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From the White House – New Federal Approach to Hiring
Nonprofit agency shows centers how to cope with preschoolers on the brink of expulsion
By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, Jan 11, 2009
The day Jaden Hubbard started preschool at the YMCA's Family Enrichment Center in South Akron, the teachers knew they had a problem.
Jaden had a neurological condition, Sturge-Weber syndrome, that left a splotchy purple birthmark on the left side of his face. It scared other children.
He didn't speak, so he couldn't express his wants and needs, which led to tantrums that frightened the staff. He would hit himself in the face, leaving bruises and bloody lips. He also hit other children.
The staff considered expelling him.
That's when Child Guidance & Family Solutions came to the rescue. The agency sent a behavior specialist to the center a few times a week to help the staff learn how to cope with problem children.
Techniques include learning to spot the early signs of meltdowns, helping 2-year-olds learn to calm themselves down and using puppets to model solutions for such common problems as two children fighting over the same toy.
''Within two weeks, this child changed like night and day,'' said YMCA director Sandy Pittman.
Jaden, who turned 5 on Friday, now is better able to communicate his wants and needs to the YMCA staff. Other children have learned to accept him and show affection, and the behavior problems that almost got him expelled have virtually disappeared.
''Jaden is a pleasure to have,'' his teachers recently wrote in a letter they shared with Jaden's mother, Tiffany Hubbard, a respiratory therapist at Akron General Medical Center. ''He gives us all a feeling of accomplishment and hope thanks to the Child Guidance and their program.''
The mental-health nonprofit is finishing the first year of a pilot program at Jaden's preschool and also at Kids-Play in downtown Akron. The program places a behavioral specialist at each site three days a week, working with about 200 children between the two centers.
Preliminary reports show a decrease in reports of behavioral problems.
''We've had zero children expelled or suspended,'' said Child Guidance's early childhood services director, Ken Ditlevson.
Child Guidance hopes to expand the ''specialty child-care program.'' The agency has funding to work in some way with 18 of the 221 licensed programs that care for preschool children in Summit County.
But demand for help from child-care providers and parents is much higher.
''The phone's ringing off the hook now,'' Ditlevson said. ''I get literally three or four calls a week with parents who just say, 'Where do I send him? He's been kicked out of three centers. Where else can I go?' ''
Working parents
The demand for child care is higher than ever.
Forty percent of children under age 6 in Summit County live in homes where both parents are in the work force, according to 2007 U.S. Census figures.
Another 27 percent live in single-parent homes where the mom or dad is in the work force. Only the remaining third live in homes where a parent doesn't work.
Summit County's licensed programs, including public schools and Head Start for preschool-age children, can serve about 10,500 children, said Amy McLoughlin, director of Child Care Connection, an Info Line program that helps parents find quality child care.
It's difficult to say how many of those children have been expelled.
''One of the big issues is that it goes unreported,'' McLoughlin said. ''Parents are not likely to disclose that their child was, for lack of a better term, expelled.''
So the children who need the preschool experience the most to prepare for kindergarten end up bouncing from one center to another during a key period in their development, McLoughlin said.
A 2005 Yale Child Study Center showed that children in state-funded preschools were more than three times as likely to be expelled as children in kindergarten through 12th grade. Data for Ohio showed only a slightly higher expulsion rate for preschool-age children than those in higher grades.
The study's author, Walter Gilliam, didn't identify why children were expelled, but he found significantly decreased expulsion rates in classrooms where the teacher got help from behavioral consultants.
The staff at the YMCA's Family Enrichment Center know all about challenging behaviors.
''We've got 2-year-olds who will throw chairs,'' Pittman said. ''I had one who could come in here and just annihilate this whole office when he had a breakdown, a meltdown. We had a lot of problem children, and you try to hang on to them, but when they put the other kids in danger with the hitting and the throwing and things like that, then we would have to let them go.''
Ditlevson said he'll never forget the first day he was at the center, preparing to launch the pilot program.
''All of a sudden a teacher walked into the room saying, 'So-and-so needs to go home,' '' he said. '' 'This is his third incident today. He kicked so-and-so. He pulled someone's earring out. He peed on the wall in the bathroom. He needs to go home.' ''
He still remembers calling the boy's mother.
''We were sitting here and we could hear her bawling on the phone,'' he said. ''She was trying to go to school. She was working. She was trying to do a lot of different things.''
Low-income families
The YMCA Family Enrichment Center is in Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority's Wilbeth-Arlington Homes. Many kids there come from poor families.
It's not unusual for parents with no transportation to push strollers through the snow to the center in the morning, leave the strollers in the hallway and get on a bus to go to work or school.
''Oh my gosh, we have them from 7:30 in the morning until 6 in the evening, from 6:30 in the morning to 6 in the evening — all their waking hours,'' Pittman said. ''Most of their waking hours are spent here. We've had them from little babies. Most of the kids you see in this class we've had since they were 6 weeks old.''
Most of the behavior problems are with otherwise normal children who are having trouble adapting to the stress of being away from home for such long stretches of time.
''That's a huge obstacle for a 3- or 4-year-old to have to work through,'' Ditlevson said. ''They're not mentally ill. We just need to work through some of the social issues, the behavioral issues.''
Those problems aren't restricted to poor families.
''I have pediatricians who are calling me saying my kids have these issues and they've gotten kicked out,'' Ditlevson said. ''It's definitely not just an issue for low-income parents.''
But the consequences of expulsion are more severe for low-income parents, who lack the same resources — extended family, reliable transportation and understanding employers — available to higher-income parents.
Summit County Department of Job and Family Services is working with Child Guidance on the expulsion issue, because parents who constantly are called at work about their out-of-control children have difficulty keeping a job, Ditlevson said.
''We're seeing a lot of parents who are being fired because they are using more sick time than they have available and parents who just quit because they can't handle finding a new center,'' Ditlevson said.
The centers don't want to expel children, but it's sometimes an economic necessity.
''It's a cost issue for them,'' Ditlevson said. ''At the risk of losing five other kids because of one biter or one kicker, they'd rather expel.''
Behavioral changes
YMCA teacher Bonnie Demboski has been at the Family Enrichment Center for five years and teaching preschool for three years. She has a Child Development Associate credential, which is a one-year course for day-care teachers.
She has seen big changes since Lauren Woods, Child Guidance's behavioral specialist, began coming to the center.
''The behavior is a lot better under control. It makes me want to stay now,'' Demboski said. ''We had kids throwing chairs and ripping people's hair out and spitting at us and cussing at us and throwing things at us. This year, we learned how to deal with the situation before it escalates to the throwing chairs and hitting each other.''
Wednesday, Woods and an assistant from Child Guidance demonstrated some modeling using a life-sized puppet named Carlos and a dinosaur puppet named Dina that both wanted to play with the same bear.
Woods asked the children what Carlos and Dina should do.
They could share them, one girl volunteered. Or get another bear, a boy said. Woods pushed for more answers if those solutions didn't work.
''A lot of times kids will try one thing, and if it doesn't work, they'll resort to aggression,'' Woods said.
Later, they broke into small groups and played a bingo game with solutions to various social problems. They used M&Ms as markers. ''It's also kind of working on impulse control because they can't eat them right away,'' Woods said.
She stays all day twice a week and every other Friday, spending time with the kids in structured activities and play time.
''I'll sit down with a small group of kids playing and do the social and emotional coaching right there and then that's modeling for the teachers right there, too,'' she said.
Computer-assisted reporting manager David Knox contributed to this story. John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
The day Jaden Hubbard started preschool at the YMCA's Family Enrichment Center in South Akron, the teachers knew they had a problem.
Jaden had a neurological condition, Sturge-Weber syndrome, that left a splotchy purple birthmark on the left side of his face. It scared other children.
He didn't speak, so he couldn't express his wants and needs, which led to tantrums that frightened the staff. He would hit himself in the face, leaving bruises and bloody lips. He also hit other children.
The staff considered expelling him.
That's when Child Guidance & Family Solutions came to the rescue. The agency sent a behavior specialist to the center a few times a week to help the staff learn how to cope with problem children.
Techniques include learning to spot the early signs of meltdowns, helping 2-year-olds learn to calm themselves down and using puppets to model solutions for such common problems as two children fighting over the same toy.
''Within two weeks, this child changed like night and day,'' said YMCA director Sandy Pittman.
Jaden, who turned 5 on Friday, now is better able to communicate his wants and needs to the YMCA staff. Other children have learned to accept him and show affection, and the behavior problems that almost got him expelled have virtually disappeared.
''Jaden is a pleasure to have,'' his teachers recently wrote in a letter they shared with Jaden's mother, Tiffany Hubbard, a respiratory therapist at Akron General Medical Center. ''He gives us all a feeling of accomplishment and hope thanks to the Child Guidance and their program.''
The mental-health nonprofit is finishing the first year of a pilot program at Jaden's preschool and also at Kids-Play in downtown Akron. The program places a behavioral specialist at each site three days a week, working with about 200 children between the two centers.
Preliminary reports show a decrease in reports of behavioral problems.
''We've had zero children expelled or suspended,'' said Child Guidance's early childhood services director, Ken Ditlevson.
Child Guidance hopes to expand the ''specialty child-care program.'' The agency has funding to work in some way with 18 of the 221 licensed programs that care for preschool children in Summit County.
But demand for help from child-care providers and parents is much higher.
''The phone's ringing off the hook now,'' Ditlevson said. ''I get literally three or four calls a week with parents who just say, 'Where do I send him? He's been kicked out of three centers. Where else can I go?' ''
Working parents
The demand for child care is higher than ever.
Forty percent of children under age 6 in Summit County live in homes where both parents are in the work force, according to 2007 U.S. Census figures.
Another 27 percent live in single-parent homes where the mom or dad is in the work force. Only the remaining third live in homes where a parent doesn't work.
Summit County's licensed programs, including public schools and Head Start for preschool-age children, can serve about 10,500 children, said Amy McLoughlin, director of Child Care Connection, an Info Line program that helps parents find quality child care.
It's difficult to say how many of those children have been expelled.
''One of the big issues is that it goes unreported,'' McLoughlin said. ''Parents are not likely to disclose that their child was, for lack of a better term, expelled.''
So the children who need the preschool experience the most to prepare for kindergarten end up bouncing from one center to another during a key period in their development, McLoughlin said.
A 2005 Yale Child Study Center showed that children in state-funded preschools were more than three times as likely to be expelled as children in kindergarten through 12th grade. Data for Ohio showed only a slightly higher expulsion rate for preschool-age children than those in higher grades.
The study's author, Walter Gilliam, didn't identify why children were expelled, but he found significantly decreased expulsion rates in classrooms where the teacher got help from behavioral consultants.
The staff at the YMCA's Family Enrichment Center know all about challenging behaviors.
''We've got 2-year-olds who will throw chairs,'' Pittman said. ''I had one who could come in here and just annihilate this whole office when he had a breakdown, a meltdown. We had a lot of problem children, and you try to hang on to them, but when they put the other kids in danger with the hitting and the throwing and things like that, then we would have to let them go.''
Ditlevson said he'll never forget the first day he was at the center, preparing to launch the pilot program.
''All of a sudden a teacher walked into the room saying, 'So-and-so needs to go home,' '' he said. '' 'This is his third incident today. He kicked so-and-so. He pulled someone's earring out. He peed on the wall in the bathroom. He needs to go home.' ''
He still remembers calling the boy's mother.
''We were sitting here and we could hear her bawling on the phone,'' he said. ''She was trying to go to school. She was working. She was trying to do a lot of different things.''
Low-income families
The YMCA Family Enrichment Center is in Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority's Wilbeth-Arlington Homes. Many kids there come from poor families.
It's not unusual for parents with no transportation to push strollers through the snow to the center in the morning, leave the strollers in the hallway and get on a bus to go to work or school.
''Oh my gosh, we have them from 7:30 in the morning until 6 in the evening, from 6:30 in the morning to 6 in the evening — all their waking hours,'' Pittman said. ''Most of their waking hours are spent here. We've had them from little babies. Most of the kids you see in this class we've had since they were 6 weeks old.''
Most of the behavior problems are with otherwise normal children who are having trouble adapting to the stress of being away from home for such long stretches of time.
''That's a huge obstacle for a 3- or 4-year-old to have to work through,'' Ditlevson said. ''They're not mentally ill. We just need to work through some of the social issues, the behavioral issues.''
Those problems aren't restricted to poor families.
''I have pediatricians who are calling me saying my kids have these issues and they've gotten kicked out,'' Ditlevson said. ''It's definitely not just an issue for low-income parents.''
But the consequences of expulsion are more severe for low-income parents, who lack the same resources — extended family, reliable transportation and understanding employers — available to higher-income parents.
Summit County Department of Job and Family Services is working with Child Guidance on the expulsion issue, because parents who constantly are called at work about their out-of-control children have difficulty keeping a job, Ditlevson said.
''We're seeing a lot of parents who are being fired because they are using more sick time than they have available and parents who just quit because they can't handle finding a new center,'' Ditlevson said.
The centers don't want to expel children, but it's sometimes an economic necessity.
''It's a cost issue for them,'' Ditlevson said. ''At the risk of losing five other kids because of one biter or one kicker, they'd rather expel.''
Behavioral changes
YMCA teacher Bonnie Demboski has been at the Family Enrichment Center for five years and teaching preschool for three years. She has a Child Development Associate credential, which is a one-year course for day-care teachers.
She has seen big changes since Lauren Woods, Child Guidance's behavioral specialist, began coming to the center.
''The behavior is a lot better under control. It makes me want to stay now,'' Demboski said. ''We had kids throwing chairs and ripping people's hair out and spitting at us and cussing at us and throwing things at us. This year, we learned how to deal with the situation before it escalates to the throwing chairs and hitting each other.''
Wednesday, Woods and an assistant from Child Guidance demonstrated some modeling using a life-sized puppet named Carlos and a dinosaur puppet named Dina that both wanted to play with the same bear.
Woods asked the children what Carlos and Dina should do.
They could share them, one girl volunteered. Or get another bear, a boy said. Woods pushed for more answers if those solutions didn't work.
''A lot of times kids will try one thing, and if it doesn't work, they'll resort to aggression,'' Woods said.
Later, they broke into small groups and played a bingo game with solutions to various social problems. They used M&Ms as markers. ''It's also kind of working on impulse control because they can't eat them right away,'' Woods said.
She stays all day twice a week and every other Friday, spending time with the kids in structured activities and play time.
''I'll sit down with a small group of kids playing and do the social and emotional coaching right there and then that's modeling for the teachers right there, too,'' she said.
Computer-assisted reporting manager David Knox contributed to this story. John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
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