3 Styles E Voice Sensitivity Editor Reuse Files Billy is a 2.5-year-old boy. He is receiving early intervention services due to a communication delay. As a psychologist, he was referred to me so that I could work with his mother in regard to the behavioral difficulties he was experiencing. He lived in his home with his mother and younger sister. His sister had just turned one year old. His father and mother were no longer together, but he and his sister did have a visitation. The mother had several different male roommates during the year that I worked with them, and this was a pattern that was reported by her before I began working with them as well. Billy's mother worked at a restaurant, so her hours weren't always consistent. He went to a daycare that was a 24-hour daycare, so he was dropped off and picked up at different times on different days depending upon his mother's work schedule. When at home, there was no consistent schedule. There was no predictable snack time, mealtime, or bedtime. Usually, the kids ate in the living room in front of the TV with almost no interaction from their mother. His home was unkempt, and it was apparent that money was something that was a challenge for them as his mother reported difficulty paying the bills. When I observed Billy for the first time, I was stunned by the number of tantrums he had during my one-hour observation. His tantrum behavior seemed to occur over almost anything. At times it was to access a preferred item, at times it was due to frustration in relation to his communication challenges, and often it was to gain his mother's attention. He also demonstrated extreme difficulty in following directions. He was so non-compliant that she didn't even take him out in the community very often, so she rarely went to a restaurant, park, etc. In regard to his communication, he had almost no discernable verbal language. He did have some nonverbal functional communication (pointing, gesturing, etc.), but he would get very upset if what he wanted wasn't provided to him. The denial of this preferred item was also done by the mother in a verbal way with a lot of repetition. There wasn't much assistance from her in helping him move on to something else or offering him something he could have, so he would end up kind of stuck in that tantrum with no way to get out. When asked about how she spent her time with him, she reported that he didn't like to play with her. He didn't like to be read to and that most of her time with him was dealing with his tantrum behavior. She had tried a variety of different discipline techniques, but nothing had worked. I asked her to show me how she would try to engage him in play. She was standing over him and said, "come play with me." He responded by shaking his head no and when she insisted, he began to tantrum. I then asked her to sit down by herself and begin playing with something. She seemed uncomfortable doing this, but she went with it, and within a couple of minutes he had come over and began playing with her. We tried this with reading as well. Instead of her asking him to come read with her she just began reading to her daughter and he drifted over to participate. From this I learned that he did want to be engaged with his mother, which was likely the reason so many of his tantrums were for her attention, but she needed some assistance with learning how to play with a child and learning how to engage them in an activity without it seeming like a command from her. At the end of that observation, she wanted to know what we were going to do in regard to disciplining him What was the plan?