FRISCO, Texas – Stressful situations and conflicts involving students with disabilities or special needs are best de-escalated with dignity by “remembering that these children are individuals first” and understanding how the human brain works, consultant Jo Mascorro said.
“I want you to walk out of here seeing and thinking just a little bit differently … about how you’re going to choose to respond to challenging situations,” she added during the Friday opening training session at the Transporting Students with Disabilities and Special Needs Conference held at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Dallas Frisco Hotel and Convention Center.
Mascorro, a child behavioral expert, explained that the part of the brain known as the amygdala — which is Greek for the word “almond” — is found in all brains. Emphasis was placed on its role as the emotion center when she shared the phrase “screaming almonds” as a reminder of its intense response during challenging behavior demonstrations. “When the brain is anxious or angry, the screaming almonds experience a huge chemical release that results in the executive functioning of the frontal lobe to be highly affected, and it may start to shut down,” she noted.
That result is more acute in children since their frontal lobes are not fully developed, resulting in their thinking and reasoning through the screaming almonds, Mascorro added.
“Why is this such a big deal? Because children are not fully myelinated yet and still learning how to understand the long-term consequences of their behaviors. When you add the complications of a disability, the results can be devastating,” she continued.
She said there was not a brain in the room that doesn’t want to anticipate, to know what is expected, who, what, when, and how. She told the attendees they could count in double digits the things they had control over when they woke up Friday morning.
“Think how important control is to you,” she said.
She shared there are two primary things that, universally, all brains want and need and that is the ability to anticipate and control some aspect of what is happening in our daily lives.
“On the other hand, think about children with special needs. Typically, they don’t get to decide when they’re getting up, what they’re going to wear, what they’re going to have for breakfast,” Mascorro observed. “The second their day begins, an adult is more than likely determining their life choices. What is the one thing they can control? Well of course, It’s their behavior, so why would they want to give that up?”
Because children’s brains are constantly changing, both drivers and educators should have daily conversations with children about expectations for bus behavior. One point to ponder, said Mascorro, would be that when a behavior simply won’t go away, consider giving it a time and place where it CAN happen.
She shared one driver’s successful ploy. He was trying to determine the “loudest group ever” and challenged the children to sit quietly, save their loud voices, and pay attention to traffic along most of the route. They were to watch for a specific cue, and when given the signal, could scream their loudest at a designated spot the driver predetermined each day.
Approximately 80 percent of what we communicate is through nonverbal visual expression, she added, so to assume that a student who is nonspeaking is not communicating efficiently is false. Children who struggle with expressive/receptive language skills are extreme communicators if educators would learn to listen to what their body and/or vocalizations are saying.
“Whenever a student who is nonverbal makes vocalizations, that is a cue for the driver or aide to acknowledge and engage with that student,” Mascorro said. “Perhaps, validate their feelings by saying things like ‘I’m so sorry I need to be so close while I help buckle your seatbelt.’ Or, ‘This will just take a minute. I need to keep you safe” when you’re securing their wheelchair”
“If we get in there and just start manipulating the child with no regard to proximity or not speaking to them first to explain what is happening, we’re just fueling the ‘screaming almonds to release chemistry and elevate the emotional response. You must listen to their behavior because behavior is communication.”
She shared that research bears out that anger is the emotion that humans recognize first and hold onto most firmly. Children who face communication challenges understandably may feel angry when they’re frustrated, resulting in outbursts that may seem baffling but shouldn’t. For example, drivers and aides can contribute to helping students alleviate some of the more stressful moments requiring compliance by clearly communicating to the student what they’re about to do, are doing, when it will almost be over, and when they are done.
“Talk to the student using verbal artistry,” Mascorro recommended.
Every time a child misbehaves, she told her audience to respond as if they see a “Y in the road.” The bottom of the “Y” is the targeted behavior. The middle of the “Y” is the fork in the road. She said some adults choose one way that begs the question of what immediate, negative consequences should the child face as a result of their noncompliance?
“Consider that it should prompt a bigger question. Is there a void in the skills of what the child SHOULD do so they wouldn’t have gotten into trouble in the first place? In other words, I wonder if they know how to … and how do we TEACH to that void?” she said.
She recalled the story of a man with autism who explained his emotions when, as a 12-year-old, he got into trouble for throwing rocks after the teacher told him at recess to go out and play. In his mind, and since he had no friends, he was playing, by throwing rocks! She confronted him to stop, he was then confused by the mixed message, and as a result, hit the teacher. “When I asked him, at that moment, what was he thinking, he responded by saying, ‘I didn’t hit the teacher because I was mad at her. I hit her because she didn’t know I couldn’t find my words, She was the adult, she was the teacher, and since she knew I had autism, she should know I couldn’t find the words,” Mascorro recalled, noting that the man provided a profound moment of clarity.
She also recounted the story of adults who had transported a girl for 10 years and emphasized her cognitive impairment instead of recognizing her abilities. In just one bus ride with the child, Mascorro saw that she knew and reacted preemptively to turns on the route and her approaching home, and even raised her feet before the bus reached a set of railroad tracks.
In another case, Mascorro found a solution for a boy with autism who was constantly disciplined for hitting others and running. She learned he was fixated on farm-to-market roads, so she requested a schematic of the school campus, renamed all the hallways farm-to-market roads, then taught the staff to change their directives from “remember, no running” to “head down farm-to-market road such and such to get to music class.”
This resulted in the student imprinting in his brain every day what to do instead of what not to do.
Mascorro said the words chosen during a conflict can make all the difference in whether a difficult situation escalates or is defused, noting that all too often adults, with the best of intentions, make statements where their intent does not match the outcome they wish to experience.
“A lot of the times we make statements that make us the bad guy and we don’t even know it. … When someone’s angry, what in heaven’s name possesses us to say, ‘Calm down?’ Calm down is not a de-escalation phrase. It’s an escalation phrase,” she added. “We’re the adults. We need to have a better understanding of how to step up. We need to land on what we want, not what we don’t want.”
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The environment of any human interaction also plays a role in how it plays out.
When it comes to the transportation environment, Mascorro said there are “three guarantees” whenever a driver steps on a bus to transport children. “Every day, you’re always going to be older than the kids on it. By default, you’re smarter. And, third, everybody’s got a brain. … You need to use that information,” she added.
Children, like adults, alter their behavior based on where they are and who they’re with, which means they may act differently on the school bus than elsewhere. “Parents say, ‘They don’t do that at home.’ There’s a remote possibility they don’t, so why are you comparing the two environments?” Mascorro said.
As a result, she said it should come as no surprise that children who come from homes where routines and rituals don’t match those of the school environment, react negatively on the bus when they’re expected to wear a seatbelt, speak quietly and follow the rules. Consequently, a situation with a swearing child may best be dealt with by teaching that “there are school words and non-school words … non-bus behaviors and bus behaviors,” Mascorro added.
Among Mascorro’s other advice:
- Validating an individuals’ feelings first is of paramount importance. (“When a student tries to punch, the adult may attempt to say instead of no hitting, ‘Hitting says you’re really mad right now.’When a student is crying, rather than the adult say stop crying, they may try and say, “I’m so sorry you’re sad. Crying tells me you’re really hurting right now!” Also, she recommended telling students what behavior you want to see happen, rather than what you don’t want or saying things like no, don’t and stop.
- Distraction and disengagement are the greatest methods to defuse a brewing conflict. “The minute you draw your line in the sand and have your Davy Crockett moment, something bad is more than likely going to happen,” she said. “Try instead to say things like, ‘You really need to see this!’ ‘Oh, wow! You’re not going to believe what I have in my office!’ or “’You’re not going to believe what you’ll get to see sitting in this row. Sometimes you can generate distractions by using imagination, music, or mystery moments.”
Jon Boyles, a driver/trainer with the Montana Association for Pupil Transportation, said he learned a number of new ideas from Mascorro’s presentation and looks forward to testing and sharing them with colleagues. “I’ve made a list. I think the best think people can do is implement one thing at a time. Don’t try to change three things at once,” he said. “I’m a bow hunter and when I’m changing the way I shoot, I try one thing at a time. If I change everything at once, how do I know what worked?” he said.
