Children in Pain!

By Robert RosecloseAuthor: Robert Rose Name: Robert Rose
Site:
About: Dr.Rose has taught every grade in four major school districts in So.California. He has been successful using an eclectic and complex approach derived from solid research in the sciences. His web sites imaginativecurriculum.com and YouTube.com/icdrrose videos are filled with his books, workbooks, and videos that challenge the status quo. He has attempted to teach based on the Constitution and mutual respect and it has worked. For forty-five years in a yours, mine, and ours marriage, he enjoys a family that is demonstratively affectionate and loving. His latest book, Abuses of Power in Education; Challenging Practically Everything, Outskirts Press, 2008, is one of the main sources for the ideas he will be explaining in his blogs. He believes that students, teachers, parents, and administrators need legal power and protection to be able to have the freedom to do their job most effectively. No person or group should have unlimited power and that's why balance is as important as autonomy.See Authors Posts (18)
 

“Don’t touch me you white M…F…!”

I wouldn’t be normal if his anger didn’t hurt me. I had the legal power (1965) to paddle or suspend him, but I didn’t. I didn’t even have this concept clearly in my mind, but I intuitively knew that he was a child in pain.

This was an eleven year-old boy who had been attacked by three teenagers several months earlier. They had almost killed him by ramming a metal pipe in his rectum. He was a handsome youngster, somewhat effeminate, and had nightmares he’d shared with me. The people and voices in his dreams repeated, “Fag, queer” and worse.

He had recovered physically, but nothing had been done for him emotionally. I had created this class for the most disturbed and dysfunctional 24 third to sixth graders in the school of eight hundred. I never knew who or how many would erupt in any one moment. There were moments the first month that I agreed with everyone who said I was crazy.

I let go of Tim, but stood between him and his older brother who had hit him. I eased Tim to the back door and we sat on the edge of the door. I talked quietly to him until he stopped swearing and began to explain what happened.

That was forty years ago. What I had done intuitively I can explain now. I had created that class because I had known some of the kinds of rejection these volcanoes had endured. I found these children the most challenging, but most interesting. The depth of their anger scared me too, but they knew I felt their pain.

I understood that my monotone, calm voice, and apparent laid-back body language somehow defused their hostility. Now I know the main reason was how I dealt with the amygdala. I explain to teachers that it is a tiny part of the limbic (emotional) brain. I ask them to visualize a small glowing yellow sphere inside a student’s brain that grows whenever someone or something provokes the human fight or flight bodily response. When he begins to experience it, it will rapidly grow bigger and his aggressiveness increases.

In a classroom when his aggressiveness is met with another’s (a teacher, another student) they keep provoking each other until physical or emotional violence erupts.

Since I saw him as a child in pain I worked hard on not letting his amygdala boil over. He responded to my quiet concern by him gradually calming down. Often, by reading his body and face, I could touch or even put my arm around him to further comfort him.

Tom’s example was common for that class in the beginning, but most teachers face more mild levels of the amygdala. These are students who smart off, say hurtful things, or gleefully inflict minor physical pain on others.

In all such instances a calm voice and demeanor (by not taking it personally) allows the teacher to defuse the amygdala. This can be done by changing your mindset from being offended and upset by a bad kid to seeing a child in emotional pain. This does NOT mean that when he is causing pain to anyone you should excuse his behavior and relieve him of any consequences.

The problem there is if he sees that he is rewarded by expressing his pain aggressively you reinforce it! Tom did apologize to me in front of the class and there was not a recurrence of that behavior. I believe in justice and fair punishment, but the purpose of punishment is to change behavior. Whatever consequences (milder to more severe) work best to change behavior I will use.

Don’t ignore the child in pain who isn’t reacting aggressively, but is quiet, apathetic, and uncommunicative. The depressed child can be more difficult because he keeps his pain bottled up and he may be giving up. He is a potential suicide or explosive when the pain boils over.

With this child I had to find things that interested, motivated, and was doable for him. In all cases I spent my time in and out of class observing, listening to, and talking with each. A main facet of this was finding his triggers – the stimuli that provoked the amygdala into aggression. These triggers were the brain patterns from past hurts and real and believed injustices.

Once I knew the triggers it was easier to be proactive and head them off before he attacked or withdrew. Of course, I made many changes in the classroom environment physically, emotionally, and educationally to make it safe for all the students. (See THE COMPLETE TEACHER, Amazon, 2009.)

It all begins with me seeing him as a person in pain. I still met most problems with humor or even ignored them, while not accepting any kind of physical or emotional violence to occur. It meant helping him admit, understand, and change his behavior.

The amygdala metaphor is one way that works – if it changes your mindset – and his!

Robert Rose, Ph.D.
icdrrose@gmail.com
www.imaginativecurriculum.com
www.youtube.com/icdrrose
Blog – Huffington Post