The primary strategy for dealing with challenging behavior should be positive approaches that emphasize developing adaptive and socially acceptable replacement behaviors. Any intervention procedure should be consistent with the long term goals of community integration. Since the ultimate goal for students with Down syndrome is that they live, work, and play in integrated community settings, any behavioral intervention should be acceptable to and feasible in those settings. For example, if a procedure cannot be used in a regular educational setting, its use in a special education classroom is suspect. The goal of an intervention should be to increase participation in, not remove individuals from, integrated settings and activities with peers without disabilities.
Integration is as important to behavior management as it is to services in general.
For example, participation in an integrated school program ensures that students will have models for appropriate behavior and that teachers have a clear reference for what amount of deviance is, in fact, age appropriate. The standards established for appropriate behavior should recflect the standards of the natural environment. Programs should emphasize the use of natural consequences for behavior rather than employ elaborate or artificial reinforcers. Developing programs that rely on natural consequences increases the probability that behavior change can be maintained by the natural environment. From the onset, the goal of a behavior intervention should be for the person to learn to manage his or her own behavior.