Accompanying children called « hard » at school
Agitation, impulsivity, opposition, provocation, aggression and emotional instability are typical externalized behavior of young preschool and school age children. When they are both frequent and intense, teachers consider them as « hard to manage » because they are likely to prevent children’s social integration with peers as well as learning outcomes. The epidemiology of externalizing problems is such that most of the teachers are regularly concerned with hard to manage pupils. Some of them feel incompetent and even suffer from burn-out. Others engage instead in a continuous search for solutions which sometimes lead them out of their role. The current approach’s framework is the developmental psychopathology approach. It intends to provide a series of 12 successive steps. The teachers are invited to take an active role, to collaborate with « co-educators » both from the school and the family settings, to focus on a limited number of objectives and to assess their intervention with the child. The protocol also aims to establish this support at the school level in order to increase the consistency and effectiveness of the approach