To think that bullies shouldn't get rewards for not bullying?

[DrSeuss]

So, my son came home with a badly bruised knee with a smallish cut the other day. He said that this happened when he was pushed over the class bully. I immediately contacted the school who were really helpful, questioned the bully, then rang me back. I was told that the boy's mother had been called in after the boy had admitted pushing my son over and that the boy had been placed on report. I was happy with this as an outcome until today, when my son told me that the bully gets a sticker for each of the three daily breaks when he behaves and that on day five, if he has fifteen stickers, he will get to choose an item from the class goody basket.

I'm not suggesting that they impose a stringent punishment on a child of six but is that really the way to go? If I had set it up, I would have given a sticker on a chart for each break with no reward for a week's worth of stickers but a telling off and the mother called in again if any stickers were missed due to bad behaviour. It just seems to me that you ought not to reward a bully for not bullying. The majority of the children in the class don't bully and to me that's normal, not requiring special praise.
Thoughts?
Oh, btw, this is not the first time he has picked on my son and my son is not the only child this boy has bullied. That's not hearsay, two other mothers have told me they have made complaints last half term.

No hard feelings EBD- you sound like you definitely have an expertise in the field and I can wholeheartedly respect that - i think we're all getting so riled up because we care so much about the children. We're just looking at the issue from two different angles...:)

Well the big question is does it work? If it improves the child's behaviour then all good? A decent school should be reviewing whether behavioural interventions are working (and a disruptive child should have a behavioural intervention plan).

No point doing something else, that placates the other children but doesn't actually affect the behaviour of the disruptive child. That is really the only relevant question 'is it improving the behaviour of the child concerned?'. If it is then everyone is benefitting.

How to effectively support and remediate children who don't easily learn prosocial behaviour, or have barriers in the way of producing prosocial behaviour, is a HUGE issue in education today. Particularly in the setting of a mainstream classroom. I don't think anybody has the answers, especially in this budget strapped age where interventions cannot be paid for. I certainly don't have the answers and I work at the cutting edge of the field.

I predict they will go back to ways that worked in previous budget strapped eras, and focus on the greater good - ie getting 29 kids properly educated without spending all the limited resources on "prosocialising" the antisocial one.

And I think the vast majority of parents will support that.

What exactly are you advocating does happen to that child? Permanent exclusion at 6? You are going to make no attempt to equip them with skills to cope in society? Do you know how much that one child is likely to go on to cost the state in later life if early intervention is absent or fails and their antisocial behaviour continues to escalate? It is astronomical.

As adults will your children thank you for the tax rises that will be required to pay for all the extra welfare, health and justice costs associated with antisocial adults? Early intervention is the cheapest and most effective option and fortunately nobody with any kind of professional insight agrees with you and redirection of resources to support more early intervention (much of it at pre-school level) is in the pipeline. We await to see what form it takes.

Early intervention is the cheapest and most effective option and fortunately nobody with any kind of professional insight agrees with you and redirection of resources to support more early intervention

Of course the professionals in the field don't agree, because they want the redirection of scarce resources to go to keep them employed in prosocialising rather than to actually teach the kids.

The real cost to any country is if it cannot educate its next generation properly.

The point of an education system is to educate the children, not to provide a supply of human billiard balls so antisocial kids can knock their rough edges off.

whatme - have you ever worked in a school?

A lot of teaching goes on, you know. It's not all bullying and billiards

I cannot believe that you think it is okay to simply have the teacher deal with the 29 children in the class and ignore the 1 or 2 children that have problems or additional needs. You're prepared to write off any future for children as young as 4 and 5 yo, the age they start school? How utterly charming and completely uncivilised. So if you have a child of that age, you'd be happy for them to be written off by society as useless and not worth the effort of educating as they don't conform?

The circumstances that the OP has described could well have described my son when he was 6 years old. His behaviour was reasonable but then he started a new school and within the first week 2 mothers put in complaints about his behaviour. They made a point of doing this in front of everyone on the school playground. The following week another complaint was made and then I was called in. I explained (again) how he had problems understanding other children and making friends and he was bored but they refused additional support in this respect. Over the 9 months he was there things got progressively worse for him. The amount of times I heard other parents tell their children not to play with him was unbelievable. If only the school had listened and other parents had not been so judgemental things could have been so different.

Before we moved him to another school he once said to me "I tried being nice but no-one played with me, at least when I call people names they say something to me even if it is nasty".

He went to a new school which did listen. One year on and he was a different child. They explained social situations to him and he has friends. What worked for him most was praise and building his confidence. He has problems in some areas but this was dealt with positively. They made sure everyone knew what he was good at and he went from strength to strength. He does maths and literacy with children 3 years older than himself and his teacher says he understands it so much better than these children that he helps them in the class. He also helps the children in his own year group.

He has also recently been diagnosed with Aspergers and ADHD.

The child the OP mentions is only 6. He clearly needs support. The school are taking measures towards that. The OP does NOT know the circumstances or background of this child or the reason for the behaviour. I would hope that the school have discussed with the childs parents the best approach to dealing with the behavioural problems and that this will be reviewed. The reward method is a positive approach and the child will have to work hard to get the reward.

Hippomaniac - Seems like unfortunately a fair few people are of the "if they don't conform, they're not worth helping" ilk here. They seem to want their NT children to get rewards for their good behaviour, but if the non-conformists get any type of positive reinforcement it is a "bribe for not behaving badly." And they shouldn't get any more attention or support than any other child in the classroom, or it's "not fair" and will damage the other children psychologically. sigh...

What do schools do with the PITA kids then? Chuck 'em on the scrap heap? Seems a shame to throw them away so young but hey, who gives a shit eh?

And BTW mummie, what is the difference between a bribe and a reward? Is a bribe something bad kids get offered? And a reward is what the good ones get?

And of course no one rewards their kiddies at home because they have been good when in the shops for mummy....oh nooooooo

One day some of you may possibly among your families of angels....give birth to a "not so perfect" child......and maybe then suddendly wake up and smell the roses...........

'Of course the professionals in the field don't agree, because they want the redirection of scarce resources to go to keep them employed in prosocialising rather than to actually teach the kids.'

. Is that what you really think?

Whatmeworry, what do you think happens to "antisocial" children who aren't taught social skills (and as a result probably struggle to access a lot of the curriculum)? They become antisocial adults who have to be paid for, through higher shop prices (shoplifting), higher insurance premiums (other forms of theft), policing, courts and prisons, not to mention the human cost of violence and the impact of antisocial behaviour. It is in no-one's interest to ignore the behaviour of children in the interests of "fairness", because once they are adults it is nigh on impossible to rectify.

I can't see where anyone has said that children who don't 'conform' shouldn't be helped. Of course they shudo be helped, but helped doesn't mean rewarded.

I think privelidges should be taken away before rewards are given. In classrooms with 5/6 yo children they usually get some free play time, but it should be stressed from the start that that time is a reward for working hard and good behaviour, so that when a child doesn't behave it can easily be taken away. It also leaves the children who have behaved feeling like they are being rewarded for their good behaviour instead of it just being normal and having no meaning.

Then if it gets to the stage where rewards have to be given for good behaviour, teachers can put ticks in a home school book or something and the reward canbe given at home. I don't see why it has to be done with stickers or class rewards, it should be done away from other children to protect them from getting the message that bad behaviour pays in the long run.

kitchenroll burke you are thinking about it, I suspect, as a parent of NT children?, without behavioural problems?

The problems or often not through poor discipline-its that the measures that work for most children, just don't have the same effect.

For example, removing free play time to run around outside, would be really counterproductive for an ADHD child

I absolutely did not intend to call you a burke I am sorry. It should have read but Blooming autocorrect

I have auto correct issues too!

I have 2 dc, and one of them has aspergers. I'm also a TA so I work in a classroom. I see what you are saying about preventing a child with ADHD from running around, and I think that would be counterproductive for most children especially those that were prone to being disruptive. But as this time often happens last thing on a Friday afternoon, I don't think it would be that bad because the child would have a chance to play straight after school.

Taking away free play time is not the only thing that could be done though. We have an adventure playground at my school and the one my dc are at, and a child could be prevented from using that on his classes day, while still being allowed to use the playground. Or they could be denied a choice about something else.

I think it also benefits the child in question to not be singled out and treated differently as much as is possible, because inclusion isn't just about having children with SN in mainstream school, it's about ensuring that every child's needs are being met while treating them the same as much as is practical.

I would have been quite upset if other children in a class knew that my dc was being treated differently because he has AS, because every child should be treated according to their needs and differences without labels being out on them. I don't want my child to be seen as different.

Also, the child in the OP is, as far as we know, NT, so that is mainly what I am forming my opinion based on.

I also think that rewarding a child for good behaviour when they find it hard to sit still or concentrate on work is very different from rewarding good behaviour for not being mean to others.

When other children are directly involved in the first child's bad behaviour, that other child has to be considered just as much. And while rewarding a child for not bullying might work for that child, it's not going to work for the child who has been bullied. It's just going to tell them that it must be so hard for X notto bully them that they deserve stickers for it. That is exactly the sort of thing that leads to the bullied child feeling they are to blam and ends up with their self esteem being trashed all over.

If rewarding the non bulling is going to be the best thing to stop it, then I really do see no reason why the parent and teacher can't communicate and let the child be rewarded at home away from the others.

Kitchenroll - you said >>>I can't see where anyone has said that children who don't 'conform' shouldn't be helped. Of course they shudo be helped, but helped doesn't mean rewarded.

Rewarding the child at home possibly hours after the fact is useless. Consequences need to be immediate or there's no point at that age.

I think this constant banging on about how seeing the "bully" being rewarded is going to damage the "bullied child" is just nonsense. They are NOT seeing the child being rewarded immediately after he has pushed someone. If the child is aggressive, then he does NOT get a reward. And the other children SEE that. If he DOES behave well, then he gets a reward. And the children see that as well.

Fair enough, but Whatmeworries post doesn't directly say that children shouldn't be helped when they are struggling.

I don't know that the school hasn't tried other options, and you would hope that they have. I'm not sure they always do though, giving lots of positive praise for good seems to be the first thing that gets advised ime with behaviour support services in schools.

It shouldn't be a reward for good behaviour when all that is required is that the child doesn't bully. That's not good behaviour, that's normal behaviour, no matter how difficult that is for a particular child to display. And again, I agree it can work well for the child that has had the behaviour problems, but I don't think that is the only thing that should be considered. The children who have had to put up with someone else being mean to them have as much, if not more, right for their feelings to be considered.

I dont work in a school but have had children in school long enough to know that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that are not necessarily made aware.

Usual step is consequences for behaviour, time out, no free time, loss of play time.

Reward system for reinforcement of positive behaviour

And very usually whilst this is happening it is temporary whilst they meet parents, maybe seek professionals and spend a lot of time working out how the child ticks and what triggers effect him, his emotional wellbeing.