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Are you struggling to manage aggressive or disruptive behaviour in your child or child in your care? Many people put up with bad behaviour at home, until the school intervenes and calls you in for a behavioural modification interview. Oo oh! Bet you wish you’d spent more time attending to behaviour management at home now!

According to Dr Martin Henley (designer of a school based curriculum for responsible behaviour) self control consists of 20 separate social skills contained within five important areas - controlling impulses, following routines, managing group situations, managing stress and solving social problems. I have found Dr Henley’s skill audit so helpful that I thought I would share it with you.

1. Controlling Impulses

• Skill 1: Managing Situational Lure
  – Learning to identify appropriate behaviors outside the classroom
  – Learning to adjust behavior to match the situation
  
• Skill 2: Demonstrating Patience
  – Learning to wait
  – Learning to take turns
  – Learning to help others
  
• Skill 3: Verbalizing Feelings
  – Learning to build a feeling vocabulary (download the free feeling faces handout available in our side bar)
  – Learning to identify one’s own feelings
  – Learning to identify feelings in others
  – Learning to share feelings
  
• Skill 4: Resisting Tempting Objects
  – Learning to discuss how the allure of material objects can influence behavior
  – Learning to evaluate the need for material objects
  – Learning to use objects appropriately

2. Following School Routines (these skills would work equally well for home and work)

• Skill 5: Following Rules
  – Learning to understand why rules are necessary
  – Learning to identify with rules
  – Learning to monitor one’s own behavior
  
• Skill 6: Organizing School Materials
  – Learning to follow instructions
  – Learning to plan a task
  – Learning to organize materials to complete a task
  – Learning to complete homework
  
• Skill 7: Accepting Evaluative Comments
  – Learning to learn from mistakes
  – Learning to distinguish criticism from teasing, sarcasm, and mean statements
  
• Skill 8: Making Classroom Transitions
  – Learning to follow steps in a routine
  – Learning to move appropriately around the classroom

3. Managing Group Situations

• Skill 9: Maintaining Composure
  – Learning to ignore classroom distractions
  – Learning to independently select a classroom activity
  – Learning to behave appropriately when the teacher is out of the room
  
• Skill 10: Appraising Peer Pressure
  – Learning to evaluate a situation in terms of personal beliefs about good and bad choices
  – Learning to act in accordance with personal beliefs
  – Learning to identify peer situations where students should say “no”
  
• Skill 11: Participating in Group Activities
  – Learning to help others
  – Learning to cooperate
  – Learning to contribute to group discussions
  
• Skill 12: Understanding How Behavior Affects Others
  – Learning to identify behaviors that affect others
  – Learning to demonstrate helping behaviors
  – Learning to behave responsibly

4. Managing Stress

• Skill 13: Adapting to New Situations
  – Learning to identify ways by which people adapt to their surroundings
  – Learning to cope with change
  – Learning to direct one’s own behavior
  
• Skill 14: Coping With Competition
  – Learning to identify positive attributes of competition
  – Learning to participate in competitive games
  
• Skill 15: Tolerating Frustration
  – Learning to identify feelings of frustration
  – Learning to develop methods of coping with frustration
  
• Skill 16: Selecting Tension-Reducing Activities
  – Learning to identify physical signs of stress
  – Learning to identify situations that cause stress
  – Learning to identify tension-reducing activities

5. Solving Social Problems

• Skill 17: Focusing on Present Situation
  – Learning to evaluate disturbing feelings
  – Learning to concentrate on a task
  
• Skill 18: Learning From Past Experience
  – Learning to describe a chronology of events
  – Learning to learn from the experience of others
  – Learning to learn from one’s own experience
  
• Skill 19: Anticipating Consequences
  – Learning to explain cause and effect
  – Learning to understand the meaning of consequences
  – Learning to accept consequences for behavior
  
• Skill 20: Resolving Conflicts
  – Learning to recognize situations
  – Learning to develop alternatives to conflict
  – Learning to use words to resolve conflicts

From a child protection perspective, it is you, the adult, who is required to help the development of the above skills in your child/foster child. If we rely on schools alone to teach this stuff we cannot be sure that our children will learn it. Too many “at risk” children skip classes and the classroom is not always the most conducive venue to learning. My experience tells me that while most parents/carers are happy to teach their children core values and skills around anger management or self control, they have no framework to guide their teachings. Now you do.

Article by Megan Bayliss Photo at top left courtesy of andrewalta at stock.xchng.