At a small school where I used to work, everyone had to be flexible and move around as needed. We once moved a student to a new room where he hadn’t previously received instruction. He had very minimal problem behaviors, but as soon as the staff attempted to get him to enter the new room, he engaged in extreme levels of problem behavior that we had never seen previously. We had no idea why.
For a couple of days, the staff attempted to shape entering the room. “If you put one foot in the room, you can earn (highly preferred item).” It was a complete failure, and the staff could not get him to cross the threshold.
Eventually, with a lot of detective work, we discovered the problem—the emergency fire exit maps on the wall. On the map, the room was labeled “Eval room,” which sounds like “Evil” when read aloud. He thought the room was the “Evil room.” We simply reprinted the map, changing the name of the room to “Fun room,” and showed it to him. We put signs on the door to the room that said “Fun room,” and left favorite toys in the room. That’s it. We eliminated the problem behavior without further intervention.
Trying to change behaviors without understanding why they are occurring is almost always a poor decision. Taking the time to understand why the person is behaving the way they are leads to huge benefits. It is usually very simple, but often not obvious.