Meridian Magazine : : Print

M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E

Answers to a Primary Question
By Kathryn H. Kidd

I am in the middle of a tsunami of email. Who would have thought so many people would have advice for how to deal with disruptive Primary children? When you think about it, though, it shouldn't be surprising. A large percentage of church members have taught Primary at one time or another.

We're going to be running letters about Primary discipline for at least the next few weeks. At the end of today's column, I'm going to run the last letter about the vampire series we discussed last month. (I know, I said the last letter was the last letter, but this one needed to be aired.)

But first, here's the first batch of letters related to Primary. To refresh your memory, the readers are responding to a Primary teacher who had one student with a severe lack of attention. She wanted to know how to discipline him without crushing his spirit:

I am so very glad to see your post this morning. I have just gotten up from prayer after having been called to teach a class of 7-year-olds so much like this child. The difference for me is there are seven active member children in this class and all seven are sweet loveable children who have some or all of these problems.

I know one thing is to be prepared to teach without the book. All of these children are so bright and know all of the answers. They are fun and need new ways to be challenged. They are the future of the Church, and these children do need us but we need help also.

One thought I have is to try to allow them to take turns teaching with me a class. It will take time to work with them but to allow them to see how hard it is to teach if no one is trying to pay attention might help. It would also allow them to find ways to teach each other, so they might all get more out of it.

I need help with the sharing time also to keep them involved. Ours seems to lose these children because they aren't involved enough. So it appears to me we need to involve them more all the way around to keep them interested and busy. Any help would be great with these little spiritual giants in training.

Primary teacher in Tennessee

Thanks for writing, Tennessee. I love how you referred to your unruly students as “little spiritual giants in training.” It's true, isn't it? How many of us were terrors when we were children? I'm guessing a whole lot of us were a real handful when we were Primary age. People who are disruptive need the discipline, but they also need someone who sees that they have the potential to be far greater than childhood hooligans. Thanks for being one of those people.

Here's one that's short and sweet:

It sounds like you may be doing this class yourself. As a public school teacher I sometimes had in the past an assistant for this kind of child.

As this is Primary, and it would not cost any more money, consult with the Primary president about having another person called to teach your class with you or, if it would not cause strife you might even ask your husband or adult child to assist you. Hang in there. Good luck.

A reader in Sandy

There's a simple solution that could be a big help, Sandy. Thanks!

I have worked with children with special needs in this area for some time now. Here are some suggestions. I hope they are of some assistance to you in your situation.

Find something small you can work on with him. For example, if he picks up something for you, you could nominate him “head class helper” therefore building his self-esteem and setting him in a positive light to him and to his fellow classmates. Use this title as often as possible in a really positive manner.

You may find it helpful to help him differentiate between a request and a command. For example, try to use two completely different tones — one being a soft high happy tone when praising or requesting participation, and the other tone being deep, strong and firm (not harsh or loud) just when he is not compliant.

Also, try to be more visual as then you are appealing to two senses (visual and hearing) as opposed to just hearing. This can be achieved by using simple sign language like “stop,” “wait,” ”quiet,” “hands down,” “stand,” and so on.

Also, there is another technique that can be used alongside these and this is simply called “hand over hand” or “full physical prompt.” This is simply assisting him (in silence, as little eye contact as possible, no emotion showing on your face) gently but firmly achieve what is expected. This might include leading him to his seat and sitting him in it, without disrupting the flow of your class. I know this is difficult, but the less attention he receives for his behaviour, the sooner it will change for the better.

As soon as compliance is achieved (even for a short period) celebrate it with him in a big way, encourage the children to join in the celebrations as well. Discourage the follow classmates to only praise him for good behaviour and try to completely ignore the undesirable behaviour.

You may also find it helpful to use as few words as possible for example when directing any communication to him.

Also, try to remember it is the last couple of words in your sentence he will hear. So if he is standing on a chair you may say, “Please sit on your chair ,” as opposed to, “Do not stand on the chair .”

Good luck, I hope this is of some help to you. I wish you all the best. I know our Father in Heaven is aware of you and his little son, I am confident this little boy is in the right class with the right teacher. You will continue to be blessed through this process.

Sis Tracey Bryers
New Zealand

You've sent in some very practical suggestions, Tracey. A lot of these things I'd never heard before (which may not be surprising because I've never been around young children). I really liked the idea of rephrasing things so that the last couple of words in a sentence are the important ones. That may come in handy in my own calling with the Young Women.

I have been dealing with this kind of situation off and on for more than 30 years. I always seem to be called to teach the class with the "impossible" child(ren) in it. I love it! I am also finishing my
clinical neuropsychology doctoral internship, so I believe I have much to offer you.

First, a reminder of perspective. You are dealing with a valiant spirit son of our Heavenly Father, whose body is a challenge to him. He is your brother, and you are right, he needs you to believe in him. He already has plenty of people in his life who do not, or who struggle to keep the eternal perspective. He's in your life for another reason — to help solidify within you the capacity to love unconditionally.

Second, please consider that this child presents with sensory integration difficulties. You don't say how old he is, but your salt dough comment suggests to me that he is preschool aged. He is trying to cope with the very confusing, very disturbing world around him, because his senses are not being processed into a comfortable and comprehensible message within his brain. The result, neurobiologically, is that he is in a constant state of low-level anxiety (resulting in fight-or-flight).

The standing in the window, punching it, lying on his back and trying to escape are all strong signs of this difficulty.
You're right; he is trying to escape, but it's not the classroom, per se, it's the sensory overload within it (and within the church environment in totality).

Third, when he interrupts your lesson, he is trying to join in on the conversation, but the processing issues in his brain are making it difficult for him to keep up with the conversation's pace. It may seem out-of-the-blue to you, but it pertains to something said even as much as 10 minutes before. It doesn't have to be an accurate or appropriate response to whatever was said; after all, he's a little guy who is having a tremendous difficulty understanding his world.

Fourth, the salt dough did keep him busy, just not in the way you hoped. He needs this physical movement to help his brain process, just like in the ADHD in your family. The throwing motion may be significant for this processing, but I'm not suggesting you let him throw stuff every week. I'm asking you to understand the function of the behavior, and to not see any of his behavior as bad.

With that in mind, here's point Five: You do not need to get his behavior under control. That's not your responsibility; it is his. This is where the behaviorists and I have a major battle — to "get his
behavior under control" is the same, in my book, as Satan taking agency away. Those behaviors are meaningful for this young brother, and at his age I refuse to consider them mean, spiteful, willful disruptiveness, etc. Are they problematic for the typical Primary environment? Absolutely. But — He is not "behavioral;" he is doing the very best he can!

So here are the recommendations:

You don't say how many children you teach, but the handbook clearly allows for a one-on-one aide. Request one today! Insist on one today! You should not do this alone; it is not fair to him or to the other children. The aide needs to recognize that the job does not mean you do things for him that he can do for himself. The aide is to help him, not answer for him, not try to introduce or expand on concepts you teach. And his aide should never be his parent! I can't stress that one enough.
Bring in a pole lamp with incandescent or halogen light bulbs. The room does not need to be brilliantly lit; soft, dimmer light is much better. Turn off the fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lights have a flicker that most people do not consciously perceive, but he might be. We can't tell. However, whether the flicker is consciously perceived or not, it does have effect on the brain. The flicker overstimulates the brain. The flicker cannot be removed unless some very expensive changes are made to the light fixture, because it is caused by the 60 times-per-minute (in the US; 50 in some other countries), back and forth electrical bursts we call an AC (alternating current) that excites the gas in the tube to make it glow. This flicker is well known to trigger seizures. (Primary presidencies would be wise to do as much in natural light as their circumstances allow. You'll see a huge
difference in reverence without the fluorescent lights.)
Use lots of pictures. The Church has a new disabilities website ( www.disabilities.lds.org ) that encourages this. Yay! I've been using lots of pictures for many years. Don't just tell stories; do it with pictures. I'm not talking about flannel board picture stories, because they are stagnant and require the children to process at a level beyond their capacity. With so much media in children's lives these days, they are less apt to create the necessary story visual in their heads, and more apt to expect it to be given to them. So you need more pictures, one for each action (not just character or place) in the story.
For example, a story about a girl who helps her father clean up the chapel after a storm (Lesson 36, CTR-B manual) should have at least 10 if not more pictures. Here's a quick description of the pictures I suggest:
1. scene of street with tree uprooted, limbs across the sidewalk
2. Dad getting phone call from bishop (in "thought bubble" above and to the side of Dad, like used in comics) with Kim standing nearby
3. Kim and Dad walking down street, stepping over a limb across the sidewalk.
4. House with large broken window.
5. Car with broken back window.
6. Meetinghouse with broken window.
7. Inside view, with trash, leaves, and mud in classroom.
8. Kim's dad telling her to wait outside, shown by him holding up his hand in a “stop” gesture.
9. Kim taking her dad's hand to go inside.
10. Kim picking up a branch while Dad stands there, scratching his head.
11. Another man helping Dad with board for window while Kim picks up trash.
12. Kim and Dad washing walls.
13. Kim and Dad leaving church with big smiles, wearing dirty clothes.
Use the pictures to reinforce reverence. Tell the children that you are going to let the most reverent child help you with the pictures. Then change who that child is with every picture. In the example above, I would have positively reinforced reverence 13 times. If the class time allows, I will repeat the story, and ask the children to remove the pictures, one by one, as the story proceeds. Thus, in one teaching method, I have reinforced reverence 26 times, taught left-right reading skills, and reinforced the message of the story. More importantly, I have built and strengthened a solid loving relationship with each student.

By the way, for my younger classes, I built a four-legged easel that uses a protected styrofoam poster board that resists damage from the sticky-tac and which is low enough to the ground (and wide enough) that the children can easily reach its top. I have used other surfaces in the past, placed on a three-legged easel, but found the contraption too unstable. If I had my druthers, I'd ask that all church architects sit on the ground and try to look up at a regularly-placed chalkboard for 30 minutes. Then maybe they would require the chalkboards and bulletin boards to be placed much lower!
I also have the entire scripture story series produced by the Church mounted and laminated, and will teach the scripture story one picture at a time. I put the captions on one page (laminated) so that I can read the caption while a child helps me show the picture (then posts it). I wish the pictures were offered consistently in the largest size used in the books, so that the children could see them more easily and we would not have to pass the pictures around. When I am the aide in the classroom, I'll use the pictures one-on-one with my special-needs student, pointing to key characters or parts of the scene as the teacher reads the caption.
I help my student learn the Primary songs by using the prompt pages from the Primary Partners music-teaching CD-ROMs (thank you, Mary H. Ross and Jennette Guymon-King). Ideally, the chorister holds up the larger picture (upon the back of which the prompt is also placed) and I hold a stack of laminated prompts, pointing to the words, mouthing the words in exaggerated fashion if the child needs me to do so, and changing the prompt pages as the song progresses. I fade the prompts as the child learns the song, so that dependence is not developed. (Failure to fade picture prompts is the biggest reason children fail to learn the songs that are taught pictorially. If the children still need those pictures by the time the sacrament meeting program has come, they were taught to need them.)
Use a soft tone of voice, not just to convey love and acceptance, but to lower the sensory overload.
Speak more slowly, and be sure to enunciate clearly.
Slow the pace of class. Focus on the main points, and don't worry if the whole lesson is not taught. He and his classmates will have many years' worth of religious instruction, and you are to augment, not insure, it!
Make sure his feet can comfortably touch the floor, even if he is seated in a small chair. You may find many wiggles throughout your class will disappear if all children sat in a chair that fit them or had a small stool or something upon which to prop their feet. If you can, sit in a smaller chair yourself. Get eye-to-eye with your students, don't tower over them even while sitting in a regular chair. There are many good reasons for this.
Give him a soft pillow on his chair. It may simply be too hard or cold of a surface for him. Adjust his foot rest as necessary.
He may benefit from an inflated balance disk upon which to sit. The standard version may be too big for him or his chair, though. However, it would allow him to shift positions, soften his seat, and give him a means by which he can wiggle and still obey class rules. Remember: the wiggling has important function for him.
When he becomes less physically busy (and has less need to throw things), he can use a squishy ball or some other sensory item to help his brain regulate.
If you have a large class, ask for it to be split so that he has just a couple of classmates. The sheer numbers in some Primaries can be very overwhelming to him; too much stimulation simply from so many children around him, or too much social pressure.
The Church's disabilities website recommends the use of picture schedules, another tactic I have used successfully for years. The schedules should be used for all the children, though. We use written schedules all the time in sacrament meeting, to tell us who is conducting, what the hymn numbers are, who will speak, and so on. We can use
those schedules, plus our clock-reading skills, to gauge how long the meeting will last. Think about how frustrated we all get when a speaker goes long! Can you imagine, then, how frustrating it is to a child who has no good method for gauging the passage of time? The main schedule in Primary should have a picture for every major thing that happens:
opening song, opening prayer, scripture, theme, talk(s), birthday song, and other activities.
Here's how it works best, because it has multiple impact: The pictures are large enough for all the children to see clearly (laminated, of course, and not with clear shelf paper, the sensory issues with that stuff can be really tough on a child). The pictures are posted at a
height that the Sunbeams can reach. Each part of the meeting is represented. Every time a part is concluded, a child who has been reverent is chosen to come up and take down the picture. (Alternate: stack the pictures on a short easel.) You can easily see how this focuses on and reinforces reverent behavior. Teach the children what the schedule means, and how it gauges the meeting. When the children seem restless, you can point to the schedule to help them understand how much is left.
If your Primary Presidency does not choose to use a main schedule, create one for your student. Use Sticky-Tac, not Velcro, for less sound, if you think this little guy won't try to eat it. If he does, make the pictures less than 2x2 inches, to fit into a page of slide holders that you mount on a Styrofoam poster board cut to size. You can reinforce left-right reading structure in this way, as the order of the pictures will have to proceed line by line.
For your class, make small pictures and put them up on a special schedule board or wherever you can conveniently work with it. If you get an aide for this child, the schedule can either be unique to him (on a small table he sits at with his aide; I use a TV-dinner table) or put up for the whole class (depending on their age; older children don't need to change the schedule, but they really like having a pictorial representation of what to expect that day). I eliminated much of the competition between some of my students for saying the prayers by this schedule. The boys know not to bother raising their hands if a
girl-praying picture is up.
Eliminate other, excessive visual stimulation. We don't need to decorate the Primary room.
Deep pressure massage in circles on his back, using the heel of the palm with the fingers outstretched (open palm position), can often help him get regulated. The deep pressure works just like swaddling of newborns does: it activates the deeper neural circuitry that responded to the fluid pressure in the womb. Don't use a light touch at first, because that activates the circuitry that the brain uses to sense pain. However, it may be that increased light-pressure sensory input helps his brain to regulate. Ask his parents to figure this out and let you know which works best to calm him or if both do under certain
circumstances.
Don't ask him to sit with his class up front in the Primary room where he is surrounded by noise. Have his aide sit with him at the edge of the room, where the sounds behind him are muted. He may need a curtain behind him to absorb the noise and minimize echo.
Probably the most important thing you can do is commit yourself to working with this child in the middle of the week. He needs to know you care about him for him , not as one of your students. He needs to know that you have accepted your calling in Primary because you love him, not because you're doing your duty, holding a calling to keep your temple covenants, or any other reason. He will test your limits, so remember that once you begin making changes, you have to hold firm and not give in to his demands. (That's where behaviorists and I agree!)
So get permission from his parents to come over and play with him, once a week for however long it takes to win him over, and then on a variable schedule after that. With older children, I ask the parents if I can take them for a walk, to get ice cream (or some treat on their diet, I'm very big on dietary interventions), or perhaps come over and bake cookies (as the Church's Primary training videos show), and ask the parents to not tell the child about my request. I then will call back and ask to talk to the child, inviting him/her to join me, and ask the child to get permission from the parents. In that way, I'm not forcing the parents into an awkward situation between their child, them, and me, and I'm respecting their parental position. I also am giving the parents an opportunity to help their child with learning decision making.
I recognize the time commitment this requires. I did not manage to be as good at this myself while immersed in my graduate training. But I have used this activity very successfully with a variety of students, and it always works when I am consistent.

I know that there is a lot here for you to prayerfully consider. Please do so! Each child who has a difficult time behaving in the socially-prescribed manner (and there are so many of them these days) is unique, and deserves our best out-of-the-box thinking. I'm willing to consult with you or with any teacher (no matter the age of children taught).

Above all, know that your Father in Heaven will make you equal to this task, if you will let Him!

Grace MacDowell-Boyer, MA
Clinical Neuropsychology Doctoral Candidate and Intern
Wolfeboro, NH Branch

Grace, you are purely amazing! You have such valuable advice, and a clear way of expressing it, and you've given it to us for free. I can't even count the number of readers this letter (and today's entire column) will benefit. Many thanks for taking the time it took to write all this stuff down for the rest of us.

I too was blessed to be part of the life of a very interesting 4-year-old a few years back. He was obsessed with mummies and Egypt for a while and he would do all of the things discussed in the cry for help e-mail. Here are some things that I did that worked for me.

I brought packages of Life Savers every week. The children knew that I would give them one at the beginning of class that they had to suck (not chew) while I taught the first part of the lesson. This kept their mouths busy for a minute so we could get the lesson in. They also knew that if they behaved, they would get a second Life Saver to suck on while they colored whatever the project of the week was. I would tell them that the Life Savers would stay out as long as they were behaving (and I didn't expect behavior beyond a 4-year-old's capacity, believe me, but we had to keep to the subject, and we had to be kind to each other, and we had to stay in our seats as much as possible.) I also had several times where we were allowed to do some kind of movement activity and I think sometimes this even works with older kids because, let's face it, sitting for three hours can be hard on anyone.
What do the parents say about this child? I wouldn't say, “Your son is a real problem!” But I would ask, “What do you do with your son when >>>>> happens?” I am lucky because I am the mother of two sons with Asperger's Syndrome, and this child I had in my class had several similar tendencies. His mom was very supportive and helpful. She wanted to know what he was doing so she could help. His dad was teaching Primary, too, at the time, and we kind of had a deal that if the son couldn't sit for me in Sharing Time, he would have to go sit with his dad, and he didn't really want to do that so it helped. Find out what is really going on with him. Maybe he has been diagnosed with ADHD, but maybe it's something else going on. If he has parents that are in denial about what is going on with him, and aren't helpful, or are so frustarated themselves, back off and find another way to approach them. Let them know you don't expect perfection, but a little help goes a long way.
It helps to know where the child shines. What can he do that is amazing? All kids have something they are good at. It used to tickle my little guy when I would bring in something I found out about Egypt, or when I would have a picture of Abraham in Egypt. He was a lot more likely to stay focused when there was something in it for him.
I would talk to the parents of the other children about how important it is to not correct this child when he is acting up. I was in a nightmarish situation once as a substitute where we had one kid who basically would say whatever popped into his head and the more the other kids would correct him, the worse he was. If I would have had that class every week, I would have made a rule about that with the other kids because it was really hard to get anything done in that class with such contention and opposition. Sometimes when a kid feels like the target, he will act out just for the attention. (One of my boys is this way.)

I hope I have been helpful. I am praying for you!

Janet Bell
Gilbert, Arizona

Janet, you wrote a terrific letter. Today's column has been just terrific, and I'm sure we're in store for more great advice next week. Thanks so much for writing in — all of you whose letters were published today, and the rest of you whose letters are still sitting in my email box.

Speaking of my email box, I wanted to end today's column with a letter of great frustration from a reader who took exception to my rant about the Twilight vampire books for girls. Even though the subject is closed (or at least I thought it was!), this deserves to be aired.

Wow! I was shocked reading your first rant against Twilight . I'm even more shocked to read that you claim you only received one letter defending Twilight. Well, you obviously decided to not count my letter which I sent, nor several of my girlfriends. All are mothers of many children.

We love this book. To represent that you received only one letter of support for the books is quite absurd. You may want to check your emails a little more carefully. As for me, I realize that only certain opinions are being expressed through Circle of Sisters through this experience. What a disappointment. There are so many reasons to love these books. But, you have already made up your mind and it's quite sad what you are missing out on through this story.

If you would like all of our original emails sent again, let us know. I however, think that you need to be in the "right"(?) on this. So much for opinion, different points of view and different xperiences.

CK Bennett
Mother of 5 in Washington

Thanks for writing the second time, CK, because I want to reassure you that I didn't get your letter — or letters from any of your girlfriends, unless one of them was the one person whose letter I printed.

I want to assure you that I don't do any selective ignoring of Circle of Sisters letters. My email box gets hundreds of letters a day (any email address posted in a public place online is subject to be harvested by jerks and sold to spammers), and there also is a lot of stuff that ends up in my spam box. But I go through that spam box as often as I read the email, and I try hard to resurrect anything that looks like it might not be spam.

I don't know what happened to your letters, but this has been a problem for as long as I've been writing the column. A couple of months ago we changed the email address because so many readers were writing to other Meridian email addresses after their Circle of Sisters emails bounced or had otherwise gotten lost in the forwarding process, but yours is the first email I've received that has let me know the problem still isn't solved. I'm sorry about that, because I would have liked to read what you had to say.

For the record, I want to say that as far as the Twilight series is concerned, I am fully aware that my opinion about the series is in the minority. And since there are millions of readers who love the books, it is extremely possible that my minority opinion isn't even right.

Originally, I had hoped to prolong the Twilight discussion by having one set of letters supporting me and the next week's letters telling me I was all wet, but I really did only get the one letter of dissent. I don't know where yours went, but I checked my email box only an hour ago (Thursday afternoon, when this column is written), and I still hadn't received either the original letters or the ones I requested to be resent. Now, of course, the discussion is behind us, and we're solving the problems of Primary children — so the letters would have been for my enlightenment only. But I like to hear points of view that don't agree with mine, and I often change my mind if someone can show me the error of my ways.

I do want to reassure you — and any other readers over the past year who haven't seen their letters in print or received any response from me — that you were not intentionally overlooked. There is no Circle of Sisters agenda, and indeed I often run letters that are completely opposite from what seems to be to be good common sense. (And if I haven't mentioned that in the column, it's because I'm only the moderator here. This column isn't a forum for my editorials, but for the readers' ideas. I only ranted about Twilight in that one column because a reader specifically asked me to do so.)

Once again I apologize for the letters that get lost. Here's hoping that one day we'll figure out how letters are getting lost, so we can remedy the situation.

If you'd like to write in, send your thoughts to meridianmagazine@aol.com. Put something in the subject line that will let me know your letter isn't spam. And when you write, be sure to include your full name, city and state or province. (If you'd rather be semi-anonymous, sign your name as “A Reader from Michigan” or “Sandy from Timbuktu.” The important thing is that we hear from you.)

Until next week — Kathy

“All children are artists. The problem is how to
remain an artist once he grows up."

Pablo Picasso

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.