Introduction

Do you know a child or adolescent who is battling depression, anxiety issues, or anger issues? Are you the parent or teacher of a student who is misunderstood and who ends up isolated in the community or in school? This book is about the countless numbers of students and their families who are living with the invisible but very real emotional and behavioral disabilities. These students can shut down and refuse to interact, cut themselves, starve themselves, refuse to follow directions, or incite other students or adults. These students are not helpless or beyond help, they are simply misunderstood and often mistreated. This book tells their stories and offers some basic solutions that are so often ignored in schools.

Challenging behaviors can mask a child’s potential, strengths, and talents; interfere with academic success; and impair the fulfillment of a productive and happy life. Parents and teachers who work with students with emotional and behavioral challenges often are desperately searching for information about successful interventions. They are seeking professionals who understand their students and who can tell them how to help. Children and adolescents with challenging behaviors can be successful in school and in life, but they need strength-based, caring interventions. This cannot occur, however, with the current philosophies and practices in place in our schools. Nationally and worldwide, failure to attend to the needs of children with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges could result in a crisis so profound that all of us are likely to be affected. Now is the time to transform our education system and the way we serve and educate students with social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. There are interventions that work. This book is designed to provide parents and educators with tools for school success, including schoolwide and classroom interventions and evidence-based interventions for individual students.

School success for students with challenging behaviors is one of the most important issues in education, mostly because the societal implications for underserving or misunderstanding this group of children are so great. Students with challenging behaviors whose needs are not met will be adults with poor social skills either unnoticed or noticed for the wrong reasons. Children who suffer with the symptoms of oppositional defiance, mood, conduct, or other disorders often are talented, but their gifts have not been uncovered. They often are situated with one foot in the world of possible unemployment and discord and one foot in the world of possibility. Children with challenging behaviors have the lowest grade point averages, lowest high school graduation rates, and the largest unemployment rates compared to any other group. Educators and parents have a ripe opportunity to now take advantage of the educational research and understanding of biological and brain-based factors for challenging behavior and transform education for this important and growing group of students.

When the outcomes of students with identified emotional or behavioral disabilities are studied, the results are dismal. More students with emotional differences drop out than graduate with diplomas (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008; Wagner, Kutash, Duchnowksi, & Epstein, 2005). In general, people with mental health and behavioral problems tax our communities when they are unemployed, incarcerated, or upsetting themselves and others. Despite the shift from establishment of the rights of children with disabilities to international implementation of rights, our efforts to provide proper and sufficient supports for children with EBD have failed. There is still a wide gap between federal legislation and policy requiring the use of evidence-based methods for children who are at risk for developing, or have been identified with, an emotional or behavioral disability and actual school-based services provided (Kutash, Duchnowski, & Lynn, 2006).

To powerfully counter these outcomes and problems, parents and professionals must intervene early and swiftly with scientifically proven methods that build upon each individual’s strengths. Escalating public awareness, proliferating neuroscience research, and an explosion of data regarding negative outcomes show us that this is now the time to transform the way we provide needed academic, behavioral, and mental health services in education.

It’s generally well known that, from infancy to adulthood, a child’s behavior, control, expression of emotions, and social skills improve and typically reach a point where the child independently uses social, behavioral, or emotional skills. But for up to 20% of children, these milestones do not occur, and school support is necessary. Research shows us that skills in these areas can be developed when the right amount and type of proven methods are provided under the right conditions (Kauffman & Landrum, 2009). Research has shown the brain is malleable and open to intervention. Students with challenging behaviors can learn social, emotional, and behavioral skills.

Whether a child is experiencing mild social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties, or whether the child is already known to have a disability, these issues can be treated and changed through schoolwide, classwide, and individual interventions. In this book, children with challenging behaviors are described with many faces on a continuum—from transient behaviors related to a trauma, to serious behaviors requiring hospitalization or residential placement.

Unlike other school problems, behavior challenges are especially complex because dealing with behaviors involves opinion, perspective, and consideration for the interaction between and among the child’s support systems. Indeed, assessing and addressing behaviors often is more art than science, although progress is being made in the study of methods that work to improve school success.

Historically, how we teach children with interfering behaviors has related to our collective perception about how people with differences should be educated, and this includes how we perceive the cause of behaviors. Educators have developed more of an ecological perspective about behavior, which includes better understanding about the biological, environmental, family, and school factors that need to be addressed for school success. Some of the common misperceptions about behaviors are discussed in the Myths and Truths tables found at the beginning of each chapter.

Children with challenging behaviors often are smart, talented, and creative. But their behaviors can be described as oppositional, defiant, disrespectful, depressed, or anxious. These behaviors can overshadow or overcome a child’s strengths. Kids who struggle with behavior are not a small group. At least 6% to 10% of school-aged students have some degree of emotional or behavioral disorder. Yet, only 1% of school-aged students receive formal services (Kauffman & Landrum, 2009). This gap means that there may be up to 9.5 million students who struggle with challenging behaviors in our neighborhood schools who are not likely receiving the services they need to be safe, productive, and independent citizens (Wagner et al., 2005).

If you have picked up this book, perhaps you are trying to better understand your child or searching for new tools and strategies for helping talented but troubled students. Perhaps you know someone like the children we introduce in Chapter 1. Perhaps you are considering a career in working with students with emotional or behavioral disabilities. Because there are about 60 million students and staff members in America’s schools, there is a widespread opportunity to make a difference in the education of youths with social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. If you are a concerned educator or parent of a student with challenging behaviors, this book is for you.