Thread: In Need on In-depth Understanding of Childhood Anxiety

I'm going to talk to my mom about this. She retired after 30+ years teaching middle school special ed, and then went to teach as a sub after retirement at the "alternative (aka detention) school". She truly has a gift for dealing with troubled children, and I know that her approach is not always a soft sweet one, but sometimes she tries to reach them on their level without overstepping her boundaries.

You're dealing with lots of different things here. Part could be behavioral based on his upbringing, part could be medical based on his conditions, part could be mental based on potential drug use during pregnancy. Each one of those things has to be broken down and handled different, not simultaneously. It's sort of like making a brainstorming tree for him, then learning to identify where certain behaviors fit (was that one mental? was it behavioral? was it medical?) Can ANY of his outbreaks be tied to an out of whack blood sugar? Is he on any other meds that could cause irritability or anger? Once you learn to identify where the behaviors belong, you learn to deal with them.

On a behavioral level it seems that once a child thinks they are "bad", all the other kids think they're bad, the teachers think they're bad, their caregivers think they are bad.......they are more prone to act out. A child like that needs someone on THEIR team, someone that doesn't think they're "bad", someone that remains calm when they misbehave, someone that talks to them like a normal kid, but someone in which that child learns won't accept carp from them. Often, children like him don't know attention unless it's negative so it is what they seek. Anything they can do to get them negative attention, is what they are going to do. So it's vital to teach them positive reinforcement. You need to be that person who is a constant for him. You need to be that person that doesn't throw him off onto someone else when he misbehaves. You need to be someone that he learns isn't going anywhere, is not giving up on him, and is going to butt heads with him until he concedes. He needs stability.

With stability and consistency comes trust. This is the ideal time to set rewards. A reward shouldn't be "you get to go back into the classroom" because chances are he feels like such an outcast there that it is NOT a reward for him. And the more he hates it there, the more he's going to act out so that he can get out of there. A reward should be something that makes him feel special (most likely, he doesn't even know what it feels like).

Ask him to help you do things. Things other kids don't get to do. (Quite honestly I'm not 100% sure what your role is in this, so if you can't do these things, perhaps you can have someone do so that is in the position to) This might be something like helping to grade papers, helping to type up things, etc. They should be asked of him as a "I really need some help and am running out of time, could you help me?" type thing so that he feels a bit of a "hero" therefore, ego boosting.

These are times when he won't feel like the center of attention and you just might get him to open up a bit with time. Once you establish that trust, and he respects you, and knows you respect him...he'll feel much more accountable for doing things that could jeopardize that.

Sorry if this is overkill and all things you've thought about and tried. Just trying to go through the scenario in my head.