A Second-Grader’s Emotional Needs

John Jensen, Ph.D.

2.6.10. - John Jensen, Ph.D. - A second grade teacher has had ongoing challenges with a bright, energetic, wilful, and occasionally defiant girl who sometimes doesn’t get along with other students. Following was my note to her.

A Second-Grader’s Emotional Needs

by John Jensen, Ph.D.

            A second grade teacher has had ongoing challenges with a bright, energetic, wilful, and occasionally defiant girl who sometimes doesn’t get along with other students. Following was my note to her.

 Dear Jen--

            Some of the most telling things are subtle and not necessarily easy. 

            Because of her capacity for bizarre behavior, Lara can be challenge.  I think she takes us out to our edge where we’re less confident of what we’re doing.  For myself, I’ve never dealt before with a child who can simply sit there and continue screaming as long as Lara can, which requires that I reach further just to figure out my own response. When we’re at our edge, our automatic responses tend not to work well, and we have to ponder deliberately how to use our skills. It’s like being a trout fisherman using 5 pound test line and hooking a 15 pound fish. We give special attention to every tug if we want to land the fish.

            The beginning with Lara, I think, is realizing “I’ve almost lost this fish.”  These next few years could spell the difference between a constructive or a maladaptive adult life for her. An accurate response counts much more with her than with other children whom we’re sure we can reach)when we need to. Her under-the-table reaction to the assignment she missed probably startled you, but was a reminder of how easy it can be to “lose the fish” over an issue way out at the edge of perception.

            Accepting first that our ability to influence her is fragile, we go next to our own inner state before devising any outer action.  Our first lever is our sense of connection (replacing opposition) with her. We want our personal bond with students to be their primary, go-to guideline for their conduct. When they feel we’re against them (even for obvious reasons from their behavior), they’re more likely to remain defensive and to repeat the wrong thing. We want the bond indissoluble, far too strong for any threat from their unacceptable behavior to break it. Even as we correct them or apply a consequence, we need to do so with regret about it, and remain convinced of and connected to the child’s basic goodness.  While this may sound like great theory but unrealistic in practice, a manner of thinking can help us apply it. 

            What we do in essence is to pick out the features of the other that cue us to act at our best toward them. It’s like having an acquaintance who talks too much and is critical of others, but is also creative and funny. The set of features we focus on conspires to move us toward or away from her.

            In Lara we might begin by recognizing her basic humanity. Life is generally better than no life.  She expresses its active rather than passive dimension, manifesting personal power, physical energy, expression of words, and display of  emotion. We can appreciate that she has basic, valuable equipment. It probably portends better for life success if a child is active rather than passive as a second grader, so we plant ourselves on drinking in this activity, on her power to think and to do things.

            Viewing her from that focus, we more readily regard her non-cooperation as one step in the developmental need to establish independence from adult figures (even though a few years earlier than most do this). She‘s manifesting skills she’ll need in her life, and is making her best attempt to meet her own needs in the moment.    

            For myself, I find that if I can square away my own perception of a child, I seldom have trouble connecting with him/her. Instead of the word “manipulative,” I’d describe her as “trying to meet her needs with poor strategies,“ which cues a different response set in me. Manipulative people I just try to avoid, but people trying to meet their needs with poor strategies move me to want to help them find better strategies.

            To help ourselves out of any oppositional sense, in other words, we focus on the aspect we feel we can work with. Usually it‘s a positive capacity mischanneled.  Adults who relate to Lara would probably agree that she’s awash with poorly based perceptions and strategies, yet I’m constantly impressed with the thought “What an intelligence and what an energy!” 

            While I watched her play with Karla yesterday, I was able to relay two ideas to her: She and Karla needed to have the same understanding of the rules of the game they’d invented, and sometimes Karla needed her help. She was very directive (a strategy inviting gradual modification) but extremely alert, able to learn quickly, and possessing some latent generosity. Upon recognizing a coat someone had left at the play equipment, she seized it and ran to Jackie’s room to return it. 

            A significant  factor in establishing connection with her is rapport.  It’s a prerequisite for dealing with people in general, but with children with whom we have a problem, we can assume that it’s missing, at least in the moment. It’s described as “an unconscious sense of matching” that in turn conveys safety, well-being, and connectedness.  It can arise from cues that may occur even within a few seconds such as being close (within 18 inches, as opposed to calling out directions across the room) and at the same eye level, speaking in a soft versus sharp or  hard voice, and matching body posture and movement however possible. Many people intuitively grope for rapport by adopting the same tone, pitch, and pace of voice as the other, and by exchanging comments, simple questions, positive feedback, and ordinary observations. Just watching Lara move might warrant saying, “I can see you are really  limber.  You bend your body almost double, ” and she might answer,  “Yes, we were playing dog.”     

            Such cues prepare the ground for tasks.  For a child with whom we  have a problem and typically experience opposition, it’s not a bad idea, if we can, to delay addressing tasks until we sense rapport.  In Mary Poppins’s line, “with a spoonful of sugar, the medicine goes down,“ rapport is the spoonful of sugar. When you think you’ve entered rapport, you can check for it by wrinkling your forehead, raising your eyebrows, or nodding slightly. It’s fairly reliable that when a student imitates your cue unconsciously, you’re in rapport with them.

            Once in rapport, you take up the task, such as giving her the assignment she missed while spending time with Karla and me. From your re-telling of the incident, it sounded as though you used a matter-of-fact, assertive voice: “Here’s the science assignment you missed.” That she took the paper and crawled under the desk would signal that from her perspective, you and she were out of harmony, which a couple sentences of conversation back and forth might have forestalled. In general, with all our relationships, whenever we reasonably predict that our comment will come as a shock to the other person, we want to cushion it with a gradual entry into it.

             A little later, while Lara was waiting for the after-school program to begin, she called to me. I saw her sitting quietly on the bench near the play equipment, and silently went to sit beside her. In a glum voice, she said, “People are always running my life.” Hearing this from a second-grader, it’s hard not to laugh, but it marks her as having higher expectations, faster thought, and more self-awareness. Adults do run her life, and she noticed. I gave, I suppose, the expected adult defense that schools were there to help her get an education, but her own feelings no doubt were more prominent to her than my abstraction. 

            A viewpoint that guides us toward better use of our skills is the computer analogy. Children’s  behavior is an exquisitely accurate print-out of their internal instructions, their software.  We never expect hardware to cure its glitches by being upset with it, and can cluster much of education under “software modification.” We recognize the need students appear to be trying to meet and the change in their software likely to work better.  

            Some of the glitches in Lara’s software can be viewed through her emotional needs. A general sequence in which people meet them follow the four A’s: attention, acceptance, approval, and affection.

            Attention:  ‘I see you.”  Children are wired to seek out great quantities of others’ attention and if they can’t get it for positive behavior, they’ll try it with negative behavior.  Most would rather others be angry at them, even abuse them, than to be isolated and invisible. This need might suggest seating Lara as close to you as is feasible, try when you speak to her to be face to face close up, and agree with her on  a personal signal system you and she can use; for instance, that every 10 minutes you’ll make eye contact and exchange a wink just so she knows you’re thinking about her. 

            Acceptance: ”You have a place here, you‘re part of the group.”  Children achieve this mainly by playing together and accepting each others’ presence. They need to be able to notice what works and adopt it (something Lara needs help in) and also the ability to invent the rules of common group activity together with others and abide by them.  Playing with Karla, she does much of this spontaneously but not consciously, was able to accept suggestions about whether or not they were using the same or different rules, and how to bridge the gaps; saying “It might work better if you….” when a strategy works poorly. She needs a better feel for taking turns, recognizing when her turn is over, and how the other person’s face offers a message that may help her select her own action. 

            Typically when children are in opposition to us, when they feel they’re accused of being “bad,” their perceptions freeze. Their attention has swallowed by their feelings, and their perceptual channel has  narrowed.  Years ago a researcher in the affective zone wrote that “Children are a speck of intelligence in a sea of emotion.“ For lifting them from this state, it helps greatly if there’s a solid go-to umbrella of unity with the teacher that instantly settles them; for example, the teacher’s smile and kindly voice close by.   

            Approval: “You’re doing the right thing” according to group standards. As they exhibit valued behavior and are recognized for it, it admits them deeper into the group bond.  Children constantly seek approval for every little gain they make in a competence. Lara needs a stream of such occasions but my hunch is that her quickness of intelligence has seen through the idea that you get approved for compliance. It‘s often more important to her to exercise her competence as she herself sees it, even if it elicits a rebuke from an adult, although she appears gradually to be finding a more acceptable middle ground at this.

            A way to work with this aspect is to offer her special tasks that intrinsically merit respect as opposed to just pleasing the teacher through compliance. She might respond, for instance, to an invitation to help you with something. Start with simple, brief, one-time tasks, particularly those that can help another student, and build slowly to tasks requiring her to remember instructions: from day to day  ‘Could you help Carlos (do something)?”  If you have anything that divides into three or four steps that another child has a hard time with, you might explain it to Lara and ask her to teach the other student. 

            Affection; ”I like you” is usually communicated non-verbally. Not getting enough of it can leave an aching gap inside children. They try to meet this need by exchanging smiles, laughs, and hugs, but external actions are a step removed from the true inner need which is just to be liked. I don’t think we can directly program for affection, but we can make it more and more likely to emerge spontaneously as we meet the prior needs well.

            John Jensen is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of The Silver Bullet Easy Learning System: How to Change Classrooms Fast and Energize Students for Success (Xlibris, 2008).  He welcomes comments sent to him directly at jjensen@gci.net and will email an ebook version of his book without charge to anyone upon request.