Inappropriate behavior in the classroom is often disruptive to the student misbehaving, his classmates, and often the teacher. It can be overwhelming to a parent who has tried everything they can to correct their child’s behavior and the problem persists or gets worse. No child wakes up and says “I am going to get in trouble at school today!” It happens though and the emotional toll on a child who is often in trouble has lifelong impact and can be just as challenging as a learning disability. I have spent a lot of time in schools, with teachers, and with parents and their children working on creating real behavior change and would like to share some of my strategy here.

There are two main points that I ask parents to think about when helping their child work on changing behavior at school. The first is the idea that if your child was struggling with math or reading or another academic area, then they would be receiving some help in the form of a tutor or mentor. When it comes to behavior struggles, children are most often punished, coerced, shamed, or embarrassed into appropriate behavior. So when this heavy handed approach isn’t working, try the tutoring route and help coach a child into the right kind of behavior. Second, when a child is struggling with behavior, the teacher will sometimes use emotional, judgmental, vague and often confusing language to describe a set of behaviors that are disruptive or distracting to the teacher’s ability to effectively do her job. As a parent, it is helpful if you see the teacher’s need and empathize with it, but you also have to be a little bit of a detective in order to learn from the teacher what the disruptive behavior looks like.

Some teachers will write a note home when a child is disruptive and include emotionally charged descriptors of character like, “disrespectful”, “willful”, or “rude.” This gives you a good idea of how the teacher might be feeling, and you can probably guess what they mean, but you need the facts without the emotion. You need to know what specific behaviors look like and when they are happening. When the teacher says your child is “disrespectful”, or “can’t get his desk work done”, call the teacher and say “I understand how disruptive inappropriate behavior can be and I want to help my child change his behavior in your class.” Then ask, “Can you think of an example today or this week where he was respectful and tell me what he did and what he was supposed to be doing?” Once the teacher says “During silent reading today, your son got out of his seat five times and was talking to another student when he should have been reading.” Now you have a specific behavior and an idea of what might be triggering it. If your son is a challenged reader, or a bored strong reader, then you can talk to him about some simple ways that he can remember not to leave his seat, and do his work even when he is bored, or ask for help in an appropriate way from the teacher. This seems like an oversimplification, but with language like “make a god choice”, or “what do you think you should be doing now?” so prevalent in schools now, it is best to start by clearly defining what has to happen in concrete terms and not vague and ambiguous character trait concepts.

If you would like more information on our Behavior Coaching method, click here for a free paperback copy of “Behavior Coaching” by Matt Pasquinilli and Scott Hall, PhD.

Matt Pasquinilli is the Executive Director of the non profit Asian Arts Center Taekwondo School in Dayton, Ohio. He is also the author of “The Child Whisperer” and co-author of “Behavior Coaching” with Dr. Scott Hall. www.aacdayton.com