Some children, due to their challenging behavior, require systematic and focused instruction to learn appropriate social and emotional skills. These skills include identifying and expressing emotion, self-regulation, cooperative responding, initiating and maintaining interactions, handling disappointment and anger, and forming friendships. “Challenging behavior" covers the following:

• Any repeated pattern of behavior that interferes with learning or engagement in social interactions with peers and adults.
   
• Behaviors that do not respond to social interaction guidance and frameworks e.g. creating a positive social environment, universal design, developmentally appropriate practice, described in Promoting the social and emotional development of children in this session.
   
• Prolonged tantrums, physical and verbal aggression, disruptive vocal and motor behavior (e.g., screaming, stereotypy), property destruction, self-injury, noncompliance, and withdrawal.

Positive Behavior Support (PBS) is an approach for analyzing and changing a child’s problem behavior. The process begins with understanding why a child engages in undesirable behavior (e.g., aggression, tantrums, property destruction, and social withdrawal). After this analysis by a team, including parents, strategies are selected to prevent the occurrence of the problem behavior while teaching the child new skills.

View a video with reports from the Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention that illustrates the team process of analyzing a young boy’s challenging behavior and implementing a successful Behavior Support Plan for him at home and in the community.