The ability to say no is a powerful thing. Saying no can help your child advocate for themselves and communicate their dislikes. However, in excess, it can also be used to the detriment of them being able to make progress, learn and communicate. What happens when your days are filled with a whole bunch of refusal? Start teaching your child compliance training.
Compliance training is a type of training that helps your child to be able to gain the skill of listening and performing a skill when an instruction has been given. This is imperative to teaching rules on safety, daily living skills and important guidelines to follow in the community.
Once you’ve brainstormed a list of skills you’d like your child to learn or the refusal behavior you’d like to change, use the steps below to help them complete new skills.
- Provide a simple instruction or direction to your child
- Physically guide your child as soon as you’ve given the direction
- Praise your child specifically with what they did well during the performance of the skill
- As your child begins to gain confidence with the new skill, reduce the amount of physical guidance you give to help them
Compliance training can take many trials across several days or weeks for your child to gain a new skill. However, if you continue to monitor your child’s progress each day, you will see how they are progressing. Taking data can be a helpful tool to ensuring you are seeing your child’s development of the skill. Imagine the amount of skills your child could learn with the steps of compliance training and enjoy the process of getting there.