Children.

[Substance G]

Aw, I love kids.

[Bear]

well kids.. well my 3 year old brothers and 4 year old sister. Ive had my fair share of caring for them for the past few months.

[cutthecashflow]

I blame most of childrens behavior on three theories.

1.The coercive interaction cycle-Brief description the kid begs, whines, and gets louder until the parent gives in. After the child has acted like an animal for the past half an hour then the parents give in reinforces the childs actions leading to more severe outbursts in the future to get what the child desires.

2.Modeling Theory/Social Learning theory-Simply put the child models what he or she sees on television and from the actions of the parents and/or older siblings. Younger children are constantly watching their parents whether their parents are aware of this at a concsious level or not.

3.Social Inrormational processing theory-This theory explains how a child takes in,processes, and generates a response to information. An aggressive child will usually take into account the last annoying thing that has happened to him or her.

If you wish to read further on the subject matter I have posted one of my papers below which will go more in depth into each of the three theories.

Christopher ****** last named blurred out for general privacy reasons
Lifespan Development
Assignment #3

Concerning Rusty Green’s Behavior

Mr. Radley I have looked over your referral of Rusty Green and I have come to a conclusion on what can possibly be done to adjust Rusty’s behavior for the better. I will explain three theories, tell you how each fits to Rusty’s behavior, and propose an idea for intervention.

There are three different approaches to Rusty’s behavior. The first being social learning theory. Social learning theory states that children model and act in ways that they see, whether through the media or at home (Feldman, 2006). If a child is viewing aggressive behavior he or she is more likely to display that behavior. For example, if a father hits his son to show obedience the son is at a higher risk to model his father. Because the father gets the results he wants from hitting his son, the son is likely to display similar aggressive behavior towards others to get what he wants.

The second theory called the social informational processing theory addresses how the child takes in, processes, and generates a response to information. How the child responds will determine if the child acts in a aggressive manor or not. There are six steps to this theory and the way a child reacts at any of these steps can attribute to aggression. The fist step is to encode social cues (Feldman, 2006). In this step the child, if aggressive takes into account the last annoying thing that has happened to them.

Now in the second step a child must interpret social cues (Feldman, 2006). An aggressive child will use a hostile attribution bias. If a child experiences a hostile attribution bias he or she will think that when someone does an unfavorable act towards them, it was done on purpose (Feldman, 2006).

In the next step a child chooses goals (Feldman, 2006). If the child is aggressive he or she will chose a goal of retaliation. The aggressive child is also likely to forget friendships and pursue a goal of hurting another, usually through revenge (Feldman, 2006). If a child is not aggressive the goal is usually to maintain friendships or avoid conflict (Feldman, 2006).

In the fourth step a child needs to generate strategies. If the child is aggressive, aggressive strategies tend to be reached (Feldman, 2006). Moving on to the fifth step a child must now pick a strategy (Feldman, 2006). An aggressive child believes that by picking an aggressive strategy he or she cant get what they desire. The child also feels that he or she is good at performing aggressive behaviors and that others will like them if they aggress (Feldman, 2006). This however is not the case as children tend not to like aggressive kids, unless they are aggressive themselves.

The final step is to enact the strategy (Feldman, 2006). The child performs the chosen strategy, evaluates the results, and if the results benefited the child he or she is more likely to repeat the acts in a similar manner next time. This then induces a cycle of aggression (Feldman, 2006).

The third and final approach is called the coercive interaction cycle. In this cycle parents often do not know they are pushing it along and out of proportion. It starts with either the parent demanding something from the child or vice versa. The parent threatens to punish the child if the child does not perform a particular task or behavior. In turn the child begins to whine, scream, or refuse. This tends to escalate until the parent gives in to hush up a child. What many parents don’t realize is that by giving in they are positively reinforcing their child’s bad behavior (Feldman, 2006). By getting what the child wanted he or she is likely to repeat this cycle more often to get what they want. After a while the parents become more permissive and let the child have his or her way. This tends to occur more frequently in stressful families than in functional households (Feldman, 2006).

From your referral on Rusty I can help explain to you which one of these three approaches fits into each part of the referral.

Using the social learning theory we can see that the trigger behind Rusty’s behavior lays at home with his father. His father’s repeated verbal and physical abuse sends a message to Rusty that it is ok to hurt someone in an aggressive manner whether that be verbal or physical. It sounds as if Rusty’s comment “I’m bigger and will give you a whooping” was learned at home in almost an identical statement from his father. Also Rusty’s father had reported hitting his son, which in turn produces the aggressive nature of Rusty at school (Feldman, 2006).

Taking a look from the social informational processing theory can help explain how Rusty goes about his aggressive nature. Rusty’s classmate accidentally tripped Rusty. Rusty took this cue and no others into account, he did not take into regard for other stimuli that may have been present. Rusty then interpreted that the trip was done on purpose to upset him. Rusty now being angry chose a goal of retaliation. His goal was clearly to upset or scare his classmate. Rusty then needed to generate and pick a strategy (Feldman, 2006). Rusty picked to pull the knife on his classmate, he did this because he believes he is good at striking fear into other people to teach them a lesson (Feldman, 2006). By pulling the knife rusty had completed the cycle. Scaring the kid reinforced Rusty’s behavior (that was his goal to bring distress to the child) which will lead to similar occurrences in the future.

Finally lets take a look at how the coercive interaction cycle plays into Rusty’s behavior. At home Rusty’s father tried to take away the television from Rusty. As we can see this did not turn out very well. His father not wanting to take time to deal with the matter in another way turned on the television. The message sent to Rusty was “If I act like this I can get what I want”. We can see this as true that in just a matter of a few days Rusty would repeat the same behaviors, ultimately then producing a vicious cycle that is not going to stop, but likely to get worse (Feldman, 2006).

I think the best thing to do to get Rusty back to an appropriate manner is to have him and his father participate in family oriented therapy. Rusty can learn to control his impulsive and aggressive behavior, while his father can learn more appropriate ways to discipline his child. His father, along with his teacher can use a system of token economy to reward rusty when he acts in a favorable manner. I do believe though that the first step in changing Rusty’s behavior is to start changing his environment at home as soon as possible.

Teaching rusty some different coping skills and a sense of empathy is also advised. The importance of treating Rusty’s behavior quickly is that children who become diagnosed with conduct disorder have a high prevalence of antisocial personality disorder later on in life (Kring, 2007). This is a serious matter and changing it while Rusty is still young is the most beneficial course of action that can be taken.

[buttermilk]

Yea, I basically agree with him...^^^

[Bunny420]

Yea, I basically agree with him...^^^

i didnt read

[Dakine]

What the hell is a tamogatchi thing

They make really annoying bleeping noises, like early pokemon games.

[FIRE!!!]

Tamagotchi was fuckin the shit man!!!!! Those things were so sweet I had like 3 of em maxed out when i was 7. YEA

[SToNeR ChRiS]

Tamagotchi was fuckin the shit man!!!!! Those things were so sweet I had like 3 of em maxed out when i was 7. YEA

I don't think Dakine would have liked you very much.

[Dakine]

Haha, i never said i didnt have one The noises just irritate the hell outta me.

[buttermilk]

What the hell is a tamogatchi thing

They make really annoying bleeping noises, like early pokemon games.

OH SHIT...now I remember those...ewwww