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Some questions I have been asked by readers of my newsletter:

1. Do special needs children understand cause and effect and also rewards versus punishments? Do they comprehend the same way as other children?

Strangely enough, it doesn't matter! Every living creature has an awareness of reward and punishment at some level. Take as lowly a creature as a cockroach. Roaches hate light and love darkness. Being in light is unpleasant, being in darkness is pleasant. Of course they don't use words like that - they are probably not even "conscious" of liking or not liking. But the result is the same:

If you turn on the lights you will see roaches scrambling towards darkness under a couch or a crack in the wall. They sense the light and know that a feeling of punishment is headed their way. They understand if they head towards darkness they are going towards a reward. This repeated reward makes them head for the darkness right away.

Roaches don't have a memory and can't be trained like humans can. Canines can be instructed because they have a great memory. They know, for example, if they hear the word "sit" they will sit down in order to receive a treat or reward.

The higher you go up on the food chain, the better their memory can be. Interest in time and the improvement of analytical skills appears. When these attributes increase, you need to vary the intensity of the rewards and punishments to have any effect.

How do you know what you can use? Simple. You start with a good guess, and then experiment. You implement a system of rewards and or punishments to modify a behavior (exact details of how to do this are in the book), and see what happens. If the behavior changes, the carry on! If it does not, then one of two things applies:

a) either the rewards/punishments were not sufficiently motivating (again, see the book for details) or

b) they were unable to make a connection between the behavior and the consequent reward or punishment. For example, if the time interval between behavior and consequence is too long, then the younger or less able child may not be able to connect the two.

If your system doesn't seem to be effective then you need to stop and evaluate what you are doing. Make improvements and modifications. Try the system another time. Keep changing the system until you find one that works. If you are unable to find a system that works then think about the following:

2. What do you do when all your best efforts to change a behavior have failed? Richard (the Dad) has been struggling with his child, Tim, who has PDD. Tim is supposed to do a few hours of physical therapy each day. But guess what? Much of the time he is not too keen on the idea!

Richard has read the book. He has experimented with just about every reward, punishment, incentive scheme he can think of. He has tried to make the therapy more exciting and fun. But despite all of these efforts, half the time the therapy just does not get done.

What can you do to fix this? You have two options including:

a. You could become all upset and flustered about it. You get mad at yourself for your apparent failure. You feel like you are no service to your child. You want to find the magic trick that will make your child want to do his physical therapy session.

b. You stop and look at your situation. You take a deep breath and look at things realistically and logically. You are okay with the fact that half the time the physical therapy session may not happen, but this is still an improvement from how much physical therapy your child was accomplishing last year.

Which option, (a.) or (b.), will yield a better result?

The downfall of (a.) is that your stress level will sky rocket which affects everyone negatively. You are not having a fun time and your results won't improve this way.

The reality is that there is, perhaps, nothing on Earth that would motivate Tim to do those exercise 100% of the time. Sorry. But we live in an imperfect world, and maybe the child in the wheelchair really will never walk. We would all wish it were different. But if that is how it is, then that is how it is.

Therefore, you should pay attention to your child's specific needs. Strive to define success off of what you are provided with and not an ideal. When you do this, you will alleviate stress and the results you want will happen. If things still don't improve would you want to have: a) 1/2 performance and we are all upset? b) 1/2 performance and we are all feeling good?

The key point is to not try to compete to an ideal level when it might not be a realistic goal.

Worried about your child's performance in school? Thinking about special educational needs? Read more of Dr. Noel Swanson's helpful articles, at his parenting advice website, and check out his book and free newsletter. Child Behavior 4

Once again the British press is full of discussion about children misbehaving in school. And once again the main solution seems to be "exclude the troublemakers from the classroom".

This time the discussion was little bit different though. The new twist is that the notion that parents should stay home and watch their children once the kids have been kicked out of school for misbehaving.

This doesn't make any sense and is a nuisance to parents. The discussion also describes letting special schools stay open or even building new special schools for these children.

The child has been removed from the regular classroom which shows that they are having difficult time working in with the normal student setting. Then the solution must comprise discovering an educational setting where students can be successful, right?

So, if your child has been kicked out for bad behavior, what do you do? Here are my thoughts on it, having been through it ourselves with our eldest:

1. DO NOT sit around blaming yourself for being useless parents. That won't help anyone. Of course your parenting could improve - that is true for everyone. So read some books and do some learning, not moaning.

2. The school has not failed to support your child. Your school does care about your child and maybe the mishandled education of your child is due to issues beyond their control like not having enough resources or poor teacher training.

3. DO make every representation to the local education authority (LEA) to find an alternative appropriate service for your child. Don't be aggressive, don't be rude, but do be very persistent and very insistent. If need be, see your politicians and even your newspapers.

4. Be prepared to have your child move on to an alternative classroom environment. Be ready for these changes. It is a great idea to comprehend that your child needs this assistance and to take care of it now. It will be much worse in the future if you avoid dealing with your child's misbehavior.

5. Seek professionals to determine if your child has a learning disability, ADHD or Asperger's syndrome. These can wreak havoc in the classroom. There is an environment in which children who suffer from these conditions can excel. It is a matter of finding the right educational setting.

6. Don't be tempted to look beyond your child's behavior or kid yourself into thinking that they are a model student. You may feel like defending your child and think that everyone is wrong about his behavior. It is more productive to acknowledge that there could be a problem and work it out with help from the LEA.

Well, that's just a few quick thoughts about it.

The previous tips should be of some assistance to any parent struggling with a child's behavior. Plus, if you work in the education field please refrain from pointing to kicking the child out of the classroom as the only solution. That would not be a solution and wouldn't be of benefit to anyone.