What we learn to do, we learn by doing.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Social relationships are central to the happiness, self-esteem, and sense of belonging for children. When a child masters social skills, he is able to initiate, build, and maintain positive peer relationships. Additionally, mastery of social skills directly influences a child’s academic performance. Deficits in social interaction skills interfere with learning, teaching, and a child’s sense of self. The bottom line is that a child’s social competence correlates to his peer acceptance, teacher acceptance, academic success, and overall emotional well-being.
If a child is not doing well socially (or academically), a strong emotional component is also at play. Every day children return home from school in tears because they were rejected or made fun of by another child. On the extreme, one of the prime causes of teen suicide is social pressure. Hence, the discussion of a child’s social development must also include the child’s emotional development as well. The two are married; one cannot exist without the other.
For children like Billy, social equals emotional. Billy’s response system is so overly stressed, it does not allow him to think clearly during difficult social moments. He reacts without thinking, his behaviors fall outside of what is socially acceptable, he gets into trouble for acting inappropriately, he feels bad and stupid (reinforcing an already established negative belief system), and he is unable to learn due to the heightened level of stress in his system. Negative downward spirals such as this have not been adequately addressed through the traditional mindset of our educational system.
The traditional view asks, “How do we get Billy to change his social behavior?” This question fails miserably for Billy. Traditionally, social skills have been taught at the intellectual and cognitive levels, not taking into account the full extent to which social interactions evoke emotional responses. The traditional approach has been designed for the child like Andy—the child who has the ability to think clearly and remain regulated when challenged emotionally.
One classic technique taught to children is “Stop and Think.” There are two problems with this for Billy. First, he has no brakes and cannot stop. Second, Billy cannot think. He feels. And what he feels comes from a deep place of survival. The result is that he reacts automatically before his brain even has a chance to think.
In Table 11.1, the left-hand column lists other traditional techniques that children are taught in order to improve their social skills. For the Billys of the classroom, these techniques will fail them almost every time. The right-hand column gives insight into why they are inadequate.
Socials skills techniques are typically taught through worksheets and cognitive processing. Billy will be able to comprehend these ideas and answer the questions appropriately when he is in a calm and regulated place. However, in the midst of the moment, when he is upset with his friend Andy, Billy will become emotionally charged. He is no longer operating from a top-down control system. Billy’s thinking is no longer rational, logical, or objective. He is working from his midbrain—from a bottom-up control. Everything from the cognitive discussion he may have had earlier about how to respond appropriately is inaccessible. Instead, he reacts from a self-protective manner, with no consideration for the future or for others’ feelings.
Billy’s internal responses, as shown in Table 11.1, are far from cognitive. They stem from a blueprint of fear. The traditional approach has been unsuccessful for Billy because it does not get to the core of what is driving his lack of social skills. It aims to retrain Billy from a cognitive level while all along, ignoring and not even acknowledging the vast emotional undercurrent of abandonment and rejection.
Table 11.1. The ineffectiveness of traditional social skills techniques for Billy
The new question for addressing Billy’s social skills needs to be, “What is driving Billy’s inability to socialize appropriately?” By asking this question, the root cause can be addressed instead of simply piling cognitive thoughts on top of an incredibly powerful undercurrent of fear, rejection, and abandonment.
Three Answers. There are essentially three answers to this question: (1) Billy is socially immature, (2) Billy is not a “social thinker,” and (3) Billy is not only scared of rejection, he is terrified of rejection.
Social Immaturity. Billy’s chronological age does not match his social or emotional age. Because of the interruption in his developmental path, he is arrested both socially and emotionally. If Billy is eight years old chronologically but five years old socially and emotionally, this can be likened to putting a kindergartener in the playground with third graders. Billy would be “eaten alive.” Billy would become threatened and go into fight-or-flight response. In fight mode, he would act aggressively and fight with the other children. Any sense of “that is not nice” would be gone from his perspective because “being nice” would not matter. That is the nature of survival. The only person who matters at that moment of survival is Billy—nobody else. If Billy goes into flight mode, he would distance himself from the other children. He would be in one corner of the playground, oblivious to the other children and make no initiation to interact. This is Billy’s hypo-aroused way of socially protecting himself from the overwhelm he experiences surrounded by other children. He is not being anti-social; rather, he is protecting himself and creating distance to decrease his overwhelm.
“Social Thinker.” Children like Billy missed the critical early years of being lovingly held and nurtured by a primary caregiver. While these experiences are designed to meet a child’s physical needs, so much more than the obvious is being met. Andy had the experience of someone connecting with him at a deeply profound social and emotional level. The caretaker was able to relate to Andy, read his social communication cues, and create emotional safety in the context of relationship with him. In response, Andy learned to read his caretaker’s social cues. His journey of developing social and emotional intelligence began on track.
SURVEY SAYS:
“I wish that other kids understood my disability better, so I would have more friends.”
Billy, on the other hand, missed all the above in his early years. Now as a student in the classroom, he is socially and emotionally deficient. The part of his brain that is designed to interpret social cues is consequently wired differently. His teachers and peers become easily impatient with him for making inappropriate social comments, not making eye contact, and simply being “a little off.”
Just as a child with dyslexia cannot make sense of the letters he reads on a page, a child with social deficiencies cannot make sense of social cues being given by peers and teachers. Pioneering research on nonverbal communication conducted by Albert Mehrabian, Ph.D., established that 55% of communication is received through facial and body expression, 38% is through the tone of voice and volume, and only 7% is through the feelings and attitudes in the words spoken.1 It is not so much the words used but the way in which they are used that we understand another person’s communication.
Billy may hear the words but does not easily make sense of them. His responses can therefore be inappropriate. Teachers often see children like Billy as deliberately obstinate or rude in class. This misinterpretation leads to Billy being punished for something that was not intentional but simply a deficiency in his development.
Fear of Rejection. The fear of being rejected is a theme that runs through all of us, no matter our backgrounds or walks of life. Test this out by picking up the phone and doing some cold calling. The fear reaction you have when you first pick up the phone and dial a stranger will not only be a thought in your mind but a physical reaction at the body level.
Children with histories of rejection through past trauma experiences live in this state of fear every moment of every day at school. While their fear may be merely a perception in the mind, it is absolutely real to them and will interfere with their ability to focus, excel in the classroom, and socially engage with other students. For example, Billy may have a teacher who is genuinely kind and loving, yet in his black- and-white thinking, all adults are a threat. He believes a different reality than what he is living.
Billy is not only fearful of being rejected by his peers (and his teachers), he is terrified of it. This, combined with his lack of emotional maturity and deficits in social thinking, makes for a child who can appear rude, disobedient, or withdrawn. Ironically, the fear of being rejected is playing out to ensure that Billy is being rejected.
Many times, however, the fear of rejection will play out in the complete opposite way. Billy has learned from a fear-based place how to manipulate people and engage with people in a smooth, attuned, and almost adult-like fashion. Billy’s fear of being rejected or ostracized has actually created a child with an overdeveloped ability to “fit in.” He is able to sum people up quickly and socially maneuver himself throughout the day to ensure he is liked and accepted. This is the Billy who comes home with the “Citizenship Award.” The teachers rave about how he is a model child, and they tell the parents how they wish all their students were like Billy. Yet when Billy arrives home, he completely unravels and becomes grossly reactive and rejecting to his parents. He held himself together for the entire school day playing the “game” of socialization (in order to survive) and is exhausted. By the time he comes home, he has reached his window of tolerance, explodes, and releases the social tension that has been building all day. His parents become the receivers of this unloading, almost a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation, that feels unsettling and quite rejecting for them.
Some children release this stress onto the parents because they have established a stronger sense of emotional safety with their parents compared to people at school. These children inherently know their parents will accept them, no matter their behavior. Thus, the parents find themselves on the receiving end of this stress. The dichotomy of the two extremes can make it as if the parent and teacher are describing a completely different child.
Other children are threatened by the parent-child relationship. As much as they desire the connection with the parent, this relationship is also an enormous threat. No one can hurt a child, whether emotionally, mentally, or physically, more than the parent. It is by nature that this relationship is to offer the child more love, acceptance, and validation than any other relationship, but in the course of reality, the opposite becomes very true.
When Billy becomes “split” among two developing personalities between school and home, it is exceptionally unhealthy to his development of the self. This splitting is a dissociative behavior; it is a creative and helpful way (from the child’s perspective) for him to deal with the overwhelm, challenges, and fear he experiences. However, it is a maladaptive response that he is developing with great skill that needs to be interrupted and addressed. The teachers and parents need to work together as a team to provide a consistent environment between home and school along with open and direct communication. If the teachers and parents remain disconnected, Billy will have a greater chance of doing the same.
The Four L’s. Many students simply need to “start over” and begin with the basics of social behaviors. They have not learned to interact in ways that elicit positive responses, nor have they learned how to act in ways that avoid negative responses, both from their teachers and peers. Neuropsychologist Ronald Federici, Psy.D., explains that children like Billy have to be taught how to act, talk, and interact appropriately, free of defiant and asocial behaviors.2 They either do not know how to be socially appropriate because of the fear and anxiety or because no one has taught them. He breaks it down to teaching a child the Four L’s: language, logic, learning, and listening.
SURVEY SAYS:
“School would be better if I had more friends.”
Language. Billy needs help learning social language and how to answer in ways that others can comprehend. He may require help in reframing his answers and learning to say things differently. Instructing Billy on how to use whole sentences and phrases, instead of baby talk and “nonsense” talk, will help him develop his skill of connecting with others. Additionally, Billy must be taught the language of emotions and how to identify feelings while connecting them to feeling words.
There are numerous social language cards and games available through websites such as Linguisystems (www.linguisystems.com), the Critical Thinking Company (www.criticalthinking.com), and Child’s Work/Child’s Play (www.childswork.com). These products are designed to help children like Billy learn how to make and keep friends, how to detect and interpret nonverbal communication, and how to understand and appropriately respond to other people’s perspectives.
Logic. Billy may have a tendency to live in a “magical world,” a maladaptive behavior used to escape from overwhelm and fear. He needs assistance coming back into reality. His responses need to make sense and be logical. Billy needs assistance getting out of looping patterns of speech and into thinking that is sequential and rational.
Learning. Punitive measures traditionally used to teach students lessons will not be effective with Billy. Instead of learning from his past mistakes, he will only sink deeper into fear and overwhelm with these techniques. Billy needs to be shown what responses of his were inappropriate, and not criticized, punished, shamed, or scolded.
For the most part, Billy is not aware of his negative social behaviors. They are not intentional. He simply does not get it. People act according to the way they perceive themselves. Billy’s perception of himself is not in reality; he has no understanding as to what he looks like. Billy needs a picture of the “real Billy” painted for him. Role-playing, videotaping, and behavioral rehearsals are effective tools (experiential learning instead of cognitive learning).
It has always been assumed that making friends is a skill that children should learn to do naturally on their own. Andy makes friends fairly easily, but such is not the case for Billy. The inability to form social relationships should be considered equal to a child having a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia. If Andy were dyslexic, he would not be asked to figure out on his own how to stop transposing a “b” to a “d” and vice versa. He would be given assistance to teach his brain how to recognize these symbols correctly.
The same holds true for Billy. Billy needs help in training his brain to properly interpret social cues and facial expressions. When teachers regard Billy’s behavior as deliberately disrespectful, they become angry and impatient, which only gets Billy more dysregulated and stressed. The solution is to give Billy understanding and to ensure he gets help in practicing new pro-social behaviors. He needs to practice new responses in order to replace old patterns. “How” to make friends must be demonstrated and role-played for and with him.
Listening. Billy’s ability to focus and use appropriate eye contact when engaging with a peer or teacher is very limited. Listening drills that practice keeping focused with appropriate eye contact in the context of a safe relationship with a calm and regulated adult may be required. Additionally, Billy’s brain is not wired to “listen” to body language and other nonverbal cues. Billy must be taught how to listen to a person’s tone of voice, affect, and body language.
Safety and Security. Creating a safe environment at the social and emotional levels for the Billys of the classroom—and all students for that matter—is an extremely effective way to boost overall academic achievement. Students whose social skills are inept are at a higher risk for academic underachievement. When students feel safe and their anxiety is decreased, they are more able to access their thinking brain—their neocortex.
SURVEY SAYS:
“If I had my baby sister at school it would be better.”
Safe Base. A student like Billy always needs an “escape hatch.” Early experiences of trauma left him with a sensitivity to feeling trapped and helpless. If these feelings are triggered, Billy is likely to become reactive and in many cases can go into a panic. Billy needs the option to connect with someone with whom he feels safe. He needs a safe base.
To create a safe base for Billy, he should be matched up with an emotionally attuned and regulated adult in the school, a mentor of sorts. As in playing tag, when children run to base for safety, Billy needs a safe base—someone to seek out for regulation and safety—when he becomes agitated, anxious, or upset so that he does not feel trapped. This person can be anybody in the school. It does not take a trained professional in the field of mental health to sit with a student and simply connect with him. The mentor’s role would be to check in with Billy, not to discipline him or talk to him about the way he should or should not be acting. A typical conversation might look like this:
Billy: “Hi.”
Mentor: “Hi, Billy. How’s it going?”
Billy: “Okay.”
Mentor: “It’s good to see you. How about you come sit next to me while I finish up this task.”
Billy: “Okay.”
Mentor: “You’re going to be okay. Take some deep breaths with me. Just let yourself settle and feel safe again.”
Billy: “Okay.”
Mentor: (Breathing deeply to help Billy settle his system, giving Billy quiet time and sending him a few reassuring glances.)
Billy: “I hate my teacher.”
Mentor: “Sounds like it’s not going so well, huh?”
Billy: “She picks on me and is ALWAYS correcting me and NEVER gives me a break!”
Mentor: “That’s a tough deal. What else is going on?”
Billy: “I just can’t seem to do anything right. I hate my teacher. I hate this stupid school. I hate this entire world.”
Mentor: “How are you feeling about yourself?”
Billy: “I hate myself! I’m stupid and I don’t know how to do any of the math problems. No matter what, I can’t ever get them right!”
Mentor: “How about you and I talk to your teacher about this after school?”
Billy: “She won’t listen!”
Mentor: “I’ll be there. I’ll make sure we can all work this out. Okay?”
Billy: (Grudgingly) “Okay.”
Mentor: “Okay ... take a few more breaths with me. Shake it out with me. Let’s get you ready to go back to class.”
Billy: “Hmmmph.”
Mentor: “Ready? Let me walk you back. There’s always a way to work these things out. I want you to get the help you need and not get so frustrated anymore. Alright?”
Billy: “Okay ... thanks.”
Mentor: “I’ll meet you here after school.”
The mentor’s role is simply to provide emotional space for Billy. The mentor is there to listen, ask inquisitive questions, help Billy process and express, and help him calm down and regulate. Notice in the above conversation, the mentor did not lecture, redirect, try to find a solution, or try to change Billy’s thinking. Table 11.2 shows more ways to create emotional space for a student who needs one-on-one support to calm down.
Table 11.2. Tips for creating emotional space
No More Survival of the Fittest. Children must learn interpersonal skills and how to solve conflicts to succeed in life. However, the letting children “work it out on their own” approach can be severely damaging to children like Billy. Andy can work through social dilemmas with only minor emotional hardship, but Billy will likely sink further into a state of dysregulation, and negative behaviors will manifest more intensely.
SURVEY SAYS:
“Teachers should be aware of kids fighting and not be afraid to interact and do something.”
The Billys of the classroom are acutely aware of how they do not fit in and how different they are. This creates a negative self-perception along with more insecurity in the school environment. Social conflicts are opportunities for these students to learn how to improve their social skills instead of increasing their sense of not fitting into the world, and they need teachers to step in and help navigate. Billy lives in a world he does not understand and in a world that does not understand him. He deserves guidance in understanding the nuances of human interactions rather than being left to his own devices and then punished.
Helping children who are struggling and tussling with each other does not mean handling the conflict through power, control, and pure authority. This will automatically create a divisive dynamic of “me against you” for Billy. His ability to take responsibility will be greatly decreased, as Billy will resist and blame the teacher for the issue. Sending Billy to a time-out or isolative type of punishment to think about what he “did wrong” will only give Billy more time to think about how to “get away with it better next time” or how “stupid” he is and how he “just doesn’t fit into this world.”
Approaching student conflicts with a level of acceptance, knowing that these students do not have the social maturity or wisdom to know how to do it differently, can keep the teacher in a regulated and mindful framework. Giving compassion and understanding to each student, allowing each student to have a voice, will work to de-escalate the situation.
Instead of punishing and isolating the student who appears to be the instigator, this student requires more direct one-on-one assistance to help him return to a place of regulation. The most out-of-control student is feeling the most isolative and the most threatened; he is the one in the deepest fear state. Children act out from a state of dysregulation and fear. Giving this student attention does not reward his behavior; it teaches him how to change and it stops him from further decompensating. Here is an example from an elementary class:
The students were having “center time.” Billy was playing with the math manipulatives and another student when all of a sudden, he began arguing and yelling. The other student just as quickly lost self-control and yelled back. The argument became more heated and Billy continued to elevate the disagreement. Instead of the teacher sending Billy to time-out or sending him to the corner, the teacher first said to the other student, “Andy, Billy isn’t feeling very safe right now and I know this doesn’t make you feel good being treated this way. Stay here and continue playing while I help Billy. I’ll be back to make sure you get what you need also.” The teacher calmly took Billy’s hand and said, “Let’s go over to my desk so I can help you. You’re not in trouble, Billy. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Once Billy is calmed down and away from the stressful situation, the teacher can then work with him individually or, in this case, with the entire class. Mantras in the classroom in this particular example would be exceptionally helpful. The teacher could have the entire class stop at their centers and point to the mantra poster board saying, “Class, when you need help, who do you ask?” And the class reads and responds, “We ask the teacher.” The teacher reinforces that it is her job to make sure everyone is safe and that there will be no fighting, arguing, or hurting. She points to the mantra poster board again and says, “There will be no what?” And the class responds, “No fighting, no arguing, no hurting.”
Practicing problem-solving skills will ensure fewer conflicts in the future. In this way, students learn how to take responsibility for their actions instead of blaming and shunning others for their actions, which typically happens when they are simply punished. They also start learning the vital life skill of self-regulation.
If you are thinking, “But shouldn’t Billy get a consequence for his behavior?” consider that he did. Billy was removed from the activity. He essentially had a time-out—only it was with the teacher to give him a chance to learn how to calm his nervous system down. If the teacher feels that Billy should have more of a consequence, she could simply say to Billy, “I need you to stay with me for the rest of center time. We have to learn to be safe in this class, so stay with me and we can try center time again tomorrow.”
Billy still receives a “consequence,” but the delivery is “we” focused, thereby taking the shame, blame, and punishment out of removing him from the activity. Billy receives the support he needs, is given a better solution for how to handle himself next time, and is given hope of tomorrow being a better day.
SURVEY SAYS:
“Make kids stop bullying me.”
“Teachers should make people feel good in the class and not bullied.”
No Tolerance for Bullying. Bullying is social issues on steroids. Children like Billy are poignant targets for bullying and it should never be tolerated—ever. Every child has a right to feel safe in school, always.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services reports, “Children with disabilities—such as physical, developmental, intellectual, emotional, and sensory disabilities—are at an increased risk of being bullied. Any number of factors—physical vulnerability, social skill challenges, or intolerant environments—may increase the risk.”3 This describes Billy exactly. His deficits and disabilities make him appear weaker and thus easily dominated and mistreated.
When Billy, with a high sensitively to feeling powerless, hopeless, and helpless, is bullied, he will go into a severe fight-or-flight response. Bullying affects Billy at the primal level. He is likely to become either aggressive and assaultive or he will go to the other end of the spectrum and become depressed or even suicidal. Billy is ill-equipped to handle such intense feelings and he absolutely needs the help and intervening actions of an educator to step forward on his behalf. If not, the results have tragic potential. Here is a story of one mother whose son with a developmental disability was bullied:
Last year, there was a group of girls calling my son, a sixth grader, a “retard.” The teacher knew about it and made mention of it to the girls but did not follow through on stopping the bullying from that point. When I discussed the situation with the teacher, her response was, “It’s just the way teenage girls are. They don’t mean anything by it.” I took my concerns higher up the ladder and spoke with the administrative staff. I was told that my son simply needed to have a stronger backbone. It was almost as if I did not present a strong enough case of bullying and that this situation was not worthy enough to be considered “legitimate bullying,” similar to Todd Akin using the term “legitimate rape.” Rape is rape. Bullying is bullying. They are unacceptable, always. My son, due to his traumatic history, is highly sensitive to stress and has an extremely low sense of self. The bullying by this group of girls sent him spiraling downward. As the bullying continued, and no one would take the impact of this on my son seriously, the situation only intensified and he attempted suicide. He went into an extreme flight mode and attempted to create his own exit strategy by killing himself. Fortunately, my son’s attempt proved unsuccessful and he is still with us today.
The traditional justifications for bullying such as the ones given in the story above, along with sayings such as “boys will be boys” or “that’s just the way teenagers act,” cannot be accepted for any student, especially Billy. With a child like Billy, who has a history of feeling powerless and a belief system in place that says he does not deserve to be on this planet, bullying behavior has to be taken seriously. It has to be stopped by those in charge of the school environment.
Stopping the bullying, however, does not mean putting the bully and the victim into a room and telling them to work it out. These are two Billys who live in survival. One has 100% of the power and the other has zero. The gap is too far for these two to be able to work through a resolution on their own. They need an adult to take strong and immediate action with a no-tolerance policy.