ABC chain

ABC . . . Antecedent Behavior Consequence

This has been DRILLED into my brain because of my job. To break this down, an antecedent is something that happens before the person chooses their behavior. An example of this is like Mom says, "Go clean your room." Child's behavior could either be to clean, or not to clean. Then the consequence is based on the child's decision. Sometimes it is hard to remember consequences are both positive and negative.

Many of the kids at my school don't understand this. So every aspect that we can talk about this we do. We are trying to drill it into their brains because it is such a fundamental social skill they MUST know to succeed in life.

I've been thinking about this a lot outside of working at Spectrum. Everything we do revolves around this ABC chain. I've also been thinking about what I believe and how this all works together. This is an example of what I mean. I am against abortion. If someone chooses to have sex (behavior), a possible natural consequence is pregnancy. If you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. You can always choose your behavior.

Now I find myself analyzing everything with this almost every aspect of my life. That's different because I'm usually an emotional thinker, not a logical thinker. It's easy to see how everything fits together. Hopefully I can help my kids think "What consequence do I want? What behavior do I need to choose so I can have that consequence?"