen, behavior analysis does too, especially if you read some relational frame theory, learn about respondent conditioning, and take a long-term functional analytic approach. Behavior analysis also goes a long way in helping the helpers undo some of the damage, teaching kids to approach adults and “unpair” adult attention from it’s previously bad parts: if I’m a student who has been through neglect abuse, my teacher coming over to me to praise my “good behavior” might not be a welcome stimulus at first… and my teacher’s praise, as well-intentioned as it may be, might not work).

Cusp Emergence University has been hard at work getting the new online training course ready for educators, and behavior analysts who work in education. We hope to help you to start answering these questions for yourself and your students and teams. On Monday, September 30, our course “Education and Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis” opens to a 7 day sale (use the code EDTIBA10 for 10 percent off this CEU opportunity). We’re providing BCBA’s and BCBA-D’s with 3.5 continuing education credits, and 3 of those are in ethics.

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Sign up now!

Start your fall to-do list: Register now for Paradigm play webinar this Monday (and more)!

06 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by kolubcbad in BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, CASA, CEU, children, Community, continuing education, Court Appointed Special Advocate, Early Intervention, Education, learning, play, resources, Uncategorized

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paradigm behavior, play, webinar, workshop

This summer has been a busy one for Cusp Emergence. Dr. Kolu taught Ethics to University of Colorado Denver students, jumped back into work doing consultation to support businesses and BCBA’s to reach their behavior analytic goals, trained CASA volunteers and more. Next month we will be training Friends of Broomfield and (finally!) putting the finishing touches on the Education and Trauma Informed Behavior Analysis course by Cusp Emergence University.

In the meantime, we just learned about a great low-cost resource for parents! Paradigm Behavior has all kinds of great parent-oriented supports that also help behavior analysts and caregivers. This Monday they are having a sale on an informative webinar!  REGISTER HERE:

https://paradigmbehavior.com/play-registration

You know who would also benefit from this? Foster and adoptive parents, preschool teachers, and church nursery staff would find this super helpful. Our trauma informed teams also love learning how to enrich “time in” with kids who are just learning to have fun with adults in carefree ways after a difficult early life.

And coming up, this fall we’ll register for the APBA (Association for Professional Behavior Analysts) convention coming to Denver 2020, attend COABA (Colorado Association for Behavior Analysts) on November 2,  sign up for 4CABA (Four Corners Association for Behavior Analysis) that meets in Colorado Springs April 2020, and submit proposals for the May 2020 workshops at ABAI (Association for Behavior Analysis International) in DC. We’ll be back shortly to tell you all about the new courses we’re offering this fall. Contact us today if you’d like Cusp Emergence to tailor an online workshop or training for your team. Hope to see you soon at a local event or meet you at one of our webinars (CEU’s offered at all of our events)!

 

Beauty and the Bug: Trauma and individuals who are differently abled

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by kolubcbad in adults, Autism, BACB CEU, Behavior Analysis, boundaries of competence, CEU, collaboration, Community, continuing education, mental health, Rett's, trauma, Uncategorized

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beauty and the bug, beauty and the bug cusp emergence, ceu bacb, cusp emergence, ethics ceu, trauma, trauma and behavior analysis, trauma and developmental disability, trauma and ID, trauma-informed behavior analysis

Beauty and the Bug (in which we briefly explore trauma and non-neurotypical people, ask how to raise tender-hearted children, and see a bug portrait in pointillism)

This is the 15th article in a series on Trauma-Informed Behavior Analysis by Dr. Teresa Camille Kolu, Ph.D., BCBA-D.

How do we teach others to tend the needs of those who cannot express them (or for that matter, appreciate the lesson of loss, the tenderness of pain, the beauty in brokenness)? And how common is trauma in individuals with serious developmental disabilities? Many of us have not considered the relevance, let alone the prevalence. Is this because we can’t see it, don’t hear about it, or think that it is out of our scope to address? These questions occurred to me this week as I thought about a participant from a recent training I provided, who asked if the model of trauma-informed behavior analysis (about which I’ve been writing here) applied to individuals with intellectual differences (it does!). Even to us professionals in the field of behavior analysis, the complexity of and subtlety of trauma and behavior remains elusive.

This week my family lost a wonderful man. He and his wife tended to the needs of others (often before their own). Also this week, my reason for taking a work break turned three months old, and Imagine! (a nonprofit agency in my area) had its annual celebration. As I mulled over these questions about trauma and differences and on raising good people, a therapist friend posted Imagine’s video of one of their clients. I realized I had not blogged before specifically about treating challenging behavior in someone who is differently abled. I need to do that, lest one more reader think that this approach (trauma informed behavior analysis) is mainly useful for “vocal” clients, or those who can easily articulate their pain and past. Today, Shelly and her zany personality inspired me to do this.

Individuals with developmental and intellectual differences express or show their history and needs in different ways, and sometimes caregivers overlook the contributions and signs of trauma, neglect or even ongoing abuse. When we (especially behavior analysts) overlook these, we are not addressing the real reasons for challenging behavior, and we might miss the importance of connecting the person with critical mental health resources, or of offering a chance to heal past wounds. We know about functional communication training. But do we fully address subtle needs to communicate pain—both emotional and physical? And when someone lives in an environment or is exposed repeatedly to a situation or person that is aversive (even abusive!) do we teach them to effectively advocate for removal and communicate their discomfort, or do we merely try to reduce the “challenging behavior” that often accompanies the terrible situation? Do we recognize the signs of abuse in individuals who have few skills to communicate?

Too many times, I took a case where team members requested decreases in “challenging behaviors” in someone with diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer, or Spina Bifida, before the team had recognized that the main thing challenging about the behavior was that it was going on because the individual had NO dignified way out. A conversation with a peer last week revealed that without training in these issues, a behavior therapist or even the entire team might treat “suicidal ideation” as a “behavior to be decreased” rather than a serious problem to be solved. (Even when this “behavior” is partly a habit the person has learned to use as a tool to produce needed attention from others, a whole behavior analysis of the situation would consider the risks and possible outcomes of addressing it in different ways, and document and address the related needs to understand and address why this was happening.)

As Shelly and her team alluded to in the video, the very state of not being able to communicate one’s needs and preferences can be traumatic in itself, and can lead one to develop desperate behaviors that just get called “behaviors for reduction” in the individualized behavior plans of thousands of clients. Today there are no more excuses for not helping someone access and master a communication system that works for them. To be sure, not everyone has access to a Smart Home residence decked out with all the tools we saw on the video- but have you seen the article on an accessible app developed by the brother of a man with autism in Turkey (so that he could communicate needs  and gain leisure skills using only his smartphone)?

Tragically, many of my clients went through abuse and neglect and need someone to write careful and informed behavior plans that teach them skills they did not have at the time, like articulating emotional and physical pain, advocating for their needs, and requesting to be removed from a serious adverse situation. Just as important, these clients need an informed analyst who designs ways that these skills will persist when the client moves environments, as I found when a former client kept being exposed to new team after new team that didn’t read the plan and failed to recognize the communicative intent of the behaviors, and the medical component to the “challenges” the team demanded to be decreased. This calls for TIBA or trauma informed behavior analysis (if the team is not already using it).

So it’s not enough for our clients to learn these skills one time. The people who make up the audience, the environment, must respond enough to maintain them. If I ask for help and you respond no, why would I ask again? Remember the lessons of the family whose school team actually discouraged them from using “saying no” as a goal for their adolescent girl with autism, arguing that they didn’t have the resources to deal with her protesting all day long. Actually, the opposite is more likely to be true—that when our “no” is respected (listened to the first time), its use will be more limited to situations in which the person really “needs” it.

So back to my original questions. How do we raise little ones who are likely to grow up to appreciate and shape the voice of the voiceless, who honor the needs of people in ugly situations, who see the beauty in what others view as broken or beyond repair? How do we insure people will have the internal resources to value what isn’t immediately perceived as “valuable” by the culture? Maybe it starts when they are little, in modeling ways we can accord dignity to the frail, the elderly, the dirty. We cultivate tenderness as we show them we appreciate the spiderweb (AND the spider), the weed and its flower, the worm (thanks, mom and dad, Nicolette Sowder of wilderchild, and my very first client who taught me that not being able to talk is not the same as not having anything to say- click here to learn about Rett Syndrome).

Thanks to mom and dad, I still notice bugs and their beauty. I thought this one was wonderful when I looked closely, so I spent even more time to study and draw him. I thought he became even more beautiful as I continued to look. Maybe you can see his beauty too.

edh

Colorado Potato Beetle by Camille Kolu (c) 2018

P.S. There is so much trauma in our schools today, whether you work with students who are “typically developing/ neurotypical” or those with intellectual, developmental and physical differences. Don’t miss the next course from Cusp Emergence University on trauma informed behavior analysis in the educational setting (complete with CEU’s including one for ethics).

Some references and resources

CuspEmergenceUniversity

Articles on prevalence of assault and ACES in individuals with developmental differences:

https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/14/2/87.short

http://www.cfp.ca/content/52/11/1410.short

https://www.acesconnection.com/fileSendAction/fcType/0/fcOid/399727599841302176/filePointer/399727599841302363/fodoid/399727599841302361/ACESandDevelopmentalDisabilitiesSteveMarcal.pdf

Read about Imagine! Smart Homes: https://imaginecolorado.org/services/imagine-smarthomes

Watch Shelly’s story: https://video.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t42.9040-2/51213666_2064787060269873_328394071330521088_n.mp4?_nc_cat=110&efg=eyJybHIiOjMxMSwicmxhIjoxMjA3LCJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6InN2ZV9zZCJ9&_nc_ht=video.fads1-1.fna&oh=79aed874369dc8f2ab3a3cc89efdd34c&oe=5C4F807E

Read about the man who developed an app for his brother: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-47001068/how-brotherly-love-led-to-an-app-to-help-thousands-of-autistic-children

https://imaginecolorado.org/

Get the full TIBA (trauma informed behavior analysis series): https://cuspemergence.com/tiba-series/

 

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