#219: Using Descriptive Praise to Help Transform Behavior with Bailey Payne

Are the learners in your class or therapy room engaging in behaviors that create barriers to learning? What can you do?

Bailey Payne, author of Behavior Breakthrough: 12 Skills to Transform Behavior at Home and in the Classroom, offers data-driven, evidence-based strategies to help parents and educators reshape their responses, modify environments, and create lasting change. Her book makes Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) concepts accessible, empowering caregivers and teachers to foster a more peaceful learning space.

Where to start?
Bailey emphasizes teaching essential skills using a clear framework: Why is it important? What is it? How does it look in practice? Today, we explore descriptive praise—a powerful tool for guiding children toward positive behaviors. Unlike general praise, descriptive praise explicitly recounts a child’s actions, showing them how to access attention appropriately without resorting to behaviors that produce a barrier to learning.

With teachers already overwhelmed, strategies like descriptive praise offer a simple yet proactive way to remove learning barriers. By intentionally reinforcing desired behaviors, educators can create a more structured, supportive environment—one where every child has the opportunity to succeed.

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What’s Inside:

• How to break through barriers to learning.
• Teaching skills to transform behavior.
• What is descriptive praise, and how can it help?

Mentioned In This Episode:

Behavior Breakthrough: 12 Skills to Transform Behavior at Home and in the Classroom
Bailey Payne
Behavior Breakthrough with Bailey Payne (@behavior_breakthrough) on Instagram
BehaviorBreakthrough (@behaviorbreakthro) on TikTok
ABA Speech: Home
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