Behaviour is a language
I once taught a boy who sat in a cupboard. I didn't put him there. He got in and closed the door behind him with his smallest digit and asked for his work to be posted through a crack in the door. Whether he was shy, traumatised, tricky or insane is hard to judge, but it seemed prudent to affect a studied nonchalance and feed him the work.
An imrpessively rotund boy, obssessive out his personal hygiene, used to lie on the floor under a counter and nap between writing. He'd seen his father shot dead when much younger, and tried, mostly successfully, not to sleep each night. I know this because I suffered a residential with him and stayed up all night with his waking nightmares. It made sense to let him sleep. He didn't write much, but when he did the words were beautifully formed, crisp and even.
Most children, given the label EBD (or its variants) are male. This is presumably because boys are naughtier than girls, or not very good at hiding their behaviours, or perhaps the victims of gender stereotyping. One might assume that a school of EBD boys would be an alpha male, last-man-standing microcosm of prison, dogs eating dogs in the pack. There are elements of that, but the anomalies abound. The withdrawn, the walking volcanos, the camp, the gentle giants, the traumatised and the runty feral survivors all find their space somehow.
For a while we had a number of overtly out, homosexual boys. They were take-no-prisoners, assertive/aggressive characters, Terence stamp in Priscilla. On one occason I was on corridor duty when a group of uncertain, but decidedly homophobic, boys were ensuring that each of them felt secure enough in their group to stare down the ringleader of the homosexual boys. So the latter, hair neatly quiffed, strode over to them and announced, 'I suck cocks: what are you going to do about it?' To which the answer appeared to be: nothing. Right on, I thought.
When I used to tell people what I do for a living, the replies were entirely predictable and singular: 'That must be stressful...rather you than me...' That sort of thing. The only exception is my father, who would always say: 'You should hit them more often.'
Most people can't picture the surreal hilarity which forms the backdrop of most days. Getting thumped, kicked, scratched, shoved, headbutted and spat on is a hazard, but only occupies a part of the day. Besides which, I could cope with all of that other than being spat on. Or being touched by boys who walked around with their hands down their underpants.
Even then, affected nonchalance, along with a good hand sanitiser, would suffice. After all, all behaviour is a language.
