functional behavior assessment?

[janebrain]

Hi All,
my difficult child 2 is 17 and a jr. in high school. She is classified spec. ed. because she is "emotionally disturbed." She has a dissociative disorder and it creates problems with her schoolwork. Last spring she was removed from school for the last couple months of the year and received tutoring and that worked pretty well. In the Fall she went back to school for half days and had tutoring for the classes she was not there for. In late January she started attending school fulltime again and it became too overwhelming and frustrating for her so she has now just gone back to half days.

I received a notice that the school would like to do a functional behavior assessment and was wondering what it is and what it means--figured you guys would know. I have not been told she has any behavior problems at school but maybe that is not what this is all about.

Thanks for your help,
Jane

 

[Sheila]

Here you go. http://cecp.air.org/fba/default.asp

 

[Martie]

I think an FBA is an odd thing to do for a difficult child with dissociative disorder. An FBA identifies environmental triggers for overt behaviors the school would like to control.... That does not include internally driven states such as one would see with dissociative disorder.

Seems strange. Is there any chance difficult child is doing some specific behavior that the SD would like to change?

That would make more sense.

Martie

 

[janebrain]

Thank you, Sheila and Martie! I know that there are probably environmental "triggers" for difficult child at school. I think the "bad" behaviors have to do with "zoning out" and appearing to be not paying attention. For instance, when she would feel anxious in her math class she might sit and doodle and the teacher would see that as her blatantly not paying attention. Also, the teachers would do things too quickly--she needs more time to get out her books, write things down off the board, etc. The teacher would be moving on to the next task while she was still trying to the 1st one.

I will call the school psychologist--the one who sent the notice and ask why they are doing the assessment. In general, I have been happy with the way the school district has handled difficult child and her problems, especially when I read some of the horror stories here!

Thanks again,
Jane