Ep. 32: Mastering Initial Interviews in FBA – Part 2 of our Mini-Series

In this episode of the Misfit Behaviorists podcast, Audra and Sami dive into the second step of the Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) process—conducting initial interviews. They discuss how to approach interviews with parents, teachers, and even the student, while maintaining a neutral, empathetic, and objective stance. By focusing on building trust, gathering comprehensive insights, and respecting confidentiality, this episode provides valuable tips for BCBAs looking to gather meaningful information and set the stage for effective behavior plans.

Key Points:
- Approaching interviews with empathy and neutrality, without undermining past communications.
- Importance of sitting “on the parent’s side of the table” to build trust.
- Tips for involving students in the process and teaching self-advocacy.
- Navigating sensitive information shared by parents and deciding what to document.
- Gathering insights from multiple sources (parents, teachers, students) to see the full picture.
- Reviewing past files, medical history, and academic records to contextualize behavior.
- Importance of remaining nonjudgmental, flexible, and objective throughout the process.
- The significance of respecting confidentiality and adhering to ethical guidelines.
  
Helpful Resources:

• FBA Interviews Forms
• FBA Template bundle of resources

Tune in next week as Audra and Sami explore the next step in the FBA process: Conducting Direct Observations!
Or go back to last week where they talked about the Referral Process.

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Transcript

 Yeah. You're Ross Geller and friends where you learn to pivot because you're going to go from A to B really quickly. Oh, very quickly. 

Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist podcast mini series. This round, join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Sami Brown, here to bring you fun and functional advice for creating and implementing behavior plans. Let's get started. 

Hey, welcome back to the Misfit Behaviors podcast, doing our FBA mini series last week, talking about the referral process. And today, Sam and I are going to talk a little bit about conducting those initial interviews. 

You know what I was thinking is,  So obviously there's a lot of different people that you're going to be interviewing through this process and parents and teachers and, you know, anyone that works with the student, but I was thinking about how, by the time you get to this place where the student is warranting an FBA  or, you're, you're going through this process, they've already received probably so many calls, emails. And so I was thinking a lot about that, like that bank deposit kind of idea of, you know, there's been so many withdrawals, so to speak from the parent's bank account that now here's a whole other person who's got, you know, potentially this title of behavior analyst, and it feels like it's got a negative type connotation. And so I was just thinking that one of the most important pieces for us, when we come in, is to kind of be that really neutral, unemotional, unbiased, very level headed, but also empathetic and try to, it's not that you're undermining the administrators or teachers or any of the emails or phone calls that they've received, but you've got to come in from this place of I'm really here to, what are current barriers to the student accessing their education? And what are the things that we are doing that are working that we can do more of and what are the things that we're doing that are maybe working in the opposite direction. And so I was just thinking of that, like positives and negatives. And so it's just an important before you even get started in the process, get yourself in an organized and clear and it's okay to, you know, hear the information and get the venting from the teachers and administrators because.

That's part of our support system, but just make sure that we're really staying unemotional and prepared for those parents who have probably already are feeling in a defensive situation. 

That's a really good point. And I think we've always gone into interviews like this, especially with the parents metaphorically sitting on their side of the table. So metaphorically, you may not actually put your arm around them, but the whole point is you want to let them feel like we're here to be with you on your side. Let's get some information. I know you've had to tell the story or whatever it is a million times before. We're a brand new, fresh lens for you. So, share everything that's going on in your family, share your, the challenges that you have at home. Same with the teachers, you know, we want to be fresh, but we don't have any sort of baggage with the student right now. So, let's go into this fresh. Let's get some, some information. We can be as objective as we want.

But you can also, as a parent, you can be as emotional as you want, because we're here to kind of be on your side to start the process of let's really iron out what's going on. 

Yeah. And also I've been in situations in the past where they, the parents, you know, became very comfortable and would share information that they then didn't want to put into a report. They didn't want it written in there. And so I feel like. Some of that's really important to discuss how is the information important for the team to be aware of and does it need to be actually written into the paperwork. And so they're gonna, just once the ball starts rolling downhill, they're going to start sharing a lot. And all of that information is important, but it doesn't necessarily all need to be pieced into the final document. 

All right. Yes, that's a really good point. And then as you're going into these interviews, think about who you're going to interview. Are you, You know, you want to get this whole big picture for the students to talk to parents. If you can talk to the special education teacher, general education teacher, if possible, talk to the kid himself or herself, you know, and we have different forms that we've used that can adjust to whatever developmental level they're at. But if you can get some information about the student from their perspective and what's important to them. I think that's really important and helpful. And to go to each one of these kind of interviews with some of those questions kind of prepared in advance, but also being flexible, letting the conversation kind of guide itself and what, because it may go into a direction that you had no idea that you needed to go. And so being a little flexible with that. 

Yeah, and I think you hit on something that is super important, especially about the age appropriateness of the child is their own involvement as it teaches a very important future skill of their own self advocacy for what they feel that they're needing in the future and so that they learn that they're a part of this and that they've got to say and sometimes they may be using their behavior to do that. And it's not the appropriate way. So we want to flip it around and say, Hey, listen, I'm here to hear you. What is it that you feel that you need? What is missing here? 

When do you feel life is hard for you? When is it easy for you? If we made everything wonderful every day, what would you want to be doing? If we wanted to, if we had to make everything most difficult and like your most miserable day, what would that look like for you? And kind of get them to be able to think about those things. How do you feel when this happens? How do you feel when this happens? And kind of the same type of questions you might ask them.

The teachers, you know, if a student comes in looking like we used to always call it what an A day and a B day, we have defined what the student looks like on an A day. They come in, they're feeling good. They look calm. Some days they don't come in that way. So as a teacher, can you identify what those A days and B days, B days look like and how do you already adjust to your classroom environment when they come in with the kind of different setup each day?

Yeah. You're Ross Geller in Friends where you learn to pivot because you're going to go from A to B really quickly. 

Oh, very quickly.  

Here we go. Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. Pivot.  

So the other thing is, you know, you're going to be conducting direct interviews, but you're also going to look at past files. So looking at, you know, background medical information. Does the family have recent medical reports and occupational therapy or speech therapy, your medical doctor reports, and maybe the team isn't aware of yet. So checking that all of that's been updated, making sure they've seen the doctor recently. You know, if it's been three years and the student hasn't seen a doctor, it might be time to get just a basic checkup.

Looking at past incident reports, what's happened at school, things that are happening at home, current IEP, behavior plans, you know, kind of all these things. Academic records, you're also going to want to look at areas where the student may not be exhibiting the challenging behavior. So if they're really strong, like, my son was really strong with academics, but it was really important when we were talking about behaviors that we take that into account because his behaviors were better when he was being academically challenged and worse when he wasn't. And that was part of his behavior plan. 

Yeah. And I'd say for the opposite for my kiddo is too much repetitiveness. So do I have to do 20 of the same math problems or can I do five or half of it? Can I just do the front or the even numbers? Or I feel like too much of a good thing, so to speak, is actually creates behaviors. 

Oh, that's so true. And a lot of our kids who have these early challenging behaviors may be feeling those things and may not be able to identify or express that. So, you may be thinking this is fun, active activity or something, but for our students, it's not it's repetitive. It's boring, but they can't communicate that. So they communicate that with their behavior. And so that really is something to look at is when are the behaviors happening? So that's where you're talking to the teachers and. You know, when do you usually see this behavior we're talking about? Is it happening at recess or is it more likely to happen during math class? You know, where are kind of the anecdotal times that you're seeing it and that gives you some clues. 

And they may also be rushing through work, which may not actually show a skill, a true skill deficit, because maybe that. Assignment is back to recess or lunch or something. And they're just hurrying to be because they're perseverating on being first in line to line up. And so whatever that work is in that period before isn't an accurate representation of their skills. 

And like you already touched on to, to try to remain non-judgmental and stay objective, you know, gather your information without making, because at this point we're just gathering information, we're not making hypotheses yet. How much information could we put into the mixing bowl before we create the cookie? Cause we don't know what cookie we may have a snickerdoodle. We may have a chocolate chip cookie. So we're just throwing all the ingredients in there. We're going to see what comes out of it. 

And it's hard because we know that school is an academic environment. They're there to learn, but there are so many other social pieces that are really learned in the environment of school. And so for kiddos that, you know, are struggling in some aspect, There is so much more that goes into their day that they're trying to blend in or they're trying to maybe keep their stimming under control or they're trying to do. There are all these other things that are not even equated in a realm of academics, so to speak, that they're focusing energy and effort on or that they're hyper aware. And so I used to say, you know, My kiddo coming home from school that first hour. I didn't ask a lot of questions. I allowed him to decompress. He's even learned to kind of say I'm needing to decompress now because he's like a two liter bottle and every social interaction, every busy assembly, every loud area. Every cafeteria, whatever it is, it shook that two liter bottle until we got to go real slow with taking that lid off because otherwise boom.

And you said it earlier, when we talked about those A and B days, let's say it's a B day. We don't know kiddo didn't get up in the morning, didn't have breakfast, was arguing with mom, mom took away electronic time. When you get home, this is going to happen. That's already started. Then he's on the bus ride and someone, you know, Tripped over his backpack is something spilled, whatever it is.

And all of those little things kind of set up the stage. They're priming that pump for those behaviors as they walk in and teacher is unbeknownst to all of this. And so that's where we start to kind of look for those patterns and weed through what is even home. Situations look like to set them up for those A days, and that's where parent involvement and teacher involvement come together to make it really important teamwork.

So that's excellent. Yeah. And through all these interviews and stuff, you're documenting everything. And you may find that some of the comments or the information you get doesn't seem important at the time. It might be later. So just jotting everything down. Those notes don't have to go anywhere. They're just kind of for you as you're gathering this information, just documenting everything.

And then the last, I think, tip we need to always be mindful of is to respect that confidentiality, that we're really careful on who we're talking to and what we're talking about and who we then share it with and making sure we have those, those signatures in place before we move further than that, that we make sure that HIPAA and FERPA and everything is taken care of so we're not, we don't put ourselves in jeopardy or our district or whoever we're working with. 

And as BCBAs to just a final note is we've, we've got a pretty strong ethical code that we're bound to. And there's things that we just will not compromise on and the integrity of the position and upholding what that is. So just wanted to mention that is that, you know, I can't be swayed, so to speak, to prove a point for one side or another. 

That's a really good point and, you know, so you can conduct these interviews, kind of this next stage of the FBA, just remembering that this is where we're beginning to build trust with the families. We're beginning to build trust with our teachers. We want to be kind of that sounding board, making sure that they know that we're here to help them to hear from them that we're here to help the purpose of everything is that we're helping to make the system better for that student and for their life.

So, and maybe a lot of work as we start these interviews and stuff, but it's worth it because it's important. It's that important step as we. Build that trust and move on to the next stage. And then that next stage is those direct observations. 

So check in again next week and we will talk about when, how, and what to do for direct observations in our FBA mini series.

So we will catch you next week. Pivot!  Shut up!  Thanks for listening to the Misfit Behaviorists, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.