Maxims

A

A bad workman always blames his tools.
A complete person does not need to make another feel incompetent.
A controlling "do to" mentality drains the life out if its subjects.™
A wheelchair is not a hearing aid in disguise.™
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Carl Sagan)
Activities that have no meaning have no dignity.™
Administrative expediency creates a disrespectful environment. (Dan Berkowicz)
Altering behavior is never a prerequisite to getting promoted into a reasonable life. (Rob Horner, PhD)
Altering the behavior of others necessitates modifying our own.™
All learning requires risk. Where there is no risk, there is not dignity. ™
An adult is determined by virtue of age not competence.™
An excuse is a rationalization of one's failure to take action.
An institution is not a place it’s a state of mind.™ An office is a place where professional staff hide.™
Anger communicates an unmet need.™ At all costs, people we support must look good in the eyes of others.™
B

Barriers cause handicaps, not disabilities.™
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. (Plato)
Be the change you would like to see in the world. (Mahatma Gandhi)
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. (Dr. Seuss)
Behave healthy, even if you're not. (Vincent Petinelli)
Behavior management drains the life out of it's subjects.™
Behavior management is itself the disease for which it purports to be the cure.™
Behavior modify dogs not people.™
Being an adult is a bilateral process One must know how to give as well as receive.™ 
Being an example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. (Albert Schweitzer)
Being on a community placement list is not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, it is standing on the edge of the precipice.
By your pupils you will be taught. 

C
Choice is not selecting an option from an array of one.
Clothing protector is a code word for bib.™
Control is the behaviorist's reinforcement.™

D
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. (William Jennings Bryan)
Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. (Fredrich Nietzsche)
Do not give people privacy, teach them to take it.™
Don't advocate for people. Advocate with them.™
Don't blame them! Train them!
Don't care for people care about them.™
Don’t think outside the box-blow up the box.
Drugs treat disorders, not behavior.

E
Employees don't leave their jobs, they leave their supervisors.
Every reason that you give why you don’t, is the justification for doing it.™
Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it is stupid. (Albert Einstein)
EVERYTHING, then you are doomed eternally to do NOTHING.

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. (Dan Stanford)

F

Facilities are meant to be flushed not lived in.™

Facts Tell-Stories Sell. Fake it ‘til you make it.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. (Theodore Roosevelt)

G

Get up, get out, and do SOMETHING! (Author Unknown)

Getting a life for people and coaching them into it...is the intervention. (Todd Risley)

Going to counseling has no value it's what you do when you are there.™

Good, better, best never let it rest until your good is better and your better is your best. (Saint Jerome , Father of Latin Church)

Good teachers disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

Good words cost little, but mean alot. (Author Unknown)

Gossip runs down more people than automobiles

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. (Albert Einstein)

H

Habilitation is not a goal, it is a result.™

How people live should be determined by how they wish to live not by their diagnosis.™

Hurting people hurt people. (John Maxwell)

I

I am somebody. (Rev. Jesse Jackson)

I cannot hear what you're saying - your actions are drowning out your voice. (Wolf Wolfensberger)
I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure that you realize what you heard is not what I meant.
I think I'm a mushroom 'cause they keep me in the dark and feed me manure.

Identifying and seeking a preferred future is the essence of a quality of life.™

Idle hands are the devil's workshop! If grade retention is harmful, life retention is devastating.

If it is not illegal, immoral or unethical - just do it!

If it’s to be, it’s up to me.

If my life has no meaning or value, I will behave in a way to cause your life to have no meaning or value.

If we were all good social workers, we would not need psychologists.™

If what you say is not memorable – it will not be remembered.

If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.

If you can't change the staff, change the staff.

If you can't change your perspective, change your attitude.

If you don't have it - you can't give it.

If you make it a struggle, you will lose. (Lee Graber)

If you want to know who is going to win the race, don't talk with the jockey, talk with the horse. (Joseph Kunz)

If you wish to be a consumer, you must be a producer.™

If your statements do not contribute to the solution, why share them?™If you're not likeable, pursue recovery. (Tim Sanders, The Likeability Factor)

In order to have a friend - you must be one!

Inclusion is asking for people...not just about them.™

Independence does not mean doing things for yourself.

It means being in control of how things are done.

Individuals make good choices by making many choices, some of which are bad.

Inept management and supervisors promote an organizational disaster - looking for a place to happen.

Insanity is repeating the same mistake and expecting different results. (Narcotic Anonymous Book 1980)

Inspect what you expect. Institutions are not built, they arise from indifference.

It is equally important that we fill years with more life as it is to fill life with more years.

It is the nature of Behavior Management to cause its' subjects to surrender their spirits or rebel.™

It's more important that we "get it" emotively than cognitively. ™

It’s not attention people are seeking – it’s prestige.™

It’s not what people have, it’s what they don’t have.™

It's better to err and ask for forgiveness than not to have acted at all.

L

Layers of bureaucracy shield the "institution" against the corrosive effects of inclusion. (Dan Berkowicz)

Life is uncertain eat dessert first.

Listeners are message insensitive to those who are not likable.

Little people belittle people. (Author Unknown)

Loose lips sink ships. (War Advertising Council)

M

Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing. (Warren Bennis Ph.D., "On Becoming a Leader")

Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. (Sophia Loren)

N

Never do anything by yourself, other than go to the bathroom or smoke a cigarette.™

Normalization is not a goal, it is a result.™

Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted, counts. (Albert Einstein)

Not having the answer is forgivable, failure to ask the question is not.

Not no, but how? Not to decide is to decide. (Rev. Harvey Cox)

Nothing about me without me.

O

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. (Albert Einsten)

Only buckets have capacity, not the human mind.

Our challenge is to define a line between compassion and infantilizing. (Lara Okunubi)

P

People do not have to prove themselves to have a reasonable life.

People do not resist change, they resist being changed.

People have a right to be crazy they just don’t have the right to behave that way.

People have a right to struggle.

People may forget what you say, they may forget what you do, they will never forget how you make them feel. (Maya Angelou)

People need not prove themselves to have a reasonable life.™

People with disabilities deserve social justice. If not now, when?™

People with intellectual disabilities are not broken, they do not need to be fixed.

Plan for the future because that's where you are going to spend the rest of your life. (Mark Twain)

Please help me to become the person my psychiatrist is medicating me to be.

Polices may keep some bad things from happening, but they rarely cause good things to happen! ™

Programming is something we do when we can’t or won’t give people a reasonable life.

Proposition is more effective than imposition.

R

Relationship is the single most important therapeutic modality for ameliorating threats of violence, emotional crisis and the need for emotional restraint

Regret is a prison, difficult to escape.

Regulations which pay homage to minutiae, while turning a blind eye on quality of life, are written by the devil.™

Remember the vision you had when you started the race?

S

Segregation is harder to spot when they call it special. 

Sensory Stimulation is not a room - it is life!™

Shift the paradigm or it will shift you!™

Smiling is the way the face gives an emotional hug.™

Some people are never freed until their parents pass away.

Some people dream of success, while others wake up and work hard at achieving it! (Author Unknown)

Some people grin and bear it other people smile and change it!

Special' is a code word for segregation.™

Start low, go slow.

Support people at the level they are capable or willing to participate.™

Support staff are like stage hands in a play, remaining behind the curtain.™

Support staff must be transparent.™

T

Take the actions of love, and the feelings will follow.™

Take what you can get, closest to what you want. (Lee Graber)

Teach the skill in the environment where you want it exercised.™

Terminating the underground is like catching a tiger by the tail.™

The best vitamin for having friends is B-1.

The brain can only hold what the "posterior" can endure. (P. Dan Wiwchar)

The cemeteries of the world are filled with indispensable men. (Charles DeGaulle)

The community is not there to find - it has to be built. (John O'Brien)

The definition of listening - quiet.

The dog has finally caught up with the car.

The eyes are the portal to the mind.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. (Daniel J. Boorstein)

The habilitation setting generates the inappropriate behavior.™

The higher up on the flagpole you go, the more your butt hangs out.

The history of their lives becomes their future. (Cheryl Wacher)

The intervention for many inappropriate behaviors is not seclusion but inclusion.™

The lack of dreams makes each day hard work. (Author Unknown)

The less capable the people we support, the more capable the staff who support them need to be. ™

The lessons of the past provide the path to the future. (Author Unknown)

The loss of liberty is the price of care.

The more competent you are, the more deviant society will allow you to be without devaluing you.

The more intense and frequent the interfering behavior, the greater the probability it can be resolved.™

The most important thing in life is to win and be respected.™

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)

The paradigm in shifting, you can either be on the bus or under it.

The person who complains about how the ball bounces is usually the one who has dropped it. (Lou Holtz)

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. (Robert Byrne)

The right drug does not fix the wrong environment.

The role of support staff is not to provide support, but to help people obtain it.™

The symptom is the disease.

The word "wait" is the most vulgar word in our vocabulary.™

The worst thing we can do for the people we support is to do for the people we support. (Steve Miller)

The worst thing you can do to a person is make them invisible. (Toni Morrison)

There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, Change it or Leave it. If you can't accept it, change it if you can't change it, leave it.

There are two kinds of people in the world - those that leave their mark and those that leave a stain.

There is no future without a presence.™

There is no greater load than the man who carries no load at all.

There is no liberty without responsibility.

Things that matter most should never be at the mercy of things that matter least. (Goethe)

This is more about us than them.™

To be the very best you don't need to be very good.

To call someone lazy, uncooperative or stubborn is to admit we don’t understand them.

To do for nurtures dependency – dependency nurtures to do for.™

To improve quality of life for those we support, we must...rehabilitate the staff. ™

To miss the point is the sin.

To the world you’re one person… To one person you are the world.

To whom much is given, much is expected. (President John F. Kennedy)

Treat everyone as though they are who they wish they could be. (Ghandi)

Treat others not the way you wish to be treated, but rather the way you would treat yourself under the most challenging of circumstances. (Author Unknown)

Treating people badly makes their condition worse! (James McKelvey)

U

Unions only go where they are invited. (Vincent Petenelli)

V

Violence is the language of the unheard. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

W

Waiting is the undertow of life.™

We all have our demons.

We are focused more on rights than on doing the right thing.™

We care more about how people behave than how people feel.™

We do a much better job of finding people for places than places for people. 

We do not suffer so much the lack of structural architects and interior designers as we do the absence of ideational architects and moral interventionists. (Burton Blatt, The Dark Side of the Mirror)

We learn what we live. 

We must provide an environment that is healthy enough for a life to happen. (Dan Berkwicz)

We see things not as they are, we see things as we are.

We sometimes create storms in the midst of peace, so that we may remain valid.

What test must one pass to be promoted into a reasonable life?

When given options, people tend to choose those things that enhance their dignity and respect.™

When people ask for things that are not available, professionals determine the request inappropriate.

When writing the story of your life, don't let anyone else hold the pen.

When you bond with people, they are less likely to behave in a way to disappoint you.™

When you change the way in which you see things, the things you see will change. (From an article "It's The Way You See Things" by Dr. Kem Thompson)

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Why do they call it Positive Behavioral Support if the primary intervention is negative punishment?™

Without a presence, there is no future.™

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. (Albert Camus)

Work is the great equalizer.

Y

You can be a wounded wounder or a wounded healer. (Origins in Greek mythology Christianity)

You cannot fix a broken life with a behavior management plan.™

You cannot keep people safe by denying them a life.™

You cannot prove someone cannot learn you can only demonstrate you are unable to teach. (Mark Gold)

Your behavior determines the consequence, I do not.

Your brain can only absorb what your posterior [sic] can endure. (P. Dan Wiwchar)

Your staff will not care how much you know, until they know how much you care. 

™ Created by Tom Pomeranz