The History and Evolution of Behavioral Approaches and Positive Behavioral Interventions

Derrick Dufresne: You know, it's always interesting to me when we talk about roommates for people, because the way it gets talked about often with people with disabilities, not so much anymore but still to some degree, is that there's this idea that if I've got somebody with autism, to use a contemporary one, that it makes sense to have a group home or a program for people with autism.

One of my favorites, that I particularly am proud of in the past, was let's group together people with behavioral challenges. Let's have them be together. And now, what we know is, if you take somebody whose major behavior is biting as a negative behavior and you have them live with somebody that spits, the really good news for them is that it's free in-service training. The person that bites is going to learn how to spit and the person that spits is going to learn how to bite. And you know what the professionals are going to do? They're going to have a meeting about the fact that the behavior is deteriorating. And from the person's behavior, it's skill development.

We have got to challenge the whole nature of why we're grouping people for what reason and why people come in groups. Half the American public that starts out by saying "I love you, Baby, it's forever, marry me," within seven years is saying "You jerk, get out of here. I get the car, you get the kids."