Chapter 7

Children with
Emotional and
Behavior Disorders
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME2wmFunCj
U&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6c5DDLwww
o&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9v4FsKXmj8

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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; or
E. 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)]

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 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.

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 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
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• 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.

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 Prediction of Adult Aggressive
Behavior from Young Children

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 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.

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 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.

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• 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
• .
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 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.

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 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.

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• 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

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• 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”
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• 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.

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 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.

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• 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.
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 Response to Intervention, EBD

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.

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 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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