Behavioral Disabilities in Low Income Families
Behavioral disabilities is emotional, social or even the behavioral functioning, it departs from age that is accepted or even appropriate ethnic or cultural norms. Behavioral disability affects the academic progress of a child as well as social relationship, classroom adjustment, vocational skills among others. Behavioral disability especially in children can be noted well in children, they usually demonstrate chronic and severe behavior which is not usually as a result of the situational anxiety, conflict or even stress. The children with behavioral disabilities have incapability of being able to develop and even maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationship. They also portray inappropriate behavior response to a normal situation.
These children have also depression, unhappiness and anxiety that is pervasive. Emotional behavior is also associated with inability to learn which cannot be explained by sensory, intellectual or even health factors (Drotar & Sturm, 1992). Emotional disability within poor families is associated with the extreme withdrawal from the social interactions. This is due to extreme thinking of a person due to the problems that surrounds him or her. Although behavioral disabilities are sometimes caused by biological causes, the state of the family also contributes greatly. The aspect of poverty is a great cause to the change of behaviors among those affected and especially the children.
Poverty is a great contributing factor which affects or influences the emotional disability of a person (Garmeny, 1993).Emotional disability in poor families results to various effects which affect the entire life’s of people and their thinking ways and attitudes. People and especially children from poor families have some behaviors that are usually unacceptable in the society. Their conduct in both at school and social areas are different from other children’s behaviors. Children from poor families in most cases are aggressive in their actions and they do not allow other children to overdo them. In most cases, they bully the other children and they tend to overrule the area where they are.
These children are disobedient to authorities and do not obey or even respect them. In schools, they are ever defiant to the rules and regulations of the school; they are always in a quarrel with teachers and other staff members (Fischer, 1982).Poverty has been seen to be the cause of many behavioral disabilities even among some adults. The issue of behavioral disability among the adults occurs rarely, the most affected group is children. Most adults also tend to be aggressive especially in most public places; their level of interaction is very low.
This factor has been attributed to poverty and its effects are rising from time to time. Most children in poor families are irritated by very minor things when they are among their colleagues. This is mainly due to their thinking that their poverty status is the main cause of what other children are doing unto them. These irritations are also expressed in adults who get irritated by very small things from their colleagues; the main cause of this problem is poverty which attributes to the change of mind and emotional status (Jose, Craig & Kathy, 2009).Emotional disability due to poverty also leads to children with some personality disorders; these children have anxiety at all moments.
They are nervous at all the moments; this is mainly due to the impacted attitude into their mind by the poverty situations. The children as well as adults are ever in a fear mode and they do not look settled in their minds or life’s. They look tensed by almost everything hence they tend to become aggressive and even violent in their behaviors. The anxiety also makes children to be irritated by some very small issues. Most of people from poor families tend to withdraw from some issues as they feel that they are not capable. Their poverty situation makes them to think that they cannot survive in any situation.
Children as well are not capable of surviving when there comes an issue to do with competition. They fear competing in any situation with other children, in case there is no option to withdraw; they tend to become aggressive in their behaviors as well as becoming aggressive.In most cases, poverty makes people to always have a tendency of having physical complaints. This is a study that has been done and proved although the fact behind this has never been known. These people tend to be having pain even emotionally. Emotional disability is also expressed in form of instability in the minds of many people.
They look as if there something they are thinking about in their daily work. The emotional instability and complain eventually results to physical complaints as well as their expression in appearance. Poverty makes most people to think and even talk to themselves as they do their own jobs or routines. This eventually leads to loss of memory even in some cases. There are some physical complaints that are not real and mainly result from the emotional disability that has occurred in a person. Another emotional disability attributed to low income is sense of immaturity.
Most people in many cases feel that they are passive among the people. Their family situation or poverty status makes them to feel rejected or even there are of lower status than those who are rich. This is a very common case among the adults or even among children in some situations. Another tendency which occurs among the people with poor family background is poor coping, this trend tend to be among the adults as well. People tend to avoid others especially when they realize that they are not in the same situation or state of poverty. The poverty also tends to make most children to prefer having player mates who are younger than them.
They feel even more comfortable when interacting with them than those who they are of the same age.Another major result of poverty is socialized delinquency; this is the involvement into gang subcultures. Most young people form poor families tend to involve themselves with gang groups, they think that their situation allows them to be in such subgroups which tend to do those behaviors that are quire. In most situations, they do those behaviors that are unexceptional and undesired by many people. They also end up in criminal gangs and drug abusing groups, this is due to the emotional perspectives they have about their family situation of poverty (Reece & Sharon, 1994).
Children in poor families have a tendency of performing very poorly in schools. This mainly comes from change in emotional disability they develop with time. This results to children being unable to comprehend in their studies. Consequently, this results to very poor performance among those children. Their performance deteriorates day by day and they end up dropping out of school and being unable to continue with their education. These children are not able to develop emotionally and therefore they do not find the importance of living according to the authority requirements.
Poverty does not only result to emotional disability, but it also results to be a burden to the nation as a whole. It affects the society in various dimensions and therefore need to be looked at very keenly before it causes even more harm to the entire society. The issue of poverty has been a thorny issue to most governments and in most cases, there has been no remedy or anything to solve this situation. Governments should take measures in ensuring that the poverty situation is dealt with well so as to prevent the calamities that results from them to continue haunting them. These calamities include emotional disabilities among the people affected including children and adults.
There have been a great number of children who drop school due to poverty situation they are subjected to. The rise of criminal gangs has been caused by the emotional disability caused by poverty, when young people realize that they are poor and no way out of it, they end up joining criminal gangs as a relieve to their problems. Therefore there is need for governments to try to alleviate that problem so as to reduce these cases of criminal gangs from occurring.There is also need to support those children from poor families emotionally and mentally. This way, the cases of emotional disabilities occurring reduces significantly.
Their mental health care can be possible if they can be given proper advices accordingly. They can be encouraged to work hard and focus on their life. This can reduce the cases or effects that may result from the poverty effects. The counseling reduces the effects of poverty on the children. There is also need to provide required counseling to the adults who are in subject poverty by private or non-government so as to reduce their poverty levels.
This is possible if these people can be engaged in work that can provide them with income. There is also need to treat all children equally especially in school environment, this will reduce the effects that may occur due to emotional reasoning of poor children if they are treated unequally than other others. This in many cases results to a wrong interpretation by the children which may lead to children dropping out of school and becoming more emotionally disabled.
