Making effective responses to troubled children

consider the troubled child

Who disrupts the classroom

Who attention seeks

Who challenges you on a daily basis

Attachment Theory

• John Bowlby (1952) believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life.

• “if a child was deprived of its mother this would cause deep, long lasting psychological problems for the child”

What do children need

in order to reach potential in all areas of their development?

Factors which affect good attachment

• Abuse

• Neglect

• Trauma

• Loss

Effects

• Distortion in how they interpret themselves

• Distortion in how they interpret others

• Distortion in how they interpret the world around them

Which then

• undermines their ability to learn

Attachment stylesSecure attachmentNurturing and caring leads to children who have a good role model and who can form similar relationships. These children tend to be more co-operative to their parents. Rated more popular by other children, higher in social competence, self confidence and self esteem.

Avoidant attachment Mothers are depressive or abusive and give precedence to their own needs. Children are therefore ignored.

As a result they may become distracted and distant, withdraw emotionally and have to be in control of their own feelings in order to be safe. Because their carer is seen as rejecting, this results in their having a working model of themselves as unacceptable and unworthy

Ambivalent attachmentInconsistency in caregiving results in the child being hypervigilant about the state of the caregiver, wondering if the caregiver will respond to them or not. They present as both clingy but also rejecting, have a negative self-image and exaggerate their emotional responses as a way to obtain attention.

Disorganised attachmentThese children are erratic in their responses because their caregivers are often abusive. They expect the worst and therefore have to remain in control of everything as they cannot bear to be dependent. They often appear as defiant but are actually fearful.

Pat Crittenden

THE KEY - SAFETY

Children need to feel safe

and without safety, they will not flourish

and when they are not emotionally flourishing

…..they cannot learn

How can we help?

‘School life with its rich environment of new relationships and tasks, presents children with occasions to identify, develop and establish fresh, more robust and socially valued aspects of the self.’

(Howe et al 1999)

Need therefore to:

• Teach healthy ways to respond to situations• Support to think in different ways• support to control physical condition, feelings

and behaviour• Make them believe in themselves and to

believe that they have value

within a relationship

3. Developmental DelayPage 26/27 of Rob Long

Stages of Cognitive Development (Piaget)  

Stage Characterised by 

Sensori-motor  (Birth-2 yrs)

Differentiates self from objects  Recognises self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a rattle to make a noise  Achieves object permanence: realises that things continue to exist even when no longer present to the sense

Pre-operational  (2-7 years)

Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words  Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others  Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of colour

Concrete operational  (7-11 years)

Can think logically about objects and events  Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9)  Classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size. 

Formal operational  (11 years and up)

Can think logically about abstract propositions and test hypotheses systematically.  Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological problems

Conclusion

Effective responses need to be appropriate for the child

BUT what happens if you are unsure of the cause of behaviour?

ANALYSIS…..

ABC of Behaviour

Date and time of incident

and context

Antecedent Behaviour Consequence (what happened next)

Pay-off for the child

10.02.10

11.45

Wally playing a maths game

In lesson

Wally starts to lose game

Knocked the board game over and ran out

TA followed Wally out and had a quiet chat with Wally (missed 10 mins of play)

Didn’t have to lose in the game.

Individual attention.

Stayed in the warm classroom

Let’s now consider the disruptive child

FIRST - REMEMBER to respond within a positive framework

• Reward all positive behaviour• ‘Catch them being good’• Recall past good performances• Catch others being good• Reinforce what is required• Give notice of a question• Acknowledge difficulties• Make early low key responses

Avoid escalation

• Don’t ignore the behaviour

• Don’t box the pupil in so that the only choice is for the pupil to ‘erupt’

• Avoid raising the pupil’s status

• Decline the ‘off task dance’

How not to box a pupil in!

• Rapidly advancing towards a pupil face on gives them 3 choices:

• Fight

• Flight

• Freeze - yield

Avoid raising the pupil’s status

• By being seen to almost ‘fight for control’, teachers risk raising the status of the pupil with his/her peers.

• This may reinforce the very behaviour that we do not want.

• Equally, we may be reducing our own status with the pupil and other pupils in the class by behaving in this way.

Offering choices

• Rather than escalate an incident – teachers can present the pupil with a choice

“Huw, the exercise has to be completed by the next lesson. You can either complete it now in class or do it in lunchtime detention.”

NOTE: this is more effective for younger children as adolescents have to deal with peer group pressure

Seeking ‘better for both’ solutions

“Rhys, you can either complete the exercise now or in a lunchtime detention with me. I don’t suppose either of us wants the detention.”

Moving a pupil

• Sometimes it’s more effective to move the person next to the one who is having difficulties behaving

e.g. Child A is constantly trying to chat with Joanna.

• “Joanna – bring me your book and let me see what you’ve done.

• Gosh that’s interesting – go and compare your ideas with Sarah’s.”

Remove the audience

Following up

When issues are deferred during a lesson they must be picked up

Either - at the end of the lesson, breaktime, lunchtime, end of the day

• Pupils must understand that teachers will ALWAYS pick them up

Follow up.. cont

• The follow up needs to focus on the behaviour that has just happened in the last lesson. It should not collect up a past history of difficulties.

• Instead of telling individuals what they did wrong, it can be more effective to ask them to tell us what happened.

• Follow up is more likely to be effective when the teacher remains calm and assured rather than aggressive

FINALLY…..

• What happens when a pupil ‘kicks off’

A FIVE STAGE MODEL OF AN INCIDENT

I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate.

It’s my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether the crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child, humanised or de-humanised.

Haim Ginott

• Teacher: Whatever made you think it was OK to behave like that?

• Pupil: Oh that’s it..

• Pupil: Start picking on me again

• Pupil: It’s typical, it happens all the time

• Pupil: Other people do what they want but the second it’s me, you pick on me.

• Pupil:Why do you always pick on me?