Parents, teachers
and principals, you are on the front line of fire daily dealing
with children's aggressive behavior. Your job is a tough one and
you deserve all the help that you can get. Here are some ideas
of helping children process their behavior that has hurt others.
These ideas are based on the growing evidence that children with
chronic antisocial behavior are slow to learn through punishment
and aversive conditioning. How you correct a child after he misbehaves
will affect whether he will increase or decrease the undesired
behavior in the future!
Have you
ever felt frustrated because a child repeated his inappropriate
behavior shortly after you scolded him? The research shows what
we all know. The old way of treating aggressive children with
reprimands and punishment does not work.
Why Punishment Does Not Work
The research
literature gives clear guidelines about the ineffectiveness of
punishment as the only correction procedure for children's misbehavior.
Yelling, shaming, scolding, and corporal punishment backfire and
create a mind set in the child where he misbehaves more. Some
children do worse when words like "never," "don t," "should not,"
and "It's not okay" are used during correction. There are many
negative side effects associated with being punished:
- Punishment
for aggression may stop the behavior temporarily, but may
further stimulate aggressive behavior.
- The
child may stop the punished behavior but may increase another
aggressive behavior.
- Punishment
may serve as a model for aggression. Children imitate what
they see adults do.
- The
punished behavior may stop only in the presence of the adult
and increase in other settings.
- The
child may strike back at the punishing adult or displace his
anger at someone else.
- Frequent
punishment may cause some children to withdraw and regress.
- Angry
children who do not fear authority may become more angry and
focus on revenge.
- The
child may feel shame and harbor thoughts of lowered self-
esteem (I'm a bad person. I'm mean.)
- Punishment
merely suppresses the response but does not teach the child
what to do.
In the
short term, punishment may be effective in suppressing negative
behavior when the punisher is present, but it does not teach
the child positive ways to act. Punishing techniques that make
the child feel bad about himself may make him act out more!
What Does Work
The research
shows that praise for appropriate behavior, reasoning, giving
consequences, withholding privileges, time out and teaching the
appropriate social skills do help a frustrated child make better
behavioral choices.
The child
who misbehaves constantly needs to hear correction statements
phrased in positive language to implant alternative ways of
thinking and acting in his developing value system. Telling
the child with behavior problems what not to do often guarantees
that he will go and do it! Instead tell him what to do and help
him to feel good just thinking about acting in positive ways.
Give a choice between two alternatives.
Teaching
social skills gives a process of correcting the inappropriate
behavior instead of suppressing it through punishment. Social
skills training offers a more humane way of giving children
tools to deal with conflict so that they can take care of themselves.
Learning social skills helps children reduce aggressive and
violent behavior. Teaching the prosocial skills helps all of
us. When children learn and use positive reciprocal ways of
interacting with each other, this adds to peace in our world.
Processing Cues To Say After Conflict
What you say
to an aggressive child will determine the likelihood of his decreasing
the inappropriate behavior the next time. To break into the child's
negative thinking patterns, process what happened and what could
be different next time in a non- threatening way. The research
shows that people are most ripe for change after a situation of
high emotional arousal. Being corrected is generally a high arousal
situation so the child should be ripe for new learning. You have
a golden opportunity to help your child make the commitment to
change by using this teaching approach.
If you
can get to the child's vulnerability and sense of fair play
after a situation of conflict, you can help him make changes.
Show the child the consequences of his actions on others. Whenever
possible, give him a choice. Ask him to make a value judgment
on what he did. Give him solid information on how he could react
in positive ways. Always leave him feeling good about himself
with hope for the future.
"It's Not My Fault!"--
The Dynamics of Denial and Fear of Vulnerability
Children who
get in trouble continuously receive so much punishment that they
become hardened to it. They shrug it off with an "I don't care"
attitude or laugh off your attempts at correction. This pose of
indifference and toughness is a defense mechanism against feeling
guilt and feeds into the rationalization of not being at fault.
With this type of defense against feeling bad, blame is externalized
to someone else: "I don't dare allow myself to feel bad inside,
so I'll send those bad feelings towards someone else." This pattern
is generally learned from parents and the cycle of aggression
is often repeated down through generations of families.
Externalization
of blame and rationalization of misbehavior is a tricky defense
to break into. Get the child to feel his vulnerability and show
him that you are on his side. Challenge him to learn different
ways to think and act. Showing aggressive children a better
way to deal with conflict and encouraging them to take responsibility
for their own feelings and behavior is a loving and humane response
to their cycle of aggression, rejection by others and the resulting
poor self-esteem.
Children
deserve to be nurtured even when they have not been nurturing
to others. Watch that you do not identify with the child who
has been the object of the aggression. Adults who have been
victimized as a child may easily slip into anger over seeing
another child being hurt. Go past your anger at your sense of
injustice to the child who has been hurt. Your anger at the
aggressor will guarantee that he will continue this behavior.
Your nurturing and positive teaching will make a difference
in the child who has hurt someone else. A key point of turning
around his behavior is talking with the child about alternative
ways that he could have handled conflict.
Expect
denial from the child if you ask him to own up to his behavior
when he is upset and angry. Children, like the rest of us, are
not rational creatures when angry. Anger throws reason out the
window. The research shows that cognitive distortions such as
minimizing, justifying or rationalizing their destructive behavior
has been associated with individuals with antisocial behavior.
Their pain is so great and their defenses so practiced that
they cannot see their own part in the conflict.
Do not
set up a situation of threat where the child will feel the need
to go into his defenses. Give him a cool down period before
talking to him. Give him a choice of the place where he wants
to cool down. Giving the child choices helps him to feel respect
and helps him to be part of figuring out solutions. Imperatives
given in a loud voice will cause him to shut down and be unavailable
to your correction.
Angry children
feel shame about being weak inside and turn around and victimize
others. Your modeling firmness and fairness to the child will
increase the likelihood that he will choose better ways of acting
in the future. Scolding and shaming the child will only cause
him to dislike himself even more resulting in a cycle of aggressive
behavior. Helping the child save face and reduce the shame that
he feels at being caught is part of getting him to understand
and change his behavior.
Negative
labels (bully, impossible, bad, mean, etc.) make the child feel
shameful and cause him to put up his defenses to shut out what
you say. He will feel bad enough just being found out. The child
who is labeled often internalizes what is being said about him
in a negative way. Talk about poor choices of behavior that
can be changed with understanding and practice. Talk about the
child's actions that are hurtful to others. The child can take
responsibility for behavior; he cannot change a label which
more than likely will turn into a self-fulling prophecy.
Recognize
the child's ability to change his own behavior. Discuss the
things that he does that causes other people to refuse to be
his friend (when true) or the things that he does that are not
respectful to others. Tell the child that he may feel bad, but
that he is not a bad kid. He just hasn't learned the rules to
take care of himself in healthy ways. This takes the focus away
from internal character attributes that can't be changed and
puts the emphasis on learning. Emphasize that he just has some
learning to do to take care of himself. Tell him that you are
here to help him learn the skills of getting along with others.
Have the
child review rules for getting along with each other and treating
people with respect. Ask him to make a value judgment on a specific
behavior, asking him "Was that a good thing to do?" If he responds
with a rationalization regarding what the other person did to
him, tell him that he is always responsible for his actions
no matter what was done to him. Remind the child that choosing
to use his words and talk about what upsets him is always the
best choice. This type of processing after misbehavior helps
the child make better decisions for next time.
Error Correction:
"I Can Feel Good About Making the Wrong Right"
Stress that
there need be no blame if each person takes responsibility for
his own actions and takes steps to correct the situation so it
does not happen again. Error correction teaches self responsibility.
Review the rationale about mistakes being okay if you learn from
them. This is the concept of error correction--if you make an
error, correct it. That is why pencils have erasers. That is why
we have word processing programs for computers with delete buttons.
That is why we have U turns. The neat thing about making a mistake
is the learning that you can gain from it. Mistakes are for learning.
If we are smart, we don t have to keep making the same mistakes
over and over like the one trick pony.
The skill
of correcting your own mistake will be more evident if you make
several dumb mistakes (like calling the principal by the wrong
name or giving the wrong day of the week). Recognize your errors
with the cheery message that mistakes are allowed in your class
as long as people learn from them. This gives a positive model
to the children about learning through errors. Errors are for
learning!
Help the
child to see that blaming someone else is an unnecessary defense.
Tell him, "You don t have to defend yourself by blaming someone
else. That doesn't help solve the problem. We are problem solvers
here. I m here to help you. You need to learn how to take care
of yourself next time. That is the most wonderful thing you
can do for yourself! Now tell me your part in this so we can
work it out so it won't have to happen again." This approach
takes the child out of the defensive mode and into error correction.
Ask the
child to describe the poor choice of behavior that he made.
Ask him how he will act differently next time. Ask him what
he will say to help himself. Ask the child what he can do to
correct his error to make amends for his behavior. Give choices
for the penalty of the infraction of the rules and send the
child off to make his amends.
Shame Removal and the Silly Game of "Pull Outs"
The child
who is called on the carpet most likely will feel ashamed although
this may be covered up by actions of bravado. It may help you
to think of macho behavior as the mask for underlying fear and
shame. Shame reactions are shown in postural and facial ways such
as hanging the head and refusing to look you in the eye, playing
dumb, avoiding talking about the event or talking in short phrases.
Shame locks in bad behavior! Unreleased shame results in decreasing
self esteem thus setting the internal climate for more aggression
with others. Unless you help the child take responsibility for
his inappropriate behavior and release the shame that he feels,
he will continue to feel bad inside and the misbehavior most likely
will continue.
Use the
techniques of "Pull Outs" as a way to humorously release shame
after the child has taken responsibility about his behavior.
Tell the child that if he has made the decision to do it differently
next time, he doesn't need to hold on to bad feelings. If he
has made amends and corrected his error for the future, then
the bad feelings can go away.
Ask the
child where the bad feelings are in his body. They usually are
in the chest, stomach or brain areas. Ask him to let the feelings
come up and feel their worst. "Okay, let's make them really
strong. Let those feeling come up and feel BAD. Have you got
them up now so you can move them? Tell yourself, 'I don't have
to do that behavior anymore so I can let go of the bad feelings.'
Get ready to pull them out. Here we go. I'll help you. Let's
pull them out!" Using pulling motions with your hands pretend
to pull from the area that the child described. Flick your fingers
to indicate getting rid of the negative energy. Encourage him
to throw the bad feelings in the wastebasket or dumpster and
remind him that he can let go of bad feelings if he can take
responsibility for changing his behavior. Add more reassurance
about believing in his ability to make good choices in the future.
Disclaimer:
Do not use
this technique on children who act in ways that they appear to
have no conscience. Other steps are needed for the child who has
no remorse about hurting others. This type of child needs to develop
empathy for those caught in the victim role. Professional help
will be needed to teach the unremorseful child to feel the effects
of his negative action on others and to make value judgments about
his behavior.
When Talking To Two Children At The Same Time
Ask each child
what his part was in the conflict. Stress responsibility for problem
solving and using words to handle the threat. Go over the rules
about treating people with respect and ask each child to describe
how he forgot a rule of being fair and friendly. Say to each child
"Can you own your part of this problem? What did you do? You can
feel good about owning your own part in this fight. Tell me about
your behavior." Show enthusiastic appreciation for the child who
can stick to describing what he did wrong without going into blaming
the other person. Stress the importance of being part of the solution,
not part of the problem.
After each
child has had a turn talking, ask the children to see the conflict
from the other persons eyes. Role play the situation switching
roles. Humor added here will break into the tension around the
situation.
Teaching Responsibility for One's Own Actions
Ask the
children "What could you have done differently? What is our
rule about that? What will you do next time that someone ____
? What can you do when you feel threatened?"
PRAISE,
PRAISE, PRAISE any remarks that show a child is catching on
to the idea of learning about himself instead of blaming the
other child. Ask them for a self talk statement they will use
next time to handle their own feelings of threat that come up.
Practice saying the self talk statements several times.
Children
who have conflict, sometimes want to be friends, but they need
your help in figuring out how they can handle the conflict.
Tell the children that you would like them to be friends but
whether they can or not is really up to them. Send the two children
off to agree on a solution, should the same incident happen
again, and report back to you what they have worked out.
PRAISE AND RECOGNITION FOR CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING WILL INCREASE
THIS BEHAVIOR!
Remember,
your energy should go to helping children feel good about solving
their own problems. Putting your energy in scolding children can
become a stimulus for their continued misbehavior!
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