By Emma Ryan | The Learning Garden
Let’s talk about reassurance seeking in autism…
I’ve seen a lot of perseverative behaviors. My guess is that if you’ve spent any amount of time in a special education classroom or clinic with students with Autism, Anxiety, or OCD, you have, too.
I’ve seen many different ways of addressing perseveration. I’ve seen question mark cards to be “spent” each time a question is asked, or popsicle sticks removed based on the number of perseverative questions asked. I’ve seen teachers and professionals ignore the behavior completely, or respond selectively — sometimes with a “Did I already answer that?” or “Do you already know that?” I’ve tried some of these interventions myself.
And sometimes, for some students, these interventions work beautifully. For others, they don’t. And that’s okay — it just means we need to reconsider the function of the behavior. It could be reassurance-maintained perseveration.
A Note on Function
Perseveration can serve a number of functions. Some students might enjoy the repetitive sound of the words. Some might be seeking attention or attempting to engage with an adult or classmate. (If you would like to learn more about the functions of behavior, check out my article.)
However, for many students, perseveration serves another function entirely: reassurance.
When we answer students, we are providing them with short-term relief. But we are also — without meaning to — teaching them that they cannot handle the anxiety on their own. The anxiety dips briefly, and then it comes back. And so does the question.
This is why reassurance-seeking behavior is so persistent. We can stop the question. We cannot, through simply not answering, stop the feeling that’s driving it.
It’s also worth noting that not all perseveration is reassurance-maintained. This post focuses specifically on that function. If you’ve ruled it out, a different approach may be needed — and a good functional behavior assessment is always the right starting point.
Why Extinction Alone Isn’t Enough for Reassurance-Maintained Perseveration
One of the core ethical principles of ABA is that when a behavior is targeted for reduction, a replacement behavior must be taught. I like to think of it this way: we wouldn’t take a raft away from someone in the middle of the ocean without giving them something else to hold onto.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to reduce perseverative behavior — in fact, doing so can be genuinely beneficial for the student and for the adults around them. But to do it responsibly, we need to understand what the behavior is doing for the student and teach a replacement skill that serves the same function.
When we use extinction — meaning we stop responding entirely — we are removing the student’s primary coping tool. Ineffective as it is in the long run, that repeated question is how this student has learned to manage anxiety they don’t yet have another way to handle. When we take it away without replacing it, we’ve addressed the behavior. We haven’t addressed the student.
And here’s the part that’s easy to miss: sometimes extinction appears to work. The question stops. We move on. But when the behavior disappears without the anxiety being addressed, that anxiety doesn’t simply go away. It builds — quietly, internally — and will almost certainly show up somewhere else down the line. A student who stops asking the question but is now sitting rigidly at their desk, unable to engage with anything, has not made progress. They’ve just run out of ways to ask for help.
That’s the difference between stopping a behavior and actually helping the student. And with reassurance-maintained perseveration, we need to do both.
How to Address Reassurance-Maintained Perseveration: A Step-by-Step Approach
The goal here isn’t a student who stops asking the question when we’re in the room. The goal is a student who can manage their anxiety independently — in any room, with any adult.
That means teaching three things:
First, teach students to identify when it’s happening. Students need to learn to distinguish between an information-seeking question and a reassurance-seeking question. An information-seeking question is asked because the person genuinely doesn’t know something and needs new information to move forward. A reassurance-seeking question is asked because of anxiety — the student already has the information, but the anxiety keeps generating the question anyway.
This distinction matters enormously — not just for the student, but for the team. Once everyone understands it, responding differently to different kinds of questions stops feeling arbitrary or unkind. We’re not ignoring the student. We’re recognizing that what they’re asking for — another answer — isn’t actually what they need. This is also an important concept to share with peers, where appropriate, so that the student doesn’t feel silenced or dismissed.
Second, teach students to label the problem. Before a student can manage anxiety, they need to recognize it. For some students, this might look like a full sentence: “I’m feeling worried.” For others, it might look like pointing to an image symbolizing anxiety. For some, a mixture of both. Students can learn to identify feelings in their bodies — a tight chest, a feeling of urgency, a thought that won’t stop — and connect those physical signals to the word anxiety. This step alone creates distance between the student and the thought. It becomes something they’re having, rather than something that is happening to them.
Third, teach students to identify the reason and choose a response. Anxiety often feels formless and global — a vague but urgent sense that something is wrong. Helping a student connect that feeling to something specific (“I’m worried about whether mom is coming,” “I’m nervous because the schedule changed”) makes the experience workable rather than overwhelming. Providing students with a list of words or images representing common worries can help them identify what’s going on for them in the moment.
From there, the final step is choosing a strategy. This might involve an adult — a brief check-in, or talking through the situation — or it might be something the student can do entirely on their own: a breathing exercise, a movement break, a visual coping tool. The goal is to give the student real options, so that reaching for another person’s reassurance is no longer the only one available.
Making It Concrete: Tools That Help
For many individuals with ASD or ADHD — and really anyone in a heightened state of anxiety — it can be hard to take a verbal instruction and turn it into a way to calm down. This is especially true in the moment, when dysregulation is already making abstract thinking more difficult.
Visuals help enormously. A list of different calming strategies presented in a clear, appealing format — different kinds of deep breaths, simple exercises, grounding techniques — removes the pressure of having to think of something on the spot. It also gives students the chance to take ownership of their own emotional regulation, rather than simply following an adult’s direction in the moment.
A thought parking lot is another concrete tool worth knowing about. Rather than asking a student to simply stop thinking about something — which, as anyone who has ever tried not to think about something knows, doesn’t work — a thought parking lot gives the worry somewhere to land. The student records the thought and sets it aside, physically and visually. The thought isn’t dismissed. It’s parked. And that small act of acknowledgment is often just enough to interrupt the cycle.
Social stories can also play an important role, helping students understand their own patterns — specifically, what perseveration looks like, why it happens, and what they can do instead. When a student can catch themselves and think, “this is a reassurance question, not an information question,” something meaningful has shifted.
A Note for Teams
None of this works in isolation.
A student who has a consistent plan in one setting but encounters unpredictable responses everywhere else will not generalize these skills. Every adult who regularly interacts with the student — classroom teacher, paraprofessional, specialist, family — needs to understand what the student is working on and how to respond consistently.
This is especially true for paraprofessionals, who are often the adults with the most direct, sustained contact with the student and who are frequently the least supported when it comes to behavior intervention training. A plan that lives only in a behavior document and never gets explained clearly to the para sitting next to the student all day is not a real plan.
It is critical that the replacement behavior piece of this plan is emphasized across the whole team: it is not enough — and frankly, it is not ethical — to remove a behavior without teaching a functionally equivalent replacement. Removing a child’s coping strategy without teaching them how to manage their anxiety effectively is not a neutral act. It just leaves them without options.
Hearing that student who asks you every day whether mom is picking them up at 3:00 PM finally say instead, “I’m feeling worried about mom picking me up” — that’s no small thing. That’s a win. And it’s a skill they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Looking for a ready-to-use resource that gives students the tools this post describes? My Reassurance-Maintained Perseveration resource includes social stories on perseveration and anxiety, visuals to help students distinguish information-seeking from reassurance-seeking questions, a visual thought parking lot for recording and setting aside intrusive thoughts, and step-by-step visuals for naming the feeling, identifying the reason, and choosing a response. View it in my TPT store →