Knowing when your expectations for a child are too high isn’t always obvious, especially when they’ve shown they can do something before. The key, according to ABA practitioners, is this: if a child is consistently showing unwanted behavior, the expectation is probably still too big. Here’s how to recognize that, and what to do about it.
Sometimes a child surprises you. They do the thing you’ve been working toward, once, maybe twice, and it feels like a breakthrough. So you pull back on the support, raise the bar a little, and wait. Then the wheels come off.
It’s one of the most common and frustrating patterns parents and therapists run into. And most of the time, it doesn’t mean the child regressed. It means the expectation outpaced the child’s skills.
We sat down with Jamie Waldvogel, BCBA and founder of the Minneapolis-area ABA practice Behave Your Best, to discuss how parents and practitioners can recognize when they’re asking too much and what to do when that happens.
Recognizing Skill Limitations vs. Stubbornness
Here’s a useful frame: if you ask a child to do long division and they can’t figure it out, you don’t punish them. You assume they’re missing a skill. The same logic applies to behavioral expectations.
“The conservative way to approach the situation,” Jamie explains, “is to assume that if a child is consistently showing unwanted behavior, ABA practitioners often interpret this as a sign that the expectation may still be too big.”
That’s a simple but powerful shift. Current, recurring unwanted behavior usually indicates that a child lacks the skills or motivation to meet expectations, not that they’re being defiant.
Toilet training is a clear example of this. Here’s a scenario Jamie walks through:
Mom starts teaching Ava to use the potty chair. Ava has some success. Mom backs off on reminders. Ava starts having accidents. Mom gets frustrated because it seems like Ava knows what to do, but just won’t do it.
What went wrong? After a few successes, Mom raised the expectation: Ava should now initiate toilet use on her own. Some kids will make that leap quickly, while others may need continued support to fully build those skills. Ava still needed continued practice and support in learning to recognize when she needs to use the restroom.
If you’re feeling stuck on something like toilet training, Jamie notes that ABAs regularly work through these situations. Consulting a professional can turn up new approaches, or at least help you figure out whether your child needs more time to build the underlying skills.
Understanding What Motivates Your Child
Let’s say Mom and Ava worked with a BCBA and figured out which skills were still missing. Now Ava knows what to do, but she still isn’t doing it consistently. What’s going on?
Think about it from Ava’s perspective. She’s building a Lego castle. She feels the urge to use the bathroom. She realizes that going means leaving the Legos. But if she just stays where she is, Mom might not even notice for a while. The castle wins.
The motivation to keep playing is simply stronger than the motivation to use the toilet. That’s not stubbornness — it’s a reinforcement problem. While reinforcement is key, it’s also worth considering emotional or sensory factors that may be influencing the behavior alongside motivation.
The fix often involves finding positive reinforcers that tip the balance. A small piece of candy or a preferred item every time Ava successfully uses the toilet is a common approach. Over time, as using the toilet becomes a consistent habit, that reinforcer can be phased out. But you have to make the desired behavior worth choosing.
Recognizing That Children Develop at Different Paces
We all know every child is different. But in practice, parents often set expectations based on what a sibling did at the same age, or what a friend’s child accomplished, or what seemed to work for every other kid in a therapy group. That comparison is where things go sideways.
Jamie shares an example from a family with two kids. Their oldest needed advanced prompts for anything he’d be expected to do, “first this, then that,” and it helped him stay regulated throughout the day. So naturally, they tried the same approach with their second child.
It made things worse. For the younger child, hearing those prompts triggered anxiety, which fed the very behavior problems they were trying to prevent.
“So what works really well for their firstborn,” Jamie says, “causes the unwanted behavior in their secondborn.”
The takeaway isn’t that prompting is wrong. It’s that strategies need to match the individual child, not a template. When we base expectations on comparisons, we set ourselves up for frustration and project that frustration onto children who are wired differently.
Real progress comes from recognizing where a child’s skills actually are right now, understanding what’s driving their behavior, and adjusting expectations to match the individual.
When to Adjust vs. When to Hold the Expectation
Lowering your expectations doesn’t mean giving up on a goal. It means being honest about where a child is right now so you can build a realistic path to where you want them to be. The tricky part is knowing which situation you’re in.
Here’s a general rule: if a child has never reliably demonstrated the skill, the expectation is almost certainly too high. Lower it, break the skill into smaller steps, and build from there. On the other hand, if a child has demonstrated the skill consistently in one setting but not others, the issue is likely generalization, not ability. In that case, the expectation itself may be appropriate, but the environment or support structure needs to change.
There are also situations where maintaining the expectation makes sense, particularly when a child is using challenging behavior to avoid a demand they can meet. A BCBA can help you figure out which category you’re dealing with, because getting it wrong in either direction causes problems. Hold too firm, and you escalate frustration. Adjust too quickly, and you accidentally reinforce avoidance.
When in doubt, the safer move is to scale back temporarily and collect some data. Watching what actually happens, rather than what you think should happen, usually points the way forward faster than any amount of guessing.
How a BCBA Assesses Skill Gaps
When parents bring a concern to a BCBA, the first step isn’t jumping to a solution. It’s figuring out exactly what’s going on. That process is called a Functional Behavior Assessment, or FBA, and it’s one of the core tools behavior analysts use to separate skill gaps from motivation problems.
An FBA looks at three things: what happens before the behavior (the antecedent), the behavior itself, and what happens immediately after (the consequence). By tracking these patterns across multiple observations, a BCBA can start to identify what’s maintaining the behavior and whether the expectation is contributing to the problem.
Beyond the FBA, a BCBA will also look at the child’s skill repertoire more broadly. Can they perform the target behavior in any context, or only in specific ones? Do they have the prerequisite skills that the behavior depends on? Is there a sensory or communication component that’s making things harder than they appear?
This kind of systematic assessment takes the guesswork out of it. Instead of wondering whether your child is being stubborn or struggling, you get actual data that tells you where the gap is and what kind of support is likely to help. That’s a much better starting point than adjusting expectations based on frustration alone.
Tips for Tracking Progress at Home
You don’t need to be a trained behavior analyst to start collecting useful information about your child’s behavior at home. Even simple observation notes can help you and any professionals you’re working with make better decisions.
Start by picking one behavior to focus on. Trying to track everything at once usually leads to tracking nothing. Identify the behavior causing the most friction and monitor it closely for a week or two before making any changes. Note when it happens, what was going on right before it, and what happened right after. You’re looking for patterns, not outliers.
It also helps to track what’s working, not just what isn’t. If your child successfully met an expectation three times today, what was different about those three times? Same setting? Same time of day? Same level of support from you? That information is just as valuable as knowing when things fell apart.
If you’re working with a BCBA, share your observations between sessions. The more real-world data they have, the more precisely they can fine-tune the approach. Progress in a therapy setting doesn’t always transfer to home automatically, and the gap between the two is usually where the most important work happens.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my child lacks a skill or is just being stubborn?
A good starting point is to look at consistency. If your child can do something sometimes but not others, context matters—motivation, setting, and competing priorities all play a role. If they can’t do it reliably, even with support, that indicates a skill gap. An ABA professional can help you figure out which one you’re dealing with.
What should I do when a child regresses after making progress?
Regression often signals that an expectation was shifted before the skill was fully established. The support or reinforcement that was helping them succeed got pulled too soon. Going back to the previous level of support isn’t a failure — it’s what the data is telling you to do.
Is it normal for strategies that work for one child to backfire with another?
Yes, and it’s more common than most people expect. Even siblings in the same household can respond in completely opposite ways to the same approach. What looks like a helpful prompt for one child can cause anxiety in another. That’s why individualized assessment is critical in ABA.
When should I bring in a professional?
If you’ve tried consistent approaches and aren’t seeing progress — or you’re seeing behavior get worse — it’s a good time to consult a BCBA. You don’t need to be at the end of your rope first. Getting an outside perspective early often saves a lot of frustration down the road.
Can ABA strategies help even if my child isn’t diagnosed with autism?
Yes. The principles of ABA — understanding behavior, motivation, and skill-building — apply broadly. While ABA is most commonly associated with autism spectrum disorder, it is also applied to other behavioral or developmental challenges, such as ADHD or developmental delays.
Key Takeaways
- Recurring unwanted behavior usually signals a skill gap or motivation problem, not defiance. Adjust the expectation before you escalate the consequence.
- Progress isn’t the same as mastery. A child who succeeds with support isn’t always ready to succeed without it. Removing scaffolding too soon is one of the most common reasons for stalled progress.
- Motivation is part of the equation. If the desired behavior isn’t worth choosing, no amount of instruction will make it consistent. Reinforcement bridges that gap, though emotional and sensory factors matter too.
- Avoid comparison-based expectations. What worked for one child, even a sibling, may actively backfire with another. Individual assessment is the only reliable baseline.
- Data beats guessing. Tracking behavior at home, even informally, gives you and any professionals you’re working with a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening.
- When you’re stuck, get a second set of eyes. ABA practitioners regularly work through exactly these situations, and a fresh perspective can often uncover what wasn’t working.
Ready to learn more about ABA approaches for families and children? Explore programs that train the next generation of behavior analysts.
