Connections volume 2.1 Disruptive Behaviour Disorders ~ Some implications for the child care community

Even kindergarten kids are out of control. This statement attributed to Diane Gillett, president of the New Brunswick Teachers Association, appeared in a recent newspaper article. She says teachers regard discipline as their No. 1 concern, and went on to relate a typical incident. "The teacher asked the kindergarten students to come in, recess was over. This one little boy said ’No, I won’t go in. ’ So she went over to take him by the hand to bring him in and he kicked and punched her." Without much doubt, most early childhood educators and child care administrators recognize this kind of scene from their own experience. The child care community knows full well that significant acting-out behaviours are not uncommon well before school age. To go a step further, looking at the literature that is starting to accumulate on aggressive preschoolers several things are becoming clear: their numbers are on the rise and their developmental pathways do not bode well for productive futures. Here in Nova Scotia, some 10 years ago, a large-scale survey of children up to five years of age in child care centres was carried out by Mount Saint Vincent University researchers. The results were disturbing. Teachers identified a full 1/3 of the population as special needs or suspected as having special needs, including aggressive behaviours. They also reported only 3 % of the children with diagnosed special needs were (Canning & Lyon, 1989). In terms of developmental trajectories it is starting to appear that the primary pathway for serious conduct disorders in adolescence and adulthood is set in the preschool period. It is suggested this begins with the emergence of oppositional disorders in children as young as 3 and perhaps even 2, progressing to aggressive and non-aggressive symptoms of conduct disorders, and then to the most seriou