Have you ever worked with a child who repeatedly questioned your right to guide, teach or discipline? Perhaps, you know a child who regularly declares one or more rules invalid and then defies parents, teachers, coaches or peers to enforce them. These are children who literally and figuratively scream, "Try and make me!"; "I dare you!"; "I'm the one in charge here, not you!"
If you nod your head in recognition or wince in pain from the memory, then you know first hand the challenges of working with challenging children. Challenging children are those children who, as a result of nature, nurture or the combination of both seem to require special attention and dedication. Perhaps it is the intensity of their presence, their great energy or vehemence of emotion, thought and activity, that causes them to be perceived by many as difficult, unusual or problematic.
Yet, like all children, challenging children have a need for:
They, like other children, spend much of their time engaged in behaviors that will insure that their needs are met. The problem seems to be that challenging children frequently use methods that are in appropriate for the circumstances and troublesome for themselves and others.
For example, challenging children who are in need of human contact typically behave in ways that draw attention to themselves-being a clown, interrupting conversations, teasing, hooting or making rude noises. If those techniques fail to get the amount or type of contact they desire, they will most likely resort to more physical means, such as putting a head lock around a friend's neck, tripping someone as they walk by or poking the teacher repeatedly while he is speaking to another person.
When attempting to assert or gain power, challenging children will often choose techniques that wrest power from others. For instance, they will attempt to depower a peer by bullying, threatening, scapegoating, or with practical jokes, ridicule, or stealing a favorite comic. They also tend to engage in power struggles with adults-making faces behind an adult's back, repeatedly asking, "What did you say?", belching loudly throughout a lesson or by downright refusing to comply with a request or directive.
Admitting they feel unsafe or insecure is difficult for many challenging children so they are likely to "hide" their need for protection behind a mask of toughness. Oftentimes, they adopt the attitude of a "cool dude", claim membership in a gang as well as ownership of a "killer" pitbull, in hope that these actions will somehow ward off attacks. They also armor themselves with scowls, snarls, snaps and shrugs to keep others, especially adults, from seeing how vulnerable they really are. Yet vulnerable they are.
When confronted with the misdeeds of a challenging child on a regular basis, it is hard to view their actions as anything but intentional and willful misconduct. However, all of the behaviors that characterize challenging children are also characteristic of children in general. The difference is that most children are better at matching their behavior for expressing contact, power and protection needs to the particulars of an environment. In other words, they have a better mastery of context.
To help challenging children get a sense of context, the adults in their lives must help them to interpret and express their needs with methods that are appropriate to the circumstances. When an adult sees a challenging child engaged in an inappropriate expression of needs, he or she must stop the behavior and clearly state a better way to get attention, join a group, express independence, be assertive or avoid hurt.
The challenging child should be encouraged to try the behavior and should be reinforced for their effort. If the child is unable or unwilling to try the better approach, he or she should be removed from the situation and allowed to calm down, regroup and reflect upon the incident. Before he or she is allowed to re-enter the mainstream of activity, the child should discuss the circumstances surrounding his or her removal and be able to describe a better way for handling the situation when it next occurs.
Without the consistent attention and dedicated effort of many adults, the special qualities and features that challenging children bring to the world will go unchanneled. As a society, we cannot afford to lose even one of these precious resources. We must all rise to the challenge of working with challenging children!