Understanding Challenging Behavior for Pediatric Therapists

Course overview

This course will examine the challenging behaviors that occur in pediatric clients, give current statistics of challenging behavior in children and discuss the social implications of these behaviors. Challenging behavior will be defined and described as a foundation for further information including functional analysis of behavior. Behavior theory will be presented with detailed discussion of antecedents and consequences to the behavior. The content of this course will assist pediatric therapy practitioners in better defining and describing the challenging behaviors their clients demonstrate, the function of the behavior and the factors that maintain the behavior. These elements lay the foundation for the next course in this series that examines the clinical reasoning process that therapists use when planning intervention for challenging behaviors.