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Youth
Change is based in Woodburn, Oregon, about 90 miles from a place you had
never heard of until May, 1998. So, when we heard on the radio one morning
last May, that there had been a shooting in Springfield, Oregon, it was
more than just another school shooting. It was something quite personal.
The extreme violence had happened in our own backyard. What could never
happen here, had happened here. We
offer this informational article on extreme violence, excerpted from our
workshop, in the hope that it may help ensure that what happened here,
will never happen where you are. Adapted from an
article published under a slightly different title in "The Child Welfare Report," Fall, 1998 There
is no guaranteed way to prevent extreme violence. But many teachers and
counselors may find it useful to at least understand which students may
potentially offer the greatest threat. This information is not intended
to alarm you, but to best equip you to organize and understand the children
who have the potential for the most extreme danger. This information is
no substitute for our workshop or other training. It is a brief thumbnail
guideline so you can conceptualize who could pose danger, and why, plus,
what you can do about it. Teach
Them Expected Behaviors:First,
all children must be taught peaceful behavior. Years ago, kids arrived
at their school or agency, prepared by their family to act peacefully.
Now, the opposite is true. Kids arrive prepared to be aggressive, often
unsure how to be peaceful because at home, on TV, in the movies, in the
neighborhood, and on the computer, people act violently, rudely and aggressively.
For some kids, that is all they know. Although it should not have to be
your job to train kids to be peaceful, if you don't do it, and the family
doesn't do it, who will? The corrections system. But that is a reactive,
not pro-active response that doesn't help ensure safety, so start by teaching
kids to do what they are expected to do. The Kids
at Highest Risk of Extreme Violence:
Remember,
this information is offered you so you can make sense out of the kids around
you. We are condensing a lot of complicated mental health information,
so please be sure to read more in this area, and not assume that this quick
guide provides you all the answers you need. When in doubt, always consult
a mental health professional. If you are not a mental health professional,
reading this guide does not sufficiently prepare you to diagnose kids,
yet the information below refers to several mental health diagnostic categories.
Remember, these categories are offered here only as guidelines, not so
you can attempt to definitely diagnose children. 1. Conduct
Disorders: The child who may potentially pose
the greatest threat of extreme violence is called a conduct disorder. To
understand this child, visualize the fictional character, J.R. from the
TV show "Dallas" because the hallmark of being a conduct disorder
(C.D.), is having no heart, no conscience, no remorse. Only a mental health
professional can diagnose a conduct disorder for sure, but being aware
that you probably have at least one conduct disordered child in your class or group,
is important to ensuring your safety, along with the safety of your kids,
because you work with conduct disorders completely differently than other
kids. Since the C.D. child has no relationship capacity, you should
not use relationship-based approaches with a diagnosed conduct disorder.
In general, conventional approaches fail with conduct disorders. That last
sentence is very, very important to think about because it says that ordinary
interventions normally fail with this particular child. Think about the implications
for your office or classroom.
It would
be insensitive to call a conduct disorder, a "baby sociopath,"
but that is close to what the term means. It means that the child acts
in ways that appear to be seriously anti-social, and the concern is that
the child may grow up to be a sociopathic type of person. Since this child
cares only about himself (C.D.'s are predominately male), there are little
brakes on this child from serious or extreme violence. Not every conduct
disordered child will engage in horrific behavior. Some C.D.'s are more
like Eddie Haskell from "Leave it to Beaver," and are just the
neighborhood bully. Others may shoplift, join a gang, or engage in hurtful
manipulation. There is a range of misbehavior C.D.'s may get involved with,
ranging from lying to setting fires or being a sexual predator. At the
most serious end of the spectrum, lies the possibility of extreme violence,
such as the school shooting in Oregon. In our
workshop, we spend at least a couple hours helping you understand how to work
with conduct disorders. While C.D.s are only 11-14% of the population,
having just one of them in your class or group can be tough. If you work
in a specialized setting, like special ed, a group home, or at-risk program,
you likely have a concentration of these kids. You can come to one of our
classes, or get books that help teach you how to work with this most hard-to-manage
kid. The main point we give in our classes is that these children operate
on a cost-benefit system, and that to control your C.D. kids, you must
keep the costs high, and benefits low. These children also especially need
to pro-actively learn how to manage their fists, mouth, and actions. Your
goal is to teach them that when they hurt others, it often hurts them too.
All interventions must be in the context of "I-Me," because that
is all this kid is capable of caring about.
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MUST-KNOWVIOLENCE PREVENTION INFORMATION PART 2 OF 2 Have you noticed how the information in this article is much more complex than the quick sound bites you get from the media when they describe school shooters? The reality of youngsters who may become involved in extreme violence can not be captured in a brief sound bite. Also, be sure to notice how this critical, potentially life-saving information was not included in your college training. (Continued below-- click here) 
(Part 2 of 2, article continues from above) Here are the second and third youngsters at highest risk of becoming involved in extreme violence. 2. Thought Disorders: The risk posed by thought disordered children is possibly far less than that of the conduct disordered youth. Although #2 on this list, it is a rather distant second choice, not an immediate one. Part of the explanation is that there are probably a lot more conduct disordered kids than thought disordered ones. The other reason that explains the somewhat distant #2 status is that the thought disordered child may be well-intentioned, kind, and loving at times. The conduct disorder child really never is able to care about anyone else. Another reason to explain the distant #2 status is that often the thought disordered child will act in rather than act out. They often will pose a harm to self rather than others. Unless you work in a treatment setting, just a very small fraction of the children you work with, may have what mental health professionals call thought disorder. In treatment settings, such as day treatment programs, state hospitals, residential treatment programs, and other such environments, there will be greater numbers of these children because they are part of the target population you serve. While the thinking of the conduct disorder is clear and lucid, that assumption is not always true for the thought disordered child. The child who has been diagnosed with this type of problem by a mental health worker, has very serious problems with their thinking. The child may hear voices or see visions that no one else can, for example. The child may believe they are being governed by demons or devils. Non-mental health professionals might view the child as crazy or insane, and that is sadly, fairly accurate. Mental health professionals might choose different adjectives but essentially they too are saying that the child is not always in touch with reality. If, as an adult, a thought-disordered person commits a serious crime, they could be judged not guilty by reason of insanity. The thinking problem that this child has, is just that enormously powerful, serious and potentially dangerous. The thrust of working with a diagnosed thought disorder is often on proper medication, although things like skill building and structure are also very important. Trusting relationships can be a helping factor to reign in or influence the child. Perhaps the single most important concern will be that the child takes any prescribed medication regularly and properly, because when properly medicated, this child may function almost normally in many ways. When not correctly medicated, this child is at the mercy of any demons, visions, voices or upsetting thoughts that pop into their head. To best visualize this disorder, watch the movie "A Beautiful Mind". It gives a glimpse of what the disorder feels like. Only the correct medicine taken correctly can help the symptoms to eventually abate. The medicine helps the child's brain to work closer to the way it should be working. As many thought-disordered children don't recognize the need for medication, helping a child become convinced that the medication is essential to living, must be a top priority. 3. Severe Agitated Depression: The occurrence of extreme violence by severely depressed, agitated children probably also lags behind the risk posed by conduct disorders. This term refers to a child who has experienced extremely severe problems with depression, and at least some of the time, also struggles mightily with agitation. Many kids, especially teens, struggle with depression, but this group endures some of the most prolonged, profound, deep depression; this should not be confused with typical adolescent ups and downs. When the severely depressed and agitated child also abuses substances, the problem can be magnified greatly depending on the interplay of the substance and the existing emotional concerns. Crisis, sudden changes and the usual adolescent successes and failures can quickly de-stabilize this child who is already seriously struggling; these events can have the effect of the straw that broke the camel's back. Any emotion that a child has trouble managing, may get acted out or acted in. Depression is generally acted in: the child withdraws, reduces their activities, may eat less, etc. But, depression can also be acted out. Feeling cornered, unable to endure any more pain, some children will act out, sometimes lashing out in very severe ways. All things in nature strive to come to a conclusion. Storms eventually dissipate, the rain ultimately gives way to sun, and even the snow will eventually end. Humans, as part of nature, also tend to move towards resolution. For some children, extreme violence can be the flash point that offers that resolution. When there appears to be no hope, perhaps the child believes that there is nothing left to lose. Depression can be tough on adults, but couple the depression with a child's lack of time concept, lack of perspective, their impulsiveness, immaturity and resistance to understanding the link of actions to final outcomes, extreme violence can be grabbed as perhaps a solution. If this vulnerable child becomes linked to a conduct disorder, you can see how under certain circumstances, that could become a deadly combination as the depressed, agitated child may join in the acting-out. To help this child, alleviating some of the torment will be critical. Building a trusting relationship with the youth would probably help, but isn't essential, and is often difficult to accomplish anyway. More essential, is to help the child find ways to exist that they can control and are also socially acceptable. Tired of feeling helpless and powerfulness in every regard, this kid can become a volcano that could one day blow. Help to manage anger in socially acceptable ways, tempering the depression, and alleviating some of the agitation can keep this child from remaining at the level of extreme discomfort they currently experience. This child can remain a pressure cooker capable of hurting self and/or others in an explosion, or the child can be aided to gradually reduce the agitation and pressure they are experiencing. If this child receives useful aid to vent the agitation and give some light to the depression, any risk of extreme violence can be significantly impacted. A site that is carefully attuned to detecting troubled children, and well-prepared to effectively assist them will not as likely face harm from such a child. Although this is the child who may originate from a troubled home, or have lived or live with victimization, this may be the most hopeful and more readily impacted of the three types of children discussed here. Medication can aid this child, but the depression and/or agitation can re-new, sometimes with a vengeful vigor when the medicine is discontinued, which is often inevitable. Medication alone is seldom the best course of action, and should always be combined with other interventions such as anger management, depression management, coping skills training, and leisure time management training. Appraising the Risk: Now you can look at your class or group and not just wonder where the potential, serious danger would come from. Now that you have more refined guesses about which youth potentially pose potential danger, here is a way to better rank that risk in your mind. As the judge in Springfield said after the shootings, so many kids are "little match sticks waiting to be lit." To adapt that image a bit, here is how you can apply that thinking to the three at-risk groups listed here. You can imagine that the conduct disorder is already lit; a flame is burning. Whether that flame becomes smaller, flares larger, or creates an inferno, is anyone's guess, but the flame is burning always, the potential for disaster is always there. What happens to that flame, whether it is static, or grows smaller or larger, or someday rages, will vary from conduct disorder to conduct disorder, but sadly, the flame will never extinguish. The thought-disordered child may be like a pilot light, a tiny flame that is always lit, but is fairly unlikely to inexplicably get massively bigger or out of control. Properly shepherded and assisted, this light may stay forever just a benign flicker. Managed improperly or inadequately, however, this flame can get bigger, even flare out of control. The extremely agitated depressed child may be the unlit match stick that the judge visualized. Outside factors will likely come into play to incite any flare-up. Outside forces could include peer pressure, crises, substance abuse, family woes, or just mounting problems that fuel the agitation and create a profound, all-encompassing sense of desperation that leads the child to "spontaneously" combust. Like the thought-disordered child, the severely agitated depressed youth can often be so readily aided if the community can identify them, then consistently care and effectively intervene. In Summary: If you work with kids, but you are not a mental health professional, maybe it's time to at least learn some of the basics about children's mental health. And, no matter what your role with children, please consider it your obligation to train your kids to be peaceful. That may be the most important contribution you could make in a world that so thoroughly ensures that every child knows so much about extreme violence, and so little about anything peaceful. Regardless of your role, your training from college may have little to do with contemporary youth. Get trained to work with that contemporary kid, who may still be able to reach the high expectations for conduct that you hold for them, but may need a lot more specific training from you to ever get there. Extreme violence, said Oregon's governor, after the shootings in Springfield, is not a school problem, but a societal problem. As long as children are raised amid the extreme violence of TV, computer games, movies, neighborhoods, and school yards, and never systematically taught anything else, this societal problem will sadly also remain a school problem. Copyright
1998 Youth Change , written by Ruth Herman Wells, M.S., Director, Youth Change.
 
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WE HAVE MANY MORE INTERVENTIONS There are a lot of them: Studies estimate that 11-14% of youngsters are conduct disorders. To work successfully with your most misbehaved youngster, your conduct disorder, you need more than just the brief summary included on this page. Since safety is always a serious concern with conduct disorders, you don't want to risk having just part of the information you need. There are clear-cut, easy-to-learn approaches that have been used with great success in the mental health, juvenile court, and juvenile corrections fields for decades. The methods do exist, and you will find it hard or impossible to safely and successfully co-exist with your conduct disorders if you lack these tested methods. (Continued below-- click here)
You can certainly track down your own resources to upgrade your skills with your conduct disordered youth and children. As long as you find a quality source of information, that is what is important. There is no workaround that exists to "fake it" with this hardest-to-manage youngster. In part, this is because conduct disorders are so perceptive, and discern bravado and bluffing quickly. They really do read adults like open comic books. They really do play adults like cheap violins. They truly are wired a bit differently from everybody else, and you can't just close your eyes to those differences and cross your fingers that you can get by using conventional methods. It doesn't work that way. There is a teachable set of tools that exist for managing C.D.s, and no known quality alternative has yet been identified. If you have found that nothing works to manage your most out-of-control students, that's your signal to upgrade your skills now-- and frankly, now is always safer than later. Now that you realize that ordinary methods will fail with conduct disorders, and you've accepted the fact that you must use special methods with C.D.s, you can certainly search out your own options for learning more. However, a good budget option is 
to get our
All the Best Answers for the Worst Kid Problems: Anti-Social Youth and Conduct Disorders
book or instant download, printable ebook, just $15. Click here for details. It's shown
at right. Purchasers often tell us it was the best $15 they ever spent.
This jargon-free, to-the-point resource explains the concepts, then carefully covers essential do's and
don'ts of working with extremely misbehaved youth and children. No more will
you have to wonder if there are better ways to work with conduct disorders.
This resource gives you specific, immediately useable approaches that can improve the results you achieve
with your hardest-to-manage youth. It will also give you must-have safety
information so you can best protect your other youngsters, and yourself.
Here's another option for updating your skills for conduct disorders and other severely misbehaved youth: In our Breakthrough Strategies to Teach and Counsel Troubled Youth Workshop (click here), we spend hour after hour explaining this youngster, and giving specific do's and don'ts. We have participants come back sometimes two and three times just for the section on conduct disorders; they apparently find it that valuable. You can take this course live (click here), or order the recorded class (click here). Here's an example of a good 
tool to use with conduct disorders: our $8 posters are not just affordable, but more importantly,
they also are very powerful and effective with conduct disorders. Since our posters play to the
key element of the conduct disorder's operating system --what's in it for me?-- they can
accomplish much more than same-old, same-old methods ever can.
Click here for more details. Poster #3 is shown here. If you
work with out-of-control, violent, or delinquent youth, this is the
type of tailored, targeted approach you need to begin using now if
you want to successfully manage your most difficult youngsters.
Buy the Book
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THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS
Q: After reading this page and learning about conduct disorders, I now understand now that ordinary interventions routinely fail with them. So, I know I must avoid the methods I had been using because they were never going to work. But, what should I be doing instead? A: There are many aspects that you need to learn about working with conduct disorders, too many to cover in this space. Here is just one key area: skills. If the youngster lacks the skills to control their fist, for example, other interventions may be rendered useless. It's always a good idea to teach any acting-out youngster to control their fist, mouth and actions. (Continued below-- click here)
Our Temper and Tantrum Tamers book has surprising, powerful
interventions for conduct disorders, and any other youngster having difficulty
controlling their acting-out behaviors.
It has compelling lessons such as
Find Work with a Temper Like That, Is There an Aggressive Face in the
Mirror? and How to Keep a Grip on Yourself.
Anger and aggression don't have to dominate your classroom or
office. There are new and better solutions that can make your job
easier, while giving your out-of-control students the self-management
skills they will need throughout their lifetimes. If your
students have not learned anger control skills at home, rules
and consequences alone will not compensate for that crucial oversight.
Buy the Book or Poster 
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PROBLEM-KID PROBLEM-SOLVER TIPYouth violence may now be at an historic worst in the U.S. Do you realize that school shootings are becoming such a common occurrence that some of them only receive local media coverage? That means that you may not even be aware how much school shootings continue to happen on a regular basis during the school year. Here's an even more upsetting fact that you may not have considered. Many of the conventional methods of teaching violence prevention are utterly ineffective with conduct disorders, the most misbehaved youngster. (Continued below-- click here)
So, as children and youth become more violent, the methods we tend to use to curtail that violence
are approaches that won't work with conduct disorders, the most misbehaved youngsters. Here is the
explanation. As discussed in the article above, conduct disorders lack a conscience. That means that they
have no relationship capacity, and are especially unable to feel empathy and compassion. Popular
violence prevention methods like character education use one core approach, caring about others.
It's like teaching a tone deaf person to sing. You can try but it may not be that person's
strong suit-- ever. You can attempt to make conduct disorders care about others so they
won't hurt others, but it's a tune they will never be able to sing. If you lack relationship
capacity, you can never care about others. Therefore, caring about others will never be the way
to assist conduct disorders to rein in their interpersonal aggression. It's actually ironic.
The youngster who needs to most benefit from violence prevention training, is the most
unaffected by it. Sadly, violence prevention training that relies on empathy, actually
can prompt conduct disorders to behave worse. Relationship-based violence prevention methods
often inadvertently teach the conduct disorder to be a more effective victimizer.
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