Children's Thoughts and Feelings

Rob Long

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134026135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Understanding how children think and feel is the key to buiding good relationships in the classroom. This book looks at:

• underlying causes of emotional conflicts
• the nature of maladaptive coping mechanisms
• why boys tend to "act out" and girls ten to "act in"
• interventions to promote the use of adaptive coping styles.

1 Introduction

There are no fixed measures to help us say whether a child’s behaviour is abnormal, but the more extreme a child’s behaviour is, the easier it becomes to do so. The label emotional, social and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) has become synonymous with behaviours that prevent a child from successfully engaging with the curriculum and with his or her peers. That is to say, there are certain circumstances when the child’s behaviour is different enough from his or her peers to justify additional adult intervention. Children who experience SEBD interfere in some way with the teacher’s teaching, their peers’ learning and their own learning. ‘SEBD’ is then more a description of a set of circumstances than a fixed diagnosis. A child’s behaviour (for example, shouting out) may be of concern in one context – the classroom – but be perfectly normal in another – the playground.

Most of our understanding about the challenges that children face in schools stems from our knowledge of their social and behavioural development. Less has been written about children’s emotional development and how problems in this complex process can result in barriers to children engaging with the curriculum.

This booklet aims to explain:

• the nature and function of emotions

• the underlying causes of emotional conflicts

• the nature of maladaptive coping mechanisms

• why boys tend to ‘act out’ and girls tend to ‘act in’

• interventions to promote the use of adaptive coping styles.

Many children respond to inner emotional conflicts by behaving in ways that may be inappropriate or destructive. Any behaviour which occurs sufficiently often can become an over-learned response. When children face problems they naturally try to solve them; however, their solution can be a problem to others.

The information offered here will help school staff understand students’ behaviours within the classroom. It will provide practical guidance for those staff who at times work either with small groups or in a one-to-one situation. When we are trying to alter a student’s patterns of behaviour we should have both good reasons and a sound model for the interventions we put in place.

The model which is at the heart of this booklet is based on the writings of Robert Plutchik (Plutchik, 2000).

Our biology

We first need to appreciate that our physical make-up provides us with basic primary emotions which exist to help keep us alive. This is because the lower part of our brain evolved to survive in the jungle and ensured that we respond to threats by ‘fight or flight’. The emotions we are born with are fear, joy, surprise, anger, disgust and curiosity. These are believed to be innately patterned responses to certain stimuli and enable us to interact successfully with our environment. The negative emotions of fear, anger and disgust help to motivate us to avoid dangers, while the positive emotions of joy, surprise and curiosity help us to explore our world. If we still lived in the jungle these emotions would be very adaptive for our survival.

The basic biological needs that we all have are:

• to survive

• to be nurtured

• to give nurture

• to reproduce.

Because we live in society we have developed higher emotions that help us to live together. Some of these are guilt and embarrassment. Babies have no sense of embarrassment about their bodily functions. But as they learn ‘how to be’ they experience shame and guilt. Without our social world there would be no emotional, social or behavioural difficulties. It is through socialisation that we all learn to judge ourselves by the standards of those who care for us. We see ourselves through their eyes.

A definition of emotions

Emotions are difficult to define because they cannot be observed directly, although we can sometimes see changes in a child’s behaviour, or children can describe in words what they are feeling. At minimum, emotions are the subjective experience of physiological arousal. When a balloon suddenly bursts our heart rate increases, our breathing quickens and we experience the same bodily changes as with fear. The experience is also shaped by our thoughts. The fact that we saw that it was a balloon and not a gun that caused the noise influences our reaction. Our emotional responses are then a combination of innate physiological responses and our intellectual understanding of the situation.

The same physiological arousal can be experienced very differently. For example, the adrenaline rush from a roller-coaster ride might be as high as when we realise one of our children ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Tags
• 3 Maladaptive defence mechanisms
• 4 Adaptive coping styles
• Further reading