Mad River Behavioral Health

A Guide to Behavioral Intervention Assess intellectual, instructional, learning, and situational factors and how they affect / contribute to the behavior problem. Develop and utilize a decision-making tree. Identify specific problem behaviors and their source / function. Conceptualize positive alternative behaviors. Progressively teach, coach, and support the student in developing and utilizing the positive alternatives: healthy, value-system-based behavioral and coping strategies in support of school / community / family success. Encourage the practice and progressive growth of positive alternative behaviors with coaching and positive, proactive behavioral planning. Scaffold: provide more support, encouragement, and behavioral skill instruction until the child begins to show some sense of competence, then wean and monitor.   Alter academic / instructional components as needed in accordance with assessment data and educational best practices. Establish realistic exp...

When you arrive home from work ... your family should be happy to see you. Contemplate this. Part of my professional perspective has been informed by my personal parenting adventures, or more accurately - misadventures.  (Ask me about the popcorn incident some day.)  It's truly amazing what one can learn by living fully immersed within the situation one teaches about. Just briefly, my wife died when our two sons, Jake and Braden, were 4 and 5 years old.  She had been struggling with cancer for quite a while and as she became more and more debilitated, I took over more and more of what had been a beautiful shared parenting partnership. I won't go into the gruesome details, but ... my transition into single parenthood was not a fluid, seamless process.  There were some very real struggles for me as I adapted to the solo role.  Sometimes, these struggles spilled out onto the boys.  It wasn't pretty.  The first lesson I learned was how to regr...