How to Teach a Kid to Not Use Hurtful Words

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I’m a 6th grade teacher. My teaching partner has a student who has always been hard; these last couple weeks especially. He’s had to practice a lot lately. Instead of writing his name on his assignment, he wrote an offensive word. He already had a talking-to about using this specific word last year. How would you address this?

Woe be unto the teacher who warns and/or lectures kids about their serious or chronic behaviors. We call it “Warning Therapy.” More on that in a moment.

First, teachers need to understand that they are not like most people. Teachers tend to be being who liked school more than most people. I know this because teachers all took a job that involves them spending an extra 30 years in school.

People who enjoyed school are (generally) agreeable people who, when told not to do something by a teacher think, “Well, this person seems like they have my best interests at heart, so I’ll stop doing the thing they want me to stop doing.”

When these agreeable people become teachers, they have a hard time understanding kids who don’t just do as they are told.

Thank goodness you have me. I am a disagreeable person. I became a teacher because I hated school, and I wanted to make school better for kids. I identify with this kid because I was this kid that you are talking about. My wife would say that I still am that kid that you’re talking about.

Kids like this kid (and me) will not improve their behavior when you apply Warning Therapy. That means that when a difficult kid hears a warning or a lecture, but the teacher takes no action, that kid gets the following message:

You can do that behavior at least one time and I’m not going to do anything about it, so please continue, and perhaps experiment, just for funsies, with doing it twice.

Kids don’t really listen when we talk, but they do tend to notice when we act.

We should set a limit once and then follow through with a Delayed Learning Opportunity prefaced with love and empathy. Here’s how I would do it with this student at a non-instructional time with no other kids around. It will occur sometime after I have delayed this opportunity to learn later. Here’s what happens later:

Kid Whisperer: Dude. Oh, dude. You are really struggling with remembering not to use really mean words on your papers.

Kid: Whatever! I’ll write whatever I want!

Kid Whisperer: I think this might be partially my fault. I talked to you about this, but I didn’t give you a chance to learn about why this word is so hurtful, and why it isn’t allowed to be used in school. I’m sorry about that.

Kid: Whatever! Can I just go??

Kid Whisperer: I got you these resources about why that word can be hurtful so that you know not to use it. I have a video and excerpts from books. You can read them, and watch them, and we can talk about them, and then you can write about what you learned. Once you understand why that word is a word that we don’t use in school, you will come up with a list of things that you will do or say instead of using these mean words when you feel like using them. Once you have the plan, we’ll be done with all of this.

Kid: Whatever! This is stupid!

Kid Whisperer: Oh, dude. I don’t argue. Here are your materials. Let me know if you need any help.

At this point, this student has two choices: he can either learn one lesson or two. He could be cooperative and solve the problem that he has been asked to solve. His other option is to refuse to solve the problem. As long as we stay firm and offer the opportunity to solve the problem that he caused during most or all non-instructional time until he agrees to solve his problem, Kid will learn an even more important lesson first: that refusing a reasonable request from an authority figure doesn’t get you out of trouble and doesn’t get you what you want.

No matter what he chooses to do, he will learn to be a better person through your expert instruction!