By Jan Hansen
There are no bad kids. What does that say about adults?
In my career as a teacher and school administrator I have broken up fights, evacuated classrooms because a student was acting in an unsafe way, and worn protective equipment so that I could safely work with particular students. Despite the behaviour that I have seen, I have never seen a bad child. What I have seen is children who struggle to cope in situations that they don’t have the skills or ability to manage.
When a kid lies immobilized by fear all night because they know that rolling over will cause the bed springs to squeak, and then a parent will hit them, it is no wonder that they have trouble holding their emotions in check at school. When a child has to put all of their energy into not doing what the voices in their head are telling them to do, focussing on fractions will be a struggle.
No child wants to be in trouble, so punishing them (which is based on the idea that they are choosing to do the wrong thing) is not effective at changing their actions. Educators do much better by working to figure out what needs are being met by the behaviour, or what skills the child lacks in order to interact respectfully with the people around them.
If this is true about children, I wonder what it means about adults. We see so much uncaring, hurtful, and violent behaviour on the part of adults. It scares us, confuses us, and fills us with grief. A very human response is to want to punish those involved, but I wonder if that is an effective way to make it all stop.
These are the sorts of things that run through my head as I ponder how I can best interact with the people around me.
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