Zeffer and His Behavioral Problem

Zeffer is an 8th grade Hispanic young man with the inability to control his emotions and

struggles in social situations. His behavior is loud outbursts to gain attention from his male

teacher. During the first few weeks of observation I did not know his full history, so I naturally

assumed he was an undisciplined child. Once I spoke in length with his teacher and saw the

hoody memorializing his father; I was able to understand what zeffer was dealing with and

needing in his life to be successful.

Zeffer is dealing with what I believe to be RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) that

effects his ability to read a room and know how to act during his time in the class room.

During my assessment of Zeffer I was looking for any patterns that would produce an

observable behavior that can be fixed. So my assessment started out as patern analysis, then

moved to the ABC method to be able to anotate and score his disorder on a chart.

Here is the hard part of my intervention that I believe zeffer can change the behavior of

focus. I believe because zeffer is dealing with RAD the best intervention for zeffer is to give

him the nessecary attention to redirect his previous behavior. I believe zeffers behavior stems

from his father passing away in 2014. The loss of his father stunted his ability to move past the

loss of his father. Zeffer is at a 4th grade reading and math level, this would coencide with the

death of his father.

I established, with the permition of his teacher, to greet zeffer at the classroom door at the

beginning of class as a posative rienforcment tool. This intervention tool could be concidered

trivial but it works. I learned about this corection behavior throught the book Five Love

Languages. In the book it points to the love language of “words of afformation” benefit from

personnal daily attention and words of encouragement. Any and all negative word can hurt, a
person whos love language is “words of afformation”, more than physically punching that

person. Giving zeffer the attention right at the beginning of class, fulfilled his need for attention.

Along with meeting zeffer at the door, I would periodically acknowledge him to let him know

he is being thought about. All my interaction with zeffer during the intervention period was

possative, never negative. How would you measure the effectiveness of this BIP for this

individual? I did not speak with zeffer during the observation phase as to get a real time

understanding of what emotional needs he has. All of his interaction with the teacher during the

observation phase was negative. The teacher would continuosly yell at zeffer and threaten him

with calling his mom.

Observation in the Classroom

Baseline Intervention

5 Zeffer
3 6
5
# of Corrections in 1 Hour

4 5
4
3 4
3 3 3
3 3
2 2
2 2
1 1
2 1
1 0
1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Weeks of Observation

Series1 Series2

As the above chart may suggest one can read that the observation collection matterial was

on the “number of outburst in 1 hour” during the week. I observed zeffer for 4 weeks to get a

solid baseline of disruptive behavior.

 At the end of my observation period is when I decided to implement the intervention to

redirect his behavior. The chart shows the intervention taking some time to be effective. The

results however suggest a posative outcome as time goes forward.

Being that the intervention does not come with any sort of awards system, I did not have

to implement phasing out the reward. Zeffer just needs a lot of individual support for emotional

behavior correction.