The Burst and the Mother's Request
Nina, 7, engages in tantrums - screaming, dropping to the floor, throwing materials - 12-18 times a day, each lasting 3-8 minutes. The BCBA's functional analysis indicated escape from demands. The current plan is functional communication training: Nina is taught to hand over a "break" card, every break card is honored with a 60-second break, and escape extinction is in place for tantrums during demand sessions. You are two weeks in. Tantrum frequency rose to 22 per day by day 4 and is now 19 per day. Duration has fallen to 2-4 minutes, and break-card use has risen from 0 to 14 per day. At pickup, Nina's mother tells you to "just hold her down when she does it" and to take the tablet away for the rest of the evening whenever she tantrums.
1. Interpret the data. Is the plan failing?
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The data do not support a conclusion of failure, and they do not support a conclusion of success either - they support "continue and keep measuring."
What fits: an extinction burst combined with a shift in response efficiency. Frequency up, duration down, and mands up from 0 to 14 is the pattern expected when a more efficient response (the card) is being acquired while the old response briefly intensifies before contacting extinction. Judging the plan on frequency alone would misread this.
What to examine and report to the BCBA: trend across all three measures (frequency, duration, mands), latency to mand, whether every card is honored and how quickly, and the safety of the higher-frequency episodes. Propose an explicit decision rule in advance - e.g., if neither frequency nor duration shows a decreasing trend over the next N sessions, the plan is reviewed. Also flag that a burst raises injury risk and may require a safety review.
2. Respond to the mother's two requests.
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You do not implement either, and you do not simply ignore them.
- Physical restraint is a restrictive procedure. It is not in the plan, you have not been trained or authorized in it, and it carries injury and liability risk. Holding a child down during a tantrum can also function as attention or as an establishing operation for more intense behavior.
- Removing the tablet for the evening is an unplanned consequence with unknown function. If the tablet is a reinforcer, this is unauthorized punishment; if removal produces a struggle, that struggle may itself reinforce the tantrum.
What to do: acknowledge her exhaustion without agreeing to the request, state plainly that you cannot change the plan and that these decisions belong to the BCBA, and commit to raising it with her the same day. Then actually do it - report the request through the chain of command and document it (what was asked, when, what you said). Consider raising caregiver training and a plan for what the mother should do during a tantrum, since an untrained caregiver improvising is a predictable risk.
3. What would you record to know whether FCT is working, and what would you check about your own implementation?
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Record:
- Mands: frequency, prompt level (independent/echoic/physical), latency, and whether each was honored and within what delay.
- Tantrums: frequency and duration, since they move in opposite directions during a burst.
- Context: demand type and difficulty, time of day, who is present.
Check about your own behavior - FCT usually fails on integrity, not on the child:
- Was every break card honored, and within the specified delay? Honoring some and not others makes the mand unreliable.
- Were breaks exactly 60 seconds, or did they stretch when you were busy?
- Was escape extinction applied consistently, or did some tantrums get a break?
- Were demands at instructional difficulty, or had they been quietly lowered to avoid tantrums?
Use a written checklist or a second observer to estimate treatment integrity, and report it alongside the client data. An ABAT who reports only client data leaves the most likely cause of a stalled plan invisible.