Consider asking about an FBA if your child’s behavior appears to be interfering with your child’s own education, or with the education of others, and
- it is not clear why the behavior is occurring; and
- the teacher has tried different interventions to address the behavior but they haven’t been successful.
Some specific examples of when you might ask about an FBA:
- your child’s behavior is identified as a barrier to spending more time in a general education classroom.
- your child is sent out of the classroom frequently or for long periods of time for disruptive or inappropriate behavior;
- your child is not participating in class or engaging with instruction on a regular basis (maybe putting their head down, falling asleep, or refusing to do work).
If you don’t know yet how often the behavior is occurring, or how frequently a child is removed from the classroom, the first step may be to ask the teacher and/or principal to start keeping track, in other words to start taking some data, on how often it is happening.
This can give you all a “baseline” or starting point, for understanding the situation.