Helping Children Under Stress Make the Grade : Stages Program Designed to Aid Students Experiencing Change in Home Life

When my parents got divorced all the light in my life went out like a shade of darkness.

--Written on an Irvine third-grader’s drawing of a dark cloud

Irvine elementary school principal Ron Moreland had been divorced for several years in the mid-’70s when he noticed his two sons were having problems in school.

“My kids were going through quite an adjustment in light of the fact that they were young and didn’t really understand why their natural parents couldn’t still be together,” he said. “They carried that misunderstanding with them and it showed up in their academic progress: They were really backsliding academically.”

Moreland also began observing the same phenomenon at Turtle Rock Elementary School where he was then assistant administrator.

“I noticed a lot of kids who came to my office for behavior problems concurrently were experiencing some disruptions in their home life,” he said. “They’d come to school with a depressed, confused feeling, and it would show up both behaviorally and academically. Many kids had difficulty getting back on track.”

Time for Program

Convinced that divorce and other traumatic family changes can have a profound effect on a child’s progress in school, Moreland felt it was “high time” that the schools produced a program to help students cope with stressful life transitions.

“I felt,” Moreland said, “it was important for someone to help them deal with change: How do we adapt to change and understand that a life doesn’t end with that condition and that there is hope thereafter?”

The result of Moreland’s concern is Stages, a pioneer educationally based program developed through the Irvine Unified School District.

The 5-year-old program, which is disseminated by the school district’s Guidance Projects division, provides training for classroom teachers and school counselors to help students understand and cope with traumatic family changes such as divorce, separation, a death in the family or frequent moves.

Initially funded for development by a two-year grant administered by the state Department of Education, Stages was implemented in five Irvine elementary schools in 1980.

Today, the program is offered in about 600 schools in about 200 school districts throughout California and 23 states.

And the number continues to grow.

Educational consultant Christine Honeyman, who was hired to write the Stages curriculum, and educational consultant Deborah King are on the road an average of twice a week conducting training sessions for teachers, counselors and administrators.

Sold Out Fast

To illustrate the growing popularity of the program, Honeyman said that a 100-copy first-printing of Stages’ new junior high-high school curriculum sold out within 20 days. Previously, she said, it had taken six months to a year to sell that many.

According to Honeyman, Stages is a program whose time has come.

Citing U.S. Bureau of Census statistics, Honeyman said that in the 1960s 8% of students nationwide were living in single-parent homes. In the 1970s the figure was 17%, and by the 1980s it had risen to 40%.

For children born in 1980, Honeyman said, the Census Bureau projects that 48% will live about four years with one parent.

In fact, she said, some high school principals say that at least 80% of their students have been through a divorce, are going through a separation or are living in a step-family situation.

Statistically, she added, less than 16% of all families fall into the “traditional family” category with the father going off to work and the mother staying home with the kids.

Indeed, she says, “the norm is not the traditional family anymore. The norm is a changing family.”

Significant Trauma

Honeyman, who has a master’s degree in counseling and a counseling credential, emphasizes that it’s not that every child who goes through a divorce is traumatized or that single-parent homes are a negative environment. But, she said, studies show that the initial breakdown of the family is a significant trauma for many children.

Studies show, she said, that children often experience a mourning reaction to separation or divorce that is similar to the death of a loved one. Children, she said, also may experience stress due to separation and divorce and internalize this stress with feelings of denial, guilt, loneliness and sadness.

And, Honeyman said, “some research studies are showing it’s a long-term crisis rather than a short-term crisis.

“Sometimes the child may seem to be processing through the first change of the divorce and the parent thinks everything is fine. Then, with the second major change of a move or a remarriage, the student’s behavior significantly changes and the parents are baffled by this. What it means is the child has never really processed through the first change.”

Honeyman added that studies show that “some loss in childhood that is not dealt with can show up in adolescence or adulthood in symptoms such as depression, alcoholism and suicidal tendencies.”

In the classroom, according to Honeyman, the emotional toll that a disrupted family life takes of children often surfaces in the form of fighting, disruptive behavior, lack of concentration, a dramatic drop in grades and truancy.

In the Irvine school district, she said, about half the students in remedial reading are living in single-parent homes. Students from single-parent homes also account for 70% to 80% of the district’s tardiness, truancy and discipline referrals.

“We found out a lot of these kids are overwhelmed with responsibility at home--getting themselves up in the morning, getting their own breakfast, taking care of younger brothers and sisters, getting their own dinners. There isn’t much supervision.”

Parents Need Support

And the lack of parental supervision is understandable, she said. “For the single mother or single father who is out working all day, trying to raise a family is really hard, and those people are going through their own stages and they also need support.”

Honeyman said that among 250 Irvine elementary school students who completed the Stages program after going through a major change such as divorce, tests showed significant increases in reading comprehension, math concepts and self-esteem. She said significant improvement in school attendance and a marked drop in disciplinary action also were noted after Stages.

“I can testify that it does work,” said Diane Larkins, a fourth-grade teacher at Turtle Rock Elementary School. “I think the value of the program is the child is able to see how they’re fitting into this picture and that they’re not alone. So it really offers them security and comfort.”

The Stages program takes its name from the six stages of adjustment people often experience when they go through a major change in their lives. The stages, which were identified by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, author of “On Death and Dying,” are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and hope.

“Depending on our own personality strengths,” Honeyman said, “we may feel stuck in one of those stages. The very responsible student usually finds himself more often in the stage of depression or sadness and will ward off feeling angry; the very spontaneous student usually expresses more anger than other personalities.

“The very emotional students will stay in the stage of denial longer because they have a great use of their imagination and create a fantasy for themselves: ‘Why face reality? I’ll create a world where my family is all together.’ The student who is very logical, analytical and cognitive will use the strength of their logic and usually go into the stage of bargaining, a stage where we use our brains to figure out a way to make the change go away.”

Responses Are Natural

What the lessons teach the students, Honeyman said, is that all the stages are “very normal reactions, but they seem overwhelming to us because no one has sat down and told us they’re natural responses. The program gives students at least an awareness that there are other reactions, and offers the idea that acceptance and hope exist, which many students are not aware of.”

That, she said, is the program’s main focus for the elementary school child: to give them a vocabulary to define what they are feeling or thinking.

“In a time of great upheaval and confusion, having a word or description to hold onto can be a lifesaver,” she said. “They can say, ‘I’m having this reaction and I know it’s a normal reaction.’ For students to know that depression--when we feel hopeless--comes just before acceptance and hope is very beneficial.”

Honeyman added that a major focus of the adolescent program is on identifying resources--both internal and external--they can turn to and in building skills for coping with each stage.

For the anger stage, for example, students are taught a technique in how to handle criticism. In the stage of depression, they’re taught the technique of giving themselves a positive self-talk.

“When a major change occurs it’s usually what we say to ourselves about that change that causes the emotional reaction,” Honeyman said. “When a student is feeling hopeless, we’re teaching them they really need to watch what they’re saying to themselves and to talk to themselves in a positive way so they won’t be so drawn to feeling there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and to know that they will make it.”

Honeyman said one junior high school student who went through the Stages program had repeated the same grade twice and “he was so caught up in anger, he didn’t think he was going to make it to high school. When it was over he said that going through the Stages program allowed him to feel hopeful about his future, that he could control his anger and make it to high school.”

Useful in Other Areas

Honeyman said Stages is not designed to address only the major changes a child may go through. It also deals “with all the minor changes we all go through such as the birth of a brother or sister, the loss of a pet, and changing schools. And, with the onset of adolescence, which is a physically major change, we find these reactions are much more pronounced.”

Stages is also beneficial for those students who have not experienced major changes, she said.

“It’s a preventive tool,” she said. “It gives students an idea of what people usually go through with a major change and it normalizes reactions that may be frightening if they don’t understand the process.”

The program includes the use of scripts, short stories and plays to illustrate each lesson. This allows the students to talk about the characters rather than their personal lives in the classroom, Honeyman said.

She emphasized that students are not encouraged to discuss family problems in class and that the Stages program is not designed to turn any teacher into a counselor. Teachers, however, are sometimes able to identify students who need counseling and can serve as a resource for parents, she said.

Many of the schools offering Stages provide small group counseling sessions, which require parental permission. Out of 400 students in one Irvine elementary school, Honeyman noted, 130 were signed up by their parents for small-group counseling.

Honeyman said schools are charged a “nominal fee” for Stages training: “A person can go through the training and receive all the lessons for their students for $90, or we will train a whole staff for a set fee of $300 and the materials can be purchased separately.”

Video Available

A video, “Love, Willie and W.P.,” which illustrates the program’s concepts, is now available to schools for $59. The video features drama students from Irvine’s Woodbridge High School who role-play the reactions of elementary, junior high and high school students as they go through a divorce. Orange County songwriter Rick Streitfeld wrote and sings the video’s theme song, “The Rain Won’t Last Forever.”

According to Honeyman, some schools apply for state grants to pay for the Stages training and materials, some seek local support and others receive money from their local school boards.

It is, she feels, money well spent.

“My wish would be all teachers coming through the teaching colleges now and those already teaching will learn some skills to feel comfortable handling the reactions of students involved in changes,” she said. “When their reactions interfere with learning, the teacher has no choice but to be involved in some way or find some way to teach this child, and most of them are unprepared.”

Turtle Rock Elementary School Principal Ron Moreland said he is “pleasantly surprised” at how far Stages has come since 1980. He credits Honeyman’s “energetic approach to disseminating the program and training people throughout the state and nation” for the growing popularity and demand for the program.

But, he said, word of mouth also has played a part.

“It’s amazing how many educators are seeking some sort of answer to this dilemma of kids literally going backward in their academic progress and having a lot of behavior problems as a result of the whole phenomena of the breakdown of the family unit.”

My parents got a divorce and even though I was only 3 years old, I was confused about how come my parents weren’t together. When I got older I thought it was my fault they got divorced. Now, because of Stages, I know that it was not my fault. --A Walnut Creek sixth-grader