A Burst of Activity

Don't fear the extinction burst.

My early training was in behavioral psychology, so I think about that perspective a fair amount as my kids move through various stages of their development. We all work so hard as parents to establish certain expectations, and to ‘parent out’ undesirable/unsafe behaviors so that our kids grow up into kind, thoughtful, capable people that have all their teeth, limbs and appendages. Yet, periodically they will do something they haven’t done in a while and it throws you for a loop.

When my girls were all under the age of three, there was a lot of chaos (two toddlers and an infant will do that…) - there is a picture from that time that perfectly captures the vibe - my two older girls are sitting on a bench screaming their heads off, while the middle one has her hands wrapped around the older sibling’s throat, and the baby is in her swing directly next to them hysterical crying. I mean. Chaos doesn’t really capture it, but that picture does.

My middle daughter was prone to slapping you if she didn’t like what was happening, and despite our best intention it resulted in a big reaction from everyone (mostly the sibling that was on the receiving end). It took a while but eventually we were able to eliminate that behavior in favor of asking for help. We used a variety of techniques to help her understand how to express herself appropriately and without hurting others, but mostly we ignored her aggression, attended to the sibling who was struck, and redirected the boxer to ask for help with words not hands. We had gone about 2 weeks or so without a slap, when out of nowhere she started up again. Every time she was looking at books with her older sister, SLAP! If she was on the floor playing with the baby, SLAP! It seemed she was even more slaphappy than ever and I started to seriously question myself as a parent and as a pediatric psychologist. Then I remembered something called the extinction burst and kept on with our approach of redirection and replacement with asking for help. Sure enough, within a couple of days the slapping had stopped and it was a long time before anyone got backhanded by her again.

An extinction burst is a psychological phenomenon in the area of behaviorism related to the concept of classical conditioning (think Pavlov’s dogs), and reflects the way in which a behavior that has already been ‘extinguished’ or ‘conditioned out’, suddenly starts up again with greater intensity. In the most simplistic terms, you can extinguish a behavior by removing all reinforcement for it. With Pavlov and his dogs, he rang the bell and didn’t give the food (in the case of classical conditioning). With my daughter she slapped someone and we redirected instead of giving attention or a big reaction (in the case of operant conditioning).

In reality, it’s a bit more complicated than this, but conditioning is based on the idea that we develop lasting, unconscious associations between our actions and the response to those actions. We can be conditioned to do things more or less depending on the response we get, so as parents the way we handle our children’s behavior does have an impact on how much or how little they’ll engage in that behavior, at least from a behaviorist perspective. When you are trying to eliminate a behavior, you remove all reinforcements, or rewards, for that behavior and eventually the behavior will go away. It will ‘extinguish’. Except that it doesn’t extinguish permanently, because the neural pathways are still intact and will fire occasionally, leading to what we call an extinction burst.

What I find useful about this concept is it allows me the opportunity to see progress even when it feels like we are backsliding. I know that if I hold the line and keep on the new path we have established, things will get back on track in short order. The good news about an extinction burst is that while the behavior may show up at a higher frequency, it tends to recede quickly - so long as the reinforcement continues to be withheld.

I’ve used this to help me as I’ve navigated tantrums, and various acting out behaviors. It has steadied me while working through food aversions, and it has saved my sanity on more than one occasion. Often, I’ll remind myself that while things feel chaotic and out of control, this is just the brain’s way of figuring out how much it still needs to preserve that previous association, or if it can trust the new way of doing things and form a lasting bond there. I tell myself to trust the path we’ve outlined, monitor what happens for a week or so, and more often than not, things have righted themselves once again.

Parenting is hard. Surprisingly hard sometimes. Trusting your plan makes it easier.