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bad behavior now a disorder
Jul. 20th, 2006 01:37 pmhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.anger17jul17,0,7903653.story?page=1
This article is especially apt after a day of being a first grade teacher. I had a kid who was a behavior problem much of the day, who broke into tears because he missed his father. I asked if his dad was picking him up and he said "no, I won't be seeing him for a long time." My heart went out to the kid and I tried to deal with him with a combination of compassion and firmness. By the end of the day he was able to transition from a crying spell to calmly coloring at his desk, which I consider a victory.
So how does this fit in with the various disorders described skeptically in the article? I'm not sure how I feel about all of this these labels and especially the drugs that go with them. I think that there are a collection of traits that you can list that deserve the label oppositional defiant disorder. I think it is good to train educators and parents how to deal with students with all of these "disorders," including "mathematics disorder" and the "disorder of written expression." Educators and parents should be given strategies to help our kids of varying abilities and behavioral proclivities succeed. Maybe the labels themselves have utility, but I'm pretty sure that treating many of them with drugs does not.
I keep thinking about the behaviors that could fall under the category of disorder in the students that I teach. Most of the time, they are impovershed and their home life is a wreck. The past 6 months of subbing has convinced me that poverty causes oppositional defiant behavior - or maybe it is a lack of hope and complete disenfranchisement that really brings it to the forefront. Regardless of how we label it, we need to deal with it. I wish that instead of NCLB, that they gave teachers real strategies for dealing with classrooms full of variously disordered children.
And then I have to ask how much of it is cultural - we are an oppositional and defiant culture, by and large. We don't value obedience and quiet time as a society, so how can we expect it of our children?
This article is especially apt after a day of being a first grade teacher. I had a kid who was a behavior problem much of the day, who broke into tears because he missed his father. I asked if his dad was picking him up and he said "no, I won't be seeing him for a long time." My heart went out to the kid and I tried to deal with him with a combination of compassion and firmness. By the end of the day he was able to transition from a crying spell to calmly coloring at his desk, which I consider a victory.
So how does this fit in with the various disorders described skeptically in the article? I'm not sure how I feel about all of this these labels and especially the drugs that go with them. I think that there are a collection of traits that you can list that deserve the label oppositional defiant disorder. I think it is good to train educators and parents how to deal with students with all of these "disorders," including "mathematics disorder" and the "disorder of written expression." Educators and parents should be given strategies to help our kids of varying abilities and behavioral proclivities succeed. Maybe the labels themselves have utility, but I'm pretty sure that treating many of them with drugs does not.
I keep thinking about the behaviors that could fall under the category of disorder in the students that I teach. Most of the time, they are impovershed and their home life is a wreck. The past 6 months of subbing has convinced me that poverty causes oppositional defiant behavior - or maybe it is a lack of hope and complete disenfranchisement that really brings it to the forefront. Regardless of how we label it, we need to deal with it. I wish that instead of NCLB, that they gave teachers real strategies for dealing with classrooms full of variously disordered children.
And then I have to ask how much of it is cultural - we are an oppositional and defiant culture, by and large. We don't value obedience and quiet time as a society, so how can we expect it of our children?
