Introduction
Special needs education focuses on helping children who have challenges in the social and emotional lives. Therefore, a child’s life is depended on social skill development to help them succeed in almost all spheres of existence. Psychologists often utilized the basics of play therapy to observe and assess a youngster’s natural setting. This technique is significant for early learning as it leads to the teenager’s social, emotional, and cognitive well-being (Jiao et al., 2020). Although most social skills can be taught, some kids need a personalized and well-planned approach accompanied by an intervention plan to satisfy the child’s requirements. As such, behavior intervention plans for this group of people rewards and strengthens positive behavior. This paper focuses on developing an appropriate behavior intervention plan for addressing Sara’s social and expressive communication challenges.
Main body
In observable terms, Sara has exhibited various target behaviors are indicated in the context. For example, Sara has particularly shown that she faces social and psychological development challenges, expressive communication, and play skills. The patient demonstrates various difficulties in interactions, especially with peers, and sometimes Sara displays aggressive behavior towards her peers. While Sara may not be aware of the contexts of her habits, there are several antecedents and consequences related to her behavior. For example, since the patient is attached to her doll, she sometimes displays aggression when her peers take her preferred toy. The consequences of Sara’s behaviors can be seen in low educational attainment and detrimental effects on her brain development (Hazell et al., 2018). These repercussions are particularly attributed to Sara’s social isolation.
Therefore, the objective of this intervention plan would be to enable Sara to improve her social, emotional, and expressive communication in an attempt to enhance her play skills. The desired behavior for Sara would be for her to actively participate in child development activities such as interacting with her peers. The patient should participate in activities that improve her verbal communication skills. As such, the function of this behavior will help Sara gain communication skills as a replacement to her aggressive nature, strengthen her play skills, and use language to bolster her independence (O’Nions et al., 2018). The replacement behavior identified for helping Sara improve her social and communication skills would help them follow their interests.
Sara’s challenges can be addressed by incorporating various improvements in her classroom environment. For example, the teacher can consider developing a play therapy session that is specifically personalized based on Sara’s profile. Therefore, adult-child interactions can be reinforced to become more supportive by using positive language, giving children choices, following their lead, and supporting their parents (O’Nions et al., 2018). The specific skill development for Sara should focus on improving their social and interpersonal skills.
A comprehensive step-by-step intervention plan identified to help Sara should focus on improving her social and communication skills. For example, the teacher should consider designing social supports such as monitoring, allowing the child to participate in extracurricular activities, and facilitating positive connections with other children (O’Nions et al., 2018). The positive guidance strategies identified to address the preferred behavior are proximity control and systematic prompting. Moreover, Sara’s progress can be monitored using a check and connect program and a check-in/check-out (CICO) technique (O’Nions et al., 2018). Lastly, the final step would be to get Sara’s parents involved in her intervention plan. In particular, the teacher should consider designing a parent-teacher communication system that utilizes technology such as a ClassDojo.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper has developed an appropriate intervention plan for addressing the social and expressive communication challenges affecting Sara. Therefore, specific groups of children will always require special intervention plans, specifically modified to suit their unique needs. In Sara’s case, the child faces various challenges that limit her from interacting with her peers. In particular, this behavior involvement initiative has incorporated antecedent and consequence strategies to formulate a plan for helping Sara.
References
Hazell, C. M., Hayward, M., Cavanagh, K., Jones, A. M., & Strauss, C. (2018). Guided self-help cognitive-behaviour Intervention for Voices (GIVE): Results from a pilot randomised controlled trial in a transdiagnostic sample. Schizophrenia Research, 195, 441–447. Web.
Jiao, W. Y., Wang, L. N., Liu, J., Fang, S. F., Jiao, F. Y., Pettoello-Mantovani, M., & Somekh, E. (2020). Behavioural and emotional disorders in children during the COVID-19 epidemic. The Journal of Pediatrics, 221, 264. Web.
O’Nions, E., Happé, F., Evers, K., Boonen, H., & Noens, I. (2018). How do parents manage irritability, challenging behaviour, non-compliance and anxiety in children with autism spectrum disorders? A meta-synthesis. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 48(4), 1272–1286. Web.