Behavioral/Emotional Disorders

With the proper diagnosis and treatment, many of the behaviors and qualities exhibited by children with Behavioral/Emotional Disorders can be improved upon, giving your child the opportunity to become a more well-adjusted part of his classroom and future environments.

We at Life Quality Resources can assist you in this process through a personalized treatment plan that will focus on:

• Relationship Building Skills

• Focus and Attention

• Impulse Control

• Managing Emotional Triggers

• Managing Anxiety

• Relaxation Techniques

• Biofeedback/Neurofeedback

• Neurotransmitter Balance and Health

• Functional Health

 

Supports that can implement these strategies can improve the health and well-being of your child now and increase their chances for success and happiness in the future. The doctors at Life Quality Resources are glad to be that immediate support for your child, and a guide to helping you the parent understand how to continue that path of encouragement and support for years to come.

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About Behavioral/Emotional Disorders
Children with emotional or behavioral disorders primarily exhibit behaviors that falls significantly outside the normal range of their cultural and age group on two dimensions: externalizing and internalizing. Both of these abnormal behavior patterns can have adverse effects on your child’s academic achievement and social relationships.

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Externalizing Behaviors
Consistent antisocial behavioral patterns, or externalizing behaviors, are characteristic of a behavioral disorder.

While in a classroom setting, many externalizing behaviors will manifest themselves frequently such as:

• Restlessness in their seats

• Arguing with teachers and classmates

• Intentionally disturbing peers

• Fighting

• Ignoring authority figures

• Complaining

• Stealing

• Lying

• Destroying property

• Not following directions

• Having temper tantrums

• Not completing assignments

Research shows that non-compliance is the central behavior that most, if not all, other behaviors stem from. Little to no provocation needs to be present for these behaviors to be expressed. Research also suggests a consistent pattern of aggressive, coercive, antisocial, and/or delinquent behavior in younger children is the greatest single predictor of delinquency in adolescence and further into adulthood. Early intervention strategies can help keep these behaviors from developing into destructive lifelong struggles for individuals experiencing behavioral disorders.

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Internalizing Behaviors
Unlike the aggressive nature of the externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors usually indicate a deeper emotional turmoil that are often seen in depression, anxiety and mood disorders, and that can cause a child to withdraw from social interactions with classmates, teachers, and family. This withdrawal usually creates developmental delays because it limits the child’s chances to take part in and learn from the activities in which the other children are participating. Because these children are less likely to disturb classroom environments, they are more likely to go unidentified as having a behavioral/emotional disorder.

With competent care by teachers, counselors, and healthcare professionals, the outlook for these children can be positive. Through a focused targeting of social and self-determination skills, along with the proper reinforcement strategies, these children with internalizing behaviors often develop the healthy behaviors that lead to successful outcomes in the classroom and in life. However, trivializing this issue or feeling that this issues will alleviate over time, is a grave mistake to make, and can result in pervasive impairments in their academic performance and more importantly, their life. Without proper and effective identification and treatment, these internalizing behaviors can lead some children to self-injurious behaviors or even death from substance abuse, starvation, and suicide.

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Academic Achievement and Behavioral/Emotional Disorders
There have been many studies outlining classroom performance and Behavioral/Emotional Disorders in children, and all have come to some fairly dismal conclusions.

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The following outcomes are from three such studies involving children with Behavioral/Emotional Disorders, carried out by the Chesapeake Institute (1994), the U.S. Dept. of Education (1998-99), and Valdes, Williamson, and Wagner (1990):

• Two-thirds cannot pass competency exams for their grade level.

• They have the lowest grade-point average of any group of students with disabilities.

• They have the highest absenteeism rate of any group of students.

• Only 20%–25% leave high school with a diploma or certificate of completion, compared to 50% of all students with disabilities and 76% of all youth in the general population.

• More than 50% drop out of high school.

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It has also been found that most BED children perform one or more years below their current grade level, with the most significant difficulties appearing in math and reading achievement skills. There is a strong relationship to these deficiencies and the active attention that students are able to give their teachers. A study by Rhode et all (1998) estimated that students with behavior disorders are on task and actively listening around 60% of the time, whereas their fellow classmates without behavior disorders exhibit attentiveness to their teachers and are on task around 85% of the time.

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To compound the academic issues that children with behavior disorders struggle with, social skills and interpersonal relationships with classmates and peers are also difficult for these children to maintain. Students with behavioral disorders reported lower levels of empathy toward others, participation in fewer curricular activities, less frequent contacts with friends, and lower-quality relationships than were reported by their peers without disabilities. All of these abilities are important predictors of present and future adjustment abilities.