Daniel is misbehaving. He is not being violent, or particularly rude, but he is being persistently disruptive and it is distracting the other children. So, you follow the school behaviour policy of warnings and escalating sanctions and, eventually, Daniel is sent out of the class, accompanied by a member of the senior leadership team.
You used to think Daniel just needed firm boundaries and support, and that once these were in place, he would soon kick the bad habits. But it hasn’t worked, so what might be going on?
It’s possible, according to Dr Alice Jones, that a child like Daniel might have social and emotional processing difficulties.
Jones directs the Unit for School and Family Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research has explored a variety of antisocial behaviours in children - her PhD examined psychopathic traits in young children and she went on to research autism spectrum disorders, and empathy and emotional processing in children with behavioural problems. She was first inspired to look into social and emotional processing issues, she explains, while working at the Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Social Communication Disorders Clinic.
“An increasing number of children were being referred for social and emotional issues, where the primary reason for their referral was behaviour,” she says. “Sometimes it was quite dramatic, violent behaviour and, in other cases, just consistent disruptive, aggressive behaviour.
“These were children who weren’t autistic, but they did certainly have processing issues. I wanted to pull apart what was going on for kids who were having a really hard time with their peer group and managing emotions in school but weren’t autistic.”
Difficulties with understanding and communicating emotions, and managing social situations, can stem from many causes, Jones explains. “The most likely route to social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) difficulties that causes the greatest number of problems will involve a combination of biological and social or environmental factors,” she says.
For some children, she adds, this is likely to be, at least partially, a biological issue - for example, in those who display characteristics associated with psychopathy, who are less likely to pay attention to others’ eyes, and maybe miss out on opportunities to learn about the emotional states of others, particularly fear. “Other very young children we sometimes characterise as having a ‘fearless temperament’,” Jones continues. “These children are over-represented in behavioural difficulties and the criminal justice system later on, and it seems reasonable to suggest that this temperament style is also largely biological in nature (for example, these children have a low resting heart rate and low autonomic arousal, so may seek out dangerous or exciting activities to stimulate themselves).”
Alternatively, she says, some children with SEMH may have a number of early brain development issues as a result of foetal alcohol or substance use, and many children with chronic and severe SEMH may also have experienced difficult or chaotic home lives (children who have had contact with the care and social service systems are vastly over-represented in SEMH special education). These children may have experienced domestic violence, neglect, extreme poverty and deprivation, emotional or sexual abuse, and the effect of early trauma can be seen in subsequent brain development and in mental health outcomes, Jones explains.
Students with social and emotional processing issues (of any age) won’t present in a uniform fashion, says Jones. For some, it will be impulsive, often explosive, behaviour, such as throwing chairs.
Many are likely to have working memory problems and find it hard to follow instructions. Many will also have language problems, often around misunderstanding context or idioms (which can lead to aggression and difficulty in friendships). But for others, it can simply look like withdrawal. “They aren’t causing disruption but aren’t really doing anything either,” Jones explains. “Some kids are a bit quiet, and that’s fine. But if a student isn’t meeting their academic potential and doesn’t seem to have friends, it’s worth digging in a bit more detail and working out what’s going on for them.”
Positive student-teacher relationships can be vital in spotting issues, she continues, but in the course of a busy school day, these can go undernourished. “I’m not blaming teachers,” she says. “If you’re massively overburdened and stressed, how will you have the capacity?
“But we know those relationships are related to lots of good outcomes. That advice about not smiling until Christmas - it’s not the way to build positive relationships. That doesn’t mean you have to give yourself away. Just have an open and honest discussion, let the student know that you are interested in them.”
So, what can you do to support students who may have social and emotional processing difficulties? The majority of Jones’ work has taken place in special schools for pupils with SEMH needs, she explains. Many of these children will have been removed from mainstream settings as a result of behaviour issues.
She worked with one primary setting in particular, which asked for her help because existing interventions - primarily nurture groups and additional support in lessons - weren’t working and staff didn’t know what to do. “It was a pretty bold thing for them to say,” she says.
“So, we went to talk to them and introduce some ideas about emotion processing and cognitive processing in children with behavioural difficulties.
“They were really interested in doing some collaborative research, so we profiled the kids in the school, and did a lot of neuro-psychological assessments and lots of emotion processing assessments.”
One of the key findings was around the teaching of empathy. The school, like many, placed a big focus on understanding others’ viewpoints and feelings, but many of these children simply weren’t able to do this.
“They didn’t understand their own emotions yet,” she says. “To expect a child who can’t tell you how they are feeling to understand how someone else is feeling is a bit of a leap. We need to solve Problem A before moving on to Problem B.”
She worked with teachers at the school, whom she refers to as “creative geniuses on ways to get students thinking about how they were feeling”. They devised a system whereby students would rate their readiness for a lesson out of five before entering the room.
If they were at one, that meant they were totally ready; if they were at five, they were not at all ready. When they would identify themselves as not being ready, they would unpick this with an adult and get to the root of it: perhaps they were angry because they had just had a fight in the playground, or perhaps they were excited and distracted because that evening, they would be seeing their dad, whom they hadn’t seen for weeks.
“We saw some quick learning from this,” Jones explains. “Kids are receptive to being given this kind of vocabulary, and were able to use fairly complex terms quite quickly to describe how they were feeling.
“They could say that they were worried, that they were sad or excited, or happy or scared. From there, it’s not too much to start to explore what that looks like in other people. We could talk to them about how they would recognise it and what they would do about it.”
The school also worked hard to integrate elements of emotional recognition into the curriculum, she continues. When they read Oliver Twist, for example, they would be asked, in related writing tasks, to imagine how characters would be feeling in given situations.
When they studied the Vikings, they plotted a raid on a younger class to steal highlighters (“the most valuable things they could think of”, Jones laughs), but discussed how such a raid had the potential to make the other students feel afraid. The result was “the politest raid you could imagine. They’d pre-empted all the little ones’ worries, so they knocked on the door, gave them their helmets and took the pens.”
The use of consistent, non-judgemental language is also important, she says, especially in students who are struggling with impulsivity. They can often identify what they did wrong and apologise, she explains, but simply not be able to control themselves in the moment.
Another tip is to avoid a confrontational atmosphere. Jones says that several of the special schools she works with have removed detentions entirely for this reason (and because they were proving to be a “waste of time”). “Instead it’s about building an environment where good behaviour is rewarded,” she says.
“Teachers don’t have to put up with being sworn at or spat at - it’s more about creating an environment where that doesn’t happen because there isn’t the stress.
“When a student isn’t in a place where they can engage in classroom activity, they can be educated in a different way; maybe in small groups or at an evening session. That’s not a punishment, it’s working with what a child is able to work with at that time.”
Jones recognises the burden that this places on schools - adding emotional education to the other non-academic life skills they’re expected to impart, such as healthy eating. But if these children are to be helped and supported, we need to look again at how we approach them. Too often, she says, exclusion is the only answer on offer to a question that requires a much more nuanced, flexible and informed response.
“It’s about how to build those skills in a way that doesn’t exclude students at the first sign of trouble,” she says.
“Being excluded from school on the basis of persistent, not-helpful behaviour is a real worry. But if, at the first sign of doing something wrong, you’re put in detention, all you’re being shown is that you’re right - school is unwelcoming to you.”
Zofia Niemtus is a freelance writer
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