Extinction

Yet another wild day with the kiddos. I joked w/ my classmates that I ought to fit into Bawler's "Schedule," crying at the end of the session. The "good" news is that both kiddos love coming to speech therapy with "teacher" me. The mystery/irony is that I still don't understand why they do.

For Bawler's session today, I implemented what behavior therapists call "extinction." Every time she started misbehaving, I straight put her on ignore (that made my assistant feel soOOoooO awkward). Conceptually, the more I attend to her bad behavior, the more I positively reinforce her (as I negatively reinforce myself). By ignoring her, I extinct her bad behavior. Small wonder - it kind of worked. I didn't mind b/c I was just out of it and tired (lack of caffeine).

The funny thing is that my supervisor told me it was working...and that I actually need to turn it up even more for the next session! How crazy is it that my supervisor would tell me that it's ok if I have a session where I get nothing accomplished (re: objectives/treatment goals). I'm sure if mom saw, she'd think I was just a meanie (and wonder why she's paying for a clinician to just sit there and ignore her kid).

At least I remembered to give her a newer-and-better Target ad to bring home AND her very beautiful reward bracelet.

Even better news today is that I really did well on my midterm (I thought maybe my prof had given me a good grade by mistake somehow) and that my NEW coffee maker arrived! Yeah!