Loving the Unloveable Child: Part II
Labeling and the Quick Fix
This is the second article in a series on approaching challenging behaviours through a Montessori lens. Read my first article here. In the first article, I told the story of Ali, a student whose behaviours had earned him the label ‘bad kid’ in our middle school program, and how, by approaching the situation with a Montessori mindset, I was able to support Ali in changing his circumstances.
“The behaviors are so disruptive and require so much redirection that I can’t teach a coherent lesson or guide a sane work period. I’m implementing SO many accommodations. Normalization is not happening. What else do I do?”
- Anon. Montessori Teacher on Facebook
Overwhelmed by Behaviors
In my own experience of Montessori teaching and of supporting other Montessori teachers, the management of challenging behaviours is often one of the most draining aspects of the job. If you feel like you don’t have a handle on certain behaviours in your environment, it can be really overwhelming and isolating, and make you feel like your classroom is unsafe and out-of-control. I’m thinking especially of behaviours that seem to threaten the peace of the environment as a whole - when children are being continually disruptive, aggressive, destructive, violent, hyperactive, chaotic, and unkind. Throw on top of that the pressures teachers receive from parents and administrators to solve the problem that a specific child presents, and this can be the issue that pushes teachers out of the profession altogether.
In her book, Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful, which is the bible for this work, Donna Bryant Goertz calls these children “outsider children”:
“Most children take the keys a Montessori teacher offers and open the doors to learning and development for themselves. Some children, however, seem to refuse the keys, or, if they do accept them, don’t seem to be able to use them to open doors. They seem to be self-defined or self-proclaimed ‘outsiders’.”
Donna Bryant Goertz, Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful
These are children who are challenging their teachers, challenging the other students in their community, challenging school leadership, and challenging the parent community.
So how do we typically respond to the challenge these children pose?
Labeling and the Quick Fix
Often our response to these children in schools is twofold: we label them and we seek a quick fix to their disruptive behaviours.
Labeling: We want to understand this child, a child whose behaviour strikes us as eccentric, complicated, challenging or confusing, and so we seek to label them. It is a very human response. We label in so many different ways - we use negative terms like difficult, challenging, naughty, hyper, needy, etc. to describe a child and their behaviour - we draw conclusions and judgements about a child's background - their family life, ethnicity, etc. - and we seek to diagnose them - SEND children, ADHD, etc.
The Quick Fix: We want to solve this child's behaviours, which threaten the peace of the community, and so we seek a quick fix. The most common quick fixes are external control, reward & punishment, tutoring, medication, and exclusion - all methods that don't align with the Montessori method.
Labels
“There are labels that might be attached to Jason, but we’ll neither define nor categorize him. None of us are to be found in sets of tasks or lists of attributes; we can be known only in the unfolding of our unique stories within the context of everyday events.”
Vivian Paley, The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter
As beautifully captured in the quote above from Vivian Paley, defining and categorizing children often obscures our view of the child we have in front of us.
Now, I am not advocating for blindness - we have to educate ourselves about ABAR teaching, special education, and disability - but we should always begin with the child as they are.
As a community we have become fixated on SEND (Special Educational Needs & Disabilities) issues, and on the numbers of SEND children in our environments. I constantly hear teachers bemoan the burden of SEND provision that Montessori schools bear. They will talk about the % of SEND students in their space.
Inclusion should not be understood as a burden, and we have to stop talking about it as such. We are operating in a culture that is obsessed with diagnosis and labels. Under the guise of understanding, these labels are often used to limit children and excuse adults from their responsibility. But at the same time, I understand that we cannot just shout "inclusion" at our teachers, we have to do a better job in supporting them in supporting these children.
In a well-run Montessori environment, one that meets the needs of all children, the majority of children who are labeled, diagnosed, and medicated in other learning environments are able to flourish. We have to balance SEND education and understanding, which is important to help guide and support our work with children, with an approach which often permits or pushes us to treat these children in a way that doesn't line up with our method or values.
The ‘Bad Kid’ Narrative
Another label or narrative I want to briefly mention is that of the ‘bad kid.’
With 'outsider' children, there is often a swirl of opinion that follows them - worries about safety, negative influence, unkindness, bullying, and distraction from learning. In a number of the programs I’m currently working with, parents are putting a lot of pressure on the school to ‘deal’ with the situation of a specific child. In a few schools, parents have pulled their children because of them feeling like this ‘bad child’ is threat to their own child's development.
I think this narrative is also sometimes used by teachers who allow themselves to believe that a specific child or group of children is the problem with their classroom not the environment or their practice.
This way of seeing children also creates a power dynamic with the other children in the community who similarly start to develop a hierarchical view of what it means to be a good or bad child in the environment:
“In a traditional school, the ‘good’ child or ‘good student’ too often perceives herself to be judged superior to others, whom she self-righteously despises. She feels ‘proud’ of herself. The ‘good’ child...is too often invested in keeping others ‘bad’ to ensure superior rank...He knows he is only ‘good’ in relation to someone else’s being bad.”
Donna Bryant Goertz, Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful
This was everything that Ali was up against [see previous article]...and he felt it. Parents and teachers who felt like he was a bad influence, and children who were happy to keep him down in order to maintain their own position.
Casting any child into the role of bad child, seeking their punishment and exclusion, threatens the psychological safety of every child. As Goertz says...
“Deep down, each child knows he is only as worthy as any other child. Casting some children in negative roles puts the very being of each and every child at risk. If even one child can be cast aside as unworthy, no child is truly safe.”
Donna Bryant Goertz, Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful
To summarize, these labels act to limit and fix our understanding of children and their behaviors, as opposed to seeing the child in front of us as capable of change and development.
The Quick Fix
We are not by nature a patient species, I find. Intellectually we know that things take time, but in reality we find this process hard to bear. As Montessorians, we are taught that work is the normalizing force - and that the process of normalization takes time, space, and effort. Too often though we rush to fix these 'outsider' children through medication, exclusion, tutoring, external control, reward and punishment.
I've especially seen this with children who have been labelled as having special educational needs. We fall into a scarcity mindset where we worry that if we don’t act now they will be left behind. They are suddenly given an excess of one-on-one support, scaffolds, plans, etc. all with the good intention of supporting them in the environment. But this places the locus of control with the adults, not with the child or the community of children. As an adolescent guide, I've too often seen the result of this approach, which is teenagers who've been enabled or perhaps even disabled by adult intervention.
“As kind and logical as it may seem to leap to the child’s assistance with a remedy...that is rarely what he needs. Montessori tells us the child is saying, ‘Help me to help myself.’
When we panic and rush in...we are wresting the key from the hand of the child and opening the door for her. What we forfeit...is value and ownership of her own freedom, will, choice, self-discipline, and effort.”
Donna Bryant Goertz, Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful
No Quick Fixes Here!
So, I’ve got to the end of this article, and once again I haven’t given any practical steps for how to deal with challenging behaviors in your environment. No quick fixes here I’m afraid! However, in the next article I will share some of the key practices that have most helped me in this work.
In the meantime, just remember what Dr. Montessori said:
“All we really need to do is change our fundamental attitude towards the child, and love him with a love which has faith in his personality and goodness; which sees not his faults but his virtues.”
That’s all. It’s easy - just change your fundamental attitude, and come back to me once your done! Next time, we’ll look at what changing a fundamental attitude might look like in practice…