ASK THE EXPERT
Q “MY 14-year-old son is always in trouble at school and gets angry when things go wrong. Whenever he reacts badly, the teachers punish him straight away, and I’m worried he’ll end up getting excluded. What might be a better way of dealing with him?”
A EDUCATION and behaviour expert Peter Nelmes, right, author of Troubled Hearts, Troubled Minds (Crown House Publishing, £16.99), says: “The adults involved need to take the lead to effect change. The school may feel that punishments cannot be avoided to put in boundaries for him, but there’s more they can do.
“By far the most effective way to change a pupil’s behaviour is to have someone with whom he can connect, someone who can cut through the secondary resentments and feelings of rejection caused by the punishments, who can acknowledge the seriousness of his behaviour but who doesn’t make it the entirety of their focus.
“A person who has a relationship with him based on respect, empathy, humour and warmth will be accorded more authority than anyone perceived by the pupil as authoritarian and rejecting. This will also give him someone to run to and hopefully keep them on side when things go badly. Here are two questions that can help.
“Firstly, imagine there was a £1 million prize on offer for you if you could get a pupil through the day without incident, and you had unlimited resources. What would you do to win the prize?
“Such a question encourages consideration of how the provision around the pupil could be shaped to start to meet their needs.
“Secondly, how would you shape things if you won the £1 million only if the pupil spent the whole day kicking off? A strange question, but it enables the staff working with the pupil to identify the triggers for the challenging behaviour.
“The questions have a theoretical £1 million prize to encourage creativity in seeking solutions, and to emphasise that the emotional needs of children which drive challenging behaviours are no respecters of resource-led responses by schools to such behaviours.”