First Steps to Prevent Antisocial Behavior

Hill M. Walker

In the past decade, early childhood educators and primary grade level teachers have been shocked and, in some cases, overwhelmed by changes in the behavioral characteristics of young children entering school. More and more children are entering the schoolhouse door with the following characteristics:

Not ready to learn
Unable to cope with the demands of schooling.
Unfamiliar with the social tasks involved in making friends and getting along with others.
Unaware of their negative, social impact on others.

Many preschoolers and young school-age children are now routinely displaying forms of unacceptable behavior in the school setting that would have been rare occurrences just a few years ago (e.g., assaulting teachers, physical aggression toward peers, inappropriate sexual behavior). We are seeing mature acts of deviance in younger and younger groups of our children and youth.

In some sections of the United States, it is not uncommon to see kindergartners wearing gang colors. Instances of young children physically attacking even younger children are being reported. Box 1 describes a recent event that occurred in an Oregon school that illustrates this unfortunate trend. Such shocking acts strain our ability to comprehend how such young children could commit them-but they are real and are increasingly a part of our social fabric.

Children At Risk

These disturbing events are akin to "behavioral earthquakes" that seem to come out of nowhere, do incredible damage in a matter of seconds, and require long periods for recovery. What accounts for these changes in the behavior of so many of our children and youth? The answers are complex, not always clear, and often depend on the perspective of the commentator or expert. Clearly, our children reflect the risk factors to which they are exposed in their families, neighborhoods, and the larger society (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP, 1995). The more risk factors one is exposed to and the longer one is exposed to them, the greater their negative effects. More and more of our children and youth are being exposed to powerful risk factors in their formative years.

Family-based risk factors include the following:

Weak supervision and monitoring of children's activities, whereabouts, and peer associations.
Lack of discipline and the use of harsh or punitive discipline.
Being uninvolved in the child's life.
Family pressures that register negatively on children, such as unemployment, alcohol and drug use, domestic violence, and child abuse (Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992).
Neighborhood and community-based risk factors include the following:
- A high rate of crime.
- Unsafe neighborhoods.
- Lack of social cohesion and familiarity among residents of a community or neighborhood.
- Few after-school, recreation-leisure activities for children and youth.
- Weak bonding to the schooling
- Lack of connection between the school (OJJDP, 1995).

Finally, our larger society seems to produce more and more "social toxins" that diminish our collective quality of life and have negative effects on our children and youth. The following are examples of these social toxins:

The amount and graphic nature of media violence (news coverage, movies, TV, video games).
The growing incivility of our society.
Social fragmentation and alienation.
Concepts of right and wrong and morality that are increasingly portrayed as relative rather than clear-cut (Hughes & Hasbrouck, 1996).

Children and youth take their cues from adults and model what they see adults do. In the past two decades, our society has provided poor models for its children and youth and has suffered a diminished capacity to safely raise and socialize our offspring.

Effects of Risk Factors

The collective impact of these risk factors is producing generations of children and youth (a) who see violence as a viable means of solving problems, (b) who don't respect the rights of others, (c) who are not socially responsible, (d) who have not been taught basic manners and social conventions, and (e) who don't value human life as they should.

Box 1

An Act of Revenge

The following, incident incurred in fall of 1996, on the Playground of a Salem, Oregon elementary school. Four, second-grade boys at tempted to suffocate a kindergarten girl by holding her down and covering her nose and mouth so she could not breath. This act was initiated by one of the boys who called himself a gang member and was angry because the girl, who had been his girlfriend, had recently broken up with him. The attempt failed only because one of the boys lost his nerve and stopped participating. The girl reported the incident to school officials, who launched an investigation.

Box 2

The Case of Ritchie

I was developing an intervention program for reducing aggressive behavior on the playground. The program called RECESS, was designed for bullies in grades K-3. A second-grade boy was referred for the program for whom behavioral reports were terrible. During a playground recess period, I was observing Ritchie to see if he were eligible for the RECESS program. While I was observing him, Ritchie proceeded to attack a kindergarten boy about two-thirds his size for no apparent reason. Ritchie knocked the boy down and was seriously choking him on the ground. The recess supervisor immediately broke it up and called the school principal and counselor.

While they were escorting him in to call his parents, I decided to ask Ritchie a question. I wanted was in his mind that prompted the attack. So I said to him, "Can you tell me why you were choking that little boy like that?"

He looked at me, in utter amazement, like I was out to lunch, and said, "Well, it was recess!"

Source: Walker, Colvin, and Ramsey (1995)

Box 3

The Case of Sarah

Sarah was a fourth grade girl universally regarded as a holy terror. She was aggressive, manipulative, a natural leader, smart, charming, and a pain in the neck for both school staff and students. Sarah's elementary school was served by a school psychologist named Billie who also served two other elementary schools. Sarah was a regular customer of Billie's each time her schedule brought her to the school. And day, the vice-principal and counselor were waiting for Billie on the front steps to tell her the latest things Sarah had done on the playground. Billie called Sarah into a conference to hear her side of the story.

Billie: "Sarah, I hear you've been having trouble on the playground again."

Sarah just looked at her, not saying anything.

Trying to engage Sarah in a problem-solving process, Billie said, "Well, what do you think people will say about that?"

Sarah looked at Billie, thought a moment and said, "Well, Billie, some people might say you're not doing your job!"

Source: Personal communication, Duane Webb (1996)

Many children exposed to these factors develop antisocial, aggressive behavior patterns that they ring with them to school. This behavior proves to be a disaster for their school careers and for those who must deal with them. Such children often have atypical views about standards governing appropriate behavior and accepting responsibility for their actions. Boxes 2 and 3 present brief, true vignettes about two children, who seem to have such views.

Pressures on Schools

Preschool and school settings are not well equipped or set up to deal with students like Ritchie and Sarah. They put enormous pressures on the management and instructional skills of teachers, and they instigate numerous conflicts with peers. By the intermediate grades, such children are almost always socially rejected by their teachers and peers.

Even when such children improve, the reputations they have now acquired prevent others from seeing and accepting the positive changes they have made (Hollinger, 1987). This lack of trust, in turn, has the effect of having the antisocial child conclude that positive change may be hopeless and not worth the effort.

Around Grade 4 or 5, these students begin gravitating to each other, primarily because they are rejected by everyone else (see Patterson et al., 1992). They bond into a deviant, disruptive peer group at this stage, which further distances them from normal social networks and activities. Further, they are often assigned to self-contained, alternative settings where they are labeled and sometimes stigmatized.

Many of these children, perhaps a majority, become chronic discipline problems in school; suffer erratic attendance; and, by middle school or early high school, start committing arrestible offenses (Walker, Colvin, & Ramsey, 1995). School dropout is a real possibility for them. A significant majority of crimes are committed by school dropouts (OJJDP, 1995).

Early Intervention Can Help

There is hope for students like Ritchie and Sarah. But it requires an early and continuing investment by schools and families, principally teachers and parents. We have to emphasize prevention before, at, and following the point of school entry. The entry into preschool or school settings provides one of the first opportunities to access or get at the social-behavioral problems of students, some of whom will be severely at risk.

If we intervene effectively and consistently at this point and involve the three social agents (parents, teachers, peers) who have the greatest influence on the developing child, the chances are relatively good that we can divert them from a destructive path leading to a host of negative, developmental outcomes (Reid, 1993).

Kazdin (1987) argued persuasively that if we have not provided comprehensive early intervention by Grade 3 or 4, then we are unlikely to turn the child around. In such cases, he suggested that we treat the problem much like diabetes, which, at present, cannot be cured. That is, we should continue to provide appropriate social, behavioral, and academic supports; but we are unlikely to achieve anything approaching a cure. This doesn't mean we should ever give up on students like Ritchie and Sarah, but it is a realistic assessment of what we can and cannot expect from our efforts if we miss this developmental window of opportunity."

What Are Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Interventions

There are three types of prevention: primary, secondary, and tertiary (see Simeonsson, 1991). Interventions differ somewhat for achieving these three types of prevention.

Primary prevention means doing things teaching anger management and conflict resolution or focusing, on enhancing school readiness for everyone are examples of universal interventions that achieve primary prevention goals. If done correctly, they can reduce the likelihood of problems emerging.

Secondary prevention requires individually tailored interventions applied to those students who already show at-risk status when they enter school. Individual counseling and the design of special, one-to-one behavior management programs are examples of these types of interventions.

Tertiary prevention strategies involve intensive intervention approaches that are characterized as "wraparound" and that are applied to the most severely at-risk children and youth. Generally, students at this level of prevention have not responded to either primary or secondary approaches. Wraparound interventions commonly require a case manager who coordinates services and supports across families, schools, and social service agencies.

First Step to Success-. A Secondary Prevention Program

Appendix A contains a description of a secondary prevention program, called First Step to Success, that is designed for remediating antisocial behavior patterns among at-risk kindergartners. First Step to Success has three components, or modules, that are used in concert with each other:

A universal screening procedure to detect children showing the early signs of antisocial behavior.
A school intervention to teach the at-risk child an adaptive behavior pattern for achieving school success and making friends.
A home component in which parents are enlisted as partners with the teacher and school in teaching the child key skills that contribute to school success (e.g., cooperation, listening, accepting limits, working independently).

The overall goal of First Step is to help at-risk children get off to the best possible start in school and to divert them from an antisocial path in their subsequent school careers. Perhaps the most important feature of the program is the partnership it forges between parents and the school in achieving school success for the at-risk child.

The program was developed through a cooperative arrangement among the University of Oregon, the Eugene School District 4J, the Oregon Social Learning Center, and the Oregon Research Institute--and with the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. First Step to Success requires 2-3 months for implementation.

Here is how it works: A First Step consultant (e.g., behavioral specialist, early childhood educator, counselor, school psychologist) initially sets up and operates the program, then turns the school portion over to the classroom teacher. The consultant also works with the parents an the home component of the program and visits the home for 1 hour each week to teach the home Base skills. The child is followed up and monitored after the program is over to preserve achieved behavioral gains. The First Step consultant usually invests 45-60 hours over the course of the program.

Systematic evaluation of First Step indicates that it has a powerful effect on children's school adjustment and acceptance by teachers and peers (Walker, Kavanagh, Golly, Stiller, Severson, & Feil, in press). Parents, teachers, and kindergartners who have participated in the program have provided positive feedback about their experiences. First Step was featured in an October 1995 20/20 segment of ABC News on teaching emotional intelligence.

What Messages Are We Giving Children?

John Locke, the English philosopher, introduced the concept of the Tabula Rasa, or blank slate, regarding the newborn child. He saw the child as a blank slate that would be written on as the child developed. What the child became (and what was written on the slate) was a result of the experiences he or she had in growing up. Even if we only partially accept Locke's view, we must acknowledge that, as a society, we seem to be writing garbled and unclear messages on the slates of our children. Our handwriting is often illegible, and the messages we impart are mixed and sometimes incoherent, leading to confusion and an impaired ability to interpret one's social environment.

We need to rededicate ourselves to putting children first and to regaining our ability as a society to raise and socialize them safely-and effectively. The national report cards we receive on the welfare of children are consistently poor and well below acceptable standards (Children First, 1996). Effective school and family partnerships are one of the best vehicles we have for changing this report card.

We are now beginning to reap the bitter harvest of our neglect and failure to nurture our children effectively (American Psychological Association, 1993). The hordes of antisocial and at-risk children entering school today are tomorrow's dropouts and delinquents. As Lisbeth Schorr (1988) has so eloquently argued, the ability to turn things around is still Within Our Reach.

References:

American Psychological Association. (1993). Violence and Youth: Psychology's response. Washington, DC: Author.
Children First for Oregon. (1996). Report card on the status of children in Oregon. Portland d: Children First for Oregon (Address: 921 SW Morrison, Suite 418, Portland OR 97205).
Hollinger. J. (1987). Social skills for behaviorally disordered children as preparation for mainstreaming: Theory, practice and new directions. Remedial and Special Education, 8(4), 17-27.
Hughes, J. & Hasbrouck, J. (1996). Television violence: Implications for violence prevention. School Psychology Review, 25(2). 134-151.
Kazdin, A. (1987). Conduct disorders in childhood and adolescence. London: Sage.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. (1995) Guide for implementing a comprehensive strategy for serious, violent and chronic juvenile offenders. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
Patterson, C. R., Reid, J., & Dishion, T (1992). Antisocial boys. Eugene, OR: Castalia.
Reid, J. (1993). Prevention of conduct disorder before and after school entry: Relating interventions to developmental findings. Development and Psychopathology, 5(1/2), 243-262.
Schorr, L. (1988). Within our reach, Breaking the cycle of disadvantage. New York: Doubleday.
Simeonsson, R. (1991). Primary, secondary. and tertiary prevention in early intervention. Journal of Early Intervention, 15, 124-134.
Walker, H. M., Colvin, G. & Ramey, E. (1995). Antisocial behavior in school- Strategies and best practices. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Walker, H.M., Kavanagh, K., Golly, A., Stiller, B., Severson, H.H., & Feil, E.G. (in press). First Steps: An early intervention approach for preventing school antisocial behavior. Unpublished manuscript, University of Oregon, Eugene.
Hill M. Walker (CEC Oregon Federation), Co-Director, Institute on violence and Destructive Behavior, College of Education, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 (e-mail: Hill_walker@ccmail.uoregon.edu).
First Step to Success was developed through a 4-year grant (1992-1996) to the author from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.

Reprinted from TEACHING Exceptional Children, March/April 1999, by the Council for Exceptional Children.