• Introduction
• Chapter 2: Risk Factors
• Chapter 3: Protective Factors
• Chapter 5: Relationship, Relationship, Relationship
• Chapter 6: Opening the Culture Door
• Chapter 7: Preventing Challenging Behavior: The Social Content
• Chapter 10: Functional Assessment and Positive Behavior Support
• Chapter 11: The Inclusive Classroom
• Chapter 13: Bullying

From the Introduction
Andrew is like a volcano
Because Andrew’s facial expressions and body language seldom reflected his feelings or intentions, his challenging behavior seemed to come out of nowhere. One of his 4-year-old classmates said it best: “Andrew is like a volcano; he’s calm on the outside and ready to explode on the inside.”

The staff tried to encourage him when he was behaving appropriately, but positive reinforcement made Andrew nervous. If a teacher showed interest while Andrew was concentrating on a puzzle, he shoved it to the ground or threw the pieces at her. Eventually, the teachers found themselves viewing his positive behavior as a chance to take a breath or be with the other children, who were receiving less and less care. They were teaching Andrew that the best way to get their notice was to do something that made them angry.

There were also some irate parents. Each day their children came home with stories about what Andrew had done, sometimes sporting bruises he had inflicted. The parents simply didn’t understand why he was allowed to remain at the center. Barbara empathized with them, but she couldn’t help wondering what would happen to Andrew if she asked him to leave. Would another center tolerate his behavior better? Or would he just bounce from center to center?

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From Chapter 2: Risk Factors
Neurological problems
Children with challenging behavior often have difficulties with brain function. If the disability takes a recognizable form, the child may become eligible for special education services. But all too frequently, the problem remains undiagnosed or undiagnosable, and the teacher must find her own solutions.

Executive functions
Many children with challenging behavior have executive functions that don’t work properly. This catchall phrase encompasses a series of interdependent skills that enable children to regulate their thoughts, actions, and emotions and perform any goal-directed activity, from taking a sip of juice without spilling it to entering a game of hospital in the dramatic play corner. The executive functions include:

1. Planning and organizing behavior, including anticipating problems and figuring out strategies to cope with them
2. Sequencing behavior
3. Sustaining attention and concentration
4. Being flexible and able to shift from one mind-set to another
5. Inhibiting responses
6. Self-monitoring
7. Taking the perspective of others (Moffitt, 1997; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000)

Executive functions emerge at the end of the first year of life as children start to inhibit certain responses. At about 2 years they can begin to use rules to guide their behavior, and from 3 to 5 years their ability to self-regulate gets better and better (Zelazo, 2005). These improvements coincide with growth in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, where the executive functions reside (Anderson, 2002). When a child’s executive functions are out of kilter, she can’t control her behavior very well and is liable to act impulsively, without considering the impact on others (Moffitt, 1997). Many of the difficulties we describe involve problems with executive function.

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From Chapter 3: Protective Factors
Why things go right
After decades of trying to figure out why things go wrong, researchers came up with the idea of trying to figure out why things go right, even in adversity. Child development specialists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists set to work studying children who were growing up in difficult circumstances—in war, in poverty, in families where there is violence or mental illness or divorce—to determine why some of them have the ability to cope successfully even when they encounter high hurdles.

The researchers named this ability resilience (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Rutter, 2000; Werner, 2000) and found that it is associated with a series of protective or opportunity factors that counter the impact of the risk factors in a child’s life. In general, the more protective factors there are and the better they balance the risk factors, the more likely it is that a child will meet the challenges in his life and turn out to be a competent and caring individual (Werner, 2000).

Risk factors have a tendency to pile up, each one bringing others in its wake (Masten & Obradovic, 2006). A child who grows up in an unsafe neighborhood, for example, may overreact to his peers’ behavior and pay little attention in school, which may lead to rejection, school failure, and low self-esteem—which in turn raise his risk for aggressive behavior, delinquency, and substance abuse. No teacher can change the fact that a family lives in poverty or a child’s mother abused drugs when she was pregnant. But teachers can help the child (and maybe even his family) to deal with those risk factors more effectively. If we can bolster some of his protective factors early on, we may be able to minimize or even ward off some of the risks and divert him onto an entirely different developmental trajectory (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Rutter, 1987).

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From Chapter 5: Relationship, Relationship, Relationship
How can you develop a positive relationship with a child with challenging behavior?
Relationships are actually made up of thousands of interactions (Pianta, 1999). If the teacher responds sensitively, promptly, and consistently, over time these interactions add up to a secure attachment—an emotional investment, a positive, supportive relationship, and an organized way for teacher and child to relate to one another (Howes, 1999).

All the while, these interactions are building brain circuits vital to self-regulation—circuits that are reinforced each time a teacher helps a child return to a regulated state (Cozolino, 2006).

But constructing such a relationship with children with challenging behavior is not an easy matter. Their internal working models of adult-child relationships (which remain unknown to us) accompany them to child care or school, where the strategies that protect them from rejection or haphazard caregiving at home may provoke exactly the behavior they are supposed to ward off, alienating them from their teachers and classmates (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, & Roisman, 2010; Howes & Ritchie, 2002). As psychologist Robert Karen writes (1998), “The behavior of the insecurely attached child—whether aggressive or cloying—often tries the patience of peers and adults alike. It elicits reactions that repeatedly reconfirm the child’s distorted view of the world” (p. 228).

If a child doesn’t trust adults to come through for him, the teacher must be, as Sroufe puts it, “patiently, inevitably, constantly” available (Sroufe, 1983, p. 77). If the child expects to be rejected and the teacher excludes him by putting him in time-out or sending him out of the class, then his expectations are confirmed (Karen, 1998). In contrast, if a teacher reacts empathically, it becomes possible for the child to believe that people actually do respond to his needs (Weinfeld et al., 1999).

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From Chapter 6: Opening the Culture Door
How does culture influence behavior?
When child care or school resembles home, a child experiences less stress, and home values are reinforced. When child care or school is different from home, there is discontinuity—hence more risk.

As soon as they’re born, children start to acquire the skills they need to become competent adults in their own culture, and by the time they enter child care or school, they’re already well on their way. In the new setting, a lot of what they’ve learned so far in their home culture simply doesn’t apply. They must start again from scratch.

Children who find themselves in a strange environment are likely to feel confused, isolated, alienated, conflicted, and less competent. The curriculum, instruction, and discipline may not recognize or support their culture; and their teachers may not notice or appreciate the talents, skills, and abilities they developed in their home community. As a result, they don’t feel accepted, respected, or valued; their self-concept and academic achievement may suffer (Gay, 2000); and they may act out. Experts often blame discontinuity for the high rate of school failure and dropout among children from diverse cultures and poor families (Gay, 2000).…

Given such discontinuity, it is easy to see how a cultural conflict, visible or invisible, can cause or contribute to challenging behavior. What was perfectly acceptable at home may be suddenly and inexplicably inappropriate at school.

If a child doesn’t answer when you ask how she feels, her behavior may be culturally appropriate, not defiant or sullen. She may not know how, or wish, to answer because in her culture it is considered rude for people to express their personal feelings. A 3-year-old who spills her apple juice may not be clumsy or immature; she may not know how to drink from a cup because in her culture many generations ago liquid was too precious to present to a child in a spillable form and she still drinks from a bottle at home.

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From Chapter 7: Preventing Challenging Behavior: The Social Context
How does the social context affect aggressive behavior?
Not surprisingly, the social context influences the appearance and spread of aggressive behavior. In a key study, Sheppard G. Kellam and his colleagues (Kellam, Long, Merisca, Brown, & Ialongo, 1998) followed more than 1,000 children from their random assignment to first-grade classrooms into middle school. In grade 1 classrooms where the level of aggression was high, boys who were already at risk for aggressive behavior acted more aggressively and continued to be at high risk for aggression into grade 6. That is, the aggressive social context of the grade 1 classroom socialized them to become more aggressive. But boys who were in first-grade classrooms with a low level of aggression avoided this outcome and were at far less risk, even if their initial aggression matched that of their peers. The nonviolent social context—established by more skillful teachers—protected them. Children at high risk were far more susceptible to the effects of the classroom’s social context than children at low risk (Kellam et al., 1998).

While they’re learning self-control, young children rely heavily on the external environment—including their teachers and peers—to help them. Some researchers have even suggested that the years up to grade 3 constitute a kind of sensitive period that sets patterns for future behavior (Buyse, Verschueren, Verachtert, & Van Damme, 2009; Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995). Teachers can support children with challenging behavior as they work to develop their internal controls—and at the same time direct them onto a more positive emotional and educational trajectory—by surrounding them with a positive, prosocial, predictable, caring social context (Hamre & Pianta, 2005; Raver, Garner, & Smith-Donald, 2007; Rimm-Kaufman, Curby, Grimm, Nathanson, & Brock, 2009).

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From Chapter 10: Functional Assessment and Positive Behavior Support
The world through the child’s eyes
Every challenging behavior can be thought of as a child’s solution to a problem and a form of communication. These ideas go back to Plato, who said that a crying baby’s behavior serves a function: She is trying to get someone to care for her. (Durand, 1990).

This is the underlying principle of functional assessment (FA, sometimes called functional behavioral assessment) and positive behavior support (PBS), two linked strategies developed by behavioral psychologists for understanding a child’s challenging behavior. Their goal is to figure out what is triggering the behavior and what the child is getting from it—and to teach her a more acceptable way to fulfill those needs instead (O’Neill et al., 1997; Repp, Karsh, Munk, & Dahlquist, 1995). Together, they enable you to look at the world through the child’s eyes.

Challenging behavior isn’t really as random and unpredictable as it seems. By focusing on the child’s immediate environment, you can understand where the behavior is coming from, why it’s happening at a particular time in a particular place (Durand, 1990), the logic behind it, and the function or purpose it serves for the child (Dunlap and Kern, 1993; Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman, 1982; O’Neill et al., 1997). Once you understand the function, you can design a positive behavior support plan, sometimes called a behavior intervention plan or BIP, to help the child achieve her purpose in an appropriate way and render the challenging behavior “irrelevant, ineffective, and inefficient” (O’Neill et al., 1997, p. 8).

Of course, all the causes of challenging behavior aren’t in the immediate environment, but viewing it from this angle can be extremely helpful. Functional assessment and positive behavior support are powerful strategies to add to your toolbox, especially when you have already built a positive, responsive relationship with the child and created an inclusive, supportive learning environment. Although it takes time and effort to do a functional assessment and develop a positive behavior support plan, it’s a sound investment. In the end, you’ll spend less time addressing behavior problems and more time teaching.

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From Chapter 11: The Inclusive Classroom
Preventing and addressing challenging behavior in children with disabilities
Successful inclusion relies on good teaching, and good teaching begins with the understanding that all children are special and every child learns in his own unique fashion. When you consider the needs, abilities, interests, preferences, cultures, and learning styles of each child and make the program fit the child rather than the child fit the program, you will find ways for all children—with and without disabilities—to participate and succeed.

As you face an inclusive class for the first time, it’s natural to feel nervous. You may wonder whether you have the skills and knowledge necessary for this job; and if there haven’t been many individuals with disability in your life, you may feel uneasy about what to say and do. Because the children will take their cues from you, it’s important to come to terms with those feelings.

Some children may never have met a person with a disability. Without isolating anyone in the class, explain that a disability doesn’t define a person but is only a part of who he is—we are all different in some way, and differences are valuable assets (Kluth, 2003). Clarify that there are several types of disability, some visible (because the child uses a wheelchair or a hearing aid, for example) and some invisible (because you can’t see a learning disability or ADHD).

As early as possible, ask the parents how they’d like you to talk about the disability with their child and the other children (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010). With their permission and the permission of the child, talk with the class about what they know and think. A child with a disability may want to talk about his experiences as well. Together, create guidelines to enable the children to feel at ease and help one another—for example, remember to focus on each child’s strengths (what he can do, not what he can’t do); and allow each child to be the judge of his own capabilities (Karten, 2005).

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From Chapter 13: Bullying
Should there be consequences for children who bully?
Many bullying experts believe that penalties don’t deter children with serious bullying problems and that punishment leads to harsher attacks. Children who bully may blame their punishment on the child they targeted, seek vengeance, and issue new threats (Robinson & Maines, 2000). Punishment also teaches that bullying is acceptable for people with power (Johnstone, Munn, & Edwards, 1991). Severe punishments, such as suspension or expulsion, discourage children from disclosing bullying or intervening in a bullying situation, and experts advise against using them (U.S. Department of Education, 2010).

Olweus (1993) regards a serious talk with a child who’s bullying as a consequence and suggests some other conventional sanctions, such as sending him to the principal’s office. Some schools use behavior contracts where, without actually admitting to bullying, the child promises not to bully in the future and understands the consequences of breaking the contract (O’Moore & Minton, 2004).

Pepler and Craig (2000) favor formative consequences, which teach empathy, awareness, and social skills, at the same time that they hold children responsible for their behavior and emphasize that bullying is unacceptable. Formative consequences help a child who behaves in a cruel way learn to treat others with more kindness and make amends for his behavior, for example by asking him to repair the damage he’s done, reading stories about bullying, talking about how bullying makes people feel, and observing and reporting on acts of kindness in the school and community.

This approach enables children who bully to “turn their negative power and dominance into positive leadership” (Pepler & Craig, 2000, p. 19). Barbara Coloroso (2002) also endorses giving children who bully the opportunity to have responsibility, make a contribution, and experience their own ability to do good.

Rigby (1998) and others advocate a respectful, humanistic approach based on the desire to understand the children involved. They propose listening carefully, establishing two-way communication, and using a technique like the Support Group Approach developed by George Robinson and Barbara Maines in England (2000) or the Method of Shared Concern created by Anatol Pikas in Sweden (1989).

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