Children From Chaotic and Troubled Homes Are More Likely to Wreak Havoc in Schools

Our society’s social, cultural, and economic problems are spilling over into our schools. They are greatly complicating schools’ central task of educating students safely and effectively.

More and more children from troubled, chaotic homes are bringing well-developed patterns of antisocial behavior to school. Their aggressive, disruptive, and defiant behavior wastes teaching time, disrupts the learning of all students, threatens safety, overwhelms teachers—and ruins their own chances for successful schooling and a successful life.  In Some of the inner city schools, it’s hard to see how academic achievement can rise significantly in the face of so much lost teaching time, not to mention the anxiety that is produced by the constant disruption.

Many Jamaican families are broken because of the social and personal factors of poverty, divorce, drug and alcohol problems, physical abuse, mental abuse, health problems, etc. These stressors disrupt normal parenting practices, making family life chaotic, unpredictable, and hostile. In these homes where stress is great, family members interact with each other in negative, aggressive ways and there are always excessive yelling, threats, intimidation, and physical force.  This kind of environment is the fertile ground in which antisocial behavior is bred. Children learn that the way to get what they want is through coercive tactics of disobeying, whining, yelling, throwing tantrums, threatening parents, and even hitting.

Children who have developed an antisocial profile have a limited repertoire of cooperative behavior skills, will readily use coercive tactics to control and manipulate others, and a well-developed capacity for emotional outbursts and confrontation. They have enormous difficulty accomplishing the social task of sharing, negotiate disagreements, deal with conflicts, make friends and participate in competitive activities.

“Antisocial children are more than twice as likely as regular children to initiate unprovoked verbal or physical aggression toward peers, to reciprocate peer aggression toward them, and to continue aggressive behavior once it has been initiated” (Snyder, 2002).

Children who exhibit severe emotional, behavioral and/or social problems can be helped by special remedial programs. It is suggested that intervention be done when children are young preferably, pre-school and primary level. Without someone intervening early to teach these children how to behave better, half of them will maintain the disorder into adulthood and the other half will suffer significant adjustment problems.

Suggested ways to affect a workable remedial program in schools

1. Provide early intervention for the young, preferable at age 8;
2. Establish a Screening Committee;
3. Require intervention beyond the school’s resources;
4. Do psychological assessment of students;
5. Review students on a regular basis;
6. Remove students from regular classrooms until they have developed compensatory skills to a level which will allow them to function successfully;
7. Conduct home and community surveys in determining the conditions contributing to behaviour;
8. Provide teacher aides for teachers involved in this program;
9. Have Professional development for involved staff;
10. Parent conferences;
11. Family counseling.

 Schools are not the source of children’s behavioral problems, and they can’t completely solve them on their own but they can do a lot to minimize bad behavior—and in so doing, they help not only the students acquire sufficient behavioral control to succeed in school, but the Jamaican society at large.

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