This post is a little off point for EBD Blog, but it will probably be interesting to folks who work with or study children and youths who have Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Over on a site called Luminous Lint, which is devoted to phtotography, there is a series of photos taken by Jean-Philippe Charbonnierin in the 1950s. The photos show adults in or on their way to French psychiatric hospitals.
Continue reading ’50s French hospital’
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Shira Salamone—who is mother of a boy with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and has documented the trials, tribulations, and joys of being the boy’s parent in a series of entries “Park your ego at the door: Links to my series ‘On raising a child with disabilities’”—has a post reflecting on the twists and turns that parenthood takes. It is, in part, a celebration of her son’s college successes.
When our son was young and giving us enough trouble to turn my husband’s hair gray and make me want to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, I never dreamed that a day would come when we would consider ourselves to be among the lucky ones. Our son “made it.” Other people’s children did not.
But, there is much more to it than that. It’s a recommended read (look in the sidebar for a link to the “Park Your Ego” series.
Sphere: Related ContentOver on Mentor Matters Mrs. Ris has comments about a book she’s read recently and her experiences with students with bi-polar disorder. Grab your mouse (or tab key) and go on over there.
Sphere: Related ContentI’m about to depart the home base again. For about a month, I’ll be in Portugal, teaching a class and talking about special education with folks there. I hope to drop a few posts here while I’m away.
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Cameron Marlow of the MIT Media Lab is collecting data about Weblogs. If you maintain a blog or contribute to one, you can help the folks there develop a statistical picture of the people who contribute to blogs by completing an anonymous survey. I gave at home. The image is a link.
SCHOOL VIOLENCE (AND THREATS THEREOF) AND PREVENTION
Our local (Charlottesville) newspaper (Daily Progress; see www.DailyProgress.com) has carried front-page stories recently about issues involving school safety. Yesterday (5/20) the story was about 4th and 5th graders bringing guns to school in a nearby county school system. This morning’s story (5/21) is a continuation of a story about the arrest and trial of two older students (a girl, 15, and a boy, 16):
Granted, the students have not been tried and convicted, and opinions about the students are varied. But I wonder what incidents like these say about our society and our willingness to confront the issue of prevention.
According to the newspaper story, the boy had previously brought a knife to school and held it to an other student’s face (for which the paper reports he had gotten “into trouble” (consequences unspecified). He is described by his mother as “a very gregarious and positive kid…. He’s always been a very nice kid. I relize that the way this has been presented it doesn’t seem that way.” He had been homeschooled until this year. A probation officer testified that the boy “is currently on a suspended probation period on two felony burglary charges, three petit larceny charges and one charge of vandalism.” Advocates for the girl requested “that the proceedings be closed to the media because it would involve testimony about the girl’s mental health.” The judge ordered that the hearing remain open; the girl’s attorney declined to present evidence.
Reports like these make me wonder about our attitudes toward punishment and prevention. As a society, we seem to believe that more severe punishment is more effective, but the research data do not support that notion. What is more effective is punishment that is consistent, appropriate for the age of the offender and the seriousness of the offense, and corrective (instructive). The punishment of offenders in our society, including kids who behave inappropriately in school, is often way off the mark. And then there is the matter of early and effective intervention to prevent the kind of incident that makes the news. In most cases, we find a history of troubling behavior (aggressive behavior, aggressive talk, prior offenses) that are ignored, justified by someone, and allowed to escalate to far more serious levels before parents or school personnel or anyone else takes them seriously.
But, of course, early intervention and prevention demands taking risks on the side of false positives. False positives are not desirable, but they’re probably less undesirable than false negatives. It’s the false negatives (no, this kid’s behavior is not a problem, really) that I think should worry us most. Nobody has been able to invent prevention without intervention, and nobody has been able to invent the perfectly accurate method of identification (so that there are no false positives or false negatives).
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