While perhaps well-intentioned, behavior charts can cause anxiety, shame, a loss of intrinsic motivation and can increase stress behaviors. The Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint shares the thoughts of four national experts, including Dr. J. Stuart Ablon, on the use of behavior charts in schools and at home.

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Matt Crestsinger, District Administration, Director of Special Services in Marshalltown, IA, shares how the school district has implemented Collaborative Problem Solving and the results they are seeing.

Transcript:

 

How did you become interested in Collaborative Problem Solving?

I was reading some of the works by Bruce Perry, and at the end of the most recent edition of his book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, it actually speaks a little bit to the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) process. I love the book, you know, it made a lot of sense to me. It was highly engaging. And so when I hear this, I'm like, well, I need to learn more. I found some materials online and did just some general reading about it. And then, I found some of the YouTube videos that were published. One in particular, it's a little more than an hour long, and it's Dr. Ablon just doing a general overview about Collaborative Problem Solving.

Well, I wanted to learn even more. So, at the time, there was an online opportunity to take essentially an online course. And I brought myself and a group of principals, some of my school counselors, we have these kind of social work type positions, and we all enrolled, and we took these classes. And we got done, and I sat around the table and said, "What do you guys think?" And they absolutely said, "We love it. That's exactly what we were talking about. We need to learn more." So, then I decided I need to get a group of people who are actually through the training. I'd been reading the literature online. Let's see where we have a Tier 1 training and how many people I can send. And after that completed, they came back, and I said, "What did you hear? What did you learn? What are the things you're excited about?" And they continue to promote of, "yes, the more we hear about this, the further we get into it, the more we agree, it's a necessary fit for us."

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What makes Marshalltown, IA, a unique community and school district?

We're about 5,300 kids. We have 11 attendance centers. 71% of our kids this year are eligible for free or reduced lunch, which is the ninth highest in our state. 31% of our kids are within the continuum of the English Language Proficiency Scale, which is the third highest in Iowa, and third most saturated in the state. Culturally, about 54% of our kids identify with Hispanic/Latino. 30% of our kids identify as White or Caucasian. 7.5% of our kids identify as Asian. About three and a half percent of our kids identify as Black or African American. And then everyone else will identify in a multi-categorical way.

So, we were trying to figure out “How do we work with this unique population to Iowa?” And I went with the principals, I went with our intermediate agency, they're called AEA or Area Education Agencies, and a group of like 20 went to a summer Tier 1. And we all came back with just our minds spinning of, “This is our missing piece. What do we need to do?”

And then fate happened. About two weeks later, an EF3 tornado came through our community. And in a community like ours, that is really a very blue-collar community, it devastated things. It hit through some of our major businesses and residential area. And so, many of our families were displaced, and they were dealing with trauma. So, we decided to bring Dr. Ablon in and address all of our staff for the first day of school, as well as then ask him to do some parent groups in the evenings. We got such tremendous feedback off of it that we thought, this is something that makes sense here in Marshalltown. This is something we need to develop and grow. And since 2017/18, we've been working to do that as systematic as we can.

What has changed since implementing Collaborative Problem Solving in Marshalltown?

I would say we're still early in, and we definitely have people who have bought into it and understand it and see the result. And we still have people that we're trying to onboard because it's just such a different way of thinking about supporting kids and families. Those who have really bought into it. It has changed the focus of the discussion. It's moved from things like, "Well, they would if they wanted to," or kind of those dead-end ideas of "This family's always been this way. I've worked with other kids," or "I was a teacher for the parents, and they were this way when they were that age." To a reframing of "What's happened to this kiddo? What about this situation is so difficult for them that I've seen them do this before, but today they can't."

And it's really made our conversations in those situations more solution focused, and it also improves the relationship. Checking in with kids and letting them feel like they have a voice and they have a choice. You just can't put money in the bank quick enough that way so that when you have those days where you have to really hold to your own expectations, that relationship is in a place where you can get some buy-in from the kids as well. And they don't always feel like you're imposing your will on them. So, we're seeing in settings where people are really invested in it, good relationships, ability to have difficult conversations, and really a problem-solving philosophy.

What are some of the results you are seeing in Marshalltown?

So, the first I'll talk about is one of our elementary schools. Its name is Woodbury Elementary, and it's a preschool through fourth-grade school. Before we began our work in Collaborative Problem Solving, we tracked many of the things most schools do: How many kids go to the office? How many kids are so aggressive that they require physical restraint? How many kids are in a situation where safety is such a big issue that we have to use exclusionary timeout? What are the factors that make the learning environment safe? Which our state of Iowa has a universal survey they do. At Woodbury, which has really internalized this work, we've seen a decrease since 2018/19 to last year: office referrals are down over 36%. The number of students who have two or more office referrals are down 49%. The need to use seclusion and or restraint is down by 28%.

And most importantly, so our state of Iowa has what they call the Conditions for Learning Survey. Then it's a survey that goes out to our staff members, our kids, and our families that asks about the well-being and the learning environments, really around SEL. Before this, that survey showed that Woodbury Elementary was 7% below the state average on emotional safety, how safe did kids feel in that school. Last year they were 7% above the state average. So, we've seen this significant swing in kids are feeling connected, regulated, and that it's a safe learning environment. I guess the other unique thing about Woodbury Elementary is that it is a dual-language school. So, our families who go there they learn in Spanish for half a day, and then they learn in English for half a day. And the general population of that school is really those families who are moving into Iowa that are completely Spanish speaking, coming from Mexico and other countries.

The last, and probably my favorite story a few years ago, we identified that there are, there are kids in schools that have serious underlying mental health conditions. And those create the behaviors that we see that are unsafe and that we really worry about. In Iowa, there's not a lot of facilities to work with kids who are beyond what most schools can work with. So we tried to create our own, and we call it the therapeutic classrooms. And in there, we have integrated CPS as our primary model into a trauma-informed approach. And we work with kids that usually would be placed in residential treatment or day school programs, or out-of-state kind of psychiatric facilities. And we are seeing success with 96% of the kids in there. And they range from kindergarten through ninth grade.

And I mean by success is if they were in their comprehensive schools, on average, they may have four, five, six behavioral incidents a day. They may have two to three behavioral incidents a month now. They're not running out of school; they're not destroying property. They're engaged in their learning. In fact, on our most recent state-required literacy academic assessment, every one of our 18 students made growth in literacy. And they're excited to come to school. Their attendance is way up. Their families who we had a really difficult relationship with for a variety of reasons. We don't have that kind of difficult situation anymore. They love our teachers; they love our little program. They love that there's a place that their kids can grow and learn and get their needs met. So those are the places I would talk about as a system. We're doing it and doing it well and seeing those great outcomes.

How does Collaborative Problem Solving support students with disabilities?

I want to share a couple things thinking through the special education lens. So federal law around special education really does dictate a variety of things that seem very prescriptive on how you have to think and approach supporting kids who may have behavioral challenges. Collaborative Problem Solving has been a game changer in a lot of our situations with kids with disabilities who have those behavioral struggles because not only does it address some of those underlying conditions that we never thought about, but it helps us then create a pretty clear way to do checks and balances along the way. A Plan B conversation is a great way to see how are things going in this element of the instructional skill-building that you're trying to do.

How does Collaborative Problem Solving integrate with SEL and PBIS in your schools?

So, our district is really committed to providing a full continuum of services to our families on social-emotional learning. And as part of that, then, my job as the director who oversees it was to gain as much knowledge and skills as possible. So first, I've been through the inaugural cohort of CASLE, the Collaborative for Academic Social-Emotional Learning, and have completed their fellows program. I've also completed two cohorts with the National Superintendents Associations, both mental health work as well as their SEL cohort. So, working with these folks has provided me with a really strong foundation about what is evidence-based, research-based, social-emotional learning across the continuum. What happens at school-wide, what happens within the classrooms, what happens within the teacher's mindsets. And having that together, we have created an infrastructure to support our needs of our kids.

Foundationally, we had to get on the same page about what are our common beliefs about kids. Many school districts will talk about Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). And what we've learned about PBIS is that first, it's very regulating to kids to know what's expected of them across settings. Many times their life is a little bit out of control at home, and there's a lot of chaos. But knowing that when I walk into this school, if I'm in the cafeteria, here's what's expected of me. If I'm in the classroom, here's what's expected. That brings down some of the anxiety, to begin with. Our next piece, though, is ensuring that everything we do is based on our thinking with Collaborative Problem Solving, is relational. So, we've moved away in many of our locations from that, that token economy system, that reward system when kids are meeting expectations, to those relational interactions.

How does Collaborative Problem Solving fit with other approaches?

I would also ask people to look carefully at the components of the other approaches that they're using. Within our district, we think about a multi-step process. And so I talked a little bit about PBIS as a regulating system for all kids across all settings. We also use classroom approaches. Responsive Classroom is something we use at the elementary, and we have found that CPS has such a great companion component to that Responsive Classroom model that they go hand in hand. It's not, "Are we doing this? Are we doing that?" We're supporting all kids under a common framework, and the language compliments each other. With our older kids, Capturing Kids' Hearts has been an approach that we've found really beneficial. And again, as the language of CKH and the language of Collaborative Problem Solving, they support each other and the framework and the thinking behind it. So, I would say within an integrated system, there are going to be a number of components. You know, you're, you're making a stew here, and you've got a bunch of ingredients in this stew. And I've found that CPS is integrated very well into our stew that also has evidence-based and research-based behind every piece of it.

How does Collaborative Problem Solving build future-ready skills?

When I went to high school, and I'm not going to say how old I am, but when I went to high school, the idea was, Matt, if you go to high school, you need to go to college. And if you can complete college, you will get a good job, and your job skills will be taught to you on-site. Many of the things that I thought were skills back then, now I can learn from YouTube, or there's a video somewhere to teach this. The things that weren't taught to me that now we're hearing kids need to have are conflict resolution skills, problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and an internal drive to be successful in something with a level of independence. And so, as we think about now, those are our umbrellas or goals for those soft skills; Collaborative Problem Solving lends itself perfectly to it. You know, it's teaching kids how to deal with difficult situations in not getting upset, essentially, staying regulated. Something has happened that I wasn't predicting, and so I'm going to get upset about it. Let's pause; let's keep ourselves regulated and start problem-solving. How do we address this issue, whether it's with a task, a situation, or another person? It's a very generalizable set of skills, I would say, across all those soft skills for employability.

How are you engaging families in this work?

So, we have been working on engaging parents in learning about Collaborative Problem Solving through what we call either watch parties or community wellness nights that we're doing once a quarter. And families can come into our schools and see and learn more about it. I think the most engaging part about all of this is not only are we continuing to try to teach them about it, but now when we have school board meetings, we have families showing up saying, "I absolutely love that my child that I was getting phone calls on all the time for whatever reason. The phone calls I get now are positive phone calls, and that I'm seeing that my child, when I'm having difficulty with him or her at home, I can kind of engage in that process and generally work through it. And even sometimes my kids are coaching me, even elementary kids so that we can try to work through this conversation in a regulated way for a mutually agreed upon solution."

What has been a challenge in implementing Collaborative Problem Solving?

The other thing, and I'm excited and also a little bit embarrassed to say this, the kids take to it well and quickly. The implementation delays are really about the adults and dealing with our own internal conflicts of how we were raised, what we believe should and shouldn't be behavioral strategies, classroom management, or just innate skills that any adult or child should have at some age. But for the kids, when we do this and do this well as an approach, they pick it up like that. As I work with kids or talk with some of the buildings that work with kids regularly in this approach, three or four conversations in the kids can start to tell you what that next component is. What's that next step that you're going to talk to them about? And they actually engage in it as long as they see it's successful for them being heard and feeling like they have some choice; they will take you there if you let them. So that was another real surprise, of it's the kids that this is, you know, going super easy with. It's the adults that we're going to have to work through a variety of different things to try to get their neurocognitive skills, skills aligned with what we're doing here.

What has been most powerful about Collaborative Problem Solving?

I'd begin with just a philosophy. Not only do I love that they have a philosophy, but when you hear, you know, Kids Do Well if They Can, if kids could do well, they would do well. And so, our job is to figure out what are the things getting in the way of them doing well, like just that general umbrella of thinking to every situation. It was an a-ha moment for so many of us who went through either the online training or went in person to Tier 1. Because, like so many, it wasn't our thinking was what happened to this child or what is getting in the way for this child? It was, oh, they're just being lazy or, what is the bigger carrot or stick I can wave at them to get them motivated to do this? What do I need to do to compel them to move forward? Instead of, "What do I need to do to lift them up and support them so they can move forward?" So that first part was just amazing a-ha for so many of us. And it's so simple. Yes, it is skill problems. You're right. If I look at them, they are trying harder than most other kids that these skills are already there for, and it happens easy.

Dr. Stuart Ablon, Director of Think:Kids, joins the North Dakota Governor's Summit on Innovative Education. He highlights the importance of addressing the mental health needs in our communities. With a compassionate and collaborative approach, Dr. Ablon provides practical, evidence-based strategies that can transform our schools.

Dr. Stuart Ablon, Director of Think:Kids, highlights the importance of addressing the mental health needs in our communities. With a compassionate and collaborative approach, Dr. Ablon will provide practical, evidence-based strategies that can transform our schools.

Dr. Stuart Ablon | Governor’s Summit on Innovative Education | August 2019

Sue O'Connell of NECN/NBC LX interviews Dr. Stuart Ablon about the recent increase in school violence and challenging behavior from students. Dr. Ablon offers insights into why this is happening and what we can do.

What's causing things to spiral out of control and what can we do to fix it?

Dr. J. Stuart Ablon

As challenging as the last year and a half of school was in the pandemic, things are much worse now, and we should all be worried. Not a day passes where I don't hear of escalating behavior, classrooms out of control, exhausted educators, and school leaders at their wits’ end. Parents are concerned for the safety of their children as students with no history of behavioral difficulties are arrested for violent fights at school. As one colleague who leads an urban middle and high school said to me, it has been "one hell of a horrible start to the school year. Dysregulation is everywhere. Basic expectations are not being met. A total mess." That about sums it up. Teachers on the front lines echo a similar sentiment. Here are some snippets of their perspective from social media:

"My students don't know how to do school. It's a huge shift in behaviors and it's non-stop. You basically teach snippets in between non-academic issues all day long." "Everyone is so tired and many people are acting out. Adults and kids. Not sure what the solution is, but it feels like a mass fatigue."

"I've been at my current school for more than 20 years, and we've never had this many fights."

"Kid behaviors off the chain. The sheer number of kids who are disruptive, disrespectful etc. is 40% higher than normal yr."

"Kids are being real jerks to each other."

"My students haven't been to school since pre-k. They don't know how to "do" school or interact with children that aren't their family members. They no longer have the stamina for 8 hours of school. it's teaching in-between de-escalating behaviors all day. We don't have the time."

"Lots of students struggling with the traditional school setting after being away so long. Teachers burned out/have a shorter fuse/overwhelmed by behaviors. Many more kids below grade level & they feel inadequate while teachers feel pressured to still teach grade level content."

"Everyone is so tired."

"Kids have forgotten expectations and social norms. Basic, basic school skills (like not having food fights in the cafeteria, or even just not standing up and shouting out in class) are just... forgotten. It's like the Wild West, and it's just exhausting."

"The student who were always OK bounced back. The students without routine & high expectations at home went feral on us."

"Nobody is OK. We have collective trauma & fatigue from what we've lived through & continue to live through, but no one has time to process it. It looks like exhaustion, apathy, acting out ... from educators AND students."

"My kids have zero school social skills."

"Students are angrier than ever before more apt to violence quicker to lash out both physically and verbally. I have been assaulted by a student that has never happened before. Vandalism. I may retire."

So, what can we do to fix these problems? The answer lies in first understanding what is causing all this chaos. Challenging behavior happens in the gap between demands placed upon someone and their skills to handle those demands. The pandemic has tipped the scale such that demands seriously outweigh skills–for both students and educators. We need to acknowledge that students did not progress academically or socially as they would normally have in the last year and a half of remote and hybrid schools and social isolation. Most students' skills are developmentally behind, making it impossible to meet typical grade-level expectations. I am not just talking about academic skills here. I am referring to social skills, skills at regulating emotions and controlling impulses, flexible thinking skills, and the list goes on. The pandemic has caused an epidemic of developmentally appropriate expectations being no longer developmentally appropriate due to lagging thinking skills.

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The same is true for the expectations we have for our teachers. As one teacher described: "Expectations for educators seem to have gone back to 'normal' - even though the pandemic and the ripple effect in education that comes with it has yet to end."

To make matters worse, as you heard loud and clear from the teachers above, both students' and educators' social batteries are getting depleted so much more quickly after being out of the practice of school and socializing. This lack of endurance is leading to all-out exhaustion from everyone, making it even harder to meet these previously typical demands of the day.

Additionally, let's not forget that many students and educators alike have experienced real trauma during the pandemic, including losing their parents, partners, colleagues, and friends.

What can we do? We only have two levers to pull: reduce expectations and build skills.

The latter obviously takes time. As a result, in the short term, the focus needs to be on reducing expectations to be better aligned with where kids are developmentally and what both students and teachers have the energy to handle. In an ideal world, we might consider simply having everyone repeat a grade—a do-over of sorts. As helpful as that might be, it is unlikely to happen and would cause other downstream problems. So, we need to focus on immediate, concrete, and realistic ways to dial back the demands. These include shorter days, more break time, more opportunities to focus on enjoyable activities, regulating physical outlets, and reducing academic expectations, including revising the speed at which the curriculum is taught. These things taken together would help combat fatigue and enable educators and students alike to feel more successful again while slowly building back endurance. A marathon runner who hasn't run more than a few miles in two years doesn't expect themselves to go out and run 26 miles right out of the gates!

Reducing expectations to be more realistic is easier said than done. Schools are not known for being particularly nimble systems, especially given all the mandated testing benchmarks. But let's be clear that our schools successfully pivoted in much more sizable ways when needed in the height of the pandemic. If we recognize the need and urgency to do it again now, we can. I hear loud and clear that our schools are in crisis, so now the time is to act.

A word of caution, though, when it comes to re-setting expectations: expectations not only need to be clear and realistic, they need to be taught – or, in this case, re-taught. Students can't meet expectations that they are unaware of or that have felt like a moving target during the pandemic. The best way to re-teach expectations to students is to involve them in that process of re-setting expectations. When students are co-authors of expectations, they tend to be much more invested in meeting them. Crucial to recovery from this tailspin in which our schools find themselves is a collaborative process of re-setting expectations.

Finally, let's not forget that the other level we can pull is to build back skills. While this process is not a quick fix, it is critical to emerging successfully from this chaos in the long term and getting students back on the wave of healthy development. Even prior to the pandemic, Social Emotional Learning approaches had been gaining traction in our schools. They are needed more than ever now. Grounding the curriculum in the social and emotional needs of the students and educators is mission-critical. Approaches that build flexibility, emotional regulation, social thinking, and problem skills, in general, must be front and center. As part of that effort, traditional school disciplinary approaches (which are primarily punitive) not only won't help us see our way out of this mess, they will make matters much worse. We must practice relational approaches to discipline at this time, or we will lose some of our most at-risk students.

My advice may be fairly simple, but it is certainly not easy. Our schools are allergic to the idea of reducing expectations for good reasons. But these are not ordinary times, and they require bold actions from our school leaders and support from our communities if we are to right this ship.


This article originally appeared on PsychologyToday.com

Dr. J. Stuart Ablon

The new school year is just getting started, and students are finally back in the building. Unfortunately, many school districts are sending home emails about yet another dangerous new social media challenge on TikTok, the “Devious Lick” Bathroom Vandalism Challenge.

What is the “Devious Lick” challenge on TikTok?

On TikTok, students record themselves vandalizing school bathrooms and then encourage classmates to do the same and share their destruction videos. Schools are finding missing or broken soap dispensers, damaged plumbing and fixtures, and extensive paint and toilet paper messes. This is an especially hard time given the importance of handwashing and keeping bathrooms clean to limit the spread of Covid. It is also providing ample opportunity for students to visit the restroom more often. This “challenge” seems to play out in middle and high schools, but that doesn’t mean your younger child, who doesn’t have unsupervised access to the Internet, won’t learn about dangerous social media challenges at school through peers with older siblings.

What Should a Parent/Guardian Do?

The most important advice to give people when talking to our kids about difficult things is to talk less and listen more. While it can be comforting to us to prepare some sage words to pass onto our kids, the best thing we can do when we are concerned about something they are seeing, reading, or hearing about is to listen to them. We really can’t know what to say until we understand more about their understanding of and reaction to something in the first place.

We, adults, tend to be wordy. So if you need to start a conversation like this, bring the topic up neutrally and succinctly. Perhaps something like: “Have you heard of this thing called “Devious Licks” on TikTok or the Bathroom Vandalism Challenge?” Then ask for information: “What do you think of it?” And bite your tongue. You may well be rewarded by having a chance to hear their perspective, their point of view, or perhaps even what worries or concerns them about something like the Vandalism Challenge. You can ask plenty of clarifying questions like, “Why do they think kids are participating when they clearly know it’s wrong to do so?” If they simply shrug their shoulders or offer the all too common, “I don’t know,” you can make some educated guesses. Is it peer pressure, to garner attention and be “cool,” or are they hoping to gain followers and clout on social media?

Once we hear them out, we will be in a better position to try to answer any questions our kids may have to the best of our ability. And yes, then (after listening to them first) we can provide critical adult perspective and advice while setting the clear expectation that this kind of behavior is not acceptable by explaining our concerns, including that this behavior is illegal and could have serious consequences. But it remains still more important to ask questions, reflect what we hear from them, and show interest in hearing more from them since they probably already know that this kind of behavior is not acceptable. This advice applies to all disturbing or confusing content or undesirable behaviors seen on the Internet or anywhere else, for that matter. Because ultimately, if we want our kids to listen to us, we should start by showing them how we listen to them!

If you are pretty confident this hasn’t happened in your child’s school yet, it can still be important to have this conversation proactively. And if you want to know more about what’s going on in their social media world, make sure to follow them on social! Nothing like seeing things firsthand to put us in a good position to ask questions and learn more from our kids directly. If, however, you already know your child was involved in something like this, your first instinct is probably to take their phone / social media access away or issue other punishments. While understandable, reactions like this rarely address the issues that give rise to challenging behavior. As hard as it can be when furious at or disappointed in our children, try listening first if you want to solve the problem in a durable way.

 


This article originally appeared on Psychology Today.

You may know that many therapeutic schools and psychiatric settings seclude and/or restrain children for the purposes of de-escalation and regaining behavioral control.

“Seclusion” typically refers to the removal of an individual into a specifically designated space used for de-escalation (e.g., a small bare room with padded walls), while “restraint” encompasses a range of interventions by staff member including holding a child’s arms and legs, or use of special tools such as straps, in order to restrict the movement of the child. According to data released from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, 107,000 kids were subjected to physical restraint or were confined to seclusion rooms in schools during the years 2011 and 2012.

Some purport that these interventions are necessary and humane, however, evidence increasingly suggests that restraint and seclusion can be physically and psychologically dangerous as well as costly to agencies. A thorough investigation by the Government Accountability Commission in 2009 found hundreds of complaints of abuse and death caused by negligent use of restraint procedures in schools and pediatric residential treatment facilities, suggesting that there are small but grave risks when physical restraints are performed irresponsibly. Additionally, even when restrictive interventions are performed consistent with safety protocols, patients often report that they are psychologically harmful and aversive. This is particularly true for children and adolescents who have experienced prior trauma.

For a long time, restraint and seclusion were considered the only option if a child’s behavior was “out of control.” As eloquently said by Connecticut Child Advocate Sarah Egan, J.D. in this interesting New England Psychologist article, “They had the hammer and nail approach, not because they were evil but those were the tools they had and so that’s what they used.”

There is a lot of buzz about restraint and seclusion in schools these days because Sen. Tom Harkin (D – IA) and Rep. George Miller (D – CA) have introduced the federal Keeping All Students Safe Act (S. 2036/H.R. 1893) that would ban the use of restraints and seclusion in schools except in cases of clear physical danger.

The New England Psychologist article does a nice job of describing one reason why this issue is complicated: Current definitions and reporting practices of schools vary widely between states and between schools and agencies. Enacting federal legislation across such a heterogeneous system is bound to be very messy.
Another complication that we have been talking about at Think:Kids is this one: It can be very destabilizing to take away one tool without giving schools and agencies another tool to use in its place. If we ask a school to stop restraining and secluding children without teaching staff what else they can do to achieve their intended goals, we can expect mayhem. That’s why we suggest that schools begin acting NOW to think about other ways to de-escalate children and regain behavioral control (or even better, prevent escalation from occurring in the first place).

In 2011, DeHert and colleagues published a paper reviewing four interventions that successfully reduced rates of restraint and seclusion in youth settings. These interventions included a model of strength-based care, a behavioral therapy oriented management program, introduction of a padded room (in this case, they replaced restraint with seclusion), and adoption of the Collaborative Problem Solving approach. Averaging across these four interventions, occasions of restraint were reduced 93%, and occasions of seclusion were reduced 75%. As you can see, Collaborative Problem Solving is not the only way, but it is one way. Talk to us if you want more information.

A final note about the fate of the Keeping All Students Safe Act

Both sponsors of the bill, Sen. Harkin and Rep. Miller, are retiring from congress in 2014. In their absence, advocates are concerned that it will likely be difficult to get this legislation introduced and passed in future sessions. Staff members of both the Senate and House committees agree that it’s critical that concerned parents, advocates, educators and the public let their congresspeople know how they feel about the use of restraints and seclusion in schools and the importance of the Keeping All Students Safe Act. Without that groundswell of support, they say, the bill is likely to die. You can find the phone numbers for your senators and representative here.

Now that bullying-prevention programs are required in our schools, students who are the victims of bullying are finally getting the empathy and attention they deserve. The work, however, shouldn’t stop there.

Bullying

Behind most bullying programs is the fundamental assumption that students who bully are choosing to do so in order to get something they want (for example, social status or attention), and that these students could behave more kindly if they wanted to. Because of this assumption, students who bully are frequently punished via exclusionary practices like detention, suspension, or even expulsion. The punishment, the logic goes, should teach bullies that their behavior gets them bad stuff instead of good stuff, and when they realize that, they will stop bullying and be kind instead. But if that logic is correct, why do bullies come out of detention, or return from suspension, and bully again?

Research actually tells us that students who are aggressive, oppositional, or otherwise behave in difficult ways are actually doing the best they can with the skills they have. All of us would like to have social status and attention; students who bully are lacking the skills they would need to attain status and attention in adaptive ways; skills like emotion regulation, self-regulation, communication, and social thinking. As a result, they seek status and attention in ways that prove harmful to others. Yes, bullies would like to avoid detentions and suspensions and they would if they could. But detention and suspension don’t teach skills; the bully returns with no more skills than she had when she left and so cannot behave any differently.

While not a popular view, it is clear that bullies lack the skill, not the will, to behave better. So if we want to effectively address bullying, we need to focus on helping bullies develop the skills they need to not bully. Our underlying assumptions about the cause of the bullying leads us to punish the bullies; ironically, it is only by having compassion and understanding for the bullies that we best help future students avoid being victims.

 

Excerpted from Education Week. Read the entire response here.

 

Bullying a bully doesn’t work. Here’s what does.

Dr. J. Stuart Ablon

April 16, 2019

Now that bullying prevention programs are required in our schools, students who are the victims of bullying are finally getting the empathy and attention they deserve. The work, however, shouldn’t stop there.

Behind most bullying programs is the fundamental assumption that students who bully are choosing to do so in order to get something they want, such as social status or attention, and that these students could behave more kindly if they wanted to. Because of this assumption, students who bully are frequently punished via exclusionary practices like detention, suspension, or even expulsion. The punishment, the logic goes, should teach bullies that their behavior leads to bad outcomes instead of good outcomes, and when they realize that, they will stop bullying and be kind instead. But if that logic is correct, why do bullies so often come out of detention, or return from suspension, only to bully again?

Research actually tells us that students who are aggressive, oppositional, or otherwise behave in difficult ways are actually doing the best they can with the skills they have. All of us would like to have social status and attention; students who bully are lacking the skills they would need to attain status and attention in adaptive ways—skills like emotion regulation, self-regulation, communication skills, and social thinking. As a result, they seek status and attention in ways that prove harmful to others. Yes, bullies would like to avoid detention and suspension, and they would if they could. But detention and suspension don’t teach skills; the bully returns with no more skills than she had when she left and so cannot behave any differently.

Fortunately, there are evidence-based approaches that help kids who exhibit challenging behavior build skills they lack, like self-regulation and social thinking skills that are linked to social aggression. Those approaches include things like Restorative Practices, Social Thinking, and our Collaborative Problem Solving model.

While not a popular view, bullies lack the skill, not the will, to behave better. If we want to effectively address bullying, we need to focus on helping bullies develop the skills they need to not bully. Our underlying assumptions about the cause of the bullying leads us to punish the bullies; ironically, it is only by having compassion and understanding for the bullies that we best help future students avoid being victims.

 


As originally posted in Psychology Today 

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