Transitions are difficult for a lot of our learners. It often requires a lot of practice, a lot of reinforcement and considering the motivation of the student.

Transitions are especially difficult when learners are transitioning away from a preferred activity to a non-preferred activity. Think about what’s in it for the individual to transition successfully? Not much! This is a very difficult skill to show in the moment so doing some teaching around this at a different time and practicing transitioning really helps.

Use “Tolerates Transitions” to teach successful transitioning.

Practice this when the student is calm, not during a difficult transition and build up to more difficult transitions.

In addition, use any of these antecedent strategies that are good practice:

Timer or Countdown: To signal when the activity is over. This skill may need to be taught (“Responds to Timer”).

Visual/Text Schedules: A great way to show the student what is next and when their preferred activity is available again.

Token Board/Reinforcement: For successful transitions and to show when work task is over.

Functional Communication Training: To teach the student to ask for “1 more minute” instead of melting down. You can use Hanley’s Tolerance and Delay method to introduce tolerance and delay.