Well the media was certainly  ablaze yesterday with yet another story to focus our attention on the crisis generation!

Little McEnzie Dunkley has been expelled at age 4, after just a few weeks at his new school. The reason apparently down to the fact that he has been flicking light switches and attacking teachers.

His Mom however denies that there is any problem at home where he always does as he is told.

Now this is very interesting, because I have been following a forum on ‘Facebook’ between a Mom who feels alone and cut off and that the school will not listen to her regarding her child’s problems and a teacher, who herself has ADHD and states that she spends 7 hours a day helping children like this and what they all need is medication and that teachers  do not need to be told their job.

OUCH!!!!!

Wow – I love these forums because it certainly gives you a flavour of how things are.

So what should little McEnzie’s Mom do now?

Well, she can certainly appeal against the full time exclusion but my guess is she will get another school and then spend most of the days waiting for the phone to ring to come and collect him as more and more schools go down the road of the ‘Zero Tolerance Policy’ option.

There has to be dialogue between home and school.

There has to be a clear home school partnership in place for the child to see and understand that dialogue and interaction.

There has to be clear communication and understanding in place as to what constitutes a ‘desirable’ behaviour and an ‘undesirable’ behaviour and a consistent way of delivering rewards and consequences around the choices that the child is able to make over these behaviours.

Now, not everyone in schools or families for that matter will have a clear understanding as to what I mean by a ‘hypersensitive’ behaviour but it is important for all parties to understand that there will be certain triggers to these kinds of anti social behaviours –and these triggers will be different for every child in exactly the same way as the behaviours will be different for every child.

It is only when we get a  handle on what these external triggers are, to these internal time bombs that we are going to be able to implement the appropriate behavioural strategies to support the children. We can give them the mechanism for  being in control of themselves rather than medicating them into submission which often increases  the ticking  time bomb. These traditional medications are known to have extreme side effects and often make the original symptoms worse.

Please point McEnzie’s Mom to our site!

Tags: ADHD Behaviour

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