This article is reprinted with the
permission of Mary Beth Hewitt. It is reprinted from CHOICES, volume
2, pages 15-18. For more information, go to the bottom of this page.
Just as individuals go through fairly predictable
developmental stages as they grow, many students go through typical behavioral
phases throughout the year. This is the third in a series of articles,
which describe some common behavioral stages.
In the past two articles of the CHOICES Newsletter, we addressed “The Honeymoon Phenomenon” and “Testing The Limits." Most students, once they make it through these stages, settle in and accept their program and become enthusiastic and willing learners. There is a small percentage of students, however, that seem determined to sabotage any chance of success.
If a student moves into a period of active resistance,
this is really the “make it or break it” point in his/her program.
If you can weather this phase, the good news is that the student will finally
begin to trust and will decide to work with you. The bad news is
that many people find it so difficult to work with a child who is so openly
resistant, defiant, and/or confrontational that a common response is to
give up on the student and look for an alternative placement. Unfortunately,
this is exactly what the student expected, which is why he/she was actively
resistant from the beginning.
WHY DO STUDENTS ACTIVELY RESIST?
If an individual has previously had a negative experience
with school or adults in general, it may be hard for him/her to believe
that it is possible to have successful experiences. Some of our students
have experienced painful rejections. To guard against being rejected
or unsuccessful again, they opt to reject us first, believing that the
best defense is a good offense.
Offensive is exactly what their behavior becomes. It appears
as if they are trying to pick a fight with us. This can be very confusing
to staff members who are trying their hardest to be caring and positive
with these children. It seems that the harder you try, the worse
they become. They actively resist any attempts to be nice to
them.
If you look at the Conflict Cycle paradigm below, you will see that these students believe that they are “bad." Based on past experiences with some adults, they overgeneralize that all adults are mean, rejecting and uncaring. When a relatively new adult says or does something positive, the child does not trust the action as being genuine. To borrow an analogy from children’s literature, their attitude is like the fly who does not trust the intentions of the spider when she says, “Come into my lair." Nice treatment from an adult and success do not “compute” with their beliefs about themselves or their beliefs about adult behavior. This creates a sense of confusion and discomfort.
To regain emotional equilibrium, these students will reject the caring action. This, in turn, creates a feeling of confusion in the adult. When friendly advances are negatively reinforced with rejection, the adult usually modifies his/her behavior and ceases giving positive strokes. Often times he/she goes beyond withdrawing positive comments and actions and becomes openly hostile. Either of these responses confirms the child’s original beliefs about him/herself (“I’m no good.”) and about adults ("They may look or sound nice at first, but eventually their true colors come out, and they either ignore you or are mean to you. It’s a good thing I didn’t start to care about them or trust them.”)
Don’t these children want to experience success and
caring? Actually, they truly don’t want to be rejected again, but
since they think that it is inevitable, they push to make it happen.
Believing “If it’s going to happen anyway,
I might as well get it over with” gives them some sense of control.
Acting like you don’t care and goofing up on purpose can protect you from
trying and failing.
THREE REASONS WHY ADULTS GIVE UP:
1) They Take The Negative Reaction Personally
Working with “wounded” children is much akin to
working with wounded animals. The problem is that we cannot see the
wounds. If we went to rescue a wounded animal, we would not be surprised
if that animal attacked us. We could see that it was hurt and scared
and merely trying to defend itself from being hurt again. We would
understand where the behavior was coming from and be empathetic.
Although we would make certain we protected ourselves from injury, we would
try to behave in a manner which would increase trust. Our voices
would be soothing, our actions non-threatening, and we would be patient.
Unfortunately, when working with children with emotional
problems, we cannot see their wounds. Therefore, we take the
attacking or rejecting behavior as an emotional affront. A thought
might be, “How dare you treat me this way! Can’t you see that I’m
trying to help you?” If we take active resistance behavior personally,
we are more likely to react emotionally instead of rationally. Instead
of interpreting the behavior as coming from the student’s fear, we view
it as a personal rejection. Learning how to depersonalize the hurtful
words or actions is an essential skill. (For more information on
how to do this, see the article “Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones But
Names Can Never Hurt Me” in CHOICES Newsletter Articles Volume 1)
(“The Conflict Cycle – Nicholas J. Long, Ph.D. President,
Life Space Crisis Intervention Institute)
2) Their positive actions are rejected
When I was doing my teacher preparation training,
I was taught that giving positive reinforcement for appropriate behavior
would increase the likelihood that an individual would repeat the behavior.
Imagine my confusion, when I gave one of my students, Roy, positive verbal
reinforcement for his appropriate behaviors, and he immediately misbehaved.
It seemed that whenever I said anything nice to him, I immediately regretted
it. The days I called home to tell Roy’s parents something nice he
had done were followed by some of his worst days. It seemed
like I was being punished for giving him positive reinforcement.
Since at the time I did not understand the dynamics of the conflict cycle,
I stopped giving him any positive strokes.
What my instructors didn’t tell me was that positive verbal reinforcement from an adult may not be positive to some students because it conflicts with their belief systems about themselves and about adults. That does not mean that you have to stop giving positive feedback. It just means that you have to, at least initially, give it in such a way that takes into account the student’s beliefs.
3) They “Stuff” Their Feelings
We have the same three choices in managing our feelings as our students
do. We can act them out and behave aggressively. We can deny/swallow
them and behave passively, pretending that we are not upset. Or,
we can accept our feelings and express them appropriately. Children
who actively resist, create their feelings in us. We can begin to
feel just as confused, hopeless, hurt, scared, worthless, and angry as
they do. We can respond by attacking or withdrawing OR we can express
our feelings appropriately. The way to deal with our feelings in
an appropriate way is to send “I” messages.
(Dr. Mac's note: You can
find more information on I messages inside the home page link of that name)
The sending of “I” messages help us maintain control
of our behavior when we are experiencing intense emotions by providing
us with a release. By saying, “I am feeling….hurt,
angry, confused…” I not only help myself, I also model for the student
that you can talk about feelings and not act on them. It is critical
that you ‘own’ your feeling by making an ‘I’ statement and not blame the
student through the use of a ‘You’ statement. My worst fear when
I started sending “I” messages was that the student would know that he/she
“got” to me. What I found was, since that was his/her unconscious
goal, if I didn’t admit it, then he/she kept trying to get to me.
Once I admitted it, not only did he/she stop, frequently, he/she expressed
the same feeling. What I had done, by talking about my feelings,
was create an environment where talking about all feelings was acceptable.
BREAKING THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY:
Interpret Active Resistance Behavior
If a student views him/herself as begin worthless,
statements that run contrary to this belief are rejected. It would
be like believing you are a girl and then having someone tell you that
you were a boy. You would argue with that person and if he/she did
not change his/her mind, you would argue some more. You might engage
others to help you with your case. Finally, you might say, “Let me
prove it to you!” The children who are rejecting positive strokes
and their own personal success are arguing with us about their self-worth.
They believe themselves to be bad; we are saying that they are good.
That does not compute. They set out to prove that we are wrong.
I had a houseguest for a while who had experienced significant rejections and suffered through devastating life experiences. When I would come home from work, I would notice some positive things she had done that day and comment on how considerate it was of her and how nice it was to have her staying there. Within a half-hour, something would break. After a few days and a few more broken trinkets, I decided to take a crack at interpreting her behavior. I gave her a compliment and then I said, “It’s hard for you to hear nice things about yourself isn’t it?” She immediately responded with, “Why are you so nice to me? Why do you let me stay here? Can’t you see what a worthless person I am?” That evening, nothing broke.
At a recent workshop when I was discussing the phenomenon of active resistance and the rejection of positive reinforcement, a participant shared with me how immediately after she had given a student praise, he had destroyed his paper. When she expressed her confusion, he said, “Why do you care anyway? I’m just going to fail. Can’t you see that?”
Often individuals do not even know why they reject positive feedback. Sometimes bringing it to a level of awareness with statements like, “It's hard for you to hear nice things about yourself"; or “It’s hard for you to believe that people do care"; or “You don‘t trust that I‘m telling you the truth” is enough to bring the underlying motivation for the rejection to the surface.
Many times you will get statements like the ones above in which the students begin depreciating themselves. To those I respond with, “You may have made mistakes or failed in the past, but that doesn’t mean YOU are a mistake. You are just as capable of doing good things.” I have found that interpreting the resistance generally creates a bond with the individual. It’s like saying, “I suspect that the reason you are doing this is because you are hurt and feeling badly, not because you are bad.”
Written Versus Verbal Feedback
It’s an interesting phenomenon, but I’ve found that
many students will accept positive feedback if it is in writing.
I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect that it may be because it is more
private, appears to be a little more objective, is concrete evidence and
actually demonstrates that the person invested some personal time.
These factors increase the credibility level of the feedback. People
can dismiss what you say by saying, “You’re just
saying that.” When you take the time, however, to commit something
to writing, it’s harder to dismiss. Think about how many of us hold on
to thank you notes and pleasant things people have written to us, sometimes
for years.
I used this writing technique with one of my former
students, Ronnie. I carried a packet of post it notes with me and
when I would see Ronnie doing something I appreciated, I would just jot
a note and stick it on his desk. He would look at it and then crumple
it up and put it in his pocket. He did not, however, behave inappropriately
afterward, like he did when I gave him positive verbal feedback.
It seemed the technique was working, although I felt sad that he crumpled
the notes. About half way through the year I went to Ronnie’s house
on a home visit. As I went to use the restroom, I passed by his room.
Taped to the door were all the post it notes I had given him and some of
the positive letters I had sent home to his parents. They mattered
to Ronnie; he just wasn’t ready to let me know that they mattered.
Dr. Mac's note: For more information
on writing notes, see the home page link titled "Nice things to try..."
Preparing Students For Positive Feedback
I’ve also found that students are more likely to
accept positive feedback if I give advance notice by saying something similar
to, "I have something nice I’d like to tell you;
do you want to hear it?’" or "I’d like to
give you a compliment; how are you going to handle it?" What
this does is give the student an opportunity to stop and think before responding.
They begin to respond rationally instead of habitually. It is at this point
that I begin teaching them how to accept a compliment by saying, “Thank
you.”
AFTER ACTIVE RESISTANCE: BEGINNING TO TRUST
As I wrote at the beginning of the article, the good news is that if you make it through this period, the student will settle in and begin to trust. Although there will continue to be times when the new feelings of caring and belonging become overwhelming and they revert to rejecting behavior, those times become fewer and farther between. There will also be times when the student becomes intensely jealous of any time you spend with other students but that, too, can be worked through (we’ll address that in a future issue of this newsletter).
The single most important component in helping students
succeed is the establishment of a relationship with at least one caring
adult. If you’ve made it through this period of active resistance
with a child, congratulations...you’ve just become that person.
**If you like
the tips of Mary Beth Hewett, you can purchase one or both volumes of CHOICES
(a collection of her newsletter articles with about 25-30 of her writings
in each) by going to the web site www.edutech.org./choices/choicesf.htm.
, calling 315/332-7255, or faxing
315/332-2117.
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