Supporting Families with Children Who Display Severe Challenging Behavior

Over the past several decades, we have developed quality behavioral assessments and interventions for challenging behaviors among individuals with a variety of severe developmental and cognitive disorders. These assessments and interventions have been used to educate family members on how to understand and intervene with these behaviors at home and in community settings. However, it has become clear that many families are not able to carry out these procedures adequately. This case describes recent work that is designed to support families so that they can assist their challenging children. Fortunately, we have been able to demonstrate a way of looking at parental difficulties and have designed interventions for families so that they are better able to implement successful behavioral assessments and interventions. We will describe a concession process that can help explain these parental obstacles and can aid with creating specific supports to assist families struggling with these difficulties. We also discuss future directions for follow-up research.