Destructive Behaviour - sabotaging rewards

Imagine the scenario... You've told your class that if they have a good week, complete their work to a decent standard, behave on the playground and are kind and considerate to one another that there will be a class reward at the end of the week - perhaps a disco. Everyone is doing great and on Thursday you remark that it looks like everyone is going to be going to the disco tomorrow! Then during the lunchbreak one your students is told off in the dinner hall for a minor misdemeanor. You remind him that he must behave or he won't be able to come to the disco tomorrow. This results in his behaviour spiralling out of control. He trashes his work, scribbles all over another student's work and refuses to listen to basic requests. Finally, you're forced to tell him that he won't be attending to the disco tomorrow. Your student sulks but the spiralling misbehaviour that has been going on this afternoon stops.

You'd be right to wonder what on earth is going on and why your student is behaving like that!?

I've had many students in my class who do this to a varying degree. Some will be as drastic as in the above scenario. While others will engage in less obvious avoidance behaviours. It appears to be caused by an array of different reasons - but fundamentally it comes from a place of fear. In my experience, it usually happens when a child is anxious about failing and so instead of putting their all into acheiving something and then having the upset of failing at it they sabotage their progress and ensure that they fail earlier rather than later. So in the example in my above scenario - the boy was frightened that he would lose the treat because of his behaviour, as a boy who has difficulty in controlling his emotions he is aware that it is a real possibility that he will 'lose' and so instead of enduring the pressure to succeed he controls the situation by ensuring that he misbehaves enough to entirely lose the treat and so not have to worry about it anymore.

So... what can we do to help him to help himself I can hear you asking?

1) The first thing to do is to ensure that the behaviour target set is acheiveable - you differentiate your lessons but do you differentiate your behaviour plans? Is expecting a child to behave all week to get their treat appropriate for every child? It's likely this isn't the case. For some children, it may be better to have a shorter time span of expected good behaviour before getting reward. So for example, my student in the scenario was given a 'working towards...' card. He could choose a reward that he would have at the end of the day if he received enough tokens. This was much more acheivable for him as he knew he was able to behave for that period of time and the anxiety of needing to succeed was lessened. He also knew it was ok if he didn't succeed one day and that he would be given the chance to start again the next day. Whereas with the disco scenario he knew if he messed up that was it for the rest of the week.

2) Give your student easy ways to communicate to you when they are feeling stressed or anxious. When a child is feeling pressured their ability to articulate their feelings will decrease. This happens to all of us - imagine a time when you were feeling very stressed - perhaps a job interview - it often happens that an adult will find that the words and sentences that usually come to them with ease are harder to formulate. Now if an adult feels like this in times of stress imagine how much more difficult it must be for a child. The way I try to combat this in my classroom is to have an emotions display with emotions cards. The children all have their picture on the display and can move their picture to the feeling card on the display to communicate to me or our teaching assistant how they are feeling. I also go a step further and give emotions cards to children who particularly struggle so that they can communicate to me without the rest of the class being aware of how they are feeling. All they need to do is hand me the card to show they are feeling anxious.

3) Provide an 'out' for your students. What are your students to do when they feel entirely overwhelmed and feel an extreme urge to misbehave? Do you give them an alternative to misbehaving or expect them to be able to over come the overwhelming urge they have? Most children will develop their own coping mechanisms for when they feel overwhelmed. They may shut their eyes momentarily, count to ten, press their hands together tightly and grimace - others cry or ask for help. But for some children they need to be provided with a coping mechanism to use until they have developed their own. In my classroom I use a quiet corner for this. I have explained to all my children that they can use the quiet corner whenever they feel they need to get away from the class group for a minute or two. The corner is equipped with some cushions, a blanket, some stress balls, and a few books. I explained that if they go and sit there I will know that they are feeling stressed and that I will try to help them. It means that they have a place to go and to calm down before I speak to them and without disturbing the rest of the class.

I've found by implementing these strategies that behaviour that sabotages treats and special occasions has decreased.

Have you found strategies that work in your classroom? I would love to hear how you reduce this kind of behaviour in your classroom - you can leave comments about your strategies below!