PBIS at Home
One way to support your children’s PBIS learning at school is to incorporate PBIS in your home.
At school, expectations are posted and taught in the classroom, in the hallway, at lunch, and at recess. Why not develop and hang up your expectations at home?
Just like the behavior matrices that are at your children's school, you can develop a behavior matrix with your family members at home. As a family, be encouraged to sit down and discuss your expectations in different areas of family and home life. Place these expectations in a matrix that your family can easily support and be accountable for.
Supporting Families with PBIS at Home
The Center on PBIS and the Center for Parent Information and Resources collaborated to develop an 8-page brief that speaks directly to parents about how to use PBIS at home, an approach used in over 25,000 schools as a highly effective way to build children’s social-emotional-behavioral skills and reduce challenging behaviors.
The recommendations in the brief start with setting routines. Examples are given as to how to adapt school use of PBIS to home use for both elementary and secondary school routines. Another recommendation is to set home expectations of behavior. Again, examples are given of how expectations at school can be adapted to expectations at home. A third recommendation focuses on emphasizing positive feedback over correcting behavior (rule of thumb: aim for a ratio of 5 positive to 1 corrective). This recommendation includes strategies such as reminding children about expectations before an activity and rewarding positive behaviors. Additional recommendations are given about communicating with the school, being creative, and modeling good behavior and well-being.
Access the brief at the Center on PBIS.
Below are examples of what an At-Home or Family Matrix can look like.
PBIS At-Home Matrix
The first example is a home matrix that uses the school's behavior expectations at home. In the example, the school's expectations are ROAR, and the family would develop examples of what ROAR looks like at the times listed across the top row.
|
Before School |
After School |
Meals |
Bedtime |
Out & About |
Respectful |
|||||
On Task |
|||||
Achievement |
|||||
Responsible |
Family Matrix
The second example uses HOME as the behavior expectations, so they do not mirror your school's expectations. Times are listed across the top row and expectations are set as a family within the matrix.
|
Getting up |
Getting |
Clean-up time |
Time to relax |
Homewok |
Meal |
Getting ready for bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
"H" |
|||||||
"O" |
|||||||
"M" |
|
||||||
Responsible |