Behavior Management is often assumed to consist of stopping behaviors when they happen. While that can be part of the process, behavior management is a process that involves much more than just behavior and how we respond to it in the moment. So lets take a deeper look at what behavior management includes.
What is Behavior?
To understand what I mean by "behavior management is a process that involves much more than just behavior and how we respond to it in the moment", let's look at how behavior is defined. In psychology, behavior is defined as "an action, activity, or process which can be observed and measured" (refer to reference link). It is also said that behavior is a response to either internal or external stimuli (refer to reference link). This means that behavior is something that usually happens in response to something else. As a result, behavior management should really be called "stimuli and behavior management". To manage behavior, we must first observe and measure it, then we must find what stimuli the behavior is a response to and manage those stimuli.
How Do We Identify Stimuli?
As I previously mentioned, the first thing we must do when figuring out how to manage behavior is observe and measure the behavior. We do this by taking note of the behavior, what it looks like, when it happens, if there are variations and what they look like, and other information such as how long the behavior lasts and how intense it gets. Once we have observed the behavior in detail, we want to look for what seems to be correlated with the behavior. By "correlated" I mean what stimuli seem to be precursors to the behavior and might be influencing the dog's engagement in that behavior. However, we need to be careful of false assumptions.
We as humans tend to take what other people and animals do and explain it in terms of what would happen if we were acting that way. For example, many people tell me their dog hears them, but it just choosing to ignore them. However, imagine if you could smell things from three miles away, hear the sounds of computers being charged and household appliances being plugged in, you could hear and smell water running through the grass, taking smells from the street in the front yard with it, and much more. Imagine that smelling those things relaxes you, decreases your heart rate, and stimulates your brain like reading a book, doing a puzzle, or playing a video game. Now imagine that in the middle of all that and more, someone tells you to come inside and lay down on your bed until further notice. How do you think you would respond?
The point here is not to say that you shouldn't call your dog in from outside or that you shouldn't ask it to do things. The point is that behavior we don't like can be connected to stimuli we as humans are not even aware of. So we need to be careful when we try to figure out what is simulating a behavior and make sure we are willing to reassess if we get more information.
Managing Stimuli
Once the stimulus or stimuli have been identified, you want to manage those stimuli. You can do this both by managing the stimuli itself, or managing your dogs access to that stimuli. For example, if your dog is stressed by strangers petting it, you can tell people "my dog is afraid of people, please give it space." This manages the stimulus of people, thus preventing the behavior of growling, snapping, or other behaviors you dog might engage in when it is scared. If you can not manage the stimuli, the you will want to manage your dog's access to the stimuli. For example, if your dog is easily distracted by other dogs, do your training away from other dogs first and gradually work up to training when other dogs are around. This way, while you dog is learning for focus on you and the training, it will not have to deal with the stimulus of another dog until your dog has learned to focus even in the face of distractions.
Closing Thoughts
While managing stimuli will get you off to a great start, there are situations where you cannot manage the stimuli. There are even situations where it is hard to manage your dog's access to the stimuli. This is where managing the behavior itself comes in handy. To learn more about managing behavior, schedule a "Behavior Management Planning" session!
Reference: https://psychologydictionary.org/behavior/
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