Dealing With Student Withdrawal

Students often withdraw from a classroom environment, and the activities that are going on, when they feel unable to participate comfortably. This can often occur in one-on-one sessions too. Perhaps, the students who withdraw by hiding are simply doing what other children wish they could do. It is argueable that as teachers or caregivers, we must be sensitive to the threshold of stress or frustration that the child feels. If the threshold is reached, and the child withdraws, we have an opportunity to remove the frustration, and possibly raise the stress threshold for withdrawal. An impatient attitude with the child simply keeps the stress level closer to the threshold, thereby limiting the amount of stress the child can deal with from his lessons. I'll describe a situation that happened to me. My thoughts will be in italics.

A student (we will call him Bob) was introduced to me as being prone to butt his head when frustrated, and to hide if overwhelmed. Our class materials were designed to be interactive and fun to use, so we never had a problem with him butting his head, as had been expected. Perhaps, it also helped that we worked on the floor often, making him feel that the environment was less structured.

During one class, Bob had just had enough. He got up from his chair and crawled under the table. No amount of coaxing could get him to come out. I thought, I wonder if I could keep control, or at least my influence over him if I crawled under there with him. After all, we have work to do. So, I asked his permission (required to let his special place continue to serve as his sanctuary) to join him in his hiding place. He said "Sure!", so I grabbed Moonbeam, our stuffed monkey, and joined Bob in "his" retreat. I told Bob that he had a neat place to hide. Bob, Moonbeam, and I visited a couple of minutes, and I suggested to Bob that I didn't really fit well under the table, and asked if we could return to the top of the table. He said "OK!". We all crawled out, and returned to work.

Bob seemed to develop a trust in me because I didn't make him feeled threatened. I didn't criticize his hiding when overwhelmed. I actually hid (from the educational environment) with him! I believe the benefit in joining him was that it made him, and his personal sanctuary, part of the educational environment, rather than trying to keep him in the environment that I had planned for him. This attempt at retaining influence on his actions worked very well. I had hoped for a temporary recovery of control of his behavior, and was not dissappointed. He still took occasional trips to his retreat, but the duration and occurances decreased over time.

I think he was more comfortable with the learning environment knowing.that he had access to his retreat. I think we created a good relationship, and high level of trust, when I recognized his world was part of our activities, and ask to join him in it. Perhaps it was the combination of our relationship, and access to the retreat that made the use of the retreat decrease with time.

I hope that you have found my tip interesting. I am always looking for additional methods, information and resources that are useful in special education, so if you know of any that I don't have links to, let me know about them. If you have a helpful tip that you would like to share, but don't have a web site, send it to me, and if I publish it, I'll include your e-mail address with it so you can get feedback. Have a great day!

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