Make a list of the behaviors that you do before and during a tantrum.

Think about each one of those in terms of what we have discussed here. Think about the effects of your actions on the child’s behavior. Do your actions, increase, decrease, or have no effect on the occurrence and or severity of the tantrum? Check off the appropriate box beside the behavior you described.

Write down some specific actions you could take to change your behavior in order to help prevent and de-escalate tantrums. Think of ways that you could specifically:

• promote calm behavior in yourself and the child
• increase the rate of reinforcement
• increase the quality of the reinforcement
• decrease the demand on the child
• increase the opportunity and likelihood that the child will experience success
• decrease the likelihood that the child will experience failure