Foster Kids with Conduct Disorders and Empowerment Based Interventions

Foster Kids with Conduct Disorders and Empowerment Based Interventions

Conduct disorder is a mental disorder that is depicting in childhood that shows signs through violation of norms and rights of others. There are two main types of conduct behavior. They include socialized and unsocialized disorders. Those children with socialized conduct behaviors usually make friends who have the same character.

In contrast, those with unsocialized conduct behavior do not make friends or in, most cases, other kids isolate them due to their harmful actions. This disorder depicts a lot of acts that reflect breaking the norms and rules. Foster children might show behaviors like fighting, stealing, having a hard time sleeping at night, among other many negative behaviors. The guardian who foster care to these children, most of the time, become stressed and may overreact when trying to correct them. Unfortunately, they end up reinforcing these undiscoverable behaviors to their foster children at the time without knowing. Therefore, the use of negative reinforcement makes their behavior becomes worse (Surabhi, 2017).  When children grow older having this disorder, they even pose a more significant challenge to their caregivers. Research has shown that conduct disorder affects more boys than girls. Other behaviors like drug abuse and violence associated with these children can also be an effect of this disorder. Conduct disorder symptoms can start showing as early as when the child is six years of age. It then continues to depict in early adulthood.

The causes of conduct disorder sometimes can be biological makeup, influence from biological parents, or even environmental factors that affect the psychology of the child. Some children are influenced by their peers in their early childhood to start behaving in a certain way. Those parents who do not give adequate care to their children when they are growing up are said to also contribute to the emergence of conduct disorder (Costello, 2015).  These children pick up behaviors from the environment where they grow up. The risk of conduct disorder is that it cannot be predetermined. It can occur anytime from childhood to youth developmental stages. Those who have conduct behaviors are said to make poor decisions in life. In the recent past, there are many cases of conduct behavior disorder, and the behavioral health facilitators are fighting hard to mitigate this disorder.

Several empowerment-based interventions can be done to fight with conduct disorder. There are differences in the degree of interventions needed to address different behaviors manifested by different kids. Schools are putting efforts to deal with these various behaviors to create safe environments by adopting social control practices. Years ago, teachers used to use behavior management practices that mostly blamed the victim, hence developing more negative values (Sağlam Baskın & Bilgiç, 2019). There has been ongoing advocacy for social skills training for the entire community. Here, there is the involvement that includes parents and teachers to reinforce better behaviors. Teachers and parents are changing their way of thinking that punishments are the only way of dealing with the children’s misbehavior.

The guideline for empowering further encourages managing the misbehavior by using a discipline measure that is reasonable, non-denigrating, and fair. Besides, the motivation theory states and stresses that using positive practices are the best of correcting someone without making them feel unworthy and lower their self-esteem. Social skills enable to prevent, and correct bad behaviors associated with conduct disorder (Shahrokhi et al., 2017). There are specific skills to deal with each situation and develop cognitive, affective orientations. People in the community are organizing events like sports activities that have rules. When children participate in these activities, they will have to adhere to game rules and start having positive behavior as time goes. It is also essential to look at the underlying cause of the adverse reaction and find the underlying motivation for such behavior. This helps in overcoming the negative attitudes toward that certain behavior.

Conduct disorder mostly needs parent intervention, which has been said to be the most effective way. However, when the disorders contain persistent misbehaviors that are disruptive and interfering with other people’s comfort, clinical intervention is highly required. These interventions can be like helping to prevent maladjustment in adulthood that can cause social impairments (Shafe & Moore, 2016).  However, there are several principles that clinicians should consider when administering these interventions to avoid bias and to apply the diagnosis with cultural sensitivity. First, the guardian should be engaged since they may have some fear of bringing their children on board to avoid being judged by the community. With a good alliance, they are likely to take it positively and help their children to adjust.

Besides, the clinicians must identify the strengths of the victim and the family. These will boost the effectiveness of treatment by considering the community settings and the natural environment surrounding them and cultural practices. All conduct disorder interventions should aim to promote both academic and social learning.  Now there will be no bias during foster care. Children affected can be encouraged and instilled with the skills to make friends enhance positive behaviors. There are so many programs designed to guide society in children’s behavior management skills and how to establish good parent-child relationships. There are also social skills therapies for children with aggressive behavior to help them have social interactions and regulate their actions. Social skills therapy helps to reduce bad habits like shouting and disrupting others. They teach the victims how to start conversations, how to participate in group activities effectively, how to listen to others and ask questions politely.

References

Costello, E. (2015). Conduct Disorder: Crime or Disease? Psyccritiques, 49(Supplement 14).

https://doi.org/10.1037/04061s

Surabhi, M. (2017). Conduct Disorder in School Children. विचार, 10(01).

https://doi.org/10.29320/jnpgvr.v10i01.11069

Shafe, S., & Moore, S. (2016). Anti-social Personality Disorder and Conduct Disorder

(ASPD/CD), Ethnicity and other Characteristics of the Alcohol Treatment Population in Trinidad and Tobago. West Indian Medical Journal. https://doi.org/10.7727/wimj.2015.477

Shahrokhi, H., Tehrani-Doost, M., Shahrivar, Z., Farhang, S., & Amiri, S. (2017). Deficits of

Executive Functioning in Conduct Disorder and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Annals Of Psychiatry And Treatment, 2(1), 013-020. https://doi.org/10.17352/apt.000006

Sağlam Baskın, E., & Bilgiç, A. (2019). Clonidine Treatment in a Case with Intellectual

Disability Accompanied by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Conduct Disorder. Turkish Journal Of Child And Adolescent Mental Health, 26(3), 140-142. https://doi.org/10.4274/tjcamh.galenos.2019.33042