STARKVILLE — Dr. Torri Jones recalls her seven-year experience in a clinical hospital setting — primarily her time working in the cancer unit at Texas Children’s Hospital — as a turning point for her interest in brief behavioral intervention.
Through her experiences working with patients, she realized many of her patients struggled with behavioral issues, especially due to the sheltered nature of the hospital setting, and she set out to do something about it.
“These children’s lifestyles were very different. They weren’t able to attend school with their friends, and they had complicated medical regimens to follow,” Jones said. “I noticed that the intervention protocol was proving effective, and the patients were following directions on top of the additional pressures.”
Jones, Mississippi State University assistant professor and licensed clinical psychologist, used this as motivation to implement the new Brief Behavioral Intervention program offered by the MSU Psychology Clinic.
The services provided through this program target children, ages 2 to 6 years, struggling with attention-seeking and disruptive behavioral problems, including tantrums and excessive whining, aggressive behaviors such as kicking and biting, and non-compliant behaviors.
SOCSD Director of Student Support Services Julie Jones said because students can experience behavioral issues for a wide range of reasons, it becomes a more common issue, especially among younger children.
“Sometimes these issues are caused by developmental delays, sometimes it could be linked to not being exposed to other kids in a social environment, therefore not knowing how to react properly, and others are just very spirited and it becomes a way to get energy out,” Julie said.
It becomes a bigger issue, Julie said, if the behavioral issues are not resolved as the children age.
How it works
Since the start of the BBI program during the spring semester, Torri Jones and her doctoral-level clinicians have provided intervention services to six families through a series of six to eight personal sessions, including the intake and the “graduation.” To provide for a specific family’s needs, an extra session can be added to spend more time in a problematic area of the child’s behavior.
Lediya Dumessa and Ashley Coleman, trained graduate clinicians for the BBI program, said the first intake session provides the baseline of knowledge needed to help children with underlying behavioral problems.
“We do a clinical interview and try to observe to get the most comprehensive view of the child, family and family history, so we can present BBI to them individually,” Dumessa said. “We want to get as much information as we can on the child and the presenting problems.”
After the intake session, the clinical team moves forward to “child-directed” playtime, which Torri said is freeing and gives the child a sense of control.
“A lot of attention-seeking behaviors children show is simply because they want more focused on them,” she said. “So, if we give the family a specific time to do that, it relieves the child from feeling like they have to create that kind of behavior.”
Other sessions involve the parents “dancing” between praise and denial, Torri said. The child receives praise for behavior the parent would like to see more of. And instead of negatively reacting to a disruptive behavior, parents are coached not to respond to it, which insures the attention-seeking behavior does not overpower.
The following sessions include effective commands and instructions, and disciplinary strategies such as time-out.
“Many parents try time out with their children, and decide it is just not for them,” Torri said. “We try to problem-solve and pinpoint what has gone awry in past disciplinary actions.”
A personal touch
The psychology clinic implements in each session Parent-Child Interactive Therapy, a technique that allows parents to be coached by graduate clinicians as problems or outbursts from the child arise.
However, the MSU Psychology Clinic adds a personal and more interactive spin to the technique, which sets apart its BBI Program from others across the nation.
The clinic rooms are equipped with building blocks, toys for early-developing children and a plastic kitchen set, which allow the children and parents to interact in a more natural way for clinicians to observe.
During each session, the graduate clinician sits in with the parent and child to coach them through problematic behavior, while Torri and doctoral-level clinicians observe on a monitor from a different room and provide live feedback through Bluetooth communication devices.
“Other parent management training programs have the parent, but not the child in the room, which means the clinicians or supervisors may not even meet the children,” Torri said. “We provide modeling and coaching of the parent in the moment, or when problems arise, which allows us to troubleshoot certain behaviors and give parents the outcomes and changes they are searching for.”
Aside from the in-clinic sessions, Dumessa said she feels that the program gives parents the resources to intervene with problematic behaviors in other environments.
“It really is about providing a tool kit for parents to use in a lot of different situations,” Dumessa said. “Obviously things come up, problems arise, but this gives parents the confidence to deal with them in a more effective way.”
During her time working for SOCSD, Julie Jones noticed sometimes traditional punishments do not work for some children, which is where she said the MSU program’s services are most beneficial.
“Because she (Dr. Jones) is working with the child and the caregiver, she is able to bring them on the same page regarding the behavioral issues,” Julie said. “Sometimes regular punishments, like timeout, don’t work. That is where she is coming in, by being creative and thinking outside of the box.”
The BBI program does have a per-session cost of $10, which helps directly fund the clinical program. Torri hopes to bring in grant funds to supplement the program.
For more information, visit clinic.psychology.msstate.edu.
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