Smacking children

[SuperBacon]

I would never dream of hitting my kids. 

I was hit as a child, and turned out pretty fucked up. But I'd say that was more due to emotional abuse rather than physical.

Both my parents are cunts but for very very different reasons.

[ThumpSquids]

On ‎24‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 4:33 PM, MungoChutney said:

@ThumpSquids, I agree with a lot of your post. When I worked in frontline childcare I implemented a 'time-in' programme that replaced the traditional approach of giving kids 5 to 10 minutes of time out when they'd misbehaved or become disruptive.  It worked far better to have a member of staff sit with them for the cooling down period and helping them to manage their anger or whatever had caused the behaviour.

As a primary school teacher I'd be interested to know your thoughts on behaviour charts that are displayed on a classroom wall.  My son's school is really good and very progressive in a lot of their approach. Yet still every class has some kind of chart with kids names and yellow and red card systems showing everyone who the teacher had decided was worth of a public warning/stripping of privileges.  I find that to be a really poor approach at best at a breach of the UNCRC at worst.

My school uses them in a great many, and often inconsistent, ways. The term will start with young people who display the most difficult behaviours having a 'Home Chart', which does encourage communication between the teacher and parent, but will often be an excuse to moan. Then, they'll devolve into class charts, collecting stickers for 'good choices', yada yada yada; essentially, the hackneyed approach to rewarding good choices, in the hope that the child will do the right thing for a physical reward. There's a place for this, I'm sure, but I've never used it. I do use Time In, which helps build relationships and offer tons of resilience/calming techniques, and I do use a very simple and instant visual chart, moving your name up and down-type affair. Aside from that, loads of dancing, joke-telling, song-singing style rewards, and my class have got to the point where they police themselves and I barely have to say anything if a difficulty turns up. Took a while for us to get there, but so worth it.

[BomberPat]

I was probably given the odd clip round the ear or something, though I don't really remember it, so it can't have happened often. Don't have kids myself, can't imagine ever hitting them if I did.

Violence happens when communication fails - and I think that if people resort to regularly hitting their kids as a punishment, because of that failure in communication, it may well be that (especially with younger kids), it won't always be immediately clear what they're being punished for in the first place, or why it's something that warrants punishment. And that breakdown in communication can be just as detrimental to a long-term healthy relationship between parents and children as the violence itself.

[Guy Bifkin]

No wonder he went on to grass up all his mates.

[Carbomb]

Someone just posted this up on my feed. Very interesting, although I'm sure @ThumpSquids and @MungoChutney are probably already familiar with it.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/schools-behavior-discipline-collaborative-proactive-solutions-ross-greene/#

It's quite a long read, but this is the bit I thought made particularly good sense:

Under Greene’s philosophy, you’d no more punish a child for yelling out in class or jumping out of his seat repeatedly than you would if he bombed a spelling test. You’d talk with the kid to figure out the reasons for the outburst (was he worried he would forget what he wanted to say?), then brainstorm alternative strategies for the next time he felt that way. The goal is to get to the root of the problem, not to discipline a kid for the way his brain is wired.

“This approach really captures a couple of the main themes that are appearing in the literature with increasing frequency,” says Russell Skiba, a psychology professor and director of the Equity Project at Indiana University. He explains that focusing on problem solving instead of punishment is now seen as key to successful discipline.

 

If Greene’s approach is correct, then the educators who continue to argue over the appropriate balance of incentives and consequences may be debating the wrong thing entirely. After all, what good does it do to punish a child who literally hasn’t yet acquired the brain functions required to control his behaviour?

[Cod Eye]

After this thread came up, I asked the question of my group of mates(one of which is a primary teacher and one a secondary school teacher) when we were in the pub the other night, and the conversation grew to groups of folk on the other tables around us too, and as you can imagine, the answers and opinions varied from person to person and generation to generation.

One question which came up though, which I suppose is a bit of an off shoot from the smacking question, is are there such things as just naughty kids anymore? I was born in 82, so spent most of my primary years at school in the 80's. There were certain kids who were known as being the bad ones who constantly disrupted lessons, swore at teachers and started fights etc. But with the way we now know about Autism, ADHD and other behaviour related and learning conditions, would those kids now be looked at differently?

[ThumpSquids]

29 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Under Greene’s philosophy, you’d no more punish a child for yelling out in class or jumping out of his seat repeatedly than you would if he bombed a spelling test. You’d talk with the kid to figure out the reasons for the outburst (was he worried he would forget what he wanted to say?), then brainstorm alternative strategies for the next time he felt that way. The goal is to get to the root of the problem, not to discipline a kid for the way his brain is wired.

“This approach really captures a couple of the main themes that are appearing in the literature with increasing frequency,” says Russell Skiba, a psychology professor and director of the Equity Project at Indiana University. He explains that focusing on problem solving instead of punishment is now seen as key to successful discipline.

If Greene’s approach is correct, then the educators who continue to argue over the appropriate balance of incentives and consequences may be debating the wrong thing entirely. After all, what good does it do to punish a child who literally hasn’t yet acquired the brain functions required to control his behaviour?

That's pretty much exactly it Bomb, just worded far better. When you understand that all behaviour is communication, and that problem solving can bring a class together and equip young people with actual tools that will absolutely benefit then throughout their life, then nothing else comes close. I know that, although there's a place for them, detentions don't work, time out doesn't work, and a great many other go-to teaching and parenting tricks, simply don't work. Why? Because even if you see better choices being made in the short term to ensure less of these 'consequences', they don't teach you anything, and education IS everything.

[ColinBollocks]

1 hour ago, Guy Bifkin said:

No wonder he went on to grass up all his mates.

[Kaz Hayashi]

In my honest opinion regarding ADHD, it’s as much an unknown quantity as it was before there was a boom in diagnosis. 

There was a huge surge in diagnosis in the mid 00’s. There’s also indication that certain drugs became more available to the U.K. following and since 2012/2013 dosage of Methylphenidate more than doubled. No secret that it went hand in hand with the amount of young people being diagnosed. Within my profession we do debate whether some of those with a diagnosis truly have ADHD, and whether or not the monetary incentive to prescribe said medication (methylphenidate) contributed to the amount of people being diagnosed.

The key being that there’s a staggering range in terms of behaviours displayed from those who have ADHD. Many still wrongly assume it’s associated with being ‘naughty’. However, it’s glaringly obvious from working with well over 200 people with ADHD that a large amount of people do not display poor behaviour. The common thread is a lack of focus and concentration, leading to fidgeting and in some cases poor behaviour. I’ve also worked with young people who have a high quality of cognitive functionality, who simply display poor/negative behaviour but are diagnosed. The diagnosis process in general needs a complete overhaul in my opinion. The general route is a referral made by a GP to a specialist team such as CAMHS. They then run diagnostic tests such as asking questions, observation and working memory style tests. They are usually conducted between 2-3 sessions. Then that’s it, a diagnosis is made.

Most young people don’t attend follow up appointments as they are simply very wishy washy, offering very little in the sense of help and guidance.

”how are you feeling today?”

”alright”

”come on, open up to me, you can trust me and if you don’t there’s little we can do to help”.

Following that they meet their doctor once every 6 months for a medication update. In this time the young person stops taking the medication because of how crap the side effects can be “stomach pains and I feel like a zombie” are the complaints I hear most often.

The general consensus is that they tend to get told off at school, removed from class and by the time I meet them the damage is done and they are approaching adulthood.

It might come as no surprise but a large proportion of those with a diagnosis and negative behavioural traits tend to have have issues or challenging family lives. Not enough is done to investigate and support this side of things, and a diagnosis is one of the first ports of call.

Im rambling a bit now and the above is a generalisation based purely on my experience.

My overall point being that in order to ‘fix’ behaviours, we as a society always wrongly look for the quick fix. Physical discipline was removed from education, however, negative psychological discipline is still highly evident, and when that didn’t work, suppress them with medication and a diagnosis, even if they are demonstrating a higher level of academic skill compared to others in their class.

For those who have stated that the lack of ability to communicate is the issue, I 100% agree with you. It also tends to be those who don’t understand what this means, are the first ones to shout about how soft we are.

Its really not very difficult. Help them to feel successful, provide positive reinforcement, structure tasks that involve activities that they enjoy and implement curriculum to said activities.

Example, Barry is 16, he has a diagnosis of ADHD, he doesn’t take medication and sees his doctor once every 6 months. He displays negative behaviour, particularly in maths sessions. He was removed from school due to his behaviour and was unable to sit any exams. He joined a facility which provides the chance to be re-educated in the areas missed, leading to GCSE exams at the end of the year. He is however incredibly good in sports sessions. You’re also aware that he has some dumbbells at home.

My approach to this exact situation was to arrange sessions with Barry in which I’d take him to the gym. That in itself reassured Barry that I’m ok and that I’m willing to listen. A basic respect has been achieved. From there myself and a coach in the gym helped him to understand what he is lifting and why he is lifting. I was able to introduce maths in to these sessions (how much are you lifting, convert that in to KG, etc etc).

Barry went on to get a C in gcse maths.

I appreciate that is a very ‘positive’ outcome and it won’t always work. But he was at a point that all he needed was someone to invest some time with him, to listen and in turn he cooperated as there was an incentive. He was well aware that these sessions could easily be stopped if he behaved in particular ways. He wasn’t perfect and there were issues, but he’d built up enough trust in certain people that he was now willing to communicate ‘why’ and he was also willing to apologise. He was simply being taught about respect at the basic level, almost starting again because he was failed the first time around.

Biggest problem is that schools are under staffed, and there are targets to achieve, so the easiest way to reach said targets are to remove the problem, home life isn’t always great, they don’t always understand why they are behaving in such a way, they also know if they behave negatively their peers will laugh and encourage it. They are very familiar with being shouted at, not listened to by adults and being removed from their peers. 

Communication is absolutely key. Everyone who should be listening doesn’t have time or resources to do so.

I’m aware I’ve spiraled a bit here, but instead of communicating, people are happy to jump straight to a very easy/lazy way to deal with it shout/hit/suppressants. It needs to stop.

[Cod Eye]

47 minutes ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

In my honest opinion regarding ADHD, it’s as much an unknown quantity as it was before there was a boom in diagnosis. 

There was a huge surge in diagnosis in the mid 00’s. There’s also indication that certain drugs became more available to the U.K. following and since 2012/2013 dosage of Methylphenidate more than doubled. No secret that it went hand in hand with the amount of young people being diagnosed. Within my profession we do debate whether some of those with a diagnosis truly have ADHD, and whether or not the monetary incentive to prescribe said medication (methylphenidate) contributed to the amount of people being diagnosed.

The key being that there’s a staggering range in terms of behaviours displayed from those who have ADHD. Many still wrongly assume it’s associated with being ‘naughty’. However, it’s glaringly obvious from working with well over 200 people with ADHD that a large amount of people do not display poor behaviour. The common thread is a lack of focus and concentration, leading to fidgeting and in some cases poor behaviour. I’ve also worked with young people who have a high quality of cognitive functionality, who simply display poor/negative behaviour but are diagnosed. The diagnosis process in general needs a complete overhaul in my opinion. The general route is a referral made by a GP to a specialist team such as CAMHS. They then run diagnostic tests such as asking questions, observation and working memory style tests. They are usually conducted between 2-3 sessions. Then that’s it, a diagnosis is made.

 

Thank you for that! It was a very interesting read and helpful for those of us who only experience the negative aspects of ADHD and the like. 

Do you think ADHD and other behaviour illness are used an an excuse sometimes for kids that have been "dragged up"(for want of a better term)? For example, we had a family next door that were the quintessential scummy family. They had 3 kids, a daughter who was 13 who they used to buy cigs for and let her smoke around the house, a lad who who was about 6 or seven and a baby. Their house was an absolute shit hole, but they spent vast amounts of their benefit money on Cigs, beer, big tellies and a massive American style fridge. They even used to ask us for any old kids clothes that had been torn or whatever so they didn't have to buy the kids anything. But It was the lad that was the biggest problem. They said he had ADHD, Autism and Aspergers so just let him do what he wanted. He broke our windows with bricks more than once, hit our daughter with a cricket bat and split her head open and was just generally disruptive.

A friend had a lad in his class at school and the other parents all complained daily about him being violent and swearing at them(as is their right), but all the school could say is there was nothing they could do as he had problems. Now, I've seen his home environment and there was no doubt that it was more to blame than any problems he may have. He used to walk around the garden singing songs from Ted and Southpark, which showed that they let this 6 year old watch inappropriate things and you constantly heard the parents swearing at each other and fighting, always in front of the kids. Then when they had bbq's they would buy this 6 year old with ADHD 3 big bottles of WKD Blue to drink at the bbq, which set his behaviour off even worse. We used to have to park the car away from the house as he used to try and break into it to drive it after he had drunk it.

In my opinion, the diagnosis he got simply gave the parents and excuse not to change their ways as it was his problems that were to blame on not theirs.

[Kaz Hayashi]

I didn’t mean or want to steer the subject title away from it’s intent but I wanted to express my experience of ADHD due to in being mention in regards to behaviour.

That question has so many variables, much like one of the points I was trying to make, everything and everyone should be looked at as individuals, there isn’t a one rule fits all.

Do I think some people play on the fact, in some cases yes. But I think that’s because they have been allowed to do so. They don’t always know any better and if a medical professional says “he has adhd, he can’t help it, here’s some medication”, some people put ultimate trust in that opinion, on top of the fact they may not have the basic skills to show respect, listen and communicate effectively in their own house. That’s why I mentioned that not enough is done at home, with the family to develop said skills. They have probably never questioned whether or not the child even has adhd at all, have never questioned if there is something much more deep rooted and may never consider actual child counselling as a way to deal with his behaviour.

But again, it’s purely individual circumstance. Chances are the parents in this situation have never had positive role models, and have never had the chance to learn/understand ‘how’ to know any better.

Also I realise my post above is fucking massive, I appreciate you quoted it to respond, you might want to delete the majority of the quote just so it’s not a mare to read on a phone 😉

[Astro Hollywood]

I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, but since it was the 80s, nothing was done about it other than telling me I had it. I left school in 95/96, so just missed the era when it was taken into consideration and even medicated. Consequently, I was completely unable to be still or concentrate or be quiet in school, and even though I'm -- clearly; look at my posts -- a very intelligent smart good boy, did really poorly in subjects which didn't hold my attention. Eventually I was expelled from college, mostly because I literally hadn't completed a single piece of work on one of my courses in the entire year, because it was boring and so might as well have been taught in Martian, while doing great in my other A-Level.

If anything, it's gotten worse as an adult, particularly when I'm struggling with other brain-issues like Borderline Personality Disorder, and if people had any idea how bad it was, they'd be amazed I'm able to compose a tweet, much less write books, though the extreme focus aspect probably helps, when you're banging out 16 hour sessions at the keyboard.

[Kaz Hayashi]

in terms of your posting and writing ability, you’re doing bloody marvellously.

[Astro Hollywood]

21 minutes ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

in terms of your posting and writing ability, you’re doing bloody marvellously.

Cheers. I'm almost loathe to post this, because this is a thread about smacking kids and here I am talking about meeeee, but I realised recently that my weird non-linear writing process is purely down to the ADHD, and both harnessing and fashioning a working process around that. I don't write from beginning to end, but just get down whatever's coming out of my brain at that moment, which means I'll basically write as a series of scattered half-lines or words placed in the document about where they should be. So rather than say, writing the opening paragraph, and then the next one, I'll do a half a line of it, maybe a few words for the ending of the pagagraph, some stuff for the middle of the piece, a line from the ending, a turn of phrase a few pages down, and so on.

To an observer, it would look like gibberish, but eventually, as I'm jumping about the page, adding bits here and there, the lines get more filled in, eventually becoming paragraphs, and once I start editing, I move everything together until it's in the right order. Mostly it's because I can't focus enough to write more than one concurrent line at a time (or rather, to keep all that in my head at once), and if I tried, I'd lose track of the stuff from later on in the chapter that's already coming out.

To keep it on topic, I was raised in the 80s, so of course I got smacked. It's neither anything that scarred me, nor is it something I'd do if I had kids of my own. Like white dog dirts or Jim Davidson, it's just something that was okay in that era but isn't now. I'm sure Brexit types hark back to the day "policemen gave kids a clip round the ear" like in the Beano, but the downfall of society was not brought about by the lack of children being hit.

[ColinBollocks]

Do you take any medication, Astro? (If you can be arsed getting that personal).

An old mate from school is very much the same way. He's a bloody brilliant musician, but academically it was a slog for him because he tended to daydream. Thankfully he picked up a guitar because he'd probably be buggered without his gift. He doesn't take anything, but he's long considered it.