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One would think that if typical babysitting can provide the stuff for an adventure story, that behavioral babysitting must offer material enough to make a horror story of Gothic proportions.. Well, to the relief of parents and the disappointment of Hollywood producers, truth be told, the exact opposite is true. Problems do occur for the behavioral babysitter but those problems are for the most part as rare as they are mellow and as far as I have ever experienced, never catastrophic.  

I’ve yet to have the kind of adventure in babysitting that sells tickets, but I honestly believe that when I do my job well, you can only measure it by the problems that never occur.

As anyone who has studied basic behavioral psychology understands, every behavior good or bad has both an antecedent and a consequence.
If you have a heightened understanding of this, especially the antecedent part, behavior problems can be averted even before they begin to brew. What many teenaged babysitters or younger social workers and teachers don’t understand is just how much their own behavior and actions, or lack thereof, can serve as precipitating events that cause or trigger negative behaviors.

In fact, I would say as much as anything, it is a capacity for antecedent detection that distinguishes the ABA trained behavioral babysitter from the 4H trained high-school babysitter.  
While, it may seem that some children’s acting act behavior comes from nowhere, our training makes it apparent that there are no accidental behaviors, that all behavior is designed to serve a function. Most typically, acting out behavior is a call for attention and for many children, attention of any kind – for good or bad behavior -- is perceived as a good thing.

If I come into the home as the babysitter and appear preoccupied with things other than those affecting the child, I’d better buckle up, as it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

However, if I come in and immediately engage the child and request direction from him or her on what activities we might involve ourselves, the chances of challenging behaviors shrink considerably.

Fortunately, at Butterfly Effects, all of our behavioral babysitters have worked hard to develop a well- equipped tool kit to actively engage and effectively interact with any child. There is very little that any child could throw at us that we haven’t already experienced or prepared for. We have all the tools and specific methods needed to affect behavioral changes including these these, examples of  which can be seen on video:
* Planned Ignoring
* Positive Reinforcers
* Physical Prompts and Verbal Prompts
* Redirection
* Behavior Momentum

The behavioral babysitter isn’t there to access pay per view movies off your cable, raid your refrigerator, and talk on the phone. He or she is there to attend to your child’s or children’s needs. Just that attitude alone eliminates many of the challenges that a typical babysitter might encounter.
While we have all been taught several different approaches to deal with challenging behaviors, I find that one of the most commonly used for the sitter is the planned ignore. The principle behind the planned ignore is to not provide any attention to a problematic or disruptive behavior as the child is merely seeking attention any way that he or she can. By ignoring the behavior, it no longer serves a purpose and is readily extinguished.

Unlike babysitters, ABA trained behavioral babysitters are masters of the planned ignore, which when done well is one of the quickest means of curbing acting out behavior. As it is a somewhat instinctive move, teenage babysitters will try to use it as well, but more than likely when they do, it will evolve into a game of chicken -- a test of wills between the sitter and the acting out child. What usually happens is that the child will sense the babysitter’s uncertainty and will raise the challenge with increasingly difficult behavior until the babysitter worried that the child will blow a blood vessel from the  screaming or attract the concern of neighbors has to relent.  When the child is savvy, planned ignoring is not for the faint of heart.

Through our ABA training, we’ve learned how to effectively apply planned ignoring.
To be effective one has to completely isolate the child with his or her behavior.  We cut off all eye contact, mute all facial expressions, and seal our lips against any verbal responses. The child essentially does not exist for us.  And if we are airtight with our refusal to engage, in most cases the problem behavior is extinguished with much less fuss than anyone expected.

Partnering with the Child
As taught in ABA-based Pivotal Response Training,  the most effective learning occurs  when the tutor and child develop a  partnerships in which the child has active say and control over various activities.  Whenever possible, we participate with the child in child-initiated activities.

No matter a child’s intellectual or emotional maturity, nearly every child does well, when the rules are consistent and easily understood, and the child believes he or she is being listened to.
Children early on become very aware of when adults are actually listening to them and when those adults are merely nodding their heads. If one repeats statements back to the child, addresses his or her questions directly, and keeps it real,  any of us. child or adult, feels listened to and validated.

Good behavioral babysitters go in prepared for the worst case scenarios while doing everything we can to achieve a best case.  We are all trained in infant and child CPR, although it is something the vast majority of us will never use. We are capable of handling the very worst acting act behavior, but if we do our jobs well, it will never come to that.

Another issue that behavioral babysitters have an edge on is dealing with more than one child. 
Family dynamics can be seductive and it’s hard for typical babysitters to not get drawn in and asked to take sides. The behavioral babysitter doesn’t allow this to happen.  He or she builds individual alliances with each child but needs to make it clear that each one is his or her favorite. Probably one of the best situations is when you get children of similar ages competing with each other to see who will and can behave better.  Of course that doesn’t happen very often. Each family dynamic is different and the relationship between siblings is rarely cookie-cutter. The rules that apply to one child, apply equally well to two or three.  It's always about applying  common sense, patience, and actively involving the children in decisions. One way to get off to the right start with two or more children is to come to a consensus about the days activities, assuring all that each child's desire are attended to.

What surprises many parents is that while we are not necessarily being paid to provide behavioral therapy, as babysitters we can often engage children to exchange or extinguish problem behaviors that the parents sometimes thought impossible to be rid of.  As behavioral babysitters, we may not appear to be very adventurous, but any day you can help make a difference in a child's life is a good day.

Go Back to Butterfly Effects Behavioral Babysitting.