National Network for Child Care's Connections
Newsletter
Dr. Maureen T. Mulroy, Ph.D.
Human Development Specialist
Cooperative Extension System
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.
Copyright/Access Information
Have you ever worked with a child who repeatedly questioned your
right to guide, teach, or discipline? Perhaps, you know a child
who regularly declares one or more rules invalid and then defies
parents, teachers, coaches, or peers to enforce them. These are
children who literally and figuratively scream, "Try and
make me!"; "I dare you!"; "I'm the one in
charge here, not you!"
If you nod your head in recognition or wince in pain from the
memory, then you know first hand the challenges of working with
challenging children. Challenging children are those children
who, as a result of nature, nurture, or the combination of both
seem to require special attention and dedication. Perhaps it is
the intensity of their presence, their great energy or vehemence
of emotion, thought, and activity, that causes them to be perceived
by many as difficult, unusual, or problematic.
Yet, like all children, challenging children have a need for:
- Contact - To be loved and accepted; to belong to a group.
- Power - To have opportunities for independent thought and action;
to have a sense of control.
- Protection - To feel secure and relatively free from harm.
They, like other children, spend much of their time engaged in
behaviors that will insure that their needs are met. The problem
seems to be that challenging children frequently use methods that
are inappropriate for the circumstances and troublesome for themselves
and others.
For example, challenging children who are in need of human contact
typically behave in ways that draw attention to themselves - being
a clown, interrupting conversations, teasing, hooting, or making
rude noises. If those techniques fail to get the amount or type
of contact they desire, they will most likely resort to more physical
means, such as putting a head lock around a friend's neck, tripping
someone as they walk by, or poking the teacher repeatedly while
he is speaking to another person.
When attempting to assert or gain power, challenging children
will often choose techniques that wrest power from others. For
instance, they will attempt to depower a peer by bullying, threatening,
scapegoating, or with practical jokes, ridicule, or stealing a
favorite comic. They also tend to engage in power struggles with
adults - making faces behind an adult's back, repeatedly asking,
"What did you say?", belching loudly throughout a lesson,
or by downright refusing to comply with a request or directive.
Admitting they feel unsafe or insecure is difficult for many challenging
children so they are likely to "hide" their need for
protection behind a mask of toughness. Oftentimes, they adopt
the attitude of a "cool dude", claim membership in a
gang, as well as ownership of a "killer" pitbull, in
the hope that these actions will somehow ward off attacks. They
also armor themselves with scowls, snarls, snaps, and shrugs to
keep others, especially adults, from seeing how vulnerable they
really are. Yet vulnerable they are.
When confronted with the misdeeds of a challenging child on a
regular basis, it is hard to view their actions as anything but
intentional and willful misconduct. However, all of the behaviors
that characterize challenging children are also characteristic
of children in general. The difference is that most children are
better at matching their behavior for expressing contact, power,
and protection needs to the particulars of an environment. In
other words, they have a better mastery of context.
To help challenging children get a sense of context, the adults
in their lives must help them to interpret and express their needs
with methods that are appropriate to the circumstances. When an
adult sees a challenging child engaged in an inappropriate expression
of needs, he or she must stop the behavior and clearly state a
better way to get attention, join a group, express independence,
be assertive, or avoid hurt.
The challenging child should be encouraged to try the behavior
and should be reinforced for their effort. If the child is unable
or unwilling to try the better approach, he or she should be removed
from the situation and allowed to calm down, regroup, and reflect
upon the incident. Before he or she is allowed to re-enter the
mainstream of activity, the child should discuss the circumstances
surrounding his or her removal and be able to describe a better
way for handling the situation when it next occurs.
Without the consistent attention and dedicated effort of many
adults, the special qualities and features that challenging children
bring to the world will go unchanneled. As a society, we cannot
afford to lose even one of these precious resources. We must all
rise to the challenge of working with challenging children!