Making effective responses to troubled children

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Making effective responses to troubled children
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consider the troubled child

• Who disrupts the classroom
• Who attention seeks
• Who challenges you on a daily basis

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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

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What do children need

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

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Factors which affect good attachment

• Abuse
• Neglect
• Trauma
• Loss

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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

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Attachment styles
Secure attachment Nurturing 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 attachment Inconsistency 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 attachment These 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.
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Pat Crittenden
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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

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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)

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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

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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
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Conclusion

• Effective responses need to be appropriate for
  the child
• BUT what happens if you are unsure of the cause
  of behaviour?
• ANALYSIS..

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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) Didnt have to lose in the game. Individual attention. Stayed in the warm classroom
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Lets now consider the disruptive child
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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

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Avoid escalation

• Dont ignore the behaviour
• Dont box the pupil in so that the only choice is
  for the pupil to erupt
• Avoid raising the pupils status
• Decline the off task dance

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How not to box a pupil in!

• Rapidly advancing towards a pupil face on gives
  them 3 choices
• Fight
• Flight
• Freeze - yield

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Avoid raising the pupils 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.

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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

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Seeking better for both solutions

• Rhys, you can either complete the exercise now
  or in a lunchtime detention with me. I dont
  suppose either of us wants the detention.

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Moving a pupil

• Sometimes its 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
  youve done.
• Gosh thats interesting go and compare your
  ideas with Sarahs.

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Remove the audience
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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

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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

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FINALLY..

• What happens when a pupil kicks off

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A FIVE STAGE MODEL OF AN INCIDENT
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Ive come to the frightening conclusion that I am
the decisive element in the classroom. Its my
personal approach that creates the climate.
Its my daily mood that makes the weather. As
a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a
childs 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

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• Teacher Whatever made you think it was OK to
  behave like that?
• Pupil Oh thats it..
• Pupil Start picking on me again
• Pupil Its typical, it happens all the time
• Pupil Other people do what they want but the
  second its me, you pick on me.
• Pupil Why do you always pick on me?