Practical Strategies

1. Heather Frye Behavior Specialist Practical Strategies

2. Explosive Students can….. • make life significantly more difficult and challenging for themselves and the people who interact with them. Often these children may have been given medical diagnoses such as Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, Depression or Bipolar Disorder.

3. Explosive Students • “A Major premise of this book (The Explosive Child) is that these children do not choose to be explosive and noncompliant-any more than a child would choose to have a reading disability--- but are delayed in the process of developing the skills that are critical to being flexible and tolerating frustration (or have significant difficulty applying these skills when they most need to.”—Ross Greene.

4. Explosive Students • Basically, CHILDREN DO WELL • IF THEY CAN. • If they can’t, • then they need us to help them figure out better ways to do well.

5. How it Looks in the classroom • Disruptive to classroom activity. • Impulsive. • Inattentive, distractible. • Appears pre-occupied. • Disregards all classroom rules. • Poor concentration. • Extreme resistance to change and transitions. • Speaks out, repeatedly. • Is aggressive.

6. How it Looks in the Classroom • Bullies and intimidates others. • Regular truancy from school. • Dishonest, consistently blames others. • Low self esteem. • Unable to work in groups. • Engages in self injurious behavior. • Has no regard for personal space and belongings. • Persistently tries to manipulate situations

7. It is Not a Choice! • Remember children don’t CHOOSE to have mental health issues, just a person doesn’t choose to have cancer. • Create a safe environment in which the child feels accepted and understood. Not judged. • Even though mental illness is not a choice we as adults must respond to inappropriate behavior for the safety of all involved.

8. How to Handle • Develop consistent behavior expectations. • Involve the student in setting academic and personal goals. • Engage in role playing situations. • Set limits and boundaries. • Apply established consequences immediately, fairly and consistently. • Acknowledge and reinforce acceptable behavior. • Avoid confrontation and power struggles. • Provide a highly structured classroom environment. • Clearly post rules and expectations. • Establish a quiet cool off area.

9. How to Handle • Provide and teach opportunities for the student to use self control/self monitoring techniques to control behavior. • Teach self talk to relieve stress and anxiety. • Teach and provide time for relaxation techniques. • Establish cues as reminders for inappropriate behavior. • Redirect to avoid situations that may increase anxiety levels. • Remain calm and aware of your body language when addressing the student. • Provide a positive and encouraging classroom environment. • Use visually stimulating material for assignments/learning presentations. • Give frequent feedback.

10. How To Handle • Patience The first step to deal effectively with inappropriate behavior is to show patience. This often means you'll need to take a cooling period before you say or do something you just might regret. This may involve having the child/student sitting in a calm area or alone until you're ready to deal effectively with the inappropriate behavior. • Be Democratic Children need choice. When you're ready to give a consequence, allow for some choice. The choice could have to do with the actual consequence, the time when the consequence will occur or input as to what follow up should and will occur. When you allow for choice, the outcomes are usually favorable - the child becomes more responsible.

11. How To Handle • Understand The Purpose/Function • Why is the child/student misbehaving? There is always a purpose. Do you know what the purpose is? Getting attention? Power? Revenge? Feelings of failure? It's important to understand the purpose to readily support it. For instance, knowing a child is frustrated and feeling like a failure will require a change of programming to ensure that he/she is set up to experience success. Those seeking attention need to receive attention - catch them doing something good! Recognize it!

12. Practice • In groups of four or five take the scenarios and see if you can identify the purpose or FUNCTION of the behavior.

13. Group Answers • 1. Antecedent: Independent task • Behavior: Head on table, singing songs • Function: Attention/Assistance from teacher • 2. Antecedent: Group discussions • Behavior: Leaning sideways, blurting out inappropriate words • Function: Peer attention • 3. Antecedent: Told to take meds/non-preferred task • Behavior: Rush at person, threatening language • Function: Escape from non-preferred task/activity • 4. Antecedent: Mother leaving • Behavior: Cry, bite hand, bang head • Function: Mother stays longer/attention from mother

14. How To Handle • Avoid Power Struggles • In a power struggle, nobody wins. Even if you do feel like you've won, you haven't because the chance of reoccurrence is great. Avoiding power struggles really comes down to exerting patience. When you show patience, you're modeling good behavior, you ALWAYS want to model good behavior even when you are dealing with inappropriate student behaviors.

15. How to Handle • Do the Opposite of What They Expect When a child/student misbehaves, they often anticipate your response. Do the unexpected. For instance, when you see children playing with matches or playing in an area that is outside of the boundaries, they expect you to say "Stop", or "Get back inside the boundaries now!" However, try saying something like "You kids look too smart to be playing there.” Say something positive first. • Find Something Positive For students or children who regularly misbehave, it can be very difficult to find something positive to say. Work at this, the more they receive attention for the positive things, the less apt they are to look for attention in a negative way. Go out of your way to find something positive to say to your chronic misbehaving students. Remember, these children often lack belief in their own ability. You need to help them see that they are capable. Never forget that ALL children need to know you care about them and that they can contribute in a positive way. It took the child a long time to become a master of aggressive behavior, be consistent, patient and understand that change will take time.

16. How To Handle • Up, Down Then Up Again • When you're about to reprimand or redirect a child. Bring them up first "Lately you've done so well, I've been so impressed with your behavior. But I noticed today that you were involved with a hands on incident.” (Deal with the issue). Then end on "I know it won't happen again because you've been making good choices up until this moment.”

17. How To Handle • In Summary • Strive to create a positive tone. Research shows that the most important factor in student behavior and performance is the teacher/student relationship. Students want teachers that: • Respect them • Care about them • Listen to them • Don't yell or shout • Have a sense of humor • Are in a good moods • Let students give their opinions and their side/opinion • Bottom line: Good communication and respect between teacher and students works.

18. Medication Side Effects • Make sure that all that work with the student understand the side effects of medications they are taking. • For example: Johnny is asking to get a drink of water every 10-15 minutes. His classroom teacher is fed up and is very frustrated with him and at times has refused to let him get a drink. A side effect of his medication is severe dry mouth. That needs to be communicated to all that work with him so they realize it is not attention seeking or task avoidance, but a true NEED.

19. Group Discussion • Are there any here that have been presented with challenging behavior? • If so how was it successfully handled? • If it wasn’t successful, what could have changed in the adults response to make it successful?