Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Angry and Aggressive Students

What To Do When Nothing Else Works--An Audio Highlight

In his fast-paced, energetic, research-based session, William DeMeo, developmental school psychologist for Cincinnati Public Schools, shared some proven intervention strategies for calming angry or aggressive students. The techniques are powerful and simple--the ones he describes here require only a paper bag or a finger.

In his conference session, DeMeo explained why the number one technique used to deal with aggressive children is "neurologically, completely useless." Hear him explain an alternative technique that only requires a paper bag in this brief audio highlight from his session.

"A lot of you are going to say to the child, when he begins to escalate, 'You need to breathe!'" Hear DeMeo explain why this doesn't work, and what you can do to get children to take a deep breath and calm down in this brief audio highlight from his session.

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If you have difficulty with the audio file, a transcript is provided below.


Transcript (paper bag)
The number one technique you have been taught to deal with angry and aggressive children is, neurologically, completely useless. When the child becomes out of control, what do teachers or principals tell the child to do? [They say], "Calm down." Guess what? [The child doesn't] hear you--for one to three minutes. So, the technique you have learned is completely useless. How about that? But, since I've criticized your technique, let me show you something you can use. Now, I have what I call wonderful, wonderful, expensive, therapeutic materials. Sir, what is this? [audience response] And how much did the paper bag cost? Nothing. Does it fit into our school budgets? "Maybe," he says! Okay, now, think about this. I have a child who has begun to escalate out of control. All this emotion of anger building up, aggressiveness builds up--it needs to come out. Unless I do something to deal with it, it's going to come out on who? Myself or the other students. So here's what I do: The child begins to escalate, I take my paper bag, put it up, drop it, and I kick it. I take the paper bag at a safe distance, I drop it next to the student, and guess what he does? He kicks it! [crowd banter] When he kicks it, here's what happens--he releases energy. In addition to that, I now have his attention and focus. And I can now verbally calm him down. I've just bought one to three minutes in dealing with that out-of-control child. I have lots and lots of techniques to share with you, today.


Transcript (candle)
A lot of you are going to say to the child, when he begins to escalate, "You need to breathe!" But remember, what do we say? What doesn't happen? They don't hear you! So here's what we do: We develop some of what we call visual cues. Very, very simple. Everybody take your finger, put it out in front of you--not your middle finger, please. And take a deep breath and blow that finger out, like it's a candle. Go ahead and extend it and take a really deep breath--blow it out like it's a candle. And now blow out my finger--really, really deep breath. Okay, now here's what happens. You do this for two weeks. If you have never practiced this technique, and you take your finger, and you put it out in front of their face, what are they going to do? They're going to bite it--they're going to break it! But if you practice ... And, are children going to like doing this? Third grade or younger? Yeah, they like doing this stuff. They begin to neuralistically program their brain for this response. So, when you put your finger out, two weeks later, guess what they automatically do? Right. Blow it out. And as soon as they blow it out, they release energy, and you have their focused attention.


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