KEEP SCHOOLS SAFE

May 15, 2009

WRAPPIN UP EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED AND AGITATED CHILDREN

 

The Wrap Control Technique comes to you directly out of my Management of Disruptive Students Instructor Manual.  Maybe you are already aware of a better strategy to safely protect the agitated child, yourself and other classmates, but, for my money I’ll go with the Wrap Control for simplicity, effectiveness and safety.

 

The Wrap Control Procedure is extremely simple for Elementary School Teachers and/or Security Staff:.

 

1. If possible, recruit an aide, fellow teacher, or security to help you separate the audience from the disturbed child.  The child might be feeding off the audience.  Plus, the closer the other students are to the disturbed child the more possibility of injury.
2. Approach the child slowly and carefully.  Always use professional language (Pro-Com), always try to calm by assuring and reassuring.
3. Grab the child from the rear and pin his or her elbows and arms to his or her sides using both your arms.
4. You need not exert much pressure or force once the elbows are pinned and trapped, pulled to the child’s sides.  Doing this will disengage the advantage of the child’s upper body strength.
5. Enhance the control technique by sitting in a chair or even on the floor, making certain not to relinquish pressure on the child’s arms.  Once seated, wrap up his or her feet using your feet.  This will prevent the child from kicking you, plus it will prevent the child from gaining leverage with the legs.
6. Always move or avert your head to neutralize the disturbed child’s instinct to strike you with a devastating head butt.
7. Also, immediately begin verbal assurances at a slow speed and pace in order to calm the child.

 

If the child is isolated from his or her classmates and is not in danger of running afoul of furniture, walls, glass, or other impediments, you might want to consider simply securing the child in a safe and isolated area and allowing his or her adrenaline-driven rage to play out.  It is a fact that a child, or anyone, for that matter, can only fight ay 100% maximum output for 10, maybe 15 seconds, tops.  Therefore, if you can contain the child in his or her safe space for maybe 15 to 20 seconds, you can rest assured that he or she will be only able to fight at about 40 to 45% maximum output.  At that point, the child would be certainly more malleable to verbal and/or physical control techniques.

 

However, even if the child’s classmates are present and you have to use the Wrap Child Control Technique, use the above axiom as a guideline to knowing how long you would have to restrain the child before he or she will begin to calm.

 

Hammer

 

 

 

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