Question: what sort of behaiviour have you seen?

Alice Jones Bartoli answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Hi Eloise,

The kids I work with have all kinds of behavioural problems, but mainly relating to frustration and not being able to find a way to explain that, or to ask for a break. The first day I worked in a school, I was working with a group of children on a measuring task for maths and one of the kids threw a golfball through a window – that was a bit of a shock for me. Many of the difficult behaviours we see in school include shouting and being rude to adults and other children, hitting out, throwing things (pens, pencils, chairs) and sometimes, damaging property. All of these behaviours have something underlying them – they’re a form of communication, so we work at finding out what – and working with children to express themselves in a less ‘angry’ sort of way.

It’s not all angry and aggressive though, some children I work with on my bullying study are involved in that mean sort of bullying that involves leaving people out, or starting rumours about people. We all know people like this, and these can be really hurtful types of behaviour. We are working on finding out what we can do to stop these sort of behaviours from happening, or from being so hurtful.