Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids

By John R Frew

Teaching students whose behaviour is so ‘out of control’ is a challenge faced by all teachers in modern schools. Contemporary approaches have focused on dealing with the presenting behaviours and attempting to control those. This approach may deal with the problem in the short term but creates no long-term solution.
This work accepts that the majority of extremely dysfunctional behaviour is carried out by children who have suffered early, persistent trauma and/or neglect. Disruptive conduct can be explained by the effect their early childhood environment has had on the neural construction of their brain. These children are not ‘born bad’ but behave this way because of the ‘parenting’ they received in their early life. These are the children who have graduated out of these dysfunctional environments.
Recognising this provides the key to understanding how to deal with these kids. Because the social conditions created these problems, if we change those conditions, over time these children will develop different behaviours to get their fundamental needs met. The solution lies in the fact that everyone acts to get their needs met in the environment in which they live, so it makes sense to present an environment that demands different behaviours to satisfy these needs.
The book provides a description about how the early childhood environment creates the neural scaffold that drives dysfunctional behaviour and how developing a well-defined classroom environment will make a positive contribution to changing that behaviour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781787105447

John R Frew

John R. Frew has worked in public education for over forty years, the last twenty-four as a school principal. In 1988, he established a unit for students with emotional disturbances and severe behaviours. Two years later, based on the success of the unit, he became the founding principal of the first school in New South Wales, Australia, dedicated to dealing with students with severe conduct disorder and oppositional defiance. John has written numerous books and programs on behaviour management. He has published numerous articles nationally and internationally. He has also presented at numerous conferences across Australia and internationally. He has also had a successful career in sport, which produced two books, The Art of Coaching Kids and Training Drills for All Team Sports. In his time in coaching, John wrote two columns for local and national papers.

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About the Author

John R. Frew has worked in education for almost fifty years and during that time has operated in a wide range of schools and specialist settings. He was appointed as foundation principal at a secondary school for students with conduct disorder and oppositional disturbance where he served for ten years. During his time at the school, John researched and studied the causes and interventions for dealing with these children. While there, he wrote three publications that supported other workers in the field. These included:

• Back on Track – a goal setting program for dysfunctional students

• Taming Anger – a series of worksheets for students to deal with their anger

• The Classroom Management Program.

John finished his career in mainstream secondary school as a principal where he has continued his work in dealing with students with severe behaviours through his consultancy practice, Frew Consultants Group, which provides support for teachers and schools, especially those who struggle with children having dysfunctioning behaviours. He has produced over 120 regular free newsletters of teaching tips for all school staff.

Since retirement, John has released further two books of essays, The Impact of Modern Neuroscience on Contemporary Teaching and Insights into the Modern Classroom that discuss various aspects of teaching damaged kids. This latest book, Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids is designed to be a guidebook for practicing educators in all school settings.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those thousands of children I have had the privilege of teaching.

Copyright Information ©

John R. Frew (2021)

The right of John R. Frew to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781787106390 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781787105447 (ePub e-book)

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First Published (2021)

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Introduction

This book started out with a focus on dealing with students whose dysfunctional behaviour has created huge problems for their teachers and their classmates, not to mention the destructive impact that the behaviour has on their own learning. This area is the field that underpins my expertise in education, having spent a significant part of my own learning in classrooms and schools that were specifically intended for such kids.

In the concluding part of my career, I was the principal of a ‘normal’ comprehensive secondary school. During these years, I witnessed the benefits of applying the techniques I developed to manage the behaviour of these so-called mainstream students. The conventions I advocate for dealing with the most difficult students focusses on the environment created in the school and the classroom. This environment provides the conditions for all students to optimise their learning opportunities.

Any teacher, academic or educational bureaucrat, understands that the best predictor of educational success is the characteristic of the family in which a child is raised. Of course, this statement is almost redundant, it is given in most educational literature. At best, the subsequent discussion around this feature explains why this is so; the discussion never, to the best of my knowledge, examines how we can develop these traits of success for children from families that do not provide these essential qualities. Most kids come from average homes with families that might not possess these ‘qualities’ and some kids are raised in families who provide such an abusive and neglectful conditions that these children arrive at school devoid of the means to succeed in school. The ambition of this book is to provide the teachers and school executives with tools to address this inequity.

From the start, it must be clearly stated that this book is for teachers and not mental health workers. Damaged children, who are the focus of the first part of this book, would benefit enormously from real, professional psychiatric support but this is paradoxically more readily available in communities that have a dominance of wealthy families and for all intents and purposes is absent from those societies that have the highest rates of social heartbreak. Those socio-economic swamplands that inhabit the outer suburbs of big cities, the ethnic communities and the abandoned rural populations.

I came to work with these very difficult kids poorly equipped for the task ahead and in my defence, I sought advice from wherever it was available. The prevailing theory, and unfortunately still the dominant model for dealing with dysfunction, is some form of cognitive intervention. I undertook as much of this training as I could but it was of little use. Not only did the behavioural skills I taught my students fail whenever they were put under pressure, I found that providing this type of support made me some sought of quasi-therapist. Apart from the obvious dangers of having an educator provide such treatment, no teacher I know would have the time to devote to one student when a class full of other students, with their specific psychological needs, requires to be taught! So, we are left with this dilemma—how do we deal with these students in a way that cultivates the strengths enjoyed by successful students? The answer is in the conditions of the environment they experience.

This book accepts that the majority of extremely dysfunctional behaviour is carried out by children who have suffered early, persistent trauma and/or neglect. Their disruptive conduct can be explained by the effect their early childhood environment has had on the neural construction of their brain. These children are not ‘born bad’ but behave this way because of the ‘parenting’ they received in their early life. These are the children who have graduated out of these dysfunctional environments. Recognising this provides the key to understanding how to deal with these kids. Because the social conditions created these problems, if we change those conditions, over time these children will develop different behaviours. The solution lies in the fact that everyone acts to get their needs met in the environment they live in.

In recent times, the number of children being referred to authorities because of neglect or abuse has increased significantly, either because it is becoming more frequent or people are more willing to report. But it is beyond dispute that too many of our children suffer trauma or neglect and a significant number of these could develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that requires long-term therapy. Statistics vary about the proportion of the population that suffers from PTSD but estimates range from 3% up to 11%. This applies to our children, which means that up to one in ten are developing in a toxic environment!

If the statistics are right then in a school of 600 students, you could expect between eighteen and sixty-six children to be suffering from PTSD and in a class of 30 students, between one and four suffering from this disease; and it is a disease.

This proposition assumes that abuse and/or neglect is evenly distributed across society and the resulting dysfunction is also uniformly experienced in their schools within each socioeconomic area; it is not. Rather, there is a strong correlation between the economic wellbeing of a community and its school and the instances of abuse. An impoverished area will have a higher concentration of ‘abuse casualties’ and it has been estimated that in some communities, as many as 23% of the kids suffer from PTSD. For our model school, this means as many as 138 students are damaged, seven in each class.

In our detention centres, these statistics are even more worrying. One report found that 92% of children detained in such a facility had suffered multiple traumas. It is little wonder these kids are a major problem for society.

Apart from the regular inquiries into violent behaviour outbursts in detention centres and schools, with their ‘mandatory reports’, little is done to really address the problems. There is no effective mental health support for these institutions, especially in those communities that suffer the most. Teachers and other personnel are left to their own devices to deal with these problems. The objective of this book is to offer practical help for those people. It is also a great resource for anyone who has had to deal with one of these children.

Let me introduce you to ‘Craig’…well, introduce might not be the correct term; let’s say remind you of ‘Craig’. ‘Craig’ represents so many of our kids. For this scenario, he is a thirteen-year-old student at Smithville House public school. He is currently on suspension for inappropriate behaviour!

Craig is on suspension for the following unacceptable conduct: he was late to class and claims he didn’t hear the bell. When his teacher asked him how come everyone else heard the bell and got to class on time, he shrugged and sat down in the back row.

Now Craig knows he has a seating plan and should sit down in the front and his long-suffering teacher told him to move. Craig refused! The teacher gave into his ongoing frustration and he started to yell at him, demanding he move to his allocated seat. Of course, Craig yelled back, challenging him to force him to make him shift.

The teacher then told Craig to get out and report to the Head Teacher; again, ‘Make me’ was the reply. Another student was sent to get the Head Teacher who duly arrived. The Head Teacher told Craig to come with him to the office. ‘No’, said Craig, now simmering with anger and looking about in a threatening manner. The Head Teacher left to get the Deputy who was considered the authority in the school.

At first the DP asked Craig to come with him in a calm, quiet manner. When this failed, he started to yell at Craig and finally placed his hand on Craig’s shoulder to ‘ease’ him out of his chair. The reaction was immediate and ferocious; Craig leapt up, kicked his table across the room and on his way out, punched a hole in the wall, all the time hurling abuse at whoever was in his way.

Instead of going to the office, Craig left the school and went to the park and when on his own, cried his eyes out. Craig hated himself and his life; everything he did met with the same rejection.

The DP went back to the office, shaken and upset, trying to work out what to do next. Should he follow Craig, ring up his mother or tell the police he had gone? He had no idea how to deal with the situation.

The school rang the mother who answered, ‘What’s he done this time?’ When told that he had run off, she told the school not to worry and that he would come home when he had settled down.

The principal had been out of the school and when she returned, she filled in the suspension forms for the department and arranged for work to be sent home.

The HT, the teacher and the class eventually calmed down and normal conditions resumed. Nothing had changed and when Craig served his suspension, the fact that ‘nothing had changed’ guaranteed that this scenario would be played out again, always with the same script but at an increasing level of ferocity.

Scenes like these occur in just about every comprehensive school; in some, it is a rare event while in others, it occurs almost weekly and in the scheme of things, this level of behaviour is nowhere near the most challenging that schools face. Every year, students, teachers and school executives are physically injured by students with severe behaviours and more than the physical injuries, they accumulate a growing amount of psychological damage. Just because Craig won’t/can’t do as he is told.

Craig’s behaviour is damaging to the learning outcomes of everyone. There is undisputed evidence that the presence of a student with severe dysfunctional behaviours hampers the learning outcomes, they create levels of stress that produce high levels of anxiety within their class. For teachers, who are often the focus of these outbursts, unless something is done to protect them from the trauma of confronting these situations, they might develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

Craig is seen as a menace to the school and to society. He is not seen as a victim of abuse and neglect; at the time, he most needed love and appropriate stimulation.

Craig eventually left school, unable to get employment, and during a drug-fuelled brawl killed another youth. He is currently serving a life sentence. The long-term outcome is not only devastating for Craig, the youth he killed, the family and friends of that boy but also the cost of having him in gaol. There are no winners.

But what about all the Craigs in our classes. In the state of NSW, in one year, over 30,000 students were suspended, over half for a long period of time. Although not all of these children might go on to have a ‘career’ like Craig, there is evidence that he is not alone. The behaviour of these children prevents them from fulfilling the ‘normal’ functions other kids complete at school. Indeed, their behaviour is described as dysfunctional, which implies that they can’t function properly in their communities. Because they are unable to conduct themselves successfully, it follows that they are ‘disabled’.

The conventional perception of a disability is linked to children who have been incapacitated through events that have been an unfortunate natural slip-up. That is, the typical journey through foetal development and early childhood evolution ensures we are equipped with the means to successfully navigate through life.

From the moment of conception, our genes divide and combine, driven to conform to a template locked in our DNA. We become humans because our parents’ genes are ‘human’. Frogs become frogs, ants become ants. The meticulous adherence to the pattern coded in the DNA assures that diversity between humans is insignificant compared to the differences between species. This conformity is remarkable when you consider how much the DNA of all species has in common.

There is a small group of children who, as a result of some mistake in the reading of or fault in their DNA during prenatal development, do not have that normal journey to infancy. These kids are born with an atypical set of physical attributes that make it hard to fulfil the purpose of genetic existence. Things like cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy are examples of physical disabilities, while Down’s syndrome results in both physical and intellectual disadvantages. Add to this the normal distribution of intellectual abilities that determine that some children will have extremely efficient brains, those with high IQs, with the corresponding number with an intellectual capacity so low that they are unable to understand the world clearly and there is the majority at the median.

There is another group of children who has suffered a physical accident that has damaged their capacity to perform the human functions expected for their age. Children who have become blinded, or through a physical trauma to their spine become paraplegic; these children are also disabled. These kids receive our compassion and support albeit not at the levels they require. Their disability is recognised as not being their fault but what about Craig’s disability?

The dominant influence of the difference between individuals is the environment in which they have developed. These broad-stroke ethnic differences across our species can be seen by something as obvious as skin colour. Dark skin is a result of evolving in a hot sunny climate while very light skin is linked to areas where sunlight is at a premium. There are plenty of examples to explain indigenous differences but within each culture and the micro-environment, the immediate family can be shown to influence the development of each individual.

The power of environmental influence is also seen in the development of a child’s cognitive efficiency. Children need a stimulus to learn, they need a reason to develop the neural pathways that control their behaviour. Children who grow in an environment that has limited stimulus develop limited intellectual ability, just as those who are raised in a family where there is richness of stimulation will acquire a robust neural network that leads to the advantage of choice when making decisions.

Craig was born into and raised in an abusive and neglectful environment. The treatment he endured as a child has shaped the way he responds to life’s challenges. The high level of stress he was subjected to from the continual abuse has produced a significant level of physical brain damage. The abuse alters the ‘normal’ growth of his brain. That part of the brain that identifies a threat, his amygdala, becomes enlarged, super-sensitive to perceived threats, while other neural components that help him control his behaviour and learning—his frontal lobes, hippocampus and cerebellum—are decreased in size and effectiveness. The abuse literally damages his brain.

The neural damage is only part of his disability, it is important to remember that the brain makes no judgement about the ethics of behaviour, only its effectiveness to deal with current situations; as a result, children learn to behave and manipulate their immediate environment. For the children at the core of this work, that initial environment, the abuse and neglect, has led them to acquired behaviours that work best for them at the time. But these behaviours are extremely inept at supporting them in a ‘functional’ environment.

Finally, brain development depends on the presence of stimulus at the time of neural development. The neglect Craig experienced, the lack of stimulating activities at the appropriate time denied him the opportunity to develop pathways that would support new learning.

The brain, through our genetic blueprint, develops from the base up and from the back to the front. At each step, there are windows of opportunity, times when that part of the brain that controls a specific behaviour gets set up to develop the neural networks that control a particular skill. Additional materials such as myelin are concentrated at that area of the brain to support the construction of new pathways. However, each new pathway will only be formed in response to a stimulus; if there is no stimulus, there is no pathway. In its quest for efficiency, once the window of opportunity has passed, the brain removes the unused material in a process called pruning. This ‘brain matter’ can’t be recovered once it has been flushed out of our system and there is little opportunity for new neural material to take its place.

A dramatic example of this failure to develop functional pathways can be seen in children who are born with cataracts over their eyes. Because the light, the stimulus, can’t get in at the time required, these children become functionally blind. They remain ‘blind’ even after the cataracts are removed because once that specific period of neural formation has passed, the brain removes the unused material.

This stimulus, neural formation and pruning take place throughout early childhood and is particularly damaging during the period of development of behaviours associated with attachment. Children who do not receive appropriate affection and attention in their early childhood find the formation of adult relationships extremely difficult. Like the blind child, these children will grow unable to ‘see’ how to cope with intimacy.

The example of sight formation is a great illustration but a more telling tragedy is when this lack of stimulus/development results in a loss of learning potential. The removal of cognitive material, the pruning that occurs when those windows or opportunity are closed, means that a significant amount of material that could have been adapted for new situations later in life is no longer available. The lack of ‘brain matter’ resulting from the absence of the specified stimulant is directly linked to future cognitive impairment.

Because Craig learned to survive in his toxic world, the behaviours he developed are functional for that environment but are entirely unsuitable for a functional environment like a school. Say Craig learned to get the attention of his dysfunctional mother by screaming or hitting his head on the floor, being sick or whatever, those behaviours—previously successful tactics—won’t work if he displays them at school. But those go-to behaviours he has entrenched are the ones he will access when he perceives himself to be in a situation that reminds him of his childhood. When he feels threatened, and he is extremely sensitive to threat, his stress levels rise and he will access the behaviour he knows the best.

A cruel complication is the continued failure to act in a functional way that produces high levels of stress associated with rejection. This elevated stress drives him to his most entrenched behaviours, those learned in early