Help for Billy: A Beyond Consequences Approaching to Helping Challenging Children in the Classroom

by Heather T. Forbes

the beginning of the school year, such an environment will progress academic learning to its highest potential over the span of the entire school year.

In one classroom, a teacher was able to establish this type of family-oriented learning environment. When a student got dysregulated, everyone was able to join in to help this student feel safe again. The teacher had a singing bowl and when Billy became dysregulated one day, another student rang the singing bowl (which he was given permission to do) and called out, “Everyone just breathe!” The teacher at this point was able to say, “We all need to stop. Pause. Breathe. We’re all okay and everyone is safe.” The teacher then encouraged the students to continue what they were doing and went over to Billy and helped to individually regulate him in order to get back on task. The class continued on in their work and Billy was able to quickly shift back on track.

Take time to talk to and acknowledge each student. When the student walks into the classroom, convey the message, “Welcome. This class would not be the same without you here today!” Recognize the students’ moods and help to regulate instead of ignoring or criticizing the moods. Listen to the students (you don’t have to agree—just listen). Smile at the students and stay in a warm place in your heart, no matter their attitude or disposition. Take an interest in what is important to each student. Ask the students for help and let the students help. Keep an attitude of “You’re always welcome here.” Share the student’s idea with others (“Billy had a good idea for....”).

Movement. Repetitive motor movement can be key in helping some students regulate. Patterned, rhythmic, and repetitive movements settle the brain and activate the vestibular system (the sensory system that responds to movement and our sense of balance).

These types of movements should be encouraged in

the classroom to settle children, help them regain their focus, and open up

the pathways for more...

Rocking. Rocking taps into the memory of being safe. Have a rocking chair in the classroom for children to either rock on their o...

Pacing. We naturally pace when we are anxious. It is a way for the body to regulate. The neocortex can absorb more information while the body is moving compared to sitting still. Mark off a pacing track in the back of the classroom with tape and allow students to pace even if you are presenting an academic lesson. Billy will learn better when he is free to move instead of being forced to sit still, which will create the feeling of being trapped. Standing exercises. As a class, incorporate exercises each student can do standing up at his desk. Brain Gym® movements can significantly increase students’ abilities to concentrate and focus. Sitting exercises. Fitness balls can be excellent alternatives to chairs for children who need to have their bodies moving while seated at their desks. Movement through space. Activities, such as spinning and swinging, can help to regulate a child both physically and emotionally. Playground equipment, suc...

Native American drumming have shown them to be effective forms of stress reduction.

White noise machines and water fountains can also be used to provide comforting background noises.

you were to walk into a day spa, what do you notice about the environment? There is soft music, the walls are painted in a soft warm color, and there is a fountain of water creating a calming background sound. Consider how the décor of the classroom environment is influencing the regulation of the students.

Using lamps with incandescent bulbs can aid in this as well as letting in as much possible natural light.

Their bodies can easily go into survival when they become hungry, which elicits the fear that they will never be fed again (there is that black-and-white thinking showing up again for Billy).

When Billy gets to this point, safety should always become the number one concern.

For a child like this, a seclusion room is the absolute worst solution for him.

Secluding a child who does not have a sufficient regulatory system to calm down by himself is counterproductive and should never be an option.

The baby will only cry louder until he gets to a point where he has to shut down in order to stop the dangerous level of stress hormones being excreted. He stops crying out of survival, not out of regulation.

When the adult is not feeding more fear into Billy and adding a calm and loving presence, Billy’s need to attack will decrease.

Never underestimate the power of the relationship in the academic environment.

I’m not enough. I won’t be loved.

When a child goes through family experiences that fail to do this and conversely exasperate these fears, the result is a student who lives and breathes every moment out of these fears.

With this intensity of fear occupying the mind, there is little room for clear, focused, and complex thinking.

Children like Billy need to be provided patterned, repetitious, relational experiences.

Enhancing the teacher-student relationship can be done in several small ways, many of which take very little extra time: Leave a note on the student’s desk.

Touch students more. Give students understanding and empathy. Listen to them; give them a voice. Scaffold them up with support and the resources they need. Give each student personal attention (greetings, short talks, compliments, acknowledgments, smiles, friendly eye contact). Express an attitude of “I care about you as a person.”

It simply takes attention, awareness, and the willingness to take an interest in the student’s perspective.

Switching teachers during the year can be disastrous for Billy.

Billy, however, is still working to keep his parents at a distance in order to protect himself from the vulnerability of an intimate parent-child relationship. Threatening to call his parents actually helps him fuel his campaign against his parents.

This is why Billy may actually increase the intensity of his negative behaviors with such a threat.

In some cases, Billy is actually trying to get his parents’ approval. In this case, a threat to call his parents would ignite his stress-response system.

He is scared that if he does not win his parent’s approval, he wi...

Adopted and foster children live in a perpetual state of fear that their parents will simply give up on them and send t...

Schools need to team up together with parents to help regulate Billy. When Billy gets upset and the teacher is unable to help regulate Billy’s stress response system, the teacher can suggest that Billy call his mom or dad. Taking two or three minutes for Billy to connect by phone can be just enough to help him get back on track.

Billy’s system is not equipped to handle six hours in a school environment; his window of stress tolerance simply is not that large.

It is a healthy coping mechanism to chunk our day into smaller pieces with relational breaks throughout.

Giving him a chance to be on his own at school for a couple of hours, then allowing him to call or text a parent to get reregulated, is giving him practice to later becoming fully able to self-regulate.

The type or magnitude of the transition itself is not the issue; the issue is the fear of actually making a transition.

Billy’s past experiences of change were negative and hurtful, therefore any and all future experiences of change will be negative and hurtful.

The term “classroom management” speaks to the idea of controlling the group’s behavior as one singular unit.

One management technique traditionally recommended to help children make transitions uses “attention grabbers.” Attention grabbers are designed to “grab” the students’ attention and direct them through the next steps.

When a child’s life becomes interrupted through traumatic life experiences, his normal course of development becomes fractured and incomplete. The result is a child who is exceptionally sensitive to uncertainty and change.

In the school environment this equates to one word: transitioning.

So for Billy, all change equals pain, no matter how small or minute the change may be. Change can be as simple as moving from one classroom to another, going

from the classroom to specials, coming into the classroom at the start of the

day, switching from a math worksheet to a science assignment, or exiting the cafe...

As he is able to experience positive times of transitions, he will learn how to make these transitions on his own.

process of taking small steps to allow the nervous system to stabilize and return to a more natural state of calm arousal.

Anything too abrupt, challenging, or strenuous will be counterproductive.

they need to be scaffolded up until t...