It's Always a Journey: Continuously Thinking about Behavior Management

I work with some challenging clients. Every student who attends my school has been sent to that school program because they have failed in every other school environment. This often means that the group sessions that I have to do are full of kids who have learned to avoid undesirable tasks through aggression, tantrums, self-injurious behaviors, running away, and doing all sorts of things in order to gain attention or leave uncomfortable situations. Classroom groups are determined by people who never have to work directly with the students, and often group members are not very compatible with one another.

At the moment, I have several groups that are complete messes.

Imagine a group of 12 kids, ages 7-21 (yep, you read that right - we have that range of ages in the majority of our classes right now). Staff members are in all sorts of training at the moment, so there are never enough staff members to cover our basic ratios of staff to student interaction. Add to the environment the fact that there has been an influx of new students arriving (at least one new student in every class these days), and my groups are messes!

Yesterday was an example of a group gone wrong. The funny thing is that everything was fine for 25 out of 30 minutes, and then, BAM! Interaction with one another became so much more reinforcing than anything I was doing. The three youngest and smallest boys went wild - loud screaming, hysteria-edged laughing, stealing, throwing things, etc. They grabbed an entire box of bandaids and proceeded to shred them while laughing. I had lost control.

I got the other students, the ones who were actually listening to me and were on the edge of joining in, out of the session. Decrease distraction and the audience effect. I called for additional support as the classroom staff members who are present are new to the facility. We managed to separate the students and get them calmer once they were away from each other. The kid who was the last one out of the room has had some trauma regarding being alone with staff members. I didn't remember that fact until he was with me and another staff member. There was one other peer in the room, but he may have been in his trauma reaction at the end of the situation. I got him out of the situation as soon as I could.

The worst part of all of this is that I was thinking that the students would be able to handle our TMEs without needing so much oversight. Silly me.

So, it is time to structure things a bit more for this group.

In situations where I am less interesting than the other people around me, I often use the concept of divide and conquer. Next week, when this group comes to music therapy, I will have assigned seats. The bandaid gang will be separated. Other students who have relationship issues with one another will also be separated. I will need to make enough materials for each small group of students. I will use the space that I have right now to my advantage. The smaller groups will be as far away from one another as I can get them. There will be a staff member assigned to each group.

We'll see if I have a bit more control and attention with smaller groups within the larger groups. If so, we'll continue this pattern until the next revolt. If not, it will be time to head back into planning.

The thing that I've noticed about being a music therapist with groups of kids (that are not arranged based on any specific criterion) is that behavior management has to be a constant consideration. Behavior management does not mean complete control - there is lots of room for choices, communication of wants and needs and preferences other than my own, and flexibility - but it does mean ensuring that every person in the session remains safe.

When I am leading a session, I find myself constantly scanning my group members for signs of escalation into unsafe behaviors. I then adjust my music. With the bandaid gang, I find that music just increases the undesirable behaviors, so I have to stop it completely. I haven't found anything consistent about their behaviors yet, but I will. At this point, the only thing that seems to be consistent is being in the same room with the other two. I'll see if separation will decrease that response.

Their next session is on Tuesday, and we will see if the new session arrangement makes a difference in how we interact. I also have an extremely reinforcing prop for sessions next week - my R2-D2 robot is going to visit. Students will have to be in control and demonstrate responsibility before they can use my robot. It will be something that kids will not want to miss, so I think there will be very good behavior next week. Assuming that, however, may be dangerous - I can't assume that the bandaid gang will react the way I expect, so I will be prepared for just about anything and everything!

Ah, the job of behavior management.