Teaching Self-Control Skills to Children Reduces Classroom Problems

[steven johnson]

Emotional dysregulation is a common factor in mental illness but the teaching of life skills for this regulation to children is novel and has unexpected benefits.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2010) — Children taught skills to monitor and control their anger and other emotions improved their classroom behavior and had significantly fewer school disciplinary referrals and suspensions, according to a study by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers.

Children in a school-based mentoring program were about half as likely to have any discipline incident over the three-month period of the study, according to an article published online by the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. They also had a 43 percent decrease in mean suspensions as compared to the control group, which did not receive mentoring of the self-control skills. In the four-month interval after the intervention began, 1.8 percent of children in the mentored group were suspended compared to 6.1 percent of the control group. Children taught the new skills also had a 46 percent decrease in mean office disciplinary referrals as compared to the children in the study's control group

"It is exciting that adult mentors, who are not mental health professionals, taught children a set of skills that significantly strengthened the children's ability to function well in their classrooms and meet school expectations," said Peter Wyman, Ph.D., lead author of the article and associate professor of Psychiatry at the Medical Center. "This study suggests that with appropriate guidance from a trained adult, young children are capable of learning a great deal about their emotions and skills for handling their emotions effectively and those skills can have direct, positive benefits for their functioning in school."

Self-control and reducing escalation of emotions is taught through the concept of a "feelings thermometer" to depict intensity. Children learn to use "mental muscles" as a tool to monitor feelings and to stop feelings from entering a hot zone. They also learn to maintain control and regain equilibrium through strategies such as taking a deep-breath, stepping back from emotionally intense situations, and using an imaginary umbrella as protection from hurtful words.


Teaching Self-Control Skills to Children Reduces Classroom Problems

[grasswire]

1. it worked for girls but not for boys, and all the mentors were women

Looks a bit flawed to me.

[lostnfound]

8. It worked for boys too.

Read it again:

Children who received the intervention showed improved functioning in all domains of classroom behavior rated by teachers. The intervention had a positive impact on children's classroom behaviors and rates of disciplinary incidents, including fewer aggressive or disruptive problems, improved on-task learning behaviors and peer social skills, and less shy-withdrawn and more assertive behaviors, the researchers concluded. After the study was completed, children in the control group also were mentored and taught the self-control skills.

The mentoring improved peer social skills for girls but not for boys.

********
Peer social skills in boys was not improved, but this seems to be a separate category form "aggressive or disruptive problems".

[lostnfound]

11. "Peer social skills" was just 1 of the 4 areas that were rated.

I'm guessing that behavior control is as much of a problem as anything else, and I'd interpret this to mean that the effects for the other 3 categories apply to both boys and girls.

Multi-level modeling accounting for the nesting of children
in schools and classrooms showed the following effects at
post-intervention: reduced problems rated by teachers in
behavior control, peer social skills, shy-withdrawn and offtask
behaviors (ES 0.31–0.47). Peer social skills improved
for girls but not for boys.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Unless it's tested it isn't taught

[femmocrat]

3. We don't even have S.E.D. classes anymore.

Remember those? When I student taught, we actually had a room, staffed with two SED-certified teachers, where we could send disruptive students for a time out.

Those were the days! LOL

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. What's SED?

Is that like ISS

[soleiri]

5. What's ISS?

:blush:

[tonysam]

6. It's probably the same as SIP

All the same kind of deal, with kids being put in self-contained programs because of behavioral problems or truancy, and then the kids are eventually placed back in the regular classroom after they learn how to behave.

WCSD's SIP= social intervention program

[femmocrat]

13. That arrangement is called "Alternative Education" here.

It is held after school. These students are deemed unfit to attend classes during the day, due to violent behavior, etc. Sometimes it is for truancy. Lately, the districts have been fining the parents whose children are absent too often. It is enforced by a magistrate. Hey, whatever it takes!

[roguevalley]

14. they decided to 'mainstream' everyone, dumping every kind of kid

into the classroom without a thought to least disruptive placement for everyone including the kid and g-d you if you try and do anything about it. kids suffer, everything suffers but it costs less than to hire enough experts to deal with these kids until they can function in a classroom.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. In School Suspension

[tonysam]

9. We had that, too, at my old middle school. n/t

[femmocrat]

12. Sorry--- " Social and Emotionally Disturbed"

No wonder they don't call it that anymore, but it was a sub-division of Special Education, for students with severe behavioral/emotional problems. Now, the most severe students are "mainstreamed", but travel with an aide. Most are left to fend for themselves and distract all the other students. Today, teachers in "regular" classrooms just have to "deal with them" and their behavior problems with no support, back-up or special training.

ISS = In-School Suspension. They don't do that very much anymore either. Students assigned to ISS were required to sit all day in a small room with a teacher supervision. The other teachers had to send work for them to do to keep them occupied. If a student didn't have enough work, he or she was given writing assignments. Some schools don't even have "detention" anymore. In our district it is called "after school tutoring".

[lostnfound]

10. Here's the abstract; the link to full article costs $34.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v908457417824153/?p=c27da119fa204471970887ec3cef5efa&pi=3

Abstract A model for teaching children skills to strengthen
emotional self-regulation is introduced, informed by the
developmental concept of scaffolding. Adult modeling/
instruction, role-play and in vivo coaching are tailored to
children’s level of understanding and skill to promote use
of skills in reallife contexts. Two-hundred twenty-six
kindergarten—3rd grade children identified with elevated
behavioral and social classroom problems from a
population-based screening participated in a waitlisted
randomized trial of the Rochester Resilience Project
derived from this model. In 14 lessons with school-based
mentors, children were taught a hierarchical set of skills:
monitoring of emotions; selfcontrol/ reducing escalation of
emotions; and maintaining control and regaining equilibrium.
Mentors provided classroom reinforcement of skill use.
Multi-level modeling accounting for the nesting of children
in schools and classrooms showed the following effects at
post-intervention: reduced problems rated by teachers in
behavior control, peer social skills, shy-withdrawn and offtask
behaviors (ES 0.31–0.47). Peer social skills improved
for girls but not for boys. Children receiving the intervention
had a 46% mean decrease in disciplinary referrals and a
43% decrease in suspensions during the 4-month intervention
period. Limitations and future directions to promote
skill transfer are discussed.

[mzteris]

15. i think Montessori schools

excel in teaching self-control and respect for others.