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Dealing with aggressive behavior from special needs students can be a big challenge. You may not always know how to respond to such behavior in the best way or how to prevent it in the future. Luckily, aggressive behavior from special needs students is a lot easier to handle once you know how to deal with it.

Ask Yourself What Happened

You may be tempted to see the aggressive behavior as the start of the problem but really something had to happen in most cases to bring it on. While aggressive behavior is clearly not the best response it is the one that some special needs students will choose. Ask yourself what was happening shortly before the aggressive behavior began.

Was the student having trouble understanding a lesson? This frustration could lead to aggressive behaviors. Was the student wanting attention but not getting it? This too can prompt aggressive behaviors.

Anything could be at the heart of these behaviors. Remember to ask the student what they felt caused it and then try to look at the situation from the student’s perspective. Things that you might never consider upsetting could be very upsetting to your students. In the end, dealing with aggressive behaviors means figuring out what contributed to these behaviors to begin with.

Stay Calm

While it may be difficult to stay calm when aggressive behaviors are taking place this is the best way to respond. If you get upset then the situation is only likely to escalate further. You want to be in a calm frame of mind so that you can address the aggressive behavior and whatever issues led to it in a productive manner.

Know Your Students

Exactly what you should do when aggressive behaviors happen depends on the student. Of course, safety issues trump everything else but after that you want to learn how to best handle each student. Some students will need you to talk to them and calm them down. Others may just need to be left to themselves to calm down for a few minutes. When you know your students then you will know how to best defuse the situation.

It Could Be You

This is not about blame. It is about discovery. When you are trying to see what is causing aggressive behaviors or what might be making them worse then you will want to look at your own actions.

Maybe you are not giving a student as much attention as they would like or more than they would like. Maybe you are bombarding them with questions and tasks that they do not feel comfortable handling. Keep in mind that it is not about how you mean something. It is about how your student interprets it.

Dealing with aggressive behaviors means dealing with them calmly and then trying to figure out why they happened. Aggressive behaviors are almost always brought on by something. Figure out what that something is, avoid it, and the aggressive behaviors could be gone for good.

T. Rhein enjoys writing extensively on the career benefits for those who obtain a master of special education.

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