The thing that appears to be missing from the thousands of words we've written about this puzzle are words from children themselves. What would happen if we brought in Vivian Paley, who died in 2019, but whose books are still with us?
The first time I tried her storytelling and story acting approach (STSA), challenging behavior came in the form of a child, Anthony, who refused to participate in the teacher-designed activity. When we moved to STSA, where I asked children one by one if they had a story we could write down and later act out, Anthony began with this: "My baby sister died of SIDS. That's spelled S I D S."
Trauma? Yes. Pre-pandemic? Yes.
When his mother heard his story, she cried and told me, "he kept wanting to talk about it."
Case study where parents, teacher and children were on the same page? Yes yes and yes.
Rare for that to happen? In my experience, yes.]
Anthony was 6, and so possessed of a brain that had been practicing emotional regulation for more years than the child we've been discussing.
Austin, age 3, was expelled in spite of his first story to me - "Mommy A. Baby A. I wanna hang it in the window" - and a series of what I thought of as ground-breaking drawings of monsters. Once he told me "get your eagle claws off me" when I tried to stop him from leaping onto tables and flinging chairs at clean-up time. I was a volunteer, part-time visitor, and missing from the 2 years I spent in his classroom was finding time to work with teachers. When one of them told me he had been expelled, she explained, "it's so hard to help children who don't want to be helped."
10 years or so after both the baby sister story and filming Paley, I team taught a course called Stories of Science. That's when I discovered that while Story Scribe A might report that Child X didn't want to tell a story, Story Scribe B would pop up with a "Hold on, this is what Child X dictated to me."
All of the scribes were college students; the majority did not have an ECE background; so we sent them back to the classroom with instructions to write down
all of the conversation: Their words, a child's responses, and the drawings children made as part of our version of story dictation.
One of the adult scribes, Chris, drew a wrestler at James' request, and then spent the next 3 weeks dealing with James' tears of frustration because when he (James) agreed to try to draw a wrestled, his picture looked nothing like Chris'.
Example of adults and/or teachers inadvertently causing distress? Oh my. Paley's books are full of example like this.
So, speaking of "cause and effect social experiments," and "observations and data," what would happen if everyone tried taking dictation and sharing the results? Would we be able to come a little closer to understanding words such as "need, obtain, avoid, and cause and effect" - what they mean to us and what they look like when we explore them through the eyes of children's stories?
I have boxes, folders and binders of thousands of stories told and drawn by children who were using story and play to make sense of moments, people and world events: from "bloody duckies," to "why you kill my best friend?," to "pashoo, pashoo the classroom schedule" to "getting shot in the balls," to "my doggy pooped everywhere."
Those are the "challenging" bits; the "good" stories included coping devices, intimations of hope, resilience and joy. Many stories were exercises confusion, frustration and uncertainty. The most hopeful approach, I learned, was to try to always think in terms of To Be Continued.
For video clips of Paley herself demonstrating STSA, visit the herdingbubbles website.
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Resa Matlock
www.herdingbubbles.com------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 12-20-2022 10:18 AM
From: Sue Miller
Subject: Determining the causes of challenging behaviors
I thank you for all the responses to my post. I understand that all behavior is a way of communicating something the child needs or lacks or is trying their best to express what they are feeling. I thank you for all the insights and views.
I still am struggling with how to determine when it is 'over our heads' to deal with. General ed teachers aren't trained to deal with some of these issues. I do believe the pandemic has influenced the younger students we are dealing with. MY struggle is with the trauma some of these children face & when do we know we don't have the skill base to help these children. I have been in this profession for 27 years and I'm getting to be at a loss for which way to go.
I know some of these children have trauma to deal with that they don't even KNOW is trauma induced. A 3-year-old who tells you, " I don't have to do what you say." - I can deal with that but one who looks at you like they are looking right thru you and saying, "I'll get a knife & slit your throat wide open, so you die." - that I don't know what to do with. This is where I question that it is an issue of avoid or obtain. f it was a one-time thing - ok - but when it is the norm, I believe this is beyond my expertise. It is these kinds of issues; I struggle to find that it is a way to avoid or obtain. Also, when these types of behaviors show up, I have found that the children who exhibit them have an extremely hard time learning and/ or retaining what we are trying to teach them socially and academically.
We have encouraged counseling & parent-child interactive therapy. Some parents follow our suggestions and others avoid the issue themselves. I guess I will continue to try strategies to the best of my abilities & keep repeating activities to help them learn academically. I can't do any more than that, even though I feel I am failing that child.
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Sue Miller
team leader
Child Development Center
Remsen IA
Original Message:
Sent: 12-16-2022 07:06 PM
From: Elaine Bragg
Subject: Determining the causes of challenging behaviors
Goodevening,
I have to agree with everything that has been said about children and behavior. I believe that it takes a strong encouraging home environment from the beginning to guide children and reinforce good behavior with healthy relationships. Also repeating the words that a child says and adding to the words to make sentences help develop their language and vocabulary. It also shows the child that you understand what they are feeling or what they are trying to say so the child feels like he or she is making their opinion known in an effective way.
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Elaine Bragg
Quincy IL
Original Message:
Sent: 12-16-2022 01:43 PM
From: Jack Wright
Subject: Determining the causes of challenging behaviors
Sue, I'm glad you read about the pyramid model. I think it guided you in good directions. I agree that trauma presents unusually issues, but I think they are all solved by finding ways to make the child feel safe. They usually feel safe in the arms of someone they trust. A soft voice and eyes, and patience, are a good start in my experience making a child feel safe enough to venture out into a program. Thank you for caring.
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Jack Wright
Child Development Consultant
Success With Children
St Ignatius MT
Original Message:
Sent: 12-15-2022 01:49 PM
From: Sue Miller
Subject: Determining the causes of challenging behaviors
I am very puzzled about this topic. I have just taken a course on "Unpacking the Pyramid Model". In this course, we looked at all aspects of the how, what, why of dealing with challenging behaviors, from environments to implementing replacement skills. One chapter is devoted to determining the root causes of behaviors. I understand that in most cases, the child is displaying challenging behaviors in order to ' obtain or avoid ' something. Many times, we can usually determine the nature of the behavior by observation, collecting data, & then asking ourselves if it is due to avoid a task or person or to obtain something they want. Yet as we deal with more children coming into our programs with trauma, mental health issues, instability in their lives & other issues - are these children's behaviors caused by only the need to obtain or avoid something. I think these children have a whole different objective for the behaviors they show & they aren't even aware of it themselves. I would like to know what others think. I believe there are more deeper reasons for the behaviors of some children that have absolutely nothing to do with obtaining or avoiding.
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Sue Miller
team leader
Child Development Center
Remsen IA
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