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If you are looking for educational audiobooks for your school, then join Listening Books to gain access to thousands of titles to support the curriculum, reading comprehension and vocabulary.

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Membership for Schools - Why Join - About Us - Listening Books

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Audiobooks are a key tool for pupils that struggle to read due to an illness, disability, mental health condition or learning difficulty such as dyslexia. Listening to an audiobook can help students to achieve their literacy objectives, as well as develop a love for books. We stock audiobooks for ages 7 and upwards.

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Summary

Have you ever wondered why some students struggle with impulsivity more than others? Are you facing challenges with managing impulsive pupil behaviour in your classroom?

Then this episode has the answers you are looking for. Join us as we sit down with expert guests Ruth Pauli and Stephane Dr Brito (researchers into impulsivity) to unravel the mysteries behind impulsive behaviour in the classroom.
Important links: Participate in Ruth and Stephane's research.
Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook

Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources.php

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Show notes / transcription
Emma Shackleton
Working with students who you find are impulsive or find it hard to focus their attention, and it's impeding their schoolwork or their social relationships with their peers? Then this episode has the answers you've been looking for. We're going to break down the difference between the different forms of impulsiveness from trait impulsiveness to state impulsiveness. We're going to share the 5 key forms of long term impulsiveness in children, and we're going to explore the impact of adverse childhood experiences on impulsiveness and give you a set of strategies that you can use with your students to help to train and improve their ability to regulate their impulses, and that's all coming after the intro music.
Simon Currigan
Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast.

Hi there. My name is Simon Currigan, and welcome to this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets. Here's a little known fact about me. I just can't spell the word occasion.

It just baffles me. First go, I always get it wrong. True story, not an interesting story. Not sure how much mileage you're gonna get out of retelling that to your friends and family at the pub tonight, but it is a true story. I'm joined today by my co host, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma.
Emma Shackleton
Hi, Simon.
Simon Currigan
Any words you consistently spell wrong?
Emma Shackleton
Loads, actually. And I think it's a family trait because I've noticed that both my mom and my son consistently spell the same words wrong in texts too, which is mildly interesting. Has this got any relevance to today's episode?
Simon Currigan
Not a lot. We're really putting our finger on the pulse of sort of SEMH issues sweeping the country, aren't you? I just wanted to put our weaknesses all out there in the public domain, but I do have a question that is related to today's show.
Emma Shackleton
Go on then.
Simon Currigan
Have you ever made an impulse purchase and regretted it afterwards?
Emma Shackleton
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Not so much lately because I'm trying to think a lot more carefully before I buy stuff now. But when I was younger, I did buy quite a lot of items of clothing that I really loved in the shop and got excited about and bought. But then when I got them home, I realised that they were pretty terrible and usually ended up taking them back to the shop again.
Simon Currigan
You're on an Amazon fast, aren't you?
Emma Shackleton
I am. Yes. Amazon fast.
Simon Currigan
The worst kind of fast?
Emma Shackleton
No. It's great.

A lot less recycling to go out as well, I must say. So, anyway, what's all this got to do with today's episode?
Simon Currigan
So today, we're gonna share my interview with Ruth Pauli and Stephane De Brito who are researchers into impulsivity. We're going to explore what impulsivity actually is at a scientific level, how impulsivity actually breaks down into a number of different traits or forms, and how we can support pupils whose behaviour is overly impulsive in a way that damages their outcomes or their social relationships or their experience in school.
Emma Shackleton
Perfect. But before we press play on that interview, I've got a quick request. If you're listening to this episode and you're enjoying School Behaviour Secrets and you've taken any value at all from it, please could you open your podcast app and hit the subscribe button? Subscribing will take you about 3 seconds, and it makes sure that you never miss another episode. And while you've got the app open, how about clicking on the share button and letting someone else know about School Behaviour Secrets? That way, your friends and colleagues will also be able to benefit from the thoughtful, interesting, and sometimes, let's face it, bizarre content that we share. Thank you so much for helping to spread the word.
Simon Currigan
We've also got a free download that accompanies this episode really well. It's called the SEND Handbook, and its purpose is to help you dig into the root causes of student behaviours that you see in class.
Emma Shackleton
And, of course, the idea here isn't for teachers to make a diagnosis because we're just not qualified to do that. But if we can start to link the behaviours that we see to possible underlying causes quickly, it means that we can get the right help and get early intervention strategies into place.
Simon Currigan
It even comes with a set of fact sheets for conditions like oppositional disorder, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and developmental language delay.
Emma Shackleton
The handbook is a completely free download, and we'll put a direct link in the episode description. So all you've gotta do is open your podcast app and click directly to get your copy. And now here's Simon's interview with Ruth Pauli and Stephane De Brito.
Simon Currigan
I'm very excited to welcome Ruth Pauli and Stephane De Brito to the show today. Doctor Ruth Pauli is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham. She studies developmental psychopathology with a focus on impulsivity and behaviour problems. She uses computational modelling to better understand the cognitive processes involved in psychopathology in children and young people. Doctor Stephane DeBrito is an associate professor also at the University of Birmingham. He studies severe antisocial behaviour in children and adults and the effects of childhood maltreatment. Much of his research uses MRI brain imaging to investigate neural changes associated with the development of antisocial behaviour.

And they've agreed kindly to be on the show today to discuss their research into impulsivity in children. Both of you, welcome to the show.
Stephane De Brito
Thank you very much, Simon, for having us.
Simon Currigan
Thank you. So before we go too much further, let's define our terms here and be clear exactly what we're talking about when we talk about impulsivity. So when you think about impulsivity in your research, what are you actually focusing on? What you actually mean?
Stephane De Brito
It's a really good question, Simon. Actually, if you ask, my colleagues or people on the street, what is impulsivity, they'll probably all come up with, like, slightly different answer. And I would say all of them are correct because what we say is impulsivity is multifaceted. So some people might say, well, it's acting without regard for consequences. Other might say, well, it's fast reaction without conscious judgment or acting without enough thinking. Well, all these aspects are aspects of impulsivity. If we were to give like a really strict definition, the International Society For Research on Impulsivity says it's behaviour without adequate thought, the tendency to act with less forethought than do most individuals, or a predisposition toward rapid unplanned reaction to internal or external stimuli without the regard to the negative consequences of these actions.

So it is really a multifaceted construct, that basically reflects this tendency to give in, to urges, to act before thinking, or seek out excitement, and have difficulty to controlling one's behaviour.
Simon Currigan
Could you give us some concrete examples of what that might look like in terms of the children that you work with and you study?
Stephane De Brito
Maybe, Ruth, you want to give some examples?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So, obviously, there's some sort of quite obvious examples that a teacher would be aware of. So children who have ADHD or that kind of, presentation, they would often struggle with things like, shouting out an answer to a question in class when they've been told to put their hand up because they know the answer and they just can't quite bring themselves to wait. They might do things like risk taking, behaviour in the playground. So the football goes up onto the roof or something, and they try and climb after it without really thinking through the consequences. But there's also some examples that are probably less obvious because this kind of ADHD or slightly hyperactive presentation, I think most teachers would recognize that. But impulsivity is also actually quite common in other types of presentations, so things like anxiety, depression, eating disorders.

A lot of people with these problems will actually be impulsive as well. So in a school, for example, you might have a child who's very conscientious, who's very quiet, who always does their work on time. But actually, in an exam situation, they tend to panic, and they see a question they're not quite sure what the answer is. Instead of giving it a sufficient thought where they might come up with the right answer, they'll just write down the first thing that comes into their mind and rush through the rest of the paper. So that's also, I think, another nice example where a child might actually be quite impulsive. But because their behaviour isn't difficult or challenging, it's not going to be picked up on in the same way by a teacher.
Simon Currigan
That's really, really interesting. You're saying there's a whole kind of, like, raft of behaviours from children that might sort of go under the radar because they're not screaming, shouting, throwing a chair, or getting engaged in kind of like disputes with their friend. That's really worth thinking about actually. And often on this show, we're focusing on the big externalising obvious behaviours, but there can be other things bubbling underneath can't there? So you divide impulsivity into 2 separate categories, trait impulsivity and state impulsivity. Can we start with trait impulsivity? What does that look like, and how would we recognize it in the classroom?
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. So, usually, we say impulsivity can be seen as a stable personality facet, like a trait. Usually, we assess, trait impulsivity using a questionnaire. So we can ask the child, we can ask their teacher, we can ask their parent. And we assess different facets of these kind of trait impulsivity.

Like I said, it's multifaceted. We know that impulsivity trait can be kind of divided in usually, we divide it into kind of 5 categories. The first one is what we call urgency. So it's kind of acting rashly in an emotional state. So it can be acting in a,
Simon Currigan
rashly when you are in a positive
Stephane De Brito
state, when you are when you are in a positive state, when you are excited, and that we call it positive urgency. Or you can act rashly when you are in a negative mood. So let's say you've just had a bad grade at school and you decide to go on a shopping spree. So that's what we would call negative urgency. And then there's also the aspect of children who might be lacking in premeditation. So failing to think before acting. So for example, a child might decide to visit a friend on a school night without checking the return bus is running.

Or something like lack of perseverance. So you can see that some children, they're quite unwilling to tolerate boredom. So they can give up on their homework after 5 minutes despite wanting to do well. And then a final aspect that we can also pick up on those question and measure is, like Ruth mentioned, sensation seeking, so seeking out novel or thrilling experiences. So for example, Chang would like to to play near the railway track, which obviously is not a great idea. We have those questions that can capture those different facets of impulsivity. And this is what we would say is tend to be a stable kind of personality facet.
Simon Currigan
So these are things kind of like in the long term that tend to be true about the child that people recognize. On an average day, this is kinda like what the child how the child presents.
Stephane De Brito
Exactly, Simon. Yes.
Simon Currigan
Okay then. So I'm probably gonna guess that if trait impulsivity are long term qualities. What state impulsivity? I'm guessing that's gonna be shorter term, comes and goes, transient?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So state impulsivity then is how we measure impulsivity just in the moment. So regardless of whether you're generally an impulsive person or not in terms of your personality, we probably all have moments where we do something that's impulsive. In research setting, we would measure this more, with computerized tasks, measuring things like reaction times rather than asking someone to reflect on their personality or on their child's personality. And again, there's different there's different types of state impulsivity. So one of them is motor impulsivity, and I think this is quite an interesting one to think about, especially in terms of primary school children. Because it's actually very difficult, especially for a small child, once they've made a decision to do something physically, you know, grab something that they're interested in and grabbing or they're running after someone in the playground, it can be quite difficult for them to actually stop that activity, physically to stop themselves.

So I think a really nice example is the children's game, Simon Says, where you have to do the action sometimes and not other times. And a lot of children will struggle with that because they're primed to do something, and then they can't quite stop themselves in time when they get this cue to not do it this time. And that's developmentally normal for young children. But I think a lot of teachers will see in a primary school that some children grow out of that earlier than others, and it can be a bit of an issue with older children if they can't quite stop themselves in time. You know, maybe they're cycling towards a red light and they don't manage to stop in time or, they're chatting and the teacher tells them to stop talking and they just can't quite do it in time. It's not a question of, thinking things through exactly. It's just a physical reaction and they don't quite have the control to stop themselves from doing something.

Then we'd also talk about choice impulsivity. So this is when you're given a choice. Can you make a decision essentially that you won't regret later? So typically, we would ask someone, would you like a small reward now, or would you like to wait a bit longer and have a bigger reward? So maybe you can have a little snack now, or you can wait till later and enjoy pudding after dinner. And some people, even adults, of course, but children especially, will find it really, really hard to wait for a bigger reward later even if that might be what on reflection, they would have wanted to choose.
Simon Currigan
So is this the idea of delayed gratification? Like, foregoing a small reward now for a bigger payoff later?
Ruth Pauli
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It is.

And, obviously, in in some situations, it might be quite sensible to go for the smaller reward. So maybe you've been offered something by an adult and you think, well, actually, that adult isn't very trustworthy. In the past, they said they're going to do something and then they don't. So maybe it actually makes sense for me to take the smaller reward. But in general, children who do that will often regret later that they didn't wait longer. So it's still a sort of a problem if they if they're like that. And then we also talk about reflection impulsivity, which is when you make a decision when you haven't got enough information essentially to make that decision.

And I mentioned earlier about a child, panicking in the exam and maybe writing down an answer that they wouldn't have written down if they'd thought about it for a bit longer. So that's an example of that. And again, conversely, you don't want to wait too long if you do know that you've got enough information. There's no point sitting there for half an hour pondering over your one answer when you've got 20 more that you still got to do. But you shouldn't just do the first thing that comes to mind without thinking through, whether you've got enough information to make that decision.
Simon Currigan
Okay. So I think everyone listening to this can imagine how these different types of impulsivity would affect a child in the classroom being successful both academically and emotionally and socially as well because all these things are kinda bound together, aren't they? Can you tell us a little bit about how you're researching this in children? Because you're doing this scientifically. You're not kinda like doing this anecdotally like teachers comparing notes in the classroom. You're doing something concrete and specific. I think our listeners will be really interested in finding out about exactly what your approach is.
Stephane De Brito
What is really fascinating is so we know that these different facets of impulsivity, trait and state exist. What is really interesting is that they tend not really to correlate with each other. So in that sense, you can have children who might be showing high level of, you know, urgency but actually low level of sensation seeking. Or they might be showing high level of motor impulsivity but not being really impulsive when we think about the level of So our research is really measuring those different facets in a very detailed way using questionnaire, using task. So in terms of task, we have basically collaborated with colleagues in Australia who have developed gamified tasks. Those are tasks that look a bit like video games, but they are designed to measure, to assess very in a sensitive way all these different facet of state impulsivity. So a game like a bit of like a Pac Man game where the child has to decide whether he wants to take a longer route to go and get a coin that might be worth 100 points as opposed to take a shortcut and just get 5 points.

So we have a number of tasks like this where we can look at how the child makes those decisions and kind of measures those different facets of impulsivity. And we can also manipulate their mood. So getting them a bit more excited or a bit more frustrated and see whether different mood, state, influence, exacerbate some of those facets of impulsivity.
Simon Currigan
And what do you find when you run those tests? Are you at the point yet where you're starting to discover any patterns? Or like you said, you're discovering that, different traits don't necessarily overlap. You might have one or another, but they you tend not to have full house to describe it that way. Well, what kind of things are you discovering?
Ruth Pauli
We're still collecting data, so we haven't looked at our results for that yet. Anecdotally, working with the children, I do see that there are differences in how they respond to these kinds of tests. We have one task, for example, which is quite fun with the younger children. We call it a picture decision task, and we have a picture that's revealed gradually bit by bit on the screen. So they might see a line, and then they're asked, would you like to guess what this picture is showing now? Or would you like to see a bit more? And they can ask you a bit more, and it eventually builds up to the full picture.

And that's about information gathering. So will they make a decision too early, or will they perhaps, wait even longer when they kind of knew what it was already? And we definitely see some differences in how children are responding to that. So I noticed, for example, that a child who is quite conscientious and generally quiet, if they realize they've made a mistake in a previous, trial and they've guessed a bit too early, they'll wait much longer and so on. We haven't analysed the data to see whether that's going to come out across the whole sample, but just looking at the children that we've had in so far, we do notice some differences. And we also, of course, we notice differences in how well the children can actually tolerate sitting in a room and doing these
Stephane De Brito
tasks as well.
Ruth Pauli
Some of the little ones, they, they they struggle and they need a few breaks.
Simon Currigan
That that sounds really interesting. It sounds as if the children themselves, for themselves, are learning to manage those impulses based on the feedback they're getting. Is that maybe early signs?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So in all of these games, they get feedback on what they've just done. So if, for example, in a in a sort of measurement of reaction time, they've pressed too late or something, they'll get feedback on that. They do learn from that. There's obviously also a motor component, a physical component. So especially for the younger children or the more impulsive children, and if they have that kind of motor impulsivity that we talked about earlier, they might be perfectly able to see what the feedback is, but they can't quite stop themselves from responding anyway. And we do see that with the little ones, and they sometimes get quite frustrated because they understand the game, but they just can't quite do it physically.
Simon Currigan
What's the overall aim of your research?
Stephane De Brito
So the research we are doing at the moment is is to try to understand how early adversity in the form of child maltreatment might influence those different facets of impulsivity. So what we know from previous research is that there is an association between early childhood maltreatment and the development of psychopathology, both internalizing problem and externalizing problems.
Simon Currigan
Before you go any further, can I just ask you for listeners what you mean by psychopathology just in case they're hearing this down for the first time?
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. So we know that there is a relationship between early adversity, childhood maltreatment, and psychopathology, which is basically psychiatric disorder. So things like depression, mood, and anxiety, but also externalizing problems like ADHD, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder. And in our research, our hypothesis is that maltreatment exacerbate different forms of impulsivity. Because we know that impulsivity is present in different form of psychopathology, both in depression, anxiety, but also externalizing problem. So our working hypothesis is that children who have experienced early adversity in the form of childhood maltreatment, this has had an impact on their impulsivity, which in turn increases their risk of developing mental health problem later on. So that's basically the aim of our research is to try to understand the relationship between those 3 different variables, if you want.
Simon Currigan
And when I speak to teachers in classrooms and we look at children, one of the phrases they often use is that they live sort of in inverted commas in the now. They don't think things through. They're very now focused survival in the moment. And I guess that would tally with that kind of underlying brain development, which is what you're investigating to see whether that's true, isn't it?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So yeah. Definitely. I think behaviours that are impulsive or not impulsive is very much learned from our environment. So if a child's grown up in an environment where there's no consistency and they've got unreliable adults or things keep changing that are out of their control, that's not an environment that is going to teach a child to restrain their impulses or, you know, wait for a later reward rather than a a smaller one now, that kind of thing. Because you just have to. And if you're living in that kind of environment, you know, if there's food available now, you've got to take it.

And that's not just a child in a sense. It's also true for the adult. You know, they might have to eat what's available. They might have to, take what accommodation is available rather than being able to save up and move somewhere nicer or safer. People just often have to live in that way. So children often coming into school where they've had this environment from birth that is encouraging them to be impulsive, Sometimes through poverty and lack of resources, but also if the parent is inconsistent or unreliable. So they say that they're going to do something and then they don't do it and so on.

And that's been sort of taught the children almost as a habit. And then they come into school and the school environment is obviously or hopefully, it's different, and now it's not going to reward impulsive behaviours in quite the same way. But children have to sort of relearn when they come into school. So they need to have that really, really consistent environment. They need to have clear routines. They need to have clear consequences. All the things that would be helpful for any child, but they're so much more important for children who haven't had that
Simon Currigan
Because these impulsive behaviours, they're habits really.
Ruth Pauli
They're sort of learnt ways of because these impulsive behaviours, they're habits really. They're sort of learnt ways of responding that the child has. And if you've had a very inconsistent environment, then it's, of course, going to take you longer to realize that this environment is not inconsistent. So if the teacher is trying to be very consistent and have very good routines with the child, but after a month or two, they think, oh, this just this isn't making any difference. The child isn't responding. I'd say don't give up because the child might have had 4 or 5 years where they haven't had consistency. Therefore, they're gonna have to take longer to learn that this is a consistent environment.

And children can change. They can change these habits and ways of responding. So even if it doesn't feel to the teacher that they're making a lot of progress, the fact that they are being consistent and the child has that structured environment will be helping them. And, hopefully, over sort of months, years even, the child's, impulsive behaviour will start to improve, and they will start to have more impulse control, especially as they grow up.
Simon Currigan
And in your research, you're sort of specifically comparing groups of kids that have had kind of, like, adverse childhood experiences as opposed to a control group. There'll be teachers listening to this thinking, hold on.

I've got a child with ADHD. That's slightly different. Yeah?
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. Basically, the focus of the research is really to understand how childhood maltreatment might have influenced those different facets of impulsivity. So we are collaborating with different agency who, come and school who come in contact with children who have experienced different forms of adversity, specifically child maltreatment. And we are basically comparing those who have experienced quite high level of those adversity versus children who haven't experienced this kind of, adversity to try to really understand how maltreatment might be related to these different facets of impulsivity.

But like everything, we just not look at it like just clear cut. Yes. No. We can also look more dimensionally in terms of quantifying kind of how much of kind of early adversity is kind of related to these different facets of impulsivity.
Simon Currigan
Can you give us examples of any strategies or activities teachers can use to support children or parents can use to support children whose impulsivity is a barrier to their success, especially in school?
Ruth Pauli
So we already talked a bit about some of the obvious things that teachers, I think, will be aware of, like clear routines, consequences, structure, and so on. But I'd also say, especially with little children, there's a lot of traditional games and activities that although they're not explicitly perhaps designed in a sense to help with impulsivity, they are actually very helpful. So these kinds of games like Grandmother's Footsteps and Simon Says, they do help the child to learn to control their impulses, in that case, their motor impulses. And I think other activities which naturally involve waiting or have a bit of rhythm or routine to them. So, for example, if you make a loaf of bread, you've got to wait for it to rise and you've got to wait for it to bake. You can't just eat it straight away. If you're growing seeds in the forest school area or in the garden, whatever you have at school, then you've got to wait for the right season, and you've got to wait for the sunshine, and you've got to wait for the rain, and you've got to wait for their fruits to mature and so on.

I think a lot of children these days, they're not having a lot of those kinds of experiences even in quite, you know, well functioning households because we live in a very sort of now focused culture. So they might be, online a lot. They can order whatever they want off Amazon. It will be delivered tomorrow. We don't have a lot of waiting generally in our culture. We don't have a lot of incentive to wait for things because we don't have to. And I think for children, that's not very helpful.

So all of these kinds of games and activities that give them a bit of rhythm in their lives and a bit of natural waiting. You know, not as a punishment. I'm not telling the child it's good for you to wait, so I'm going to make you wait for a week before you get your parcel over in the post. But things where you naturally have to wait, I think that's very helpful for children when the teacher can do that at school. I'd also say that impulsive behaviours, a lot of these sort of behaviours in general, as we said, they are a habit. And if children are going to learn good habits, they need to practice getting it right, not getting it wrong, if that makes sense. So I think it's really important, especially for primary school age children, to minimize the opportunities that they have to go wrong, to make mistakes.

So if you know that a child is going to be distracted by having a fidget toy on their desk or having a brightly coloured display next to them or perhaps another child who's going to speak to them. Just try and avoid putting them in that situation in the first place because they are only going to learn that they get put there and then they start chatting and this is what happens at school and it becomes a learned habit. So if they can sort of prevent rather than cure in a sense in that way by avoiding opportunities for children to make mistakes and go wrong. It's also, I think, a very good idea for teachers to try and observe children as closely as possible to look at what kind of triggers there are for impulsive behaviour. So Stephane mentioned earlier about positive and negative urgency and how in general different mood states could be triggers for different children. So it might be that you have one child, and as soon as they're a bit bored or they haven't got something that's interesting for them to do, then they will start to act impulsively, wander off, start chatting, do things they're going to regret. For another child, it might be when they're under time pressure.

So a more anxious child, for example, they might really struggle to complete a piece of work if they know that they've got time pressure because that just puts them in a state where they can't focus. And then another child might be the complete opposite that they actually need a bit of time pressure to focus them, otherwise they sort of feel out with, you know, I can do that later. So I think as far as much as it's possible in a sort of busy classroom environment, the teacher should try to think about these different triggers and mitigate them as much as possible because it will be very different for different children. And I think one last thing that I see happening in schools, which I think maybe isn't always helpful in this particular context, is that we tend to give children a lot of choices. And, obviously, that can be, helpful in some situations. So if a child doesn't react well to authority and you need them to do something, it might be helpful to give them a choice so that they feel that they've made the decision to comply. But for children who are impulsive, I think sometimes that's quite unhelpful because this is the kind of situation where they're really going to struggle to make a thoughtful decision.

And if we're giving them constant decisions, it's almost like a cognitive overload for them that they're just not quite going to be able to cope with that. And I think as adults, it's really easy for us to think, well, if we're offering them, you know, do your maths now and then do some colouring in 5 minutes or do some colouring now and do your maths in 5 minutes, it's trivial and it doesn't really matter. But if you're 5, that might be the most important decision that you've made all day. So it's quite a lot when children have to make these choices constantly. And I talked earlier about avoiding opportunities for children to go wrong or to make mistakes they're going to regret. And I think that's really relevant here. So I would say if you know that a child is actually going to struggle with decisions, is going to struggle with making thoughtful decisions, try and avoid giving them lots and lots of choices if you can because it it is really just a form of cognitive overload for them, and it just gives them opportunities to make mistakes and get in the habit of making mistakes that they will regret.
Simon Currigan
We're actually seeing this more and more in the early years where they they go into a classroom and they just have this tidal wave of choices. They could go to one table or another table. They can go outside or they could play. And you just see them. And for a moment, they're frozen and then they're overwhelmed. And then they just get emotionally heightened and don't know what to do, so they throw the LEGO bricks at someone. So that's really true.

It's really, really true. Is impulsivity always bad? Are there any cases where it might be adaptive for certain students to be impulsive?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. Definitely. I think some people would say, by definition, impulsivity is bad. But if we go with the sort of broader definition that Stephane talked about earlier, then, yes, I would say definitely it's helpful. Mean, we already talked about the kind of home environment where you often need to be impulsive just to survive. So don't wait to have a delicious meal later if there's food now because you don't know if you're going to get your delicious meal later. And, you know, if an adult is volatile or is violent, you need to be able to make a snap decision about whether you're going to to stay in the room or run away.

You need to be able to read people's emotional states very quickly to be able to keep yourself safe, which then in an environment like school might make a child very, hyperreactive to emotion, but home or in a more volatile environment that actually makes sense. But even for children who don't come from these kinds of backgrounds, I think there are situations for all of us where impulsive decisions are necessary. So, for example, if we're in a life or death situation, you're not going to stand there and think through all your options. You know, shall I go and help that child get down from the tree, or should I just sit here and wonder if they're going to fall? You have to make a decision, don't you? You have to just jump to it. And so we wouldn't want to not be impulsive in that situation.

And there are other examples as well. You know, sometimes, I think we've all had this experience. You're browsing for something online. You're wasting a bit of time maybe because you're putting off doing something else that you ought to be doing, and you spend hours and hours comparing 2 saucepans on Amazon or something. You don't really need to spend that much time making that decision. You know, you could have a quick look, see which one's got better reviews, make a decision, and get on with what you're supposed to be doing. So there's definitely a balance.

You don't want to be overly impulsive, but you don't want to be indecisive as well and waste lots time doing things that you don't need to be doing.
Stephane De Brito
No. And just to go back, to children and kind of in the classroom, I think one of the thing that was also mentioned in a previous podcast is they will get it wrong, the children. And it's really trying to focus on positive reinforcement when they get it right and to try to encourage when they've shown example where they could wait for their turn, where they didn't act too rationally, is actually praising them and giving a lot of positive reinforcement rather than focusing on when they get it wrong.
Simon Currigan
To encourage that behaviour in the future, that sort of delayed gratification or the thinking ahead or the restraining of the sensory impulse, whatever it was.
Stephane De Brito
Exactly.
Simon Currigan
Your research is really interesting, and I know this is where our audience comes in, that you are looking for families and children to participate in your study right now. So if schools or families wanna get involved, what are you looking for? What does their participation look like? And how do they get in touch with you?
Ruth Pauli
So we're running a study at the University of Birmingham. We're asking families to come and, visit us at the university to take part, ideally. Although if there are people who are interested in taking part and they live further afield, we do have a short online version that families can do as well, so they don't have to visit us in person. We're looking for children aged 9 to 16 years old and a parent or carer who can participate with them. We can take most children in that age range. Unfortunately, we can't take children with autism. That's just part of our ethics that we can't take them at the moment if they've got a diagnosis.

And they would have to be able to sort of understand the purpose of the study and so on to consent. But assuming they meet all those criteria, University of Birmingham, and they can come for 1 or 2 sessions. So, typically, they might come for 2 afternoons after school or they might come for a whole day at the weekend or school holidays. We always offer slots outside of school time, so we're obviously not asking children to, miss school for this. So they come in. We'll give some questionnaires to the parent asking a bit about their child's behaviour and their background, and the child will do some very simple computer games. We always call them computer games.

I think children these days are so used to computer games that they come in and say, this isn't a proper game, but it's a sort of gamified, online task and some questionnaires for them to do as well. And these questionnaires and games are measuring the different types of impulsivity that we've talked about. So motor impulsivity based on reaction times, how much information do you take into account before you make a decision, and so on. We also offer to children who are interested for them to come and have an MRI scan, which is a a brain scan. It's noninvasive. It doesn't involve any contrast agents or any, radioactive, substances or anything like that. So it's completely safe.

That takes about 30 minutes, and it's just an optional extra. If children are interested in that, they can do that part of the study and get a picture of their brain to take home, which most of them find quite exciting to do. If families live locally, we will pay their travel expenses to come into the university, and we give the parents a little payment as well for their time. The children get a certificate, and they get a book about brain. And in their second session, when we do some games designed to test how their mood affects impulsivity as well, they'll have a chance to win a little prize of their choice, so a toy or game or a voucher if they're a bit older.
Simon Currigan
And how do people get in touch with you to participate in that?
Ruth Pauli
So I think you're going to put our contact details, aren't you, in the information that comes with the podcast. There's, should be an email address and a phone number on there and a link that links to our, website where they can see our study flyer with all the information. So if parents are interested, they can get in touch with us, and we'll, do a quick screening on the phone to make sure the child is suitable and then take it from there.
Simon Currigan
So if you're listening to this, all you need to do now is open up your podcast app. Look at the episode description, and you'll see all the links and email addresses explaining how you can participate there in the text underneath the episode description. If you're a teacher or school leader listening to this podcast, what's the best first step you can take today to help a people in your class who's struggling with their impulsivity?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. I would say recognizing the impulsivity is a habit. So you don't want to train children to have the wrong habit. So thinking about what is likely to trigger a child to be impulsive. And as you said, that's gonna be different for every child. Trying to remove opportunities for them to make decisions that they're going to later regret. And this is things like, you know, having clear routines, having clear consequences.

It sounds really obvious, but if a child doesn't actually know what the consequences of their behaviour are going to be, then they can't plan ahead because they don't know what's going to happen. So it's important that children do know how you're going to react to different kinds of behaviour so they can take that into account. And I think something that's really helpful for situations where children do have to make decisions. So it's not just sort of their habitual normal behaviour, but they've got to make a decision about something at school, you know, how to react to a child being mean to them or something. It can be really helpful to rehearse in advance with that child how they're going to respond Because we know that when people are put on the spot and asked to make a decision, it's much easier for them to make a thoughtful decision if they've rehearsed a little bit mentally how they're going to react to that situation. So that might in the classroom, that might look like a teacher having a conversation with a child about if Josh says something mean to you in the playground or this child takes your toy away. How are you going to respond to that?

And actually have the child rehearse a little bit. You know, I'm going to take a deep breath, and I'm going to walk away, and I'm going to fetch a teacher rather than reacting badly and hitting him or yelling, this kind of thing. It's just really helpful, I think, for children to have those conversations so that they know how they're going to respond. And sometimes they won't manage to. Sometimes they'll just be too wound up in the situation. And and like Stephane mentioned earlier, then you try not to focus too much on the negative. You reward them when they have done well and focus on when they have done the right thing.

But having those sort of almost pre prepared scripts so that the child has a plan for what to do when things go wrong, that is really helpful.
Simon Currigan
That's really helpful practical advice for, everyone listening out there, I'm sure. And finally, we ask this of all our listeners. Who is the key figure that's influenced you, or what is the key book that you've read that's had the biggest impact on your approach to working with kids?
Stephane De Brito
Personally, there's lots of scientists in this field of work that have been really influential, but I would say one in particular is Dante Cicchetti. He's a psychologist in the United States and has developed this, what we call the developmental psychopathology approach. It's really a way of understanding how biological, emotional, cognitive, relational, and also unconscious processes, how they interact together to lead to psychopathology or maladaptive behaviour. And it's really this approach to really look at the child in a holistic way, thinking about the emotional, the cognitive, the relational aspect, but also unconscious processes and how they might interact to create different outcome. Because we know, for example, that children who have experienced adversity, some of them will develop anxiety, mood disorders. Others might develop more like externalizing problems. Others will have a combination of those kind of problems, internalizing, externalizing.

And also some children will actually be resilient. So this approach is really, really important and has been really instrumental in understanding these different outcomes. And I think one of the aspects of this developmental psychopathology approach is really focusing on developmental processes that are both reciprocal and transactional. So what we mean by that is if you look at the child factors, their aspects, they will influence the environment. And the environment will respond to that and influence the child. So basically, it's gonna be a reciprocal kind of influence, the child and the environment. And those influences change the child as well as their environment.

So if you think about the child who has ADHD, who is very impulsive, they will be very difficult to parent. They will be very difficult to work with in a school setting. So the child, their characteristic will influence the environment, but the environment will respond to that child. And that will also shape how the child will respond. So this approach that Dante Cicchetti has developed has a number of these kind of key core aspects that has really helped us tremendously in understanding these kind of transactional processes between the child and the environment.
Simon Currigan
Sounds like an important framework for understanding why children do the things they do.
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. And how we respond to them and, how that might in turn influence them and, you know, contribute to sometimes kind of cycle that become really entrenched and difficult to, to change.
Simon Currigan
I was literally about to say, and around and around it goes. Exactly. Ruth, how about you?
Ruth Pauli
I think I would mention there's a research psychologist in America called Russell Poldrack, and he does a lot of work not just with, impulsivity. He's a sort of looking at decision making and psychology generally. But he wrote a book, I think, a couple of years ago called Hard to Break, where he was looking at how habits develop. It's not just about impulsivity, but I think it's quite interesting in this context because he's talking about, the brain and he's talking about the different systems of memory. So our more sort of, like, conscious deliberate memory versus our more habitual system and how these relate to different aspects of our behaviour. So addiction, for example, is something that's very much based on our habitual memory. Whereas making a conscious decision to learn how to do quadratic equations, for example, would be very, very conscious.

And I think it's quite interesting in the context of impulsivity for teachers to think about this. So one of the things that he mentions in this book, which I like, he says, as far as you can, make rules, don't make decisions. And I think that nicely encapsulates a lot of what we've talked about today because children or adults for that matter struggle to make good decisions because they're impulsive. It's really helpful to have a rule that, you know, in this situation, I do this, and that's the end of the story. So you then don't have to to keep using your willpower essentially to just keep making decisions that are difficult for you. And I think that's a really nice phrase in a way for teachers to bear in mind when they're thinking about the best way to work with these children because it just, yeah, it just sums up everything that's gonna make it easier for people to make good decisions.
Simon Currigan
I think there's something that we all can take away there, children and adults, you know, for improving our lives. Ruth and Stephane, thank you for sharing your expertise on the show. I really appreciate you, joining us today.
Ruth Pauli
Thank you.
Stephane De Brito
Thank you for having us.
Emma Shackleton
Oh, so that really makes you think about the behaviours from the kids that you're seeing in class and how they are affected individually by the different forms of impulsivity and how potentially more old fashioned play activities might have actively encouraged children to learn to restrain their impulses, where more modern ones, I'm thinking screens here, don't coach children in the same way.
Simon Currigan
Yeah. Just think about how many games and apps nowadays are engineered to keep giving kids hits of dopamine and rewards to keep playing rather than waiting for a reward. Did you remember? I was in a shop the other day, and I actually saw a pram. Right? Imagine like a stroller with a strap across the front like a bar to hold a tablet in front of a baby's face so they didn't even have to look at the real world. That is just shocking, isn't it?
Emma Shackleton
That's a really worrying trend, I think. And, of course, we should say that if you're working with children with specific conditions such as autism or ADHD, and there may be an underlying reason at the brain based level why those children find impulse control difficult, and those students may require a specialized approach to make progress.
Simon Currigan
And if you're interested in being part of Ruth and Stephane's research, remember, I have put direct links in the episode description. If you've enjoyed today's show, remember to rate and review us. Every single review you leave prompts the algorithm to share school behavior secrets with other listeners helping us get the word out there to other school leaders, parents, and teachers who need this information.
Emma Shackleton
And that's all we've got time for today. We do hope that you have a great week, and we can't wait to see you next time on next week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets. Bye for now.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)

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Understanding Impulsive Behaviour: Strategies For Classroom Success

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Understanding the Science Behind Impulsive Behaviour

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Improving the wellbeing of autistic girls

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Improving the wellbeing of autistic girls

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If you could model a learning environment that was intended to be an assault on the senses, it might very much look like a typical school.

To a neurotypical person, this might be difficult to comprehend - yet for a young autistic person, our schools can be the epitome of chaos. Hundreds of children shouting noisily, teachers raising their voices to be heard, bells going off, the constant echo of footsteps in corridors, people talking all at once in lessons, dense slides, bright lights, itchy uniforms, a bombardment of smells in the dining room. It can take a lot of energy just to be there.

For autistic girls, however, this exhaustion is often multiplied due to their need for perfection and the pressures of masking as they strive to meet social expectations. The more we learn about their routines, the clearer it becomes that this can be detrimental to positive wellbeing. Autistic girls have even been described as 'little psychologists' by some in the field, due to their tendency to over-analyse events and experiences.

Gender stereotypes have shifted over the last ten years or so and we now recognise the nuances of autism in girls. I've spent 30 years as an educational psychologist, developing a specialism in autism and in recent years have increasingly worked with young autistic girls. Many of these girls report feeling isolated, misunderstood, anxious and exhausted. There is a significant increase in those who find attendance challenging and many have been out of school for extended periods of time.

These students may gain other labels such as, for example, anxiety or depression, which become the focus and mean that their wider needs can then be ignored. It has been suggested that up to 80% of autistic girls remain undiagnosed at the age of 18.

Enjoy unlimited digital access to Teaching Times.

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Improving The Wellbeing Of Autistic Girls At School - TeachingTimes

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Autistic girls can be at increased risk of anxiety and depression. Dr Sue Sheppard, an educational psychologist who works closely with girls with autism, gives her advice on how schools can take proactive steps to protect their wellbeing.

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Autism assessments: Quarter of families wait at least four years, survey shows

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Official figures out today reveal the number of people in England waiting for an autism assessment has risen 47 per cent in the past year.

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4 times as many boys are diagnosed autistic as girls. This is not an accurate picture.

Frequently, for many reasons, girls are diagnosed later (on average up to 6 years later), missed or misdiagnosed, causing long term mental health problems with too many girls feeling too anxious to attend school as a result.

Currently the assessment tools used to screen for autism are male-centric. We want to see tools in place that reflect multiple presentations and needs so that no child's need goes unrecognised or unsupported. We are currently pilot-validating the Internal Presentation of Autism Checklist that sits within our white paper Autism, Girls and Keeping it All Inside , so expect that to change soon. Our survey had 1123 responses in a week, so there are many people who feel strongly about having screening tools which feel representative. Our vision is for a system that enables autistic girls to thrive, to feel understood and to achieve the best educational outcomes.

Our aim is to raise awareness of autism in girls and others who present in an internal way with health, social care and educational professionals and to bring change. Not only to the way that autistic girls are assessed and subsequently supported but to the narrative, with updated and positive terminology used to describe autistic traits.

Our private Facebook group supports both autistic girls and women and their extended families, but there are many more who need our help. We are now a registered charity, fundraising to enable us to both fund projects which offer face to face support and campaign for real change.

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We are a small registered charity working to support, educate, and bring change. Here you will find lots of resources.

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How can we help anxious children thrive?

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How can we help anxious children thrive?

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How Can We Help Anxious Children Thrive in Social Situations? - Pooky Ponders - Big Questions with Brilliant People

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In this episode of the Pooky Ponders Podcast, I explore a range of ideas for building the confidence of anxious children in social situations.

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Homework strategies for neurodiverse students

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Homework strategies for neurodiverse students

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Homework Strategies for Neurodivergent Students

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An Introduction to PDA with Clare Truman

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This week Dale is joined by Clare Truman to give SENDcast listeners an introduction to Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA).

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Christmas preparations for those with autism

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Christmas preparations for those with autism

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The Christmas period can be a very exciting but often stressful time of the year for many autistic people. It can be a time with lots of change, social interaction and expectations. We have put together a brief list of resources that may prove helpful in making this festive period as special and stress free as possible for autistic people.
Here are a variety of resources that give guidance, advice and ideas for the festive season:

Preparing for Christmas - National Autistic Society

Our website features a range of advice on preparing for Christmas, including some real-life stories and tips from autistic people and their families.

Preparing for the festive period - Scottish Autism

This article includes some advice on preparing for Christmas, as well as some information on how to approach the period after Christmas and the New Year.

3 tips for an autism-friendly Christmas - Jamie Knight

Jamie, an autistic adult, explains how he prepares for Christmas, including the need for quiet spaces and sensory considerations.

Coping with anxiety at Christmas - Emma Louise Bridge

In this blog, author Emma Louise Bridge, offers advice on how best to cope with anxiety at Christmas.

An autistic person's guide to an autism-friendly Christmas - AutisticNotWeird

Chris Bonnello recommends not conforming to other people's expectations of what should happen at Christmas. Chris also has advice on handling the sensory overload and changes in routine that may occur during the festive period.

Autism Christmas tips and tricks - Purple Ella

In this video Purple Ella gives some advice to autistic people and their relatives on how to manage some of the challenges of Christmas including gifts, food and socialising.

Christmas Sensory Survival Kit - Sensory Integration Education

Sensory Integration Education (SIE) have put together a useful guide for preparing for and experiencing Christmas. It has been created using advice and experiences from autistic individuals, parents and carers and professionals.

Autism Tips for the Festive Season - Becoming Autism

Savannah from Becoming Autism shares her four tips on coping with the festive period as an autistic adult during Covid-19. Savannah also discusses how to communicate what you need to others.

An Autistic Friendly Christmas (Autistic Girls Network) - Cathy Wassell

In this blog, Cathy Wassell shares personal experience of why Christmas can be a difficult time for autistic people and offers suggestions of what could help.

Autism and Christmas (Neuroclastic) - Emma

In this blog, Emma explains why Christmas can be an overwhelming sensory experience for some autistic people, shares some tips on how to reduce sensory overwhelm, and advice on creating autism-friendly traditions.

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Preparing for Christmas: autism resources

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A brief list of useful resources for the festive period

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SEN resources from the Witherslack Group

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SEN resources from the Witherslack Group

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All SEN Resources | Witherslack - Witherslack Group

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Unsure of where to start? Find all of our SEN resources here.

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How to embrace neurodiversity and home life - Podcast

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How to embrace neurodiversity and home life - Podcast

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School phobia, or school-related anxiety - sometimes called 'school refusal' - is when your child feels fearful or anxious about school and/or is unable to go to school. It's also referred to as emotionally-based school avoidance (EBSA) or anxiety-related absence.
It can happen at any age, and it can be more common among children with additional or special educational needs (SEN). There can be many reasons why your child might experience school anxiety, but dealing with it can be stressful for you as a parent, as well as your child.

Parents' Toolkit has teamed up with educational psychologist Dr Amanda Furness and SEN advisory teacher Sarah Barton to give you advice on how to handle 'school refusal' and where to go for help.

'School refusal' is a catch-all term often used to describe when a child is anxious about or unable to attend school.

Dr Amanda Furness points out the term can be misleading because, "it implies that children and young people are making a choice not to attend", whereas in reality there are likely to be many interacting contributing factors. Therefore many people prefer to call it emotionally-based school avoidance (EBSA).

There's some evidence to suggest more pupils have experienced challenges getting in to school since the Covid-19 pandemic. In the autumn term of 2021, almost 1.7m children missed seven days of school or more. Even allowing for some Covid disruption, that figure is significantly higher than before the pandemic.

Dr Furness says difficulties attending school, whether primary or secondary, "can happen suddenly or build over time" and "can be very complex and are likely to be due to a range of interactive factors". However, reasons for not wanting to go back in can include anxieties around...

social and/or work pressures at school

difficulties maintaining positive relationships with peers or staff

unmet needs (eg: additional needs or feeling unsafe)

home and/or family factors

sensory needs making the environment feel overwhelming

Other reasons include a range of socioeconomic factors, plus some parents choosing to electively home educate their children because they feel their child's needs were no longer being met in school.

BBC News has reported that some schools have even started picking kids up from home to boost attendance.

Dr Furness says: "It's common for young people who feel unable to attend school to experience heightened anxiety," but it might not always show up in a " typical way". Some ways you might spot it in your child include...

not wanting to get up, get ready or go to school

anxiety and heightened emotions when getting ready to leave for school

physical symptoms like headaches, stomach ache or feeling sick

a change in behaviour either by becoming more withdrawn or acting out more

trouble sleeping or getting to sleep

not doing schoolwork or performing worse at school

not going into school without telling you

When a child elects not to go to school it can have a knock on effect for others - especially for a parent or carer who may then have to stay off work, but the resulting stress can then exacerbate feelings of guilt or worry in the child.

It can be a worrying time for you as a parent, so go easy on yourself and your child. The most important thing is to listen to your child and to try and be calm, patient and show empathy. It's also important to look after yourself and seek support when you need it.

Dr Furness says start by working together with your child and their school to identify patterns or possible triggers.

Consider whether there are any current social difficulties or learning challenges, or if there have been any events or triggers that could have caused a change in the way the child feels about school."

"It's important to have open and non-confrontational conversations with young people about what they're finding difficult, remembering that they may not be able to verbalise this fully themselves."

Start talking to your child's school as early as you can. "Most schools will suggest talking with the class teacher first, and this can be escalated to the school Special Educational Needs and Disability Coordinator (SENDCo), who will be able to advise on support. Also - have open conversations with school staff who monitor attendance."

If your child is able to make it into school, you can still support them by talking through the school day and discussing what might help at each stage, linking them up with a pastoral staff member and/or peer buddy at school, providing a safe space for them within school, and having a 'time-out' or 'exit' card they can use in class if they feel anxious.

Some children may also benefit from extra responsibilities at school, or involvement in sport or extracurricular activities. Discuss what might work best with your child's teacher or SENDCo.

If your child isn't able to get into school, avoid arguing with them and be supportive of any small achievements they make, like putting their uniform on or walking to the school gates, even if they can't go in.
Keep in regular contact with school and work with them on strategies to help your child, including work for them to do at home if necessary. Keep a note of your correspondence as you may be asked to provide evidence that your child isn't well enough to be in school.

Sarah Barton works with children and parents in Rochdale who've decided to electively home educate their child, often due to emotionally-based school avoidance. She advises getting help whilst your child is still enrolled at school...

"See what's available at your local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) - do they have a drop-in centre? Look into local charities like Thrive that can support you. Talk to school about what support will look like, how it can be measured - in terms of goal-setting - and how you'll adjust things as you go along."

Get in touch with CAMHS as early as possible if you have any concerns about your child's mental health - waiting times for CAHMS have risen since the pandemic with the average wait last year being more than two months, topping eight months in some areas. Our mental health first aid kit for parents can guide you through steps to take and offers some things you can do whilst you and your child are waiting to access these services.

It's also worth making an appointment with your GP to check for any neurological issues and to discuss next steps.

Dr Furness says children with special educational needs (SEN), "may experience heightened anxiety due to social factors, environmental factors (e.g. sensory needs), or learning barriers."

"Some children with social, emotional and mental health needs can experience high levels of stress. They may mask these needs in school and show them more at home until they're no longer able to maintain their masking. This often leads to a seemingly sudden change in their attendance or behaviour."

Take things slowly with your child and gradually introduce tasks for them to complete, to help them get to school or cope once they're in school.

Whilst each child's needs will be individual to them, Dr Furness recommends identifying a 'safe place' and 'safe adult' in school, particularly around transitions. "If you know your child is anxious about school, be proactive in getting support in place before this escalates. Work with the SENDCo to identify potential barriers and reasonable adjustments that can be made."

Sarah Barton adds: "Talk to the school about a bespoke support package for your child, for example: who do they report to when they get into school? Should we have a phone call with the family at the end of the day? What plan is in place if your child doesn't go in that day?"

You can also apply to your local authority for an education, health and care plan (EHC) which will work out your child's educational, health and/or social needs and set out the additional support needed to meet those needs.

Dr Furness says support will look different for each child, but some ideas include...

Ensure each day is a fresh start. Often pupils who've been unable to attend school then feel they can't reintegrate.

Try to avoid a 'shame cycle'. Acknowledge their difficulty, validate their feelings and explain that you can work together to overcome barriers.

Work with the school to identify learning that can be done at home. This will help to ensure that your child doesn't feel like they've fallen behind too much.

Be proactive in lowering baseline levels of anxiety. For example, through mindfulness activities around transition points.

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School anxiety and refusal: How parents can help their child get through tough times - BBC Parents' Toolkit

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Emotionally-based school avoidance, or 'school refusal', has increased since the pandemic. Here are tips to help parents to understand what causes it and to help their child cope.

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Rhi is a mum of four, living in Wales, who has autistic children. Here she offers her tips for how you can prepare and support your autistic child as they return to school after time at home.

Rhi's tips

Talk to your child about what they can expect when they return to school. Their timetable especially, including lunchtime!

Help them to identify and share their emotions with you.

If they're feeling anxious, talk about breathing exercises or grounding - which could include hugging and talking through what they can see, hear, smell, taste and feel - then try them together! You could even fit these techniques into your schedule at home.

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Preparing my autistic children for the return to school

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Mum-of-four Rhi offers some advice for helping to prepare your child with an autism diagnosis for the return from home to school.

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Picture the scene: your child comes out of school and the teacher says they've behaved like the perfect child all day, but the moment you get home they have a complete meltdown. Your child screams, shouts, lashes out, sulks or generally acts in an unruly manner.
If that scene is familiar to you, you're not alone. This type of behaviour is what some psychologists refer to as 'after-school restraint collapse' and it's not unusual. It happens because your child has been busy managing their emotions all day as they navigate the complexities of school life.

When they get home, that's their safe space to let it all out!

So, now you know what it is, what can you actually do about it? Parents' Toolkit has been speaking to educational and child psychologist Dr Anisa-Ree Moses, for some tips on how to handle these outburst of emotions after-school.

1. Understand how hard school can be for some children

Dr Anisa-Ree Moses says that children can feel emotional, physical and mental exhaustion at the end of the school day. They have been trying to manage a mix of things like learning, social expectations, their own growing social awareness and all the feedback they're getting from teachers and peers.

"When they come out of that environment a pressure valve is released. If kids feel safe to express themselves, they will do so!"

The transition from school to home can also be challenging for some children: "Some kids may have difficulty separating from their parents. It's a relief when they see them, because their parent or carer represents a level of safety, but they're frustrated at the same time - the child wants them but is finding connection difficult at that moment. It's a positive reunion but it's also really emotional and can be hard for some children to channel."

Dr Moses adds that it can be particularly difficult for neurodiverse children who are coping with sensory sensitivities and the effort of containing a lot of emotions. When they come out of school they often can't hold it all in any longer.

For older children, she also says the transition home can be tricky too. They need space and time after school - they might not want to talk to you about it or will go to their room for a bit first.

Dr Moses suggests having a think about what your child needs when they come out of school.
"Do they need to go and run around the school playground a few times and let go for a bit before they walk home? Do they need movement or do they need a healthy snack? Or quiet time alone with no music or no chatting on the way home in the car or bus?"
It will be different for different kids, but Dr Moses suggests trying to be quiet on the walk or ride home.
"Connect with your child. Not by asking 'how was your day?' but through genuine emotional connection. You could say 'I'm so happy to see you, I'm glad we get to go home together, it made me happy coming out of school this way'. Being calm and using supportive words is important for your children."

She adds: "Include some downtime rather than moving straight on to homework or out to a club, so that your child can decompress. They might enjoy their clubs but still feel anxious, so build in downtime first and make their routine clear, visual and written down if they need that. You can also ask them what will help, for example drawing, reading a book or even just relaxing for a bit. Do it with them and help them to see they can do things to support themselves."

"Be understanding of their emotions - help them feel listened to if they want to talk about what's gone on, or be angry."
"You could say 'I can see you're shouting. I can see you want to be really loud, maybe let's go to the park on the way home'. Validate how they feel rather than try and control it. If they are impolite in the moment, come back to that later - talking at that moment won't help."

"Help them feel listened to and respected and make a genuine connection."
Dr Moses says the after-school 'meltdown' is an expression of emotion that often comes out physically. As parents you can recognise and label it so your child can see if for what it is.
"For example, 'I can see you are kicking the bin, I can see you're clenched and red, I can hear you're shouting and that's making me think you're angry, so I want to help you. However, here's not the safest place to do that, let's go to the park, etc.'"

"Build their emotional vocabulary and link it to the emotion - then they can tell you what they're feeling. You can say things like 'I want to help you. I can't do that when you're screaming. Let's take a deep breath, both of us.' Acknowledging it helps children to not feel alone."
With older children, Dr Moses says it's often more about them not wanting to talk or engage in any discussion about school.
"Especially for those who see school and home as two completely separate things. Just encourage them to build their emotional vocabulary, and be interested in what's happening in general in their life."

She adds: "Questions like 'how was your day?' will get a grunt or 'it's fine'. Think about what you are trying to find out. Can you remember an assignment they had or what they were going to be talking about with their friends? And connect by saying 'I'm happy to see you and hope you've had a good day' until they feel ready to come and have a conversation. Then offer yourself as being there, offer yourself as someone who wants to help and is interested in what's going on.

"Help them feel listened to and respected and make a genuine connection."

Dr Moses says your child might also be upset when they come out of school if there were any difficulties that day that weren't addressed, or there's something unresolved that's happened.

If your child's behaviour after school changes or is different to what's usual for them, try and find out if there are things happening during the school day that are affecting them.

"Think about whether you need a home-school communication book, so that you know whether what's been happening in school could trigger what happens at home. Information from school can help parents know how to approach a situation and whether there's something that needs resolving."

Connection is a great way for your child to know they're loved and that you're there for them, no matter what.
It could be snuggling up in bed, reading a book together, playing a quick game, or just having a chat.

Dr Moses suggests thinking about what your morning routine is like: "Is there anything you can build in there that can help them feel connected to you? I know this can be hard, I know how frustrating and annoying school runs can be! Let them know you're looking forward to seeing them later, just for who they are, not for what they've achieved."

She adds: "If your child is finding separation difficult, can you give them a note or something of yours to have in school? For some children, knowing that Mum or Dad is a phone call away and it won't be withheld from them helps them more.

"Also think about whether you have conversations about emotion at home. It's about helping your children with emotional literacy, building resilience and problem-solving skills, as well as building in transitioning - learning how to make things more predictable so that transitions are not as big and scary. Children are better able to manage their emotions if they know what's going to happen."

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Five tips on how to handle the after-school 'meltdown' or 'restraint collapse'

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'After-school restraint collapse' isn't unusual. Your child has been busy managing their emotions all day and when they get home, it's time to let it all out! Here are some expert tips on how to cope as a parent.

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With 8 weeks to go and preparations underway for Christmas, now's the time to highlight the challenges Christmas can bring for families, especially for children with SEND.

Children return to school in September to a new term, new environment, new subjects, new friends and coping with everything causes their energy levels to decrease. After half term it's Halloween, Bonfire Night and then before we know it we're in the Christmas period. By then children have the least possible capacity to deal with it. Everything changes at Christmas, and that can send some of our young people into a complete tailspin!

Sarah-Jane Critchley joins Dale in this week's episode 'Surviving Christmas' to discuss why Christmas isn't always fun for everyone and how to support children with SEND through Christmas.

Listen to find out what we can all do at school and at home to make it more fun and less stressful for everyone! Sarah-Jane gives us some tangible ideas and some useful tools that you can use to make the season as joyful as we can for everyone.

About Sarah-Jane Critchley

Sarah-Jane is an Author, Speaker, Consultant and Coach from Different Joy Partnership. She was previously the Programme Manager for over 10 years at the Autism Education Trust. Pupils with autism often struggle with attending school for a number of reasons. Her daughter Beth is autistic and also suffers from migraines which meant from Year 3 onwards she missed a lot of school and missed over 50% of her GCSE classes, eventually dropping out of school in year 12.

Contact Sarah-Jane:

Twitter: @SarahJaneCritch

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sarahjanecritchley/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/differentjoy/

Learn from many autistic people at the NAS Christmas Grotto Christmas Grotto (autism.org.uk)

Relaxed performances of pantos in many places this year e.g.

For more podcast episodes from the SENDcast click below... https://sendcast.wpengine.com/sendcast-episodes/

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Surviving Christmas with Sarah-Jane Critchley from the SENDcast

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Sarah-Jane is an Author, Speaker, Consultant and Coach from Different Joy Partnership. She was previously the Programme Manager for over 10 years at the Autism Education Trust. Pupils with autism often struggle with attending school for a number of reasons.

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Could ADHD Be Your Student’s Superpower? With Soli Lazarus

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Quick-fire strategies: What to do when your behaviour strategies stop working

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Quick-fire strategies: What to do when your behaviour strategies stop working

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Quick-fire strategies: What to do when your behaviour strategies stop working.

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Here you will find some free bite-sized training covering over 30 topics that we hope will help you to understand more about support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in Oxfordshire.

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OXSIT are delighted to present some new Bite-sized training from OCC. We hope this will be useful for parents and carers, staff in schools, and multi-agency professionals.

Here you will find some free bite-sized training covering over 30 topics that we hope will help you to understand more about support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in Oxfordshire.

The training comes as a powerpoint with voice over, and has been designed as an introduction to each topic, (also known as 'the bite-sized basics'). These materials provide you with links to further reading, external resources and materials. We also hope this will give you a chance to reflect on what further training and development might be needed. Let us know your thoughts. What would you like to see next?

Each session is brief and contains a feedback link - if you could take the time to provide feedback it will be really helpful in evaluating this free training offer and planning for further updates or new topics.

For information on further training on any topic please contact your inclusion consultant or email [email protected]

We are committed to continuous improvement of our services for all young people with SEND and thank you in advance for engaging with this training.
Click a training link to be taken to a preview page. Download the PowerPoint to enable the included audio and video content (you will be prompted to open the document in read-only mode) Once you've downloaded the Powerpoint, go to 'slide show' and click 'from beginning' to get all the included audio and video content.

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OXSIT are delighted to present some new Bite-sized training from OCC. We hope this will be useful for parents and carers, staff in schools, and multi-agency professionals. Here you will find some free bite-sized training covering over 30 topics that we hope will help you to understand more about support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in Oxfordshire.

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Help for people with Dyslexia

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Struggling with reading impacts the whole of a person's education and can follow them long into adulthood. It can cause embarrassment and low self esteem because many people assume that reading problems are directly related to intelligence. This isn't true.

People with dyslexia often display enhanced creativity and 'big picture' thinking as well as strong holistic visual and spatial processing. Dyslexia is not caused by or related to a lack of intelligence. For many, the symptoms of dyslexia are caused by visual stress that causes words and letters to appear to move around and become blurred.

Understanding dyslexia and visual stress is complicated. You can have dyslexia without visual stress and visual stress without dyslexia. Many young people still 'slip through the net' of widely used dyslexia testing despite having their potential inhibited by visual stress and become adults who have no idea they may be suffering from visual stress.

Explore the links below for more advice and information. If you would like to speak to us about your child. your student or your own difficulties, please email us, send us a message on messenger or fill in the contact form at the bottom of the page.

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Help for People with Dyslexia | Dyslexia Research Trust

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Struggling with reading impacts the whole of a person's education and can follow them long into adulthood. It can cause embarrassment and low self esteem because many people assume that reading problems are directly related to intelligence. This isn't true. People with dyslexia often display enhanced creativity and 'big picture' thinking as well as strong holistic visual and spatial processing.

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Oxford Health NHS OT support

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This is a prescribed app. It should only be used alongside a face to face intervention provided by a mental health worker. Check with your local service to see if they subscribe to the app.

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Children's occupational therapy | Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

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This is a prescribed app. It should only be used alongside a face to face intervention provided by a mental health worker. Check with your local service to see if they subscribe to the app.

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Inspire learning with our magical games for kids.

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Inside out - Guessing the feelings

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Does your child have special needs?

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At CBeebies we believe passionately that what we do should be enjoyed by all children, including those with additional needs. We believe that it's important for children a disability to see themselves positively represented on the channel, so we make every effort to do so. We also produce shows, activities and parenting resources for children with a range of different needs.
Communication difficulties:
Problems with speech and language are the most common developmental difficulty in the UK where studies indicate that as many as 1 in 10 children may be affected in some way. Children with communication difficulties may have problems understanding language, using spoken language, producing the sounds needed for spoken language or problems with their listening and attention skills.

The impact of these difficulties can be profound, affecting children's ability to follow instructions and understand information, making it difficult for them to develop social skills and form relationships and making them frustrated at not being able to express themselves, sometimes leading to tantrums.

There are lots of strategies parents can use to help children with communication difficulties, you can find out more about these on our communication difficulties page.

Something Special, featuring Mr Tumble, AKA Justin Fletcher, is designed to be enjoyed by all children but is particularly aimed at children with communication difficulties. The show gives children an introduction to using Makaton signing, which can help support communication and language development. You can find out more about using Makaton signing and how it could help your child in this Makaton resource for parents.

The Something Special website also has a range of games designed to be suitable for children with communication difficulties and many Makaton signs to watch and print out.
Health and Medical Needs
Looking after a child with a long term health condition can be incredibly hard. It can mean frequent medical appointments and hospital visits which can be stressful both because you're worrying about the outcome and because it can be very hard to fit it around a 'normal' life, especially if you're trying to hold down a job or have oter children as well.

Our page on dealing with health problems and operations has lots of practical suggestions and strategies for making hospitals and medical conditions less stressful and easier to fit in to your life.
Physical Disabilities
Children with physical disabilities may have problems with gross or fine motor skills, balance and co-ordination, or muscle tone. They may need extra help and support with everyday activities like walking, feeding themselves or holding a pencil.

CBeebies has a range of games which are 'switch' compatible, including Something Special's 'The Looking Game'.

'Switch' is the name of the technology which makes access to computers easier for children who have difficulty using a mouse or keyboard.

'Switch compatible games' are those which have been designed to be controlled by just one or two keys - usually 'Enter' or the spacebar to select, sometimes 'Tab' as well in order to move between options. This makes the games easy to control and suitable for children who don't have a high level of mouse or keyboard skill.

CBeebies' show Tree Fu Tom has been specially designed to encourage children to develop movement skills, especially those with Dyspraxia - a developmental coordination disorder that causes difficulty in acquiring foundation movement skills. You can read more about how the movements in Tree Fu Tom can help children with movement difficulties and Dyspraxia in this article.
Deaf children and children with a hearing impairment
If you or your child uses BSL, check out Magic Hands, a ground-breaking show on CBeebies featuring poetry translated into BSL. Magic Hands features an entirely deaf cast of presenters interpreting a selection of classic poems through BSL and animation.
Children with a visual impairment
Melody is a show designed to introduce preschool children to a variety of classical music through stories and animation. Melody, the title character, is a partially-sighted girl with an incredible imagination. CBeebies worked with the RNIB to make the show as accessible as possible for children with a visual impairment, by working with high contrast colours, having centrally-focused action, bigger movements, longer shots and telling the story as much as possible with voiceover and sound effects.

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Something Special - Does your child have special needs?

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CBeebies has lots of help and resources for children with additional needs incuding Dyspraxia, Autism, visual impairment, learning disabilities, hearing impairment.

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Special Needs Jungle provides parent-centred information, news, resources and informed opinion about SEN, disability, children’s health and SEN politics

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Why we use visuals

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Dyslexia

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The British Dyslexia Association is the voice for the 10% of the population that are dyslexic

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Ways to support our children's mental health

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HappyMaps - Find the best support, advice and information on young people's mental health, all in one place. For Parents, Professionals and Young People.

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Read reviews

"I think this is a fabulous resource-very clearly laid out with the full range of supports available, from parenting tips through to professional help" (Parent)

"This is great to recommend to parents when they are worried about their children. It's the best website for mental health issues that I've found" (Teacher)

"Excellent. I work for CAMHS Bristol and regularly recommend this website" (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services)

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Home - HappyMaps: Help and Resources for Children's Mental Health

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An award-winning website on children's mental health collating sensible and professional advice on common problems. With new self-help pages for young people.

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Mental health support for our young people

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Mental health support for our young people

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YoungMinds | Mental Health Charity For Children And Young People

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YoungMinds are a mental health charity for children, young people and their parents, making sure all young people can get the mental health support they need.

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Learn about the Zones of Regulation

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Teach Kids to Manage Big Feelings Through Effective Social Emotional Learning

Over 80% of U.S. public schools reported in 2022 on the negative impact of the pandemic on child well-being and self-regulation. Kids are:

Struggling to manage their feelings and mental health

More disruptive in the classroom

Needing additional social, emotional, and behavioral support

(source: National Center for Education Statistics)

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The Zones of Regulation is a complete social-emotional learning curriculum, created to teach children self-regulation and emotional control.

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Ways to support our children with their emotions

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Ways to support our children with their emotions

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Life can be tough for children with modern day pressures. It can result in anger, worry, anxiety and emotional overwhelm. If your child is experiencing stress at school or home, such as friendship issues, exams or sibling rivalry Chatterminds can help.

Chatterminds helps to...

Equip children and adults with the skills and benefits of mindfulness

Enable young people to name and recognise different emotions and how they feel in the body

Empower young people to regulate their emotions and foster an ethos of kindness and gratitude

Support young people with their friendships, giving them the confidence to stand up for themselves whilst still being kind

Build resilience and self-esteem

Equip young people with skills to nurture their mental health, with an emphasis on positive self-care

Why not join the Chatterminds Facebook group?

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Life can be tough for children with modern day pressures. It can result in anger, worry, anxiety and emotional overwhelm. If your child is experiencing stress at school or home, such as friendship issues, exams or sibling rivalry Chatterminds can help.

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5 ways to support children's mental health

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An easy way to understand wellbeing is to say it's 'feeling good and doing good'.

Here are five ways you can help children keep their wellbeing topped up - and your own, too.

For many, it's going to be harder to get outside and move around, but we still need to keep active. When we move our bodies, it has a positive effect on how our brain works, as the brain starts releasing chemicals that make us feel good.

* Host a home disco. Play the family's favourite dance songs and have a boogie for ten minutes.

* Watch BBC Super Movers videos. These short films can get the whole family moving (and learning). Learning routines (or just attempting them) means your child's brain and body (and yours!) are keeping active and engaged.

* Blow up a balloon. Once you've tied it, see how long you can keep it up in the air while passing it between you.

Having more time at home together may also put additional stress on family relationships so give everyone in the family a chance to refuel. It can be as simple as curling up on the sofa together and watching a film or some cartoons - and then chatting about your favourite bits.

Having these sorts of conversations can help to make the positive buzz of watching (and laughing) together last for longer. It'll also improve your child's ability to reflect on their experiences and talk about their preferences.

Stories are another great way to help children recharge as they lose themselves in wonderful fictional worlds. There are likely to be some old favourites they want you to read again, as they'll take comfort from hearing a familiar tale (for children, knowing how it ends is a good thing, not a spoiler alert!).

It's helpful for children (and adults) to have a healthy balance of emotions in a day. Fears and anxieties about the current situation may, at times, overpower our positive emotions unless we make a conscious effort to re-address this balance.

Here are a couple of ways you can help your child to achieve this balance:

* Make a 'Top Times' scrapbook. Help your child to create a scrapbook of memories, with printed out photos, drawn pictures, saved tickets and other bits and pieces stuck in to help them remember. These don't have to mark occasions; they can capture smaller moments of joy, like throwing a ball for a dog or seeing a rainbow.

Once you've built a collection of pages (and maybe several scrapbooks), you can enjoy looking through them together.

* Create a gratitude jar. Another way to take in the good stuff is to write down a little note when something's gone well and keep it in a jar or box. Younger children may prefer telling you what to write so you can record the experiences for them. As they get older, they may want to write their own notes.

You can encourage them by doing this alongside them. The great thing about a gratitude jar is you can revisit it on days when you need a little boost to remind everyone of the things you've been grateful for.

Building gratitude habits doesn't mean we diminish the struggles that children (and we) experience. It's really important to talk about these difficult moments too. But, having a time in the day when you focus on the positive can be useful in helping children to keep their thoughts balanced.

Having more time at home offers an opportunity to set some goals about new things you and your child want to learn. It could be something that helps encourage their independence when they return to school, like tying their own shoelaces or buttoning up their coat. Or it could be something that helps at home, such as how to put their clothes away or helping out with washing up. When children feel they're contributing to family 'work', it can enhance their sense of belonging. If your child is capable of doing things for themselves, give them as many opportunities as you can to practise these skills.

Whatever the learning goals, it can be helpful if children understand they can improve their skills and abilities. This is often referred to as a 'growth mindset' since it's about realising we all have the ability to change the way we think and do things. So, whether it's tying shoelaces, learning to spell, or even how to hop on one leg, the way adults talk to children about the learning will influence those children's beliefs.

Here are two ways to encourage your child to adopt a growth mindset:

* Add the word 'yet'. Changing the way you talk about intelligence and ability can help your child understand that learning is a process - our skills and traits aren't fixed from birth. When your child claims "I can't do this" (whether they're talking about a new hobby, homework, or anything else), say: "You can't do it yet".

Adding and emphasising this tiny word subtly reinforces the learning process and may help them to try again.

* Practise (and fail) with your child. Trying new things can be scary, but it's often less daunting when you do it with others. As a family, you might decide to try something new and celebrate your learning and your failures when it doesn't work (the first, second, or even the ninety-ninth time!).

Being able to support your child's wellbeing also involves taking care of yourself. As a starting point, try and eat nutritious healthy food; it's a great idea to turn cooking into an activity the whole family takes part in. Life can often feel very busy and parents give themselves a hard time about being unable to do everything perfectly. Remember, though, there are no 'perfect parents'.

We all get things wrong, we all have days when we struggle. And while it may be true that you might not have done everything 'perfectly', you've probably done more things to support your child's wellbeing than you realise. So, try and focus on what you're doing well - it's not you being boastful, it's actually really helpful for your child to do this. Children can learn a lot from hearing adults respond kindly to themselves when things don't work out - and then from seeing the grown-ups try again. Notice how you speak to yourself about your mistakes. If you can cultivate kindness towards yourself, your child is more likely to practise this when they get things wrong too.

It might also be useful to take a moment and think about the activities, people and places that help you to feel brighter and refuelled. Even if you can't do these things at the moment, perhaps there are new ways that you can connect with the things that matter to you, like chatting with friends on the phone instead of meeting up. No matter how busy you are, try and squeeze in a little time for yourself. It's likely to help you with the many joys and challenges that parenting can bring.

Dr Hazel Harrison is a Clinical Psychologist with a particular focus on mental health and wellbeing.

For further information check out the rest of Starting Primary School which has lots of ways to help prepare children for different aspects of school life - both practically and emotionally.

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Five ways to support children's mental health

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Clinical psychologist, Hazel Harrison, suggests five ways you can support your child's mental health.

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