A mother reported to me: “The thing I most worried about when addressing my son’s behavior problem is not getting at the heart, the cause of the problem”.
A concerned grade school teacher voiced a similar worry: “George is my problem student,” she said. “I’m continuously having to discipline him for one thing or another, over and over. If I could only get at the root cause of his problem, I’d be better able to help him.”
These are common concerns expressed by persons who have been instructed in dealing with problem behavior. Generally lacking in the instructions, however, are directions on how they are to uncover the causes of problem behavior. True, they are told to look for that which caused the behavior to surface or come into being. In most cases that is not sufficient when it comes to correcting the problem behavior. Let me explain why.
Looking for the cause of a problem is certainly a necessary step in trying to solve a problem. In medicine for example, any serious physician would first look to find the cause of an illness before prescribing a treatment. An electrician, in trying to solve the problem of a continually blown fuse, would first try to find the cause of the short and correct it rather than simply replacing fuses. A clock maker will first attempt to find the reason why a timepiece stopped before he would attempt to get it working again. In all of these instances, it makes good sense to look for the cause that set the problem in action before attempting to correct it.
In trying to explain problem behavior psychologists in the past also looked for the cause that set the problem in being. In fact, these experts in human behavior had adopted the same approach as a physician would use. That is, they used the medical approach called the “medical model.” This means they used the same reasoning a physician would use in trying to correct a disease. They likened misbehavior to an illness. The reasoning went something like this.
A person is misbehaving because of some deep underlying cause and unless the cause of that misbehavior (illness) is uncovered and corrected, the problem of misconduct (illness) will continue.
Parents, teachers and all of us as well, have come to accept this medical model of behavior problems as true and necessary before any correction can be effective. For years we have spent countless hours trying to find the cause, or why misbehavior is motivated and sometimes we are successful, but most often we are not. And there is a good reason for that lack of success.
At first glance the medical model approach would seem to work out very well, but in many instances, if not most, the thing that may have originally caused the misbehavior to occur is no longer present, so we can’t actually address the cause. Yet, the misbehavior still continues despite the absence of the cause.
A good example of this is illustrated by nine year old Cedwick who was continually fighting with the kids at school. His mother, after considerable effort to correct the situation, sought out professional help. She was told that her son’s fighting could be attributed to his feelings of jealousy and rivalry with his older brother. In addition to psychotherapy for Cedwick, the treatment outlined for the mother was to reduce the competition between the two boys. For the most part the treatment was successful, at least in resolving the fighting between the two brothers. Cedwick’s behavior at school however, had not changed as he was still fighting with his peers even though the original cause, the sibling rivalry, had been deal with.
The medical approach to problem behavior has a rather narrow or limited focus. It assumes, without question, that all misbehavior comes from a single source. That source is the original or initial cause which brought that behavior into being. In this approach, once a behavior is brought into existence, it will continue to occur unless the initial cause for its introduction is removed. As applied in the case of Cedwick, his fighting with others was caused by sibling rivalry. That is the original or initial cause. And, as the medical model has it, if the sibling rivalry could be eliminated the misbehavior of fighting should stop all together. Now that logic seems reasonable. Reasonable, but not necessarily correct.
What we find in far too many cases is just what we found in Cedwick’s case. That eliminating the original cause of the misbehavior, that is his not getting along with his brother, does not mean that he will eliminate or correct the total misbehavior of fighting. There is very good reason why this is so. That reason is that misbehavior comes from more than one source and in dealing with only the original cause or source of the misbehavior, we’re almost certain to fail in correcting that misbehavior.
In correcting problem behavior, I think it makes much more sense to think of the misbehavior as coming from at least two sources or causes. Namely, that which first caused the behavior, the original or initial cause, as well as that which is currently causing the behavior to continue, the continuing cause. From this perspective, that which originally caused the problem behavior to appear, may not be the same thing as that which is causing it to continue. There are most often two very different and distinct sources and to confuse one with the other can only mislead when trying to correct the misconduct.
In Cedwick’s case, the original cause of fighting with his peers may very well have been sibling rivalry. The continuing cause, that which is causing him to continue fighting, is something different. And, unless this continuing cause is dealt with, he is almost certain to continue fighting. But, what about the original cause? What are parents to do about that? The answer is simple, nothing. Let’s see why this is so.
It is generally agreed upon by psychologists that the original causes of misbehavior are both numerous and complex. There are conscious causes, there are intellectual causes, there are biological causes and there are social causes, to mention but a few.
Now, when one considers that any one of the many original causes of misbehavior can combine with any or all of the other causes, we can begin to understand how complex the matter becomes. And, in turn, we can understand how difficult it is to determine the true original cause of any one misbehavior. Is it any wonder that when a parent tries to determine the cause of acting up, his or her chance of making an error is tremendous. And when we consider the fact that parents are not really trained as diagnosticians, the chance of having appropriate discipline, based upon the original cause of the problem, becomes ever poorer.
It is my belief that the chance of finding the original cause of a misbehavior is very close to zero.
If, however, the original cause is obvious, then it can be dealt with directly. For example, if Johnny hit his sister because she teased him we may want to put a stop to the original cause, the teasing. However, if the teasing continues, the parent will have to look to the continuing cause of that behavior. And the place to look for the continuing cause is in what takes place immediately after the child has misbehaved. For it is what happens there, that causes the behavior to persist.
Reward as the continuing cause
Behavioral psychologists contend that anything that follows a behavior and causes that behavior to continue or increase is called a reward. For a behavior to persevere it must be followed by a reward, otherwise, as the psychologists insist, that behavior will drop out. So it is the reward that is the continuing cause of all behaviors including problem behaviors.
A reward must be something that is meaningful to the person. It is something that serves a purpose. It can be something pleasurable, something that satisfies a human need or something that is so desirable the person will act or behave to attain it.
When it comes to problem behavior, two rewards loom above the others in serving as the continuing cause they are: Attention and Control.
Attention as a reward
When I speak of attention I am referring to the taking of notice, regard, or heed of someone or something. It is an awareness of who someone or something is and what he, she or it is doing. That taking notice, regard or heed of what someone is doing is usually expressed in three ways: Visual, verbal and physical attention. Visual attention occurs when one person looks at another. Verbal attention comes about when one person speaks to another. Physical attention is given when we one person touches or stands close another.
If any of the three forms of attention are given after a behavior is presented then any of those three forms of attention can serve as a reward for that behavior. Make no mistake, as simple as attention appears to be, its power on human behavior is profound. For a full discussion on the topic of attention and its full force see Our Need for Attention in: DrHoule.com.
Control
Control is the action we engage in when we want to influence others in satisfying our needs, wishes, wants and desires. Controlling others appears to be a very popular activity. The old, the young, the rich, the poor, the intelligent, the unintelligent, in fact, all people are smitten by its use, thus attesting to its attractiveness. So universal is its use, so frequent its application, that it leads me to make the following observation: All things considered, we spend the bulk of our time trying to control our world and the people in it so things come out our way. When we receive feedback that our attempts at controlling others are successful, that in itself serves as a reward to continue controlling others.
For a full discussion on control see: Why We Behave The Way We Do: The Houle Relationship Approach.
Getting back to Cedwick. The attention he got from his parents and teachers for fighting, combined with the control he’s gained over the other kids by fighting with them, could very well cause him to continue fighting. Both the rewards of attention and control are the continuing causes of Cedwick’s problem behavior.
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