USING POSITIVE measures such as praise to reward good behaviour instead of punitive measures such as scolding and extra homework is a much more effective way of dealing with children with challenging behaviour in the long term, a conference on special needs heard in Cork at the weekend.
Behavioural specialist Kirsten Conroy said punitive measures may work in the short term, but could lead to low self-esteem or turn a child off a particular subject.
She told the third annual Special Needs Assistants Group (SNA Group) conference: “We need to put strategies in place to empower a child to be able to deal with a situation they find hard to cope with, be it a typically developing child or a child with a condition such as autism, Asperger’s or ADHD. These strategies must be tailor-made for each individual child and situation.”
She said challenging behaviour was behaviour which jeopardised the child’s ability to partake in typical social situations, was difficult to cope with, ie tantrums and aggression, and was in the child’s best interests to change.
Ms Conroy advised teachers, parents and SNAs to ignore bad behaviour within the limits of safety and reason and to make a point of praising good behaviour no matter how rare.
“A child with ADHD, for example, should be praised for sitting in his/her chair quietly, even if only for a few minutes instead of being constantly corrected for leaving their chair. I’m a firm believer that every classroom should have a physiotherapy ball to allow kids to get up and move during the day, and in taking stretch breaks.”
Director of the SNA group, Karen Lowther, highlighted the need for the Government to fund professional training for SNAs in the specific conditions they are working with.
She told Healthplus: “I think there is a need for additional training in specific conditions such as autism and Asperger’s on top of the basic SNA course if people are going to be professional in their jobs. At the moment, it’s up to the individual school to provide this training as it is not being funded as a rule by the department so it’s usually the board of management, the SNAs themselves or the parents who have to pay for it.”
Co-founder of the SNA group, Catherine Jackson, expressed her concern that SNAs would be taken from the schools where they were so badly needed as a result of a current audit of SNA positions being taken by the Department of Education.
