Understanding and Dealing With Concerning Behaviour

 The topic I am going to touch upon is often discussed and still seems to be of great interest to many of us, especially the parents and the teachers. You might wonder as to why did I shift from education, coaching and school to taking care of the children with concerning behaviour. A friend of mine gifted me a book and the title of which may not be appealing to some but the content is worth reading and if we follow the advice given in the book, then most of the problems faced by the KIDS, parents and teachers can be taken care of. The book is titled, “The Explosive Child - A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children”, by Ross W. Greene. Though all of us would have come across some examples which I would quote from the book at times these seem to be too extreme but the solution suggested is of paramount importance. However, some can find it difficult to follow so we need to develop patience while applying these methods. The first example is of two siblings, Jennifer and Riley who have difficulty getting along due to the extreme behaviour of Jennifer. One fine day Jennifer gets up and makes her bed properly and reaches for having something of her choice in the breakfast. She opens the freezer and takes out a packet of waffles. She counts them to be six in number and takes three out of them and keeps the remaining in the fridge to have them the next morning. In the meantime, Riley and his mother come to the kitchen and the mother asks him what he would like to eat. Riley asks for the waffles. Immediately Jennifer shouts that he cannot have them. The mother intervenes but the conversation between her and Jennifer turns bad. Meanwhile, Riley cries and runs out. The other two, Jennifer and her mother are left furious as always because it happens very often on some or the other issue. The other situations are like Jennifer not wanting to have dinner with family, not letting the brother watch his favourite program on TV, watching videos on her mobile for a long time and many more. She gets hyper suddenly on small issues and then it is difficult to manage her. The father is the one who wants both the children to follow what is expected of them. Riley seems to be fine but Jennifer just does not care, the more she is pushed, the more violent and furious she becomes. While reading the story some of you might relate it to someone in your family or in your class. I have often heard from parents and teachers saying that they were unable to mend the bad behaviour of their child/children. In the beginning, I used words (as written in the book) concerning behaviour, which the author explains as the child not being able to meet some expectations. I always had a strong belief that no child is bad or poor, only the action or the behaviour may be unacceptable and the action/behaviour is learnt/acquired from the surroundings the child grows in. Based on this, I would believe that for this the parents and family and thereafter when the child joins a school, the teachers and peers influence him/her the most. But this may not be always true. Sometimes the children are born with different abilities(differently abled) which may appear to be abnormal (at times these really are!). But when I progressed in reading the book, I realized that the external environment/ surroundings can make a difference even in the most difficult cases. When Jennifer was born the nursing staff conveyed to the parents that they were going to have a difficult time with this child and that came out to be true. This book talks about the solutions even in such cases.

The first important thing to understand is why do children show such behaviour? The basic cause of the same is when the children are not able to fulfil an expectation/ some expectations. You would have realized that at times the child does not want to do the homework and when parents pressurize, there are problems and the child might behave in a violent manner, at times using harsh language or body behaviour, some children do not eat certain food items, they may not like to go out to play, some do not come back home on time, some may remain awake till late night and get up late in the morning, some do not like to share their things with others, some do not want to join in family dinners, some may not be interested in going out for family get-togethers and many more such actions/behaviours. Now let us try to see what is the response of parents/ teachers in such situations. Most of the time adult response is reactive, which should be amended. There are two kinds of responses - Grilling and Drilling. Grilling is when you are trying to find a mistake in someone and make him/her feel guilty, while drilling is trying to understand the real cause and help someone to become better. Contrastingly, the approach exercised is a grilling one most often. In this context, the writer explains three plans that either are adopted/ should be adopted by adults or you may take these as three options which can be used to address and tackle the concerning behaviour of the children.

The three options have been called as Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. Plan A is when the adults try to solve the problem/ tackle the concerning behaviour of the child in which the parent/teacher impose his /her understanding and the decision on the child to solving that concerning behavior. Plan B is in which collaborative approach is adopted, the adult and the child discuss and drill deeper together to find the solution of the concerning behavior. Plan C is nothing but to set aside an unsolved problem for some time. Though most of us are used to using the Plan A but the future, as per Ross W. Greene is Plan B and Plan C. Now let us try to understand these plans in some detail.

Plan A- For many people Plan A may seem to be preferred plan but it is not so (though is used by many adults) Plan A is where you are solving problems unilaterally and you are the only one deciding on the solution to a given unsolved problem. Your child just listens and is expected to abide by the decision taken by you and follow. For example, if a child is not able to complete his math homework then most of the time the solution given by adults is that the child can not go out to play until his homework is not done. Or if a child has difficulty brushing his/her teeth before going to bed then the adult decides that the child will not be to watch TV and play videogames at night until the teeth are brushed. Now these solutions may seem to be fairly ok for many and the parents may feel as if they are exercising parental authority. But you should not forget that while doing so they are inducing frustration in the child and he/she may not be able to handle this frustration very well. This frustration will set in motion child’s concerning behavior. Unfortunate part is that the kids, least capable of handling, Plan A are the ones most likely to get it. The parents and teachers must realize that if the kids are getting lots of Plan A, it means it’s not working. Unfortunately, the solution arrived at through Plan A is not just unilateral but also uninformed.  Now the question may arise, is Plan A always off the table? I would say ‘No’, you do need it sometimes. If your child is wanting to go alone and don’t want to hold your hand in a crowded place (like a railway station, and fair etc.) then you need to assert Plan A because the safety of the child is of utmost importance.

Plan B- As mentioned earlier Plan B is to solve a problem of concerning behaviour collaboratively, in which the adult and child work together to solve the problems that have been challenging and destructive to the relationship between them. Plan B consists of three steps which are crucial to the collaborative solutions:

1.     The Empathy step involves gathering information from the child to understand what’s making it hard for her to meet particular expectations.

2.     The Define Adult Concerns your perspective that why was it important to meet that expectation.

3.     The Invitations Step is when the adult and the child work towards a solution which is (a) realistic and (b) mutually satisfactory.

Here some parents/teachers might erroneously conclude that plan B should be used when they are in the midst of dealing an unsolved problem. The writer cautions the adults against this because using plan B is not appropriate when the child is already heated up. We must realize that unsolved problems are highly predictable (if we have observed the pattern carefully), so the goal should be to solve the problem ahead of time before it comes up. This you may call proactive plan B. For ex, if a child has difficulty completing homework so the best time to implement plan B is before the child is supposed to sit down to complete homework and not at the time of doing homework.

Plan C- You would have realised that some children have many concerning behaviours/unmet expectations and if you try to address all of them simultaneously then it would be difficult to address any of them, both for the adult and the child. So, try to filter down those concerning behaviours for which the solution is required first and set aside the other problems for later.

Now let me try to put plan B with respect to the school environment. You would have noticed that the child may be very attentive in one particular class but absolutely opposite in another class. If the child doesn’t behave as expected in the class, the teachers usually adopt Plan A and continue doing so making things worse. The writer suggests the use of plan B with the following necessary components:

·        Awareness- The writer strongly suggests that students with concerning behavior should be helped using plan B and not ill served by traditional disciplinary practices. Some educators already know it and are eager to learn new ways of understanding and helping the kids with concerning behavior. The educators who still do not know this, need to be enlightened.

·        Urgency- Tackling and helping the students with concerning behavior has to be prioritized, but since educators have so many things to do, in their opinion helping such students sits quite low in the ‘to-do’ list. In the process they lose lots of kids unnecessarily because they are misunderstood and mishandled.

·        Expertise- Many schools have been using the same discipline strategy for years though the children are not being benefitted from those strategies. So educators need to have the expertise to understand and help behaviorally challenged students. This expertise is nothing extraordinary but same for every educator i.e. identifying lagging skills and unsolved problems and using Plan B.

·        Mentality- It has been observed that many educators blame the parents for every concerning behavior the children show in the school which is disowning their responsibilities, in the process reaching to a dead end. I do not say parents’ help should not be sought but the entire blame should not be put on them. The educators should have the mindset to use plan B to solve the problem of concerning behaviour.

·        Time-The educators have a large number of children to address and many other things to do so time management becomes of utmost importance. Though Plan B takes time but it also saves time. Once you prioritize the concerns and behaviors to be handled it becomes easy to solve the problem using Plan B.

·        Assessment and referral mechanism- It will be necessary to achieve consensus on the lagging skills and unsolved problems of their students with concerning behaviors so that the factors underlying the difficulties of the students are well understood and the problems that need to be solved should be very clear. The educators need to understand clearly the reasons for lagging and unsolved problems.

·        Practice, feedback and coaching-  Once mechanism for assessing lagging problems for unsolved problems are in place educators are ready for the next step: becoming proficient in plan B. For most people, this process will require practice, feedback and coaching. The aspects of Plan B that are challenging for parents are same for educators i.e. drilling for the information in the empathy step, articulating why it is important that an expectation be met, and collaborating on solutions that are realistic and are mutually satisfied.

·        Ongoing communication- For Plan B advance preparation is essential. In schools as well as at homes there is a tendency to work on a “hot” problem that precipitated a concerning behavior on a particular day is often replaced the next day by a different “hot/unsolved problem”. As the first unsolved problem has not gone away and still remains unsolved so it keeps coming back again and again. So it is very important to keep the communication happening until an unsolved problem reaches a solution end.

·        Perseverance- You would have realized using Plan B is no quick fix and you are in a long hole. Transforming school discipline is a project and takes time to happen so, but it has to happen anyhow in the interest of the child as an individual and community as a whole.

 

I would like to quote an example from the book, in a scenario (student-teacher problem solving}

a)     Teacher: Students please get to your work on social studies.

Student: I’m not doing it.

Teacher: Well then, your grade will reflect both your attitude and your lack of effort.

Student: I don’t worry about my grades. I can’t do this is tough

Teacher: You have been punished many times for this and I don’t want such a student in the class.

Student: This class is a tension.

Teacher: You need another punishment. I’ll take you to the Principal now. 

Was this not Plan A?

 

Now see, how it can be solved using Plan B

 

Teacher: Students, please get to your work on social studies project.

Student: I’m not doing it.

Teacher: Tell me what’s going on child?

Student: I just can’t do this!

Teacher: Child tell me what’s going on?

Student- You know I have difficulty with spellings.

Teacher: Yes, I know. That is why I do not grade you for spellings.

Student: But it still bores me.

Teacher: Let us see if we can find a way for you to do the important part of your assignment without getting frustrated about the spelling part. 

Student: How?

Teacher: Well your best friend would help with words you don’t know the spelling of.

Student: No way.

Teacher Why?

Student: He would tease me for needing his help

Teacher: Is there anyone else to help you and would not tease you?

[The student indicates another peer and the teacher accepts the same, thereby adopting a collaborative approach]

Student: Yes.

Teacher: Good

Student: He is really smart and would not tease me.

Teacher: You are also smart but just have some difficulty in spelling.

 

This would give a fair idea to the educators and the parents that empathy is the key to the whole process of plan B. Patience is another quality which will help both, the educator/parent and the child.  While I was going through the book, the scenes of the problems/issues raised by the parents at home and teachers in the school were playing in my mind. I realised that if the advice and suggestions given in this book are followed by the adults at home and in the school, most of the concerning behaviours of the children will be taken care of and we shall have happier and more positive adults in future.