Identifying Disruptive Behaviour

In children (and many adults) disruptive behaviour can be due to a lack of conscious awareness and/or practical issues of stress and anxiety. Disruptive and anti-social behaviour is predominantly a matter of actions that are unsuitable to the situation – e.g. wiping sticky fingers on new clothes for sale in a shop. Disruptive behaviour is commonly identified as that which is:-

• Unsuitable to others present – unsociable
• Potentially or actually causing physical harm to the environment, a person or event.
• Potentially or actually likely to cause physical/mental/emotional damage.
• Triggering knowingly or unknowingly another person’s specific areas of emotional or physical insecurity, stress and/or fear.

Development of Consciousness and Disruptive Behaviour

Aggression and abuse are commonly associated with anger and bullying.

The ‘purpose’ that fuels aggression and abuse is to dominate other members of a social group and establish or improve one’s social position in the hierarchy, i.e. the order of power gained from importance and respect.

(www.angermanagement.co.uk)

Bully and victim interaction is commonly due to emotional disruptions experienced by the participants themselves or previous generations in their family constellation.

Bullying is a primitive survival mechanism designed to gain inter-action from other members of the social group and establish or improve one’s social position in the hierarchy, i.e. the order of power gained from physical size and strength, importance and respect.

When we avoid confrontation with the bully and give our attention and care to the victim we provide the best deterrent to further bullying. Disciplining the bully with social disapproval or dominance provides him/her with social attention and information based upon primitive social structures. This attention may encourage the bully to upgrade the intensity and strength of his/her bulling in the hope of establishing a higher position in the primitive social structure of the group. Giving care and special support to the victim can confuse and disrupt the bully’s primitive survival mechanism. It stops the bully from receiving social attention and control, and suggests the ultimate social discipline of disapproval by withdrawing social interaction.

The victim needs to have socially positive experiences that can neutralise disruptive emotional issues related to isolation, (rejection, exclusion, separation). A victim needs support within their most vulnerable situations as well as help to gain genuine positive social experiences and inner confidence.

Adults who project an enforced system of responsibility for younger children onto older children can encourage bullying; especially when the older child (children) is feeling pressured beyond their personal consent, choice or social skill level. Similarly bulling may occur when older and younger children are not given suitable separate environmental conditions to suit their personal and creative activities Issues related to bullying can be eased and resolved by casual and kindly supervision that encourages the bully to develop social confidence and manage the emotional damage that drives him/her to resort to primitive social responses. For those who may resort to bullying, the problem can be addressed within environments that give the least intensity to social expectation, competitive activity, ridged rules, and/or oppressive forms of authoritative discipline.

Also, supervised outdoor environments and opportunity for informal social interaction can help those who feel socially challenged and are likely to use the primitive social defences related to victim and bully interaction.

Natural outdoor environments generally present relaxed and informal social expectation, where competitive activity and group dynamics are minimal. All children thrive on free play in a natural environment where they can explore, experiment and investigate; whereby a passion for learning guarantees intellectual development. Also their own unique personality fills the play with creativity and social interaction. While empowered by child-directed discovery learning children are also encouraged to engage in creative activity and personal expression. Working with animals especially horses, cows and large dogs can also be very helpful if properly supervised by suitably experienced adults. Natural environments can help those who feel socially challenged to avoid the use of primitive social defences, and encourage opportunities for the development of self-confidence, self-discipline and positive interaction.

Being a valued member of a sharing and caring community helps everyone to gain confidence and communication skills related to authentic personal expression. Important learning and much enjoyment is acquired through inclusive social activities involving music and dance. Those who mix regularly within groups, that include a wide range of age and ability, are encourage to confidently develop free-thinking and their own unique personality. Strong experiences of compassion, caring and sharing are encouraged within outdoor community activities that incorporate all ages and those with disabilities as equally valued participants.

Bully-victim behaviour and associated primitive social behaviour can be excessive within some areas of human society because of over-crowding, childhood issues related to social isolation and lack of appropriate adult supervision.

To successfully dissolve the subconscious limitations and experiences related to adverse social interaction, it is essential that we establish new depths and new dimensions of love, for ourselves, each other and especially our children.

Common Causes Related to Emotional and Physical Over-whelm:-

1. Unable to shut out unwanted stimulus.
2. Too much unfamiliar or overbearing social interaction.

E.g. Being in close proximity with people I don’t know or feel uncomfortable with.

3. Transition:-

• Unable to meet the change/s in circumstances.
• Loss of supporting companionship- mother, father, sibling, teacher, friend, familiar companions (child, adult or pet!) and/or environment.
• Unable to accommodate invading stimulus. For example:-
• Adult commentary, “Oh what a wonderful castle do you see how that drawbridge is going up?”
• Unwanted companionship, “Johnny is coming to paint with you.”
• Being told to do something different, “It is time to tidy up for lunch now.”
• Postponement, “No you can’t have a piece of this cake until Aunty comes to tea tomorrow.”

4. Unable to keep appropriate body temperature, i.e. too hot or too cold or too changeable.
5. Boredom (lack of self-direct): –

• Unable to motivate engagement in activity.
• Unable to respond naturally.
• Unable to relate to the environment in a way that feels right or is requested of me.

Children are often unable to understand adult contrived consequences and they receive these adult devised consequences within the social-emotional context of either loving kindness related to adult approval or unloving rejection related to adult disapproval. Therefore adult directed consequences, especially for young children, need to be directly and immediately linked with the physical environment from a natural perspective.

For this reason calm and assertive blocking and/or removal of related objects and/or immediate bodily removal from the adverse environment are ways in which the adult can create realistic environmental consequences. These responses may ultimately give the child a helpful social understanding of their behaviour. For example: the child that screams in the shop or cafe is calmly and compassionately removed as an immediate and first response. If dramatic emotional interaction is the first reaction then the child will feel emotionally challenged and the act of removal will not be acknowledged with any clarity. Similarly giving a child a treat when s/he has done something GOOD is not going to help the child gain any social understanding outside of ‘doing this will get me a sweetie!’ Within the behavioural reward and punishment system children can often transfer the rewarded behaviour with enthusiastic repetition into socially inappropriate situations, then the adult may react with disciplinary action instead of the reward expected by the child. This level of unexpected disapproval can feel very distressing to the child who was expecting a reward as a sign of approval. This inevitably brings the child unfair consequences and much confusion which may damage their subsequent social confidence.

• A young child rarely pre-determines a negative attitude or destructive/disruptive behaviour
• Young children are often unable to understand the direct physical consequences of their own actions.
• Young children are intrinsically linked with their own moment by moment relationship with their immediate activity. Therefore imagining possible consequences is often beyond their mental abilities due to their multi-sensory experiences and willed focus on their moment by moment interaction with the sensory environmental.
• Children’s imaginative abilities develop in relation to their own experiences and their own will. Children are often unable to understand adult contrived consequences.

Most parents instinctively know that disruptive behaviour needs to be neutralised if the adverse results are to be minimised and bad habits successfully avoided.

Two opposite and equally extreme forms of adult interruption are as follows:-

1 Rewards as a comforter.

For example: giving a treat such as sweets, cakes, watching a video or a new toy.  This may work well at the time but it teaches the child that disruptive behaviour brings rewards and thus the child is motivated to instigate disruptive behaviour in order to gain a reward.

The meaning and use of the word praise: This is a word I usually avoid because of its polarised counterpart reprimand. I personally feel that authentic communication – appreciation/gratitude/empathy are all more helpful than the less personal and more polarised presentation of praise.  This I feel is of particular importance with the woman to boy/Lad/man relationships where the heart connection of caring and sharing is what appears to be sought and appreciated above all else by the males from females in particular. However, I must concede that the male to male relationship is much more able to carry the authoritative leadership aspect of praise and its counterpart reprimand.  Indeed I have spent a great deal of time and effort supporting single parent mothers to hold more successful boundaries and consequences when raising their young boys without the male input from the father. Praise certainly seems traditionally more acceptable within those situations of master and apprentice, which involve a commitment on both sides, to the discipline required for mastery of any kind. Praise also feels more in context with the male relationship as the chief towards the male members of his tribe and in today’s western society the male head of the family as protector and provider.

2 Domination/intimidation/threats

A stronger illustration of disruptive behaviour, i.e. screaming, shouting, violent and/or threatening, whereby the person/s who wishes to stop/interrupt the disruptive behaviour creates an even stronger more dominantly influential behaviour in order to win or regain control.

This will usually work at the time, however, the child is motivated to develop higher levels of disruptive behaviour in the hope of winning in a future round. This method of highly affective domination over disruptive behaviour also motivates the disruptive child to learn from example, and thereby gain further even more effective skills of influence through an increasing confidence in the powers of anti-social behaviour.

Disruptive/anti social behaviour in the young child is often a copied response, an innocent occupation of social interaction. Alternatively it is a call for attention and help. For the adult to meet this calling s/he will need to come from heart-felt compassion. Only a loving response can bring the child from feeling disturbed and separate to feeling secure. Many people try to distract the child into a more positive activity which works well for copied behaviour and bad habits, but will only temporarily postpone the child’s inner distress if a loving disposition is not genuinely underlying the adult’s behaviour.

So we come to the question of how to interrupt the negative behaviour without rewarding and without winning through domination.

Seek to identify and alleviate the cause

Why is this child/person unsettled? Why is this child unable to engage in socially suitable activity – natural play and learning?

It could be said that all disruptive behaviour in both children and adults is a call for some form of attention or help, or the expression of stress and anxiety.  We must address the underlying needs and identify- what survival issue is feeding this disruptive behaviour.

The following is a list of possible reasons:-

• I am too tired to manage this situation. (Physical exhaustion)
• My body is not feeling fit and well enough to manage this situation (poor physical health and/or physical disability). Many children/persons have unrecognised learning difficulties that are based on unidentified immaturity and/or damaged in their neurological functioning.
• I cannot perform in the way that you expect or want me to, and my inevitable failure is more than I can manage right now.
• I need to ‘get back into my body’, I need to be actively doing something meaningful to me.
• My mind is going too fast, I need things to slow it down.
• I feel anxious, I need to get ready to protect myself.
• I need to raise my adrenalin flow.
• I need to be with someone I trust.
• I do not feel safe in this situation.
• This situation scares me because…..
• This is not a safe and suitable play environment for me right now.
• I need to run around and be boisterous
• I need to get warm
• I need to express the bad feelings I can feel inside me, NOW, so that they don’t get any worse and make me have an unpredictable outburst of very unreasonable behaviour which may cause more upset than I and everyone else can manage without over reacting.
• I need you (the adult) to express the bad feelings I can feel inside you, NOW, then I won’t be so hurt by you having an outburst of unpredictable and probably unreasonable behaviour.
• I need you/everything to slow down.
• I need you to leave me alone/stop helping me.
• I need rest, I’m tired.
• I can’t manage any more of this situation/experience.
• I can’t manage what you are asking of me.
• Something is happening inside me:- which does not feel good; that I can’t control; that I can’t understand; that I can’t explain to you!
• I need some food, I’m hungry/ my blood-sugar level has dropped too low.

My body needs help I feel unwell/pain/discomfort.

The diagram below illustrates a natural progression of responses to a situation that is felt to contain a level of seen or unseen danger.