by Stephen Rothenberg, PsyD
Many children with learning disabilities and attentional problems also
struggle with modulating their feelings. They can feel easily
overwhelmed by emotions and can sometimes act out impulsively. This,
in turn, can affect their feelings about themselves. Children build
their sense of self-esteem from mastery of their environments and
themselves. If they find that they often cannot control themselves,
they may feel quite bad about that. Impulsively acting upon feelings,
particularly anger, can quickly affect peer relationships in a very negative
manner. This can result in a downward, negative spiral. The
child may feel bad about him or herself, act negatively in relationships,
and worsen their self-esteem. If a child is more stressed, he or she
will be less likely to be able to respond in a constructive manner to
negative feelings.
"Language Problems"
Children with expressive language problems may not have the facility with
language to be able to express what they need to quickly enough. As a
result, they may end up acting out their feelings instead.
Interestingly, children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder appear
to have a "language problems" themselves. these children
often do not have the inner language that would enable them to delay acting
on feelings, that "inner voice" that enables many children to stop
and think and consider their behavior and the consequences before they
act.
Outside/Inside
Many children (whether they have learning disabilities, attentional
problems, or autistic spectrum disorders) also have problems with sensory
integration. This means that they have difficulty organizing
sensations and stimulation from outside and/or within. It can be very
difficult to put together and make sense of all of the sensory information
that is coming at them. It can also be very difficult organizing and
understanding the sensory information that is occurring within them.
For these reasons, it can be easy to misinterpret social information from
outside and emotional information from inside. This may then result in
an inappropriate response to the situation at hand.
Giant Steps
It is easy for us to forget all the steps involved in managing
feelings. Think about it - we need to identify and organize feelings
within ourselves, identify and interpret social information from outside,
integrate that information into something meaningful, and then formulate the
appropriate response in a controlled, socially acceptable manner. This
is difficult enough for adults without learning or attentional
difficulties. It is extremely difficult for a child who DOES have
learning and attentional difficulties.
Identifying Feelings
In social skills therapy, whether individual or in a group, we attempt to
help the child learn to appropriately organize and interpret cues from
outside and identify, organize and express emotions from the inside.
The first task for some children is to learn to pair the physiological
response from inside them with the label of "angry." Some
children need to know that tightness in their muscles, or that feeling that
their head is about to blow off, is what we call "angry" or
"mad." (This may sound like something that you would do with
a younger child. Since children with learning and/or attentional
problems may experience some delays in their cognitive development, they
also tend to experience some delays in their emotional development.)
Putting the Puzzle Together
Once a child is able to identify his or her own feelings, they can begin
to work on identifying the feelings of others. In order to accurately
identify what other people are feeling, a child needs to be cognizant of
body language, facial cues, tone of voice, and context. Much like
putting together the pieces of a puzzle, a child needs to assemble all
information into an emotional picture that makes sense. If the puzzle
is put together incorrectly, it will result in an inappropriate
response. Children with language processing problems may actually be
quite aware of the non-verbal cues but may have trouble with comprehending
the spoken message. Children who have non-verbal learning disabilities
have great difficulty synthesizing body language and visual cues, as it
requires the ability to utilize "right brain",
perceptual-organization functions. Those who are more impulsive,
without the processing difficulties, may get the whole picture but
selectively attend only to isolated details. They may also tend to
just go with what they want at the moment, rather than what the situation
calls for.
Taming the Tiger
For younger children, helping them to get some distance on their anger
can help them maintain positive feelings about themselves. Helping a
child to "tame the tiger" or calm down their "angry
monster" helps a child to work on the feelings without experiencing a
loss of self-esteem.
Help the child identify what he/she is feeling. Help them be aware
of the signals they receive from their bodies that tell them "I am
mad", "I am happy", etc. "You know when he took
that toy you like and you hit him? You were feeling mad."
Help your child to identify what others are feeling. Point out the
various cues that are available and help the child put them together into a
meaningful puzzle. "See when his eyebrows went down and his face
scrunched together like that? I think he was mad."
Help your child to communicate anger in an effective manner. This
depends upon their developmental abilities. Some children need to find
ways to discharge their anger appropriately, as they are not yet able to use
inner language to delay their actions. They may need to learn to break
something (something safe in a supervised setting, like having balloons
ready to pop) before they are able to say, or have you help them label, what
they are feeling.
In individual and group therapy, we attempt to help children build in a
"delay mechanism" using the Stop Light Technique. When they
identify that they are feeling angry, they:
STOP (picture a stop sign in their heads) and take three deep
breaths or count to 40,
THINK (Think about what is making them angry so they can make a
plan. This includes thinking about what the other person
intended. "Did she do that on purpose?"), and
GO (go ahead with the plan and see how it works).
Taming the tiger depends a lot upon "language." Reading
non-verbal cues, processing nuances of spoken words, and developing an inner
voice. For many children, developing this ability is akin to learning
a foreign language. It takes time and patience, but is a very
worthwhile enterprise if it can result in improvements in a child's
relationships and self-esteem.
~~~~~~~~~~
© 1997, Learning
Disabilities Association of Massachusetts.
All rights reserved.
This article originally
appeared in the November 1997 issue of the Gazette, the Journal
of the Learning Disabilities Association of Massachusetts (LDAM), and is
posted on NLD on the Web! with the express permission of the
Editor, Teresa Allissa Citro. Reproduction
of this material in any form other than for individual educational
purposes, without the express written permission of the LDAM, is
prohibited.
