Working with Michael(s) Family to Explore Ways to Support His Development and Learning
◆◆ After making some careful observations of specific incidents involving Michael, the teacher recorded what she saw objectively so she could be clear and non- judgmental about Michael’s behavior before meeting with the parents.
◆◆ She met with the family in a place where they could have privacy and not be overheard or interrupted. She invited any family members the parents thought they should bring along. They came by themselves.
◆◆ She let them know that the purpose of the meeting was to find ways to better support their child’s development.
◆◆ The discussion started with the teacher asking how they, his parents, saw Michael. They shared their views and then the teacher shared her observations. When they compared notes they found there was consistency—what the par- ents saw at home related to what was happening at school—and they felt they were all on the same page. One difference, however, was notable. The teacher saw Michael with other children and noted that he was something of a bully. The parents didn’t see him around other children.
◆◆ The teacher shared her perceptions of Michael’s strengths and asked his parents to do the same.
◆◆ The teacher shared her concerns, using examples from her observations, and the parents shared theirs. They spent the rest of the meeting brainstorming approaches to take with Michael.
An IEP might be in Michael’s future but is not part of the discussion at this time. For now, Michael’s parents and his teacher are working together to figure out what to do about Michael, but in a less formal system than if he enters the special education system.
Michael is a tough nut to crack, but his behavior makes sense when you un- derstand his history. He is getting his strokes in the only way he knows how. His reality is that he is “bad,” and therefore he believes deep down that he deserves the negative attention he gets. The positive strokes he gets from the school and at home are brushed off. They are not part of his reality. They don’t belong to him.
The adults in his life frustrate him because he can’t get the same intense reac- tion to his behavior that he used to get from his birth mother and from the people she lived with before he was removed from the home. The teachers don’t show their anger as passionately as the people he lived with in his first years. They don’t hurt him the way he was used to being hurt. He doesn’t understand the reality of the environments he is in now.
What should be done about Michael? The abuse and neglect that still have such a hold on him lie back in his past. Now it is up to the people in his life to help Michael control his unacceptable behavior, learn some prosocial behaviors, and come to feel better about himself.
Here’s what they finally come up with as a group—teacher, family, and principal. In spite of the failure of their past efforts, they all continue to focus on the positive aspects of Michael’s personality. They search for tiny bits of acceptable behavior. Sometimes they joke that they need a microscope to do this searching, but they
discover that when they look hard enough they can find positive behaviors— brief though they may be. Every scrap of positive behavior from Michael brings immediate adult attention—hugs, smiles, words.
They also begin to see Michael in a new light. Instead of a difficult child, they see the behavior for what it is, patterns that he has learned in response to his early environment. The patterns are working against him now, rather than for him, but they can be understood as adaptive behaviors. They discuss how he could be if he overcame his behavior issues and learned to feel good about himself. Once they even took some time at one of their meetings to visualize
Instead of a difficult child, they see the behavior for what it is, patterns that he has learned in response to his early environment.
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Working with Families of School-Age Children 117
this new Michael. They closed their eyes and “saw” the potential that lies beneath the difficult behavior.
When the teacher and aide are with Michael, they manage his behavior without rejecting him. It isn’t easy. In fact, they really need an extra staff person to do this job properly, but they are able to use the daily parent volunteer to help out so they can do whatever is necessary to focus more fully on Michael.
Little by little they are managing to disconfirm Michael’s perception of himself as a “bad person.” They’re changing his attitude by changing his behavior. They take a prevention approach—physically stopping him before he performs a malicious act.
When they first started this approach, they called in an extra aide so they had plenty of people in the classroom, thus releasing the regular aide to “track” Michael—to keep a constant eye on him. That meant that even when the aide went on a break, someone else was assigned to take over, so that Michael was never un- observed during any part of the first few days of the new approach. He was “tracked” during recess as well as in the classroom. His behavior began to improve—so much so that they were able to reduce the “tracking” to difficult parts of the day. This way they could dispense with the extra aide. The principal agreed to come in sometimes when they needed augmented staffing. Eventually they needed to track Michael only during transition periods, such as arrival and departure times as well as before and after recess, which were always bad times for Michael.
Of course, prevention doesn’t always work. Sometimes the adults slip and acci- dentally let Michael do something unacceptable. The other day, for example, while the teacher was tying another child’s shoelace, Michael grabbed a shovel from a boy who was digging in the sandbox. When the child protested and tried to get the shovel back, Michael kicked him, and he was continuing to kick when the teacher grabbed him.
The teacher’s response was to separate Michael from the other children. He took him inside. The teacher stayed with him—not to scold him and tell him how badly he’d behaved (Michael already knew that) but to let him know that someone will provide the control that he still lacks and that he is supported and cared about.
The idea is to not allow Michael to make others reject him, which is what used to happen regularly. He still hasn’t made friends among the children, but he’s be- ginning to form an attachment to the regu- lar aide—and that’s helping to build trust and to give him a sense of the pleasures of closeness with another person. The Mi- chael who’s been locked away inside is starting to emerge.
With Michael, remediation must be done. He must be “reprogrammed.” Children usually don’t need to be repro- grammed when the adults in their lives pay attention from the beginning to what mes- sages they’re giving and strive to emphasize positive ones. Messages, of course, don’t come just from words. They come from actions as well—even little actions such as facial expressions, gestures, and body language.
have his same needs. Take Jay, for example, another five-year-old in the same kindergarten.
Jay is what’s called a “resilient child.” Jay is like the children Werner (1984, 1995, 2000) and Werner and Smith (2001) described, those who tend to have the ability from infancy on to elicit positive responses from people; who have established a close bond with at least one caregiver during the first year of life; who have a per- spective that allows them to use their experiences constructively; who take an active approach toward solving problems; and who have a view of life as meaningful.
Jay was shuffled from relative to relative after his mother left him in the arms of his grandmother the day he was born. His grandmother was able to keep him until he was 15 months old, but then she had a stroke and Jay went to live with his aunt. He’s only seen his mother twice in his young life, once last Christmas when she came to visit and once when he was two and a half; and he went to visit her—in prison.
When Jay arrived in kindergarten, he had lived in four different homes and had been removed from the last one because of an abusive situation. You’d never know all this to look at Jay. He’s a sunshiny kind of child who beams at anyone who notices him, and he’s very good at getting people to notice him. There’s something about Jay that attracts people to him, children as well as adults. His special friend in kinder- garten is the custodian, and Jay can often be found at recess hanging out with him.
In spite of his difficult home life, Jay seems to have managed to get enough posi- tive strokes when he most needed them—during the first year or so of his life. That period with his grandmother seems to have helped him develop an attitude that he’s a person worthy of positive attention. As a five-year-old, he seeks it—and he knows how to get it and use it. Notice that in all this discussion of affirmations and positive strokes, the word praise was never used. Many teachers, when thinking about helping children develop prosocial skills, tend to zero in on praise. Praise can work, but it has some side effects. It takes some skill to use praise effectively. Let’s look a little more closely.
Empty Praise Versus Encouragement Observe children who have been used to a good deal of praise. Watch them turn to adults after every little accomplishment. “Look at me, Teacher,” they say, either ver- bally or nonverbally. For example, Alexis stands at the easel painting a picture. When she finishes it, she takes it down and carefully carries it over to show the teacher who is busy working with a small group. She waits impatiently for a while, then seeks out the aide and shows it to her. The aide makes a comment, which Alexis barely hears because just then she notices the teacher is getting up from the group. Alexis rushes over and puts the picture in the teacher’s face and waits for a response. The teacher looks at it and remarks about the use of color and moves on to something else. Alexis sees the easel is still free, so she lays her picture out to dry and starts on a new picture. She finishes this one in a hurry and goes through the same routine of seeking praise for her accomplishment. Is she really painting for her own pleasure, or is she just producing paint on paper because she’s trying to get praise from the adults in the room?
You can see this behavior starting in infancy as a baby puts one block on an- other and looks immediately for an adult to clap, smile, or say something. One common response is “good boy!” This is the kind of response someone who was just learning about behavior modification might give. Behavior mod, as it is called, is a particular approach for changing behavior based on behaviorist theory. The
idea is that a verbal reward, called rein- forcement, will increase the behavior. The baby will be encouraged to try some- thing like this again.
But let’s look more closely at that kind of reward. Calling a child a “good boy” when he performs can backfire. What if he tries and tries and doesn’t ac- complish the feat? Is he a “bad boy”? Or what if he doesn’t try at all? Anyone who believes strongly in a positive approach wouldn’t tell him that he’s a bad boy, but the absence of the label of “good” can easily be interpreted by a child as its opposite. When adults do use both “bad boy” and “good boy” (or “good girl”/“bad girl”) to give feedback on behavior, there is a real danger that the children will la- bel themselves in those same terms. As children try to live up to their labels, they limit their options and potential. It’s best to avoid global judgments that reflect on the child’s worth as a person when using praise to motivate.
The teacher might say “Good job!”—making a nonspecific reference to the be- havior (rather than a global judgment of the child). Even better, the teacher might say “Good stacking!” or “Good painting!”—specifically labeling the skill and the out- come. Or the teacher might focus instead on the process—the effort put in: “You worked hard to get that block to stay on top”; “You put a lot of effort into making that picture” (see Gartell, 2007).