Annie’s morning starts out pleasantly. She gets dressed, eats her favorite cereal, plays a video game with her dad, walks her dog, and finally runs up the street to her bus. The morning takes a turn after she takes her seat in Room 1 at Northside Elementary.
“Annie, please take the attendance sheet to the office,” says Ms. Star, her 3rd-grade teacher.
Annie freezes in a state of panic, mouth open, eyes wide. She cannot figure out what to do next. Annie has trouble with word recall. At this moment in time she cannot remember what an attendance sheet is.
Annie thinks to herself furiously, “Attendance sheet, attendance sheet, what is an attendance sheet? I know, I know what it is. I just can’t remember right now. Ms. Star is going to yell at me so bad. What am I going to do? I can’t tell Ms. Star I don’t know what it is. She won’t believe me and all the kids will think I am dumber than Luke and all the kids will hate me as much as they hate him.”
Annie is a child whose brain does not recall words very well. It causes her extreme anxiety when put on the spot. Ms. Star has not and will not ascertain Annie has trouble with word recall. Ms. Star believes all academic and behavioral problems boil down to poor attention span.
“Annie, were you paying attention to me? Did you hear what I just said? Can you repeat back to me what I just said? You know how important it is to pay attention in my class, from the moment you step foot in the door until the moment you leave. I have been urging you all year long to pay closer attention and I don’t know what else to do.”
When Annie fumbles for a word or turns in sub-par work, Ms. Star ramps up her running commentary to Annie about how Annie needs to pay closer attention in class and work harder on her assignments. This is part of how Ms. Star practices behavior management. Ms. Start talks about the behaviors she wants from Annie and she reprimands Annie when Annie does not exhibit those behaviors.
All Annie knows right now is Ms. Star is going to yell at her big time if she does not stand up right away to get the attendance sheet in order to take it to the office. Annie has previously been yelled at many times for drawing a blank when Ms. Star has made a request of her.
Ms. Star is now looking sternly at Annie with a firmly set jaw and an expectant expression. Much to Annie’s horror, she simply cannot remember what an attendance sheet is. Annie cannot bear to be yelled at again in front of the whole class. She just knows she is about to be humiliated once again.
Annie is terrified the other kids will figure out she has trouble remembering words and they will start treating her the way they treat Luke. All the kids refer to Luke as the ‘dumbest’ kid in class and nobody plays with him. Ms. Star reprimands Luke in front of the whole class the most of all, but Annie knows she is running a close second.
Annie has no good options available to her in this moment. She simply cannot call up what an attendance sheet is in her mind. Whatever she says right now will cause Ms. Star to admonish her about her poor attention and her bad attitude in order humiliate her in front of the class, albeit for her own good.
In a split second Annie assesses how to choose the kind of humiliation she is about to receive. She thinks to herself with lightning speed. “Should I:
A.) admit I cannot remember what an attendance sheet is,
B.) pretend I wasn’t paying attention and get reward points taken away,
C.) tell Ms. Star I cannot take the attendance sheet because I have go to the bathroom,
D.) throw my pencil at Luke so I will get sent to the principle’s office and won’t have to take the attendance sheet any more?”
Annie chooses D. So she extemporaneously makes up a fib to justify throwing a pencil at Luke and then lets her pencil fly, screaming, “Luke, you stole my notebook.”
Annie has nothing against Luke, it’s just that throwing her pencil at Luke is the perfect distraction for getting her out of taking the attendance sheet to the office and exposing her confusion with word meanings. Annie knows she will receive a punishment but the other kids will see her as cool instead of a dumb loser who can’t remember the meanings of words.
The pencil hits Luke in the lip. Luke knows he did not take Annie’s notebook and a tiny tear trickles down his face. He wipes it away quickly, but another one replaces it, and then another, and another. Luke is devastated because he thought Annie was one of his good friends. She is usually nice to him and sometimes even sits with him on the bus. Nobody ever sits with him on the bus. Luke is embarrassed and confused. He wants to crawl under his desk and hide his eyes because he cannot stop crying, compounding his already searing embarrassment.
It is only 8:53am.
Meanwhile, Ms. Star is quite upset. She calls the principal’s office over her intercom. “Mr. Lewis, please come to Room 1. It is urgent. One of my students engaged in violence”
Ms. Star then addresses the whole class. “Class, as you all know by 3rd grade, our school has a Zero Tolerance Policy for Violence. All violence results in a week-long suspension. Annie will now be suspended for one week. Let this be a lesson to all of you. Annie, pack your things. Mr. Lewis will call your parents from his office to take you home. Mr. Lewis will speak with you about our Zero Tolerance Policy for Violence.”
Mr. Lewis arrives and whisks Annie away to his office, gives her a serious talking to about the consequences of student violence, suspends her officially for one week, calls her parents, and sends her home. Annie had not remembered the whole concept of zero tolerance for violence. She is still unclear about what suspension means.
Annie was expecting the usual punishment of having to stay inside for recess, so being forced to go home is extremely disorienting and confusing for her. She starts to cry and hyperventilate because she is so confused and humiliated and doesn’t completely understand what is happening around her.
Luke spends the day trying to be invisible inside his brand new oversized Star Wars sweatshirt he had been joyously excited to wear to school today. He thought his classmates would admire his new sweatshirt so much they would ask him to play. He believes everyone likes Star Wars as much as he does. He cannot imagine otherwise.
At least Luke can use the hood to his advantage. Luke pulls the hood up and down over his eyes to hide his intermittent tears. All the kids are mad at him for allegedly stealing Annie’s notebook and getting her in trouble. They mutter mean comments under their breath and give him dirty looks all day long.
Ms. Star calls Annie’s mother that evening. She recommends Annie’s parents find a psychiatrist and a psychologist for Annie due to what Ms. Star believes are anger management and negative attitude issues stemming from either possible Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder or ‘trouble at home.’ Rumor has it Annie’s parents are on the verge of divorce and it is commonly accepted that children ‘suffer psychologically’ when their parents are on the verge of divorce. Nobody knows exactly, precisely, or scientifically what the term ‘suffer psychologically’ means, but it is nonetheless widely accepted as a real phenomenon. Ms. Star tells Annie’s parents about the psychiatrist she recommends for her students when she thinks they might need ADHD medication.
Ms. Star also calls Luke’s mother and recommends Luke’s mother find a psychologist for Luke because Ms. Star believes he is suffering from childhood depression due to either Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Disabilities Not Otherwise Specified, and/or the trauma of having an absentee father who is a soldier. It is commonly accepted that children ‘suffer psychologically’ when their parents go on extended military duty. Ms. Star gives Luke’s mother the standard information she gave to Annie’s parents about the psychiatrist she recommends when she believes a student might need ADHD medication.
Luke has all kinds of learning challenges. Instead of giving him cognitive and physical supports to make up for his poor short and long term memory, his poor ability to generalize, his low muscle tone, and his weak eye/hand coordination, Ms. Star has decided Luke’s problems are mostly due to the ‘psychological stress’ of having a father away at war and his poor ability to sustain his attention on her lectures, directions, and the tasks at hand during class. Ms. Star believes Luke needs three things; some good old fashioned behavior management, therapy for the ‘psychological distress’ he surely must have with his father gone for so long, and a standard ADHD medication. Ms. Star finds Luke hard to teach even though he is a well behaved and quiet boy. He just cannot do the work expected of him in 3rd grade. So Ms. Star has decided a psychologist and a psychiatrist can fix up his likely depression and attention deficits so he will become more teachable.
When Annie returns from her week long suspension she has missed the whole introduction to identifying nouns in Language Arts. She has missed the introduction to the social studies unit on map reading. She has missed the explanations for all the new concepts and words involved in these units. Due to her trouble remembering the meanings of words in the first place, Annie cannot make heads or tails of the work expectations when she returns from her suspension. Ms. Star, though not a psychologist herself, becomes convinced Annie definitely has ADHD and repeatedly urges Annie’s parents to take her to the psychiatrist she recommended to them who can prescribe the appropriate medication for Annie. Annie’s parents begrudgingly relent. They want their daughter to succeed, and they do not want to offend Ms. Star or disrespect her position of authority.
The psychiatrist, based solely upon the written reports of Ms. Star, quickly confirms Ms. Star must be right, and prescribes Ritalin for Annie after one short visit with her.
Let’s pretend Annie and Luke have Ms. O’Boyle in Room 2 instead of Ms. Star in Room 1. Let’s pretend the same attendance sheet issue arises.
“Annie, please take the attendance sheet to the office,” says Ms. O’Boyle in Room 2. Annie cannot remember the meaning of the word attendance sheet. Ms. O’Boyle sees the worried look on Annie’s face and quickly ascertains that Annie isn’t sure what it is. Ms. O’Boyle quickly walks the attendance sheet over to Annie and hands it to her before Annie has the chance to becomes confused and embarrassed.
Ms. O’Boyle ascertained on day one of school that Annie had trouble with word recall, because Ms. O’Boyle reads a student behaviors as if they are the encyclopedia for understanding how that child thinks. Ms. O’Boyle understands a student’s behaviors are always in alignment with their thinking. Thoughts and behaviors are an inseparable team. Ms. O’Boyle hears the occupational therapists at school say this all the time and she has learned quite a bit from them.
When Annie froze the first day of school when Ms. O’Boyle asked the students to take out their 2-inch binders, Ms. O’Boyle did not assume Annie was being defiant or lazy or inattentive. Ms. O’Boyle did not read into Annie’s behaviors as having any negative connotations. Ms. O’Boyle quickly ascertained Annie was not sure what a 2-inch binder was. So Ms. O’Boyle held her 2-inch binder up for the whole class to see and asked if anyone needed help finding it among their school supplies.
After taking the attendance sheet from Ms. O’Boyle on this day, Annie thinks to herself while walking towards the door, “Oh ya, I remember now. The attendance sheet tells who is absent. If you ask me, it should be called an absence sheet.”
Ms. O’Boyle interrupts Annie’s thoughts and asks her to hang on a second just as Annie is about to step out into the hallway. “Luke, will you go to the office with Annie? Once Annie delivers the attendance sheet to the office, will you both go into the P.E. Room and ask Mr. Philco to give you all the jump ropes for Room 2? We need those jump ropes for today’s recess activities.”
Ms. O’Boyle believes her students each have very unique ways of organizing and understanding information. She believes they will always come to conclusions unique to them due to how they are capable of thinking through a problem given their unique cognitive, sensory, and motor systems.
Ms. O’Boyle knows Luke and Annie have cognitive challenges in terms of how they are able to organize, generalize, and remember information. Ms. O’Boyle takes care never to mistake their cognitive challenges for defiance, laziness, lack of attention, bad attitudes, behavioral problems, or psychological problems. Ms. O’Boyle supports her students’ thinking abilities to make sure her students are as successful as possible every day at school. Ms. O’Boyle does not use intimidation, humiliation or her position of authority to garner or demand their attention or to forcibly modify their behaviors.
Ms. O’Boyle tells her students: “Since I am your teacher I am in charge of developing learning units for you. I am also in charge of establishing and enforcing the rules of our classroom environment. Once you learn the rules I will expect you to follow the rules. You are always in charge of yourselves and your decisions in this classroom. The only person who can make decisions for you is you. I trust you will all figure out how to make decisions that will help you follow our classroom rules. Sometimes we all make mistakes and it is OK to make mistakes. Our rules are in place because there are so many of us in this small space. We usually change some of the rules throughout the year as you grow and change. If you ever have any ideas for good rules for our classroom that will help us stay organized, please let me know in person or in writing.”
Ms. O’Boyle does not have preconceived ideas about what student behaviors mean as measured up to fixed understandings or standards. Ms. O’Boyle assumes a student’s behaviors are always in alignment with his or her ability to think through and cognitively manage any given circumstance. She believes her students, like all individuals, are designed to assess a constantly changing environment by orienting uniquely their own uniquely integrated array of cognitive, sensory, and motor capacities. Each student relies upon his behaviors to engage, orient, and support his cognitive capacities.
Because a student’s behaviors are so crucial to his overall cognitive processes, Ms. O’Boyle believes it is extremely threatening and destabilizing to a child to have his or her behaviors commented upon. She understands every student will engage behaviors unique to them, all day, every day. She understands behaviors are personal, private, and crucial to a student’s ability to orient and stabilize himself in space and time. Ms. O’Boyle talks about the expectations of her classroom and helps each student achieve the expectations in terms of their unique cognitive, sensory, and motor requirements and capacities. She talks about classroom rules and academic expectations in terms of how to achieve them, not in terms of how NOT to achieve them.
If a student has trouble with academics or classroom rules, Ms. O’Boyle simply works through the conflict in a non-confrontational, non-humiliating kind of way. Her students never feel threatened by her and classroom conflicts are easily managed. Miss O’Boyle does not believe behaviors can be problematic so her students do not have behavior problems. For this reason she doesn’t look for how to change her students’ behaviors, she looks for ways to match their understanding to the learning or classroom goal. And rule number one Ms. O’Boyle has for herself is to never humiliate, intimidate, or invalidate her students. Discussing a child’s behaviors, particularly in front of the whole class, violates all of these rules so she doesn’t do it.
While Annie and Luke leave Ms. O’Boyle’s room to walk to the office together, Annie tells Luke she likes his new sweatshirt. Luke says, “Thanks Annie,” and smiles broadly from ear to ear. Luke gives Annie an original Princess Leigha Star Wars sticker he had been saving for her. Luke knows the original Princess Leigha is Annie’s favorite character of all. Annie’s dad is a Star Wars fan and Annie knows more about Star Wars than any other girl in the third grade. Luke thinks Annie is spectacular and pretty and nice. Annie doesn’t have a clue that Luke is the ‘dumbest’ boy in the class because Ms. O’Boyle has never singled him out to embarrass him into submission in front of the others for his mistakes, attitude, effort, or attention.
It is 8:53am in Room 2.
The day started out great for Annie and only gets better. No tears are shed. No suspensions are necessary. No psychologists are called. No psychiatrists are called; no medications prescribed.Ms. Star is one example of how a teacher arrives at the conclusion to recommend drugs for her 3rd graders. Teachers, like psychologists and psychiatrists, employ widely varying kinds of methodologies in the field because they are given so many open-ended, non-specific and vague personality and behavioral theories to choose from in their preparatory college courses. Many teachers end up recommending drugs, but just as many don’t. And right now, for our kids, it is totally the luck of the draw for who will get drugs and who won’t because there is no theoretical uniformity in the field of psychology or in our teaching.
Many teachers and psychologists believe exactly what Ms. Star believes about attention span because psychology and child development courses promote the idea that children must pay attention to learn. This, of course, makes sense, but psychology and child development courses most often overgeneralize and oversimplify the complex series of interactions that must go on in the brain and body in order for a child to pay attention at any specific moment in time. They see attention as a function of behavior instead of a function of how a child is able to sense, co-ordinate, organize, and form conclusions about information. A child is a function of how he is able to think, not how he is able to behave. His behavior is determined by his thinking. And a child can only think how he can think. Drugs cannot change how a child’s brain organizes and understands information.
Teachers can only apply in practice what they have been taught. And what they have been taught is an enormous grab bag of ideas about the human personality and how children learn. All of us who have been educated in the United States are used to unquestioningly accepting the enormous grab bag of overgeneralized and oversimplified psychological concepts and theories we have been taught since our very first psychology course in high school. In college, intro to psychology 101, child development 101, abnormal psychology 101, and on up through graduate level psychology courses, psychological concepts and theories are taught in grab bag fashion. And we have accepted all of it on faith.
Most psychological textbooks teach 5 different categories of personality theories. Within the 5 categories, around 8 personality theories are typically highlighted for no apparent reason other than their historical significance. Typically mentioned are Freud’s psychosexual stage theory of personality, B.F. Skinner’s behavioral theory of personality, and Gordon Allport’s trait theory of personality, to name a few. Gordon Allport went through the dictionary and found 18,000 words he believed referred to personality traits. Allport wrongly believed personality traits encoded themselves into our nervous system as ‘structures’ that guide us to behave consistently over a variety of situations throughout our lives. He was wrong, but his trait theory is still taught for no apparent reason.
Imagine if Allport or any of the personality theorists throughout the history of psychology had observed and taken data on 18,ooo children as they grew and developed over time? Instead of 18,000 words from the dictionary that refer to personality traits and a grab bag full of contradictory and unverified personality theories, we might have ONE scientific, evidence-based personality theory to guide our interactions with developing children. As it stands, in perhaps one of the most stunning oversights in the history of science, the branch of science devoted to the study of the human personality freely and without reservation admits it has no earthly idea what a human personality is.
The field of psychology, again, has a grab bag full of personality theories to choose from for professionals who work with people. All the theories contradict one another in one or more ways. Unbelievably in so many ways, there are only two things all existing psychological personality theories have in common. None of them are evidenced-based and none of them are scientifically verified.
Because there are so many theories of personality, teachers have no choice but to pick from the grab bag of existing theories to guide their creation of lesson plans and classroom management strategies. The idea that raises to the top of the heap most often from the psychological grab bag full of personality theories is the idea all children should be able to pay the same amount and quality of attention in school regardless of their processing speed, I.Q., short and long term memory capacities, fine and gross motor abilities, or sensory idiosyncrasies. The second idea that raises to the top of the heap is that when a child does not pay quality attention during class, the teacher should devise some sort of behavior modification to get him or her to do so.
The most popular theories of personality are the easiest one’s to put into practice and they allow for the most accurate record keeping, something all teachers are required to do. Quite often, psychological theory as it is applied into teaching practice looks like this: A child who pays attention will achieve at or above grade level. A child who doesn’t, won’t. Behavior management is used to ‘help’ inattentive children pay better attention. If behavior management doesn’t work, drugs are quickly recommended. Follow along with Annie’s story to see how quickly drugs can come up as a viable solution.
Due to the lack of theoretical uniformity, our children have confusingly different kinds of interactions with their teachers from year to year because it is up to each teacher to adopt and apply the personality and behavioral theories of their choice to inform how they teach, manage, and interact with their students. For this reason, students have no idea how to predict how they will be responded to or treated year to year by their different teachers. The lack of predictability from their teachers sets students up to be anxious and/or paranoid. For some kinds of thinkers, the unpredictability of how different teachers, specialists, and staff members will respond them is highly destabilizing and anxiety provoking. Anxiety related disorders are an epidemic among our nation’s children. If we can agree on consistent methods for how to optimally interact with our students, it is highly likely we could reverse this trend.
Ms. O’Boyle is a veteran teacher like Ms. Star. Ms. O’Boyle was unhappy with the theoretical frameworks available to her via psychology for how to understand the personality and behavioral development of her students. Ms. O’Boyle read extensively about many different personality theories but none of them could she apply successfully and reliably. Out of necessity, Ms. O’Boyle developed her own personality and behavioral theories from which to build her teaching practices. Consequently, Ms. O’Boyle has developed very different tactics for how she manages her classroom than Ms. Star. Most notably, Ms. O’Boyle does not manage her students’ behaviors. Ms. O’Boyle manages the environment of her classroom, not the behaviors of her students, by setting clear rules. Ms. O’Boyle helps her students figure out cognitively how to make decisions that will allow them to be in compliance with the rules. If students go out of compliance, she figures out why. When Ms. O’Boyle does not immediately target the student’s behavior as being the problem for why a student is out of compliance with a rule, Ms. O’Boyle always finds a valid and important reason. When Ms. O’Boyle has a concrete reason for why a student is out of compliance with a rule, she can easily problem solve with that student. If Ms. O’Boyle modifies a student’s behavior right away to coerce him into compliance, that student becomes upset and anxious. The student suffers and the reason he was out of compliance is never found or solved.
Ms. O’Boyle had read enough about behaviorism to know that behavior modification does not have scientific proof to back up it’s efficacy. B.F. Skinner’s theories are behind behaviorism old and new, but B.F. Skinner’s theories have all been disproven. In fact, Skinner had macabre ideas about the human personality. He believed children were born totally malleable. He said through consistent behavior modification techniques we can mold children into human beings who will respond and behave exactly how we want them to. His theories of personality and behavior, if they really worked, would work across the board for all kids and we would have classrooms full of kids across the country responding and behaving in exactly the same ways as one another.
It is true we adults have the power and the intelligence to manipulate and manage the behaviors of our children. But if we had scientific theories to show how a child’s behaviors are 100% integral to his ability to sense, think, move, manage himself, and make decisions moment to moment in ways that make sense to his unique sensory, motor, and nervous systems, then we would not mess with his behaviors. We would modify our environments to adapt to the behaviors of our children and we would help children modify their cognitive understanding of our expectations of them. If we had scientific research and evidence that showed behavior modification can be one of the main contributors to mental illness, we would not mess with our children’s behaviors.
Behaviors are personal. Behaviors are private. Students are ferociously defensive and protective about their behaviors, like all mammals are, and rightly so, because their behaviors are the tools with which they have been biologically equipped to support and carry out the directives of their brain.
All human brains are different and unique, therefore all human behaviors are different and unique. If we modify a child’s behaviors, we confuse their whole nervous system. When we confuse the nervous system, the brain cues for the fight-or-flight response, every time. Our brain reads confusion as distress. Our fight-or-flight response occurs when our brain cues our autonomic nervous system to go into distress mode. Our brain will always be threatened by confusion, in whatever form it comes. We cannot expect our students to control their fight-or-flight responses because these biological responses are autonomic. But we teachers can do a whole lot to prevent our children’s brains from cueing their autonomic nervous systems to engage the fight-or-flight response. We teachers have college degrees, high I’Q’s, many years of life experiences, and we have total control of the classroom environment. We can modify anything we want to in the classroom environment to help our students achieve learning goals. We do not need to modify the behaviors of our developing students in ways that confuse and upset them when we can literally modify anything and everything else in the classroom environment, including our own behaviors.
Ms. O’Boyle, through years of observing what put her students into fight-or-flight, anxiety, and distress, came to the realization she should not modify her students’ behaviors. When Ms. O’Boyle does not say or do anything to put her students in fight-or-flight, they remain calm. When they are calm they are not anxious or paranoid. When problems or conflicts arise, calm students who have faith their teacher will not put them into the yucky feeling of fight-or-flight, are quite willing and able to problem solve. When Ms. O’Boyle does not see behaviors as being the source of problems for her students, she simply does not have any behavior problems. Ms. O’Boyle’s room can get loud and boisterous with lots of hustle and bustle. But her students are always calm. If a child becomes anxious, the first thing Ms. O’Boyle does is help that student get back to a calm state. Once calm, she problem solves calmly with him.
Ms. O’Boyle, like many teachers, has developed her own unique teaching strategies because there exists no universally confirmed theories of personality and behavior that can be applied reliably in the classroom setting.
Ms. Star, on the other hand, cannot imagine teaching without practicing behavior management. Ms. Star, of course, uses modern incarnations of Skinner’s ideas. She uses positive reinforcement and rewards students for good behavior. But ‘positive reinforcement’ ends up being negative for the students who rarely receive it or who consistently lose out on the rewards. And so-called positive reinforcement techniques teach children that authority figures have the right to judge and modify the behaviors of those under them. It also teaches children exactly how to modify the behaviors of others. On the playground, we call behavior modification bullying. In the classroom, we call it teaching.
Interestingly, Ms. Star and Ms. O’Boyle have almost identical educational backgrounds. They both went to undergrad and grad school together. They both started teaching 3rd grade at Northside Elementary 20 years ago. They both take all the same continuing education courses together so they can share transportation and lodging.
How is it possible they both assess the meanings behind student behaviors and achievements so completely differently from one another? This is the million dollar question. It is also the question behind the fact that if I went to 25 different psychologists and 25 different psychiatrists for the same mental health problem, I would end up with 50 different assessments and 50 different treatment plans and goodness knows how many different meds. This state of affairs points directly to our lack of scientifically verified theories of the human personality and human behavior.
If we develop biologically accurate theories, we will be able to account for and solve for the individual thinking differences that exist among all teachers and students. Our current personality and behavior theories are all over the map, none of them are scientifically verified, and most of them are not even scientifically verifiable, meaning we have to take them on faith.
Each year, your child will have a teacher who understands and applies personality and behavioral theories in a manner completely unique to him or her because we do not have biological, brain-based theories of the human personality and human behavior to translate into uniform and optimal teaching practices. We have mountains of data, but no theories with which to interpret and apply the data in consistently optimal ways
If we want better results in our classrooms, we have to develop and provide teachers with evidenced based, verifiable, and uniformly understood biological and brain-based theories of the human personality and human behavior. To do this, we must replace the current plethora of non-evidenced-based psychological theories.
There is a concerted effort underway among many of our country’s esteemed psychiatrists to bring much-needed reform to the field of psychology and psychiatry. Those calling for reform say the numbers of children being over-diagnosed and given unnecessary drugs has skyrocketed. Allen Frances, M.D. and Bruce Levine, Ph.D, are two of the many professionals in this field who site current and past research studies that give overwhelming evidence that drugging children should be the absolute last recourse for a child because the short and long term side effects of the drugs often reduce the quality of life for him or her in both the short and long term. But these psychiatrists are not going deep enough to look for their reforms. We must have a theory of personality with which to interpret our observations, data, and research about how our behaviors, body, and brain all integrate and are reflected outwards as our personality.
A likely theory of personality is so simple and straightforward that it doesn’t seem possible. Jeff Hawkins, modern brain researcher and author of On Intelligence, has ascertained that the brain is constantly and continuously comparing its sensory experiences to its stored memories and coming up with predictions for what to do next. What we predict and decide to do next is who we are. We are a decision in a moment. Our personality simply reflects our process of our decision making. Our personality is a process. not a product.
The most riveting deduction I have inferred after reading Hawkins’ work and matching it up to my observations of children is this. Because the brain’s ultimate goal is to develop predictions for what to do next, anything that contradicts, confuses, or challenges a child’s predictions for what should happen next will put him into fight-or-flight. This is true for all mammals, young and old.
Our brain reads patterns because it does not have senses itself. The brain cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or touch anything from where it sits in the skull. Our sense organs send the brain neuronal messages from where they sit outside the body. The brain itself is hyper aware to changes in what it has predicted for any given moment because it is literally in the dark. When it receives the coded message patterns from the senses and they are off from what it had predicted, it cues for fight-or-flight.
Furthermore, we have only 7 or so emotional states. We are not that differentiated when it comes to the number of emotional accompaniments our brain can either cue for or supply. Anxiety is a big feeling and deeply affecting and it is cued the same way for a big, dramatic event as it is for a small anomoly. Fight-or-flight is cued for and supplied whenever there is a challenge, contradiction, or change in what the brain was predicting regardless of whether or not the event was major or minor.
Our brains cue for fight-or-flight all the time and we experience anxiety all the time. We are basically anxiety producing machines because our brain is an organ of paranoia because that is its job. Becuase we are not connecting the dots about how easily and frequently our brain cues for anxiety (fiight-or-flight), we are not connecting the dots about how we can understand it for what it is. And what it is, is an internal bite of information telling us where to direct our attention. That’s it.
If we understand anxiety as information we need instead of a random hindrance, it becomes much easier to manage. Anxiety not only becomes easier to manage, it starts to make our decision making easier because we use it do guide our decision making.
If we allow our children to express their anxiety through their words or behaviors and we take them at face value, then we don’t teach out of them their own understanding of how their brain and body communicates with them. The adult generation was taught to understand our thoughts and behaviors for how they made sense to others. We were not given the opportunity to connect the dots between how our biological cues made sense for how we sense, move, and think. We do not have to do the same thing to this next generation of children.
For example, if a child’s brain predicted a teacher will begin math at exactly noon like usual, but the teacher begins reading instead, there exists a contradiction to what the child was predicting. Most children, if they are able to estimate time, will be able to be flexible about such a contradiction to what they were predicting. But some children cannot be flexible about time and scheduling. The brains of those children will go into fight-or-flight and they will become highly agitated and anxious. To the ‘old school’ teacher, those children will appear to have ADHD or oppositional defiant tendencies. The ‘old school’ teacher who adheres to behaviorism will give those children a consequence for being disruptive.
Conversely, the teacher who understands all behaviors are in alignment with one’s thinking will seek to understand what has upset the child. That teacher will always seek to understand the child’s behaviors by attempting to find out how the child is sensing, thinking, and then making predictions for what to do next in any given circumstance. And this teacher will actively work to respond to this child in ways that calm the child. This teacher will never purposely over excite a student’s nervous system in order to ‘teach’ him a lesson.
I have developed some biologically based and verifiable theories about the human personality and human behavior based upon my 35 years of observing children both in and out of the classroom. If verified through research and testing, I believe these biologically based theories will lead to practices that can allow teachers to provide uniform, consistent, brain-based, and optimal services to students year after year, regardless of a student’s or teacher’s strengths or weaknesses.
I am currently writing a book about my proposal for new biological and brain-based theories of the human personality and human behavior.
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