Strengthening Kids’ Social and Emotional Skills, an interview with Clark McKown
THE FUTURIST: You recently identified three key factors in a child’s behavior that could cause him or her to suffer social rejection: inability to pick up on nonverbal cues and social cues in social interaction; inability to recognize cues’ meanings and respond appropriately; and inability to reason about social problems. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. But what, exactly, is the third?
Clark McKown: When we talk about reasoning we're talking about problem solving, real world social dilemmas. For example, if two kids want to play with the same toy, they can’t both play with the same toy. That’s a problem. They’ve got to recognize what the problem is that they want to solve, they’ve got to figure out what they want to get out of the situation, and they have to figure out what they’re going to do to resolve the issue, and then. Then they have to do it. It's really a series of problem-solving steps.
The Futurist: How would a greater awareness of these three factors change the discussion on socially rejected youth and how to help them?
Clark McKown: Identifying these factors would help develop screening tests and treatment plans for social-emotional learning difficulties.
The Futurist: Of the three factors identified, two of them—inability to pick up on nonverbal cues and inability to recognize cues’ meanings—are commonly recognized symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. To what extent does recognizing these three cues early help educators also identify learning disabilities early on?
Clark McGowen: I'm glad you asked that because of two things. One, I'm not sure that kids with ADHD do have deficits in the ability to read nonverbal cues and meanings. We’ve been doing tests of kids with ADHD and autism. The evidence is that a lot of kids with ADHD actually read people pretty well and know what they should do. But they act before they think things through, and so they are they're not able to take advantage of the social smarts that they have. They don’t need to be taught social thinking. They need to be taught to slow down. There's another piece that’s important for social success. That’s social regulation, the ability to refrain from impulsive behavior. Kids who are able to regulate their behavior--slow down, not speak up--end up being at a social advantage.
The Futurist: Many schools currently have staff counselors who work with children who exhibit behavioral problems. Roughly how many of these school counselors know about, and look for, the three factors that you identified?
Clark McGowen: Not too many. I think that many clinicians who work with children who have behavioral issues are looking at whether children are reading people well and so on. But I don’t think it’s pretty uniform. The counselors and mental-health staff at the schools would do well to do these assessments and use them to target treatments. It’s within our reach to do universal screening for social functioning, and to both identify kids who struggle socially and to implement prevention-oriented programming in the schools that gives children the emotional tools they need to succeed. In Illinois and a handful of other states there's legislation that requires school districts to have a plan to address kids with social and emotional needs. We go out to meet school personnel all the time who are aware that they need to be focused on social and emotional issues. I give a lot of credit to school administrators for reaching out and trying to learn these new requirements.
The Futurist: Where are these laws in place, or at least under consideration?
Clark McGowen: They exist in Illinois, New York, California, and the city of Anchorage, Alaska. And there are a handful of other states that are in serious discussion about implementing or passing laws that would increase the focus of school personnel on social learning, teaching social skills in the classrooms. A lot of people are skeptical about that because they think it’s not really the schools’ job, that it’s taking time away from academic pursuits. But it turns out the CASEL Group looked at hundreds of studies and found that when the school implements it well, their social skills improve, and also their tests and grades improve. It’s social learning and academics; it's not either/or. They're both intimately tied together.
The Futurist: In the last 15 years, there have been a number of school shootings committed by students who had been socially isolated and not adequately helped. It wouldn’t surprise me if this had raised momentum for a lot of these new initiatives.
Clark McGowen: I do think that is a big motivator behind some of the legislative efforts.
The Futurist: How early would trained counselors be able to spot these three factors? How early do these signs show compared with other signs of antisocial behavior?
Clark McGowen: What I would recommend for schools is that they look not at the three factors to begin with. The thing to do is figure out who in the school is rejected by peers, actively disliked by peers, excluded from activities, bullied, or is a bully. When you figure that out, those are the kids that you want to do some assessments to figure out if they have skills deficits.
The Futurist: To what extent is concern for children who suffer social rejection a growing phenomenon?
Clark McKown: I think there are a number of groups trying to grapple with this issue of screening identification everyone seems to have a different point of view on it. My view is that there's an inexpensive way of identifying kids having problems socially, and that is to ask kids. Take each kid aside, give the kid a photo of the kids in the class, and have the kid indicate whom he or she likes in the class and whom he or she doesn’t like.. That’s called “sociometrics,” the measurement of peer acceptance. From those two simple questions, you can quickly calculate a score for each child, and you can identify kids who are rejected. It wouldn’t take much for schools to learn how to do it, identify the kids on the fringes, and work on how to integrate them more successfully. Some teachers might be uncomfortable with asking kids to single out other kids who they don’t like. But the questions themselves are not harmful. Kids talk about these things anyway. We’d just make sure that each discussion with each kid is private and stays anonymous. There are other ways, too. Teachers can nominate kids they are concerned about socially, for instance, though they actually don’t get you the quality of information you get when you ask the kids themselves. If you really want to know who is rejected by peers, you ask kids.
The Futurist: What’s a good resource for readers to get more information on these topics?
Clark McKown: I think very highly of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. You can find it online at CASEL.org. It’s a repository of information about programs that can be implemented in school to prevent social problems and help kids who have social problems. If you’re in a school and you want to promote kids behavioral and learning schools, CASEL is where to go.
For more information, see: Rush Neurobehavioral Center, www.rnbc.org . Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, www.casel.org .