| |
| Teachers,
also human beings, are also loaded with complicated and
individualized software running on a similar operating system
and hardware build. Sometimes things do not run the way
they are supposed to. Classroom behavior gets a little blurry
and out of focus. In the US school system, keeping students
in order is a major function of the school system. With
a deprecated unit running in their network (the misbehaving
child), bells and whistles alert the teacher (or parent,
principal, etc.) that a problem must be fixed. One of the
newer utilities for focusing blurred units is Ritalin. It
has been earning great reviews. So did Windows 3.1 for a
few years. We now realize it was a limited application and
it cannot serve the needs of most people using computers
today. Ritalin is like Windows 3.1. It might be good in
a few cases but a wide distribution of it would cause a
huge amount of lost functionality for any organization relying
upon it. |
|
| |
| Therefore,
this is my dream. We pay careful attention to the child's
environment. What is going on the child's home life? Are
the parents willing to learn about and improve their behaviors
that adversely affect the behavior of their child? Humans
learn through reinforcement. Any behaviors that a child
ever emits can be reinforced and supported. We must be careful
about how we reinforce behavior. Even when we reinforce
a behavior negatively, the behavior increases. Those who
do not agree might want to experiment with their children.
Carefully observe how your own actions directly affect the
actions of children. I want this to be the solution
to problems with ADHD children, a behavioral analysis of
the supervising adults as well as a diagnosis of the child. |
|
| |
|
The actions of children are clues to problems in their
environment. My parents divorced 6 months after I stopped
taking Ritalin. They had been struggling to cope with each
for years. I, their child, displayed behaviors symbolic
of the problems in our household. Children are a great insight
for realizing problems in Adult behavior management. If
children are scoring poorly on a particular test, how well
were the preceding lessons taught? Children shuffle around
in their desks, are the chairs uncomfortable or ergonomically
incorrect? Such lines of reasoning seem more logical as
ways to assess behavioral problems. They will yield results
where the underlying sources of problems are dug up, lessons
are learned, and new methodologies are developed. Instead
of drugging a child to achieve desired behaviors, I encourage
a thoughtful analysis of how we structure that child's environment. |
|
| |
 |
|
