About 10 percent of the school population—9 to 13 million children—struggle with mental health problems, according to the Child Mind Institute. The odds are good that in a classroom of 20 you will have one or two students who are dealing with serious psychosocial stressors relating to poverty, domestic violence, abuse and neglect, trauma, or a psychiatric disorder.
These mental health problems make it difficult to regulate emotions and focus on learning. The basic skills needed to regulate behaviors are missing, and sometimes there is an inability to recognize one’s own actions. Behaviors can be inflexible and result in outbursts for no apparent reason—disrupting the classroom routine daily. Students can disengage socially or be clingy, sleepy, or irritable. They can defy school personnel repeatedly and argue incessantly. Many of their stories are heartbreaking.
To be effective and help each student reach their potential, teachers need a new approach to clearly understand what drives student behavior. Teachers also need a variety of strategies that allow them to intervene effectively before the behavior is entrenched.
Understanding these 5 critical concepts helps teachers choose how to intervene better with students’ problematic behavior:
1) Misbehavior is a symptom
When students blow up or act out, it is a sign that they are stuck and can’t cope with the situation. Some may be oversensitive to stress and have an overactive fight-or-flight response. Others may lack basic social skills needed to navigate an interaction with a peer or the self-regulation to withstand an anxiety-producing task.
2) Behavior is communication
Step back and understand what the student is trying to communicate and what the function (or intent) of the behavior is. With practice, learn to stop and “listen” to the message the behavior is conveying, break the behavior code, and respond in more productive ways.
3) Behavior has function
Behavior is never random or aimless. Individuals would not repeat a behavior unless they were getting something out of it. Usually, it is a response from other people that fuels inappropriate behavior. Teachers first need to figure out what the student is getting from inappropriate behavior, then find different ways to respond so as not to inadvertently reinforce the behavior.
4) Behavior occurs in patterns
The key to breaking the behavior code is to look for patterns. Patterns can be based on time of day (they always yawn in the morning before snack), activity (they always ask to go to the nurse when math starts), people (they participate more in class when Ms. Irving is there), and many other factors. Once the pattern is discovered, the function or intent of the behavior will often reveal itself. Every behavior also has bookends: the environmental variables that occur prior to the unwanted behavior (the antecedents or activators) and the response of the teacher and peers after the behavior (the consequences). When trying to understand behavior, notice these triggers and outcomes. These are what fuel the behavior and allow it to persist.
5) Behavior can be changed
Good behavior plans are a guide to help teachers develop new behaviors so they can interact with challenging students in a more productive and preemptive way.
When interventions are based on understanding the function of the student’s behavior and teaching underdeveloped skills, a student can show change quickly. If the student has been demonstrating an inappropriate behavior for years and lacks the necessary skills, it may take longer.
Some students stop behaving inappropriately in only three weeks. Others have tapered off a behavior over a three-year period. The more intensely the student is taught the underdeveloped skills and the more the environment is changed to encourage appropriate behavior, the faster the behavior is likely to change.
The Child Mind Institute
