A number of people made comments on the
post relating to the behaviour of children with “special needs” earlier
this week. This morning’s IPM podcast from the BBC was relevant to this and
interesting to me for what wasn’t said.
The mother spoke as though she was
alone with her son, but this was not made clear. An event occurred in a class
of six year old children that led to permanent exclusion of her son, the
perpetrator, but we weren’t told what that event was. What was
clear was the mother’s distress at her incapacity to cope with the situation.
She loves her son but for some
inexplicable reason, or reasons, he is not socialised sufficiently at age six
to fit into a class of children in a school environment. We weren’t told
anything about his care for the first years of his life. If he was happily
fitting into a day care environment prior to his school failure this wasn’t
mentioned.
For many years the western world’s
obsession with chronological age as a determinant of readiness for school has
been challenged. Edward de Bono demonstrated that the natural order of things
is not for children to be placed in a group with others of a similar age and
instructed by an adult, but for them to learn from slightly older
siblings.
Until education was formalised this was
always the way. Brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbours - they were a child’s
early mentors and teachers. And this makes a lot of sense.
Today we have much smaller families and
for many children there are fewer opportunities to model behaviours by
observing slightly older relatives. Nobody enters this world knowing how to
behave, we have to learn our behaviours.
Let’s recognise that in evolutionary
terms formal institutionalised education has only been around for a very
short time. Mass education is a very recent concept in human development. When
education was the domain of the ruling classes it was one to one and personalised,
it did deliver specialised tuition.
Children are not tiny adults, they are
both psychologically and physiologically different to adults, but today many of
them are almost exclusively exposed to adult interactions and social
negotiations.
This is especially so in our mediated
world when soon after birth they will hear the sounds of television, and see
the events on the screen. Television portrays dramatic events, not real life.
It has to, because real life in the average household that ordinary children
inhabit would make for dull viewing.
And so from Coronation Street or
Eastenders a child can “learn” that life is a series of peaks and troughs, of
ecstasy and misery, and that we scream and fight our way through our lives and
survive only by sharing our most intimate fears with those who are closest to
us. Those who will then betray us. They “learn” that when we are annoyed with
our spouse, about anything at however trivial all jump into bed with the first
person we meet, throw the television across the room, smash furniture, or
worse. And that’s just the early evening soaps!
Interestingly we also learn from our
television that if a male character appears to be a man of honour and
integrity, decent, hardworking and faithful he will always appear as a buffoon,
usually wearing ridiculous clothes and be portrayed as a loser.
The truth is that the mediated world is
saturated with dramatic effects, for that’s the currency of the entertainment
industry. Everyone in a drama has to move the action along, nobody is the focus
of attention for being quiet, relaxed, and just being there. Just being
yourself is not an option, everyone must perform.
Many children today are growing up with
a single parent and for them the number of intimate social negotiations they
observe will be limited. I’m using intimate here to describe
the minute communication transactions that occur between those living in the
same home, people not acting in a hierarchy such as the workplace, or
engaged in an economic deal. An example of an intimate social negotiation in
the home might be parents deciding whether to go on holiday, what sort of
holiday, where, when, etc
The lone parent may even begin to
discuss issues with their child as though the child is a tiny adult. This can
happen before the child is ready for such decision making.
In a traditional nuclear family there
are constant daily discussions around a myriad of trivial everyday subjects,
and these tiny communication events form the threads that weave the fabric of
our lives. Children learn to argue without raised voices, to challenge without
abuse, to compromise without loss of face, and a whole host of other valuable
life skills. They also learn when to stay silent.
On the podcast there is mention of a
charitable organisation that aims to help the families of excluded children,
and the person speaking sounded caring and sincere, but funding to support the
individual children with problems isn’t going to improve the situation for
society.
The suggestion that teachers need more
mental health and special needs training was worrying. Britain has difficulty
recruiting good teachers now, how much more difficult if we expect them to
undergo mental health and special needs training too?
As a society we need to address this
issue urgently.
We need to act urgently to identify
whether the number of children with issues is increasing, or just the number
being diagnosed, and whatever the outcome we need to know why it is happening.
The behavioural problems being acted
out in our schools are probably not the result of a contagious notifiable
disease.(Although nothing should be ruled out) If it were we would have
protocols within our public health legislation to control the spread of the
infection. Unless there is an underlying infection causing this then one “special
needs” child could not infect a neighbourhood, and yet we see the
condition is spreading.
Nature or nurture the parents are
responsible. Whether it is their genes or the environment they grow their
children in. However, if the responsible persons are incapable of solving their
problem a civilised society must offer assistance. Unless society as a whole
finds the answers as to why we have such a growth of “special needs” children
the future for us all is compromised.
We need to know why it is happening?
I’ll be amazed if anyone reads this
far, but just in case you have I’ve put in a couple of links that might be
interesting. The first is a long presentation by a scientist who is not
especially endowed with presentation skills, Dr Judy Mikovitz but she has wealth of
knowledge and a whistle to blow – she isn't the first to raise doubts about
vaccinations, but we should listen and think about the warnings. The second
link is on a topic that I think has much to do will many of our social problems
today, Margaret Heffernan on willful blindness.
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