Children with Emotional and Behavior Disorders Chapter 7

Children with Emotional and

Behavior Disorders

Chapter 7

6 | 2Copyright © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

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Definition of SED /Serious Emotional Disturbance(IDEA PL 101-476)

…a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects educational performance-

A. An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors;

B. An inability to build and maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers;

C. Inappropriate types of behaviors or feelings under normal circumstances;

D. A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; orE. A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with

personal or school problems.

[Code of Federal Regulations, Title 34, Sect. 300.7(b)(9)]


Emotional Disturbance Prevalence

• The definition of EBD has many problems associated with it. One problem is that it places all responsibility for the problem on the child and none on the environment in which the child exists, thus making it the responsibility of the special education program to change the child—but not the learning environment

• 473,663 children and youth with E.D. were provided special education and related services in 2000-2001 school year.

From Twenty-fourth Annual Report to Congress, U.S.Department of Education, 2002.


Aggressive Groups• Several studies demonstrate the importance of

early intervention and illustrate that behavior problems and academic problems do not improve over time without intervention as the child physically and socially matures.

• chronic high aggressive (the child was aggressive when starting school),

• increasing aggressive (including those who seemed to become aggressive while in school and increased their aggressiveness over the years),

• moderate aggressive, and nonaggressive. • Non-aggressive


• The next slide shows the comparison of the aggressive behavior in school with later adult consequences. The figure shows that almost three-quarters of the chronically high aggressive and the increasing aggressive children had juvenile arrests, and half of them had adult arrests. Also, almost three-quarters of the chronically high aggressive and the increasing aggressive were identified as having conduct disorder or antisocial personality disorder.


Prediction of Adult Aggressive Behavior from Young Children


What are several potential causes of externalized emotional and behavior problems?

• biological risk factors• family risk• violence in the school• cultural and ethnic risk factors• substance abuse.


Internalizing Anxiety and Depression

• Children with anxiety-withdrawal and/or immaturity have excessive “internal” control and usually maintain strong control over their impulses, wishes, and desires. They are often more of a threat to themselves than to others. Chronic anxiety in children appears to be the result of the child’s perception of being caught in a stressful environment from which there is no way out. Sometimes this leads to a learned behavior pattern in which the child believes that nothing he or she can do can stop bad things from happening.


• Learned helplessness becomes so much a pattern that these children begin not to try in school because they believe it will only lead to another failure. Prolonged, intense periods of anxiety or depression can lead to suicide, the third leading cause of death in the age group 15 to 24 (Guetzloe, 1991). The following are some currently cited signs of a potential suicide: extreme changes in behavior, previous suicide attempt, suicide threats and statements, and signs of deep depression. Special education or general education teachers who note such signs should make referrals to appropriate crisis teams or mental health facilities (Law 51/50: Involuntarily hospitalization) for 48 to 72 hours. PET Team

• .


Identification and Placement

• The IEP for a student with emotional and behavior problems should be shaped not only by the student’s specific problems but also by the available resources in the school and in the community and should be a guide for the teacher. Most diagnostic instruments focus exclusively on the child’s characteristics and not on the environment. Both need to be evaluated when identifying children with behavior and emotional problems.

• Transient adaptation problems A behavior problem that is temporary—for example, one that occurs due to a family problem that is later resolved.


What techniques do we use to teach children to manage and control their own behavior?

• a. Positive behavior supports (PBS) are approaches to intervention based on behavior science principles to control behavior. They include functional assessments, positive interventions, and evaluative measures to assess progress.

• b. Functional behavioral assessment is a key part of PBS. Functional assessment, a multistep procedure with the purpose of understanding the intended objective or intent of the student’s behavior as well as describing that behavior, starts with the premise that self-destructive behavior has a rational purpose.


• c. Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is based on the work of B. F. Skinner and focuses on the A-B-C approach (Antecedents–Behavior –Consequences). By modifying the antecedent behavior and the consequences that follow, we can modify the behavior itself.

• Preventing social problems education : This approach attempts to prevent problem behaviors from occurring in the first place. Programs are designed to reduce aggressive, hyperactive, and disruptive behavior by having the full classroom become proficient in understanding each member’s own feelings and by learning self-control skills. Eg: Promoting alternative thinking strategies (PATHS), a 57-lesson curriculum in social competence focusing on self control, awareness of one’s own feelings, and peer relations, was utilized to improve social skills for the whole class


• Social skills training. Students with EBD usually need to improve their social skills to produce socially acceptable learned behaviors such as cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control. Some have suggested that improvement in academic skills instruction might improve the behavior of many students as well as the social skills instruction itself. One of the biggest problems these students experience is a failure of generalization of the skills from one environment to another.

• f. wraparound approach involves a commitment to blend and create services for children, their teachers, and their families. “Wraparound incorporates a family-centered and strength-based philosophy of care to guide service planning for students with EBD and their families”


• g. Adaptive technology. The computer can be an especially useful learning tool for a student with behavior problems because it provides an objective, neutral response to the child’s sometimes provocative or challenging behavior. Computers can focus the attention of the student, adapt the speed of delivery to match the student’s pace of learning, and create a structure for those students who have a hard time creating their own cognitive structure.


Self-instruction Training (SIT)• The cognitive strategy approach: students are taught

self-monitoring (a strategy that requires students to determine whether a target behavior has occurred and then record its occurrence)

• Self-evaluation (a strategy that asks the student to compare his or her behavior to some criteria and make a judgment about the quality of the behavior being exhibited),

• self-instruction (a method by which students can talk to themselves with verbal prompts to solve an academic or social problem)

• self-reinforcement (the student rewards him- or herself with a token or a tally after meeting some performance standard.


• These next slide shows the RTI model for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. The bottom of the RTI triangle looks at the universal interventions or the schoolwide behavior system. There needs to be a determined effort to ensure that the regular classroom is a place for healthy social interaction and the presentation of good mental health programming as well as adequate content knowledge.

• Three levels of behavioral support seem to be necessary for good school operation : The first is universal group behavior support for most students. This involves establishing schoolwide management strategies, setting rules and standards for expected student behavior in venues such as the cafeteria, the hallways, and the bus: It reduces office referrals for misbehavior

• The second tier activities (about 5 to 15 percent of students) would apply the positive behavior supports through small-group work or individual tutoring. Such intervention starts at the earliest possible moment to prevent the development of even more difficult behavior problems.

• The third tier (which involves a small number of students, about 1 to 7 percent, but those with the most serious emotional and behavioral problems) is dealt with on an individual basis with carefully designed IEPs and professional support to lessen the negative impact hat the environment and bad personal interactions has had on these impaired children.


Adapted from Sugai G, et al. Journal of Positive Response to Intervention, EBD. Reproduced with permission of Sage Publications Inc. Journals in the format

Textbook via Copyright Clearance Center.

Response to Intervention, EBD


Role of the Family• Family

– Table 6-4

• Families of children with behavior problems are challenged to work with their child at home and be particularly concerned about what happens after high school.. In addition, viewing the parent-professional relationship as a partnership of experts can foster parent-school relationships.

• Transition from School to Work. School programs are not teaching students with behavior problems the skills they need to find jobs (reported that only about 40 percent of these students completed their secondary schooling.

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Children with Emotional and Behavior Disorders Chapter 7