This site uses cookies. Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site, while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
Cookie settings
  1. KudoZ™ Top
  2. German to English
  3. Psychology

schwer erziehbaren

English translation: Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties „EBD”

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)
German term or phrase:schwer erziehbaren
English translation:Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties „EBD”
Entered by: Natalie Wilcock (X)

22:47 Sep 18, 2004
German to English translations [PRO]
Social Sciences - Psychology
German term or phrase: schwer erziehbaren
Betreuung und Unterstützung von schwer erziehbaren Kindern und Jugendlichen im Alter zwischen 5 und 18 Jahren.
Natalie Wilcock (X)
Local time: 18:42
Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties „EBD”
Explanation:

Robert Laslett’s book Changing Perceptions of Maladjusted Children (1), was essential reading when it was published in 1982. It was re-issued in 1998 as Changing Perceptions: emotional and behavioural difficulties since 1945 (2) and covers the field authoritatively.
From 1944 to 1994
The recognition in the 1944 Education Act of ‘maladjustment’ as an educational handicap was regarded as a great step forward, giving children considered to have this condition the right to an appropriate education, and leading to the setting up of much special provision. In 1978, the important Warnock Report (3), reviewing the ‘education of handicapped children and young people’, shifted the focus from the ‘handicap’ itself to the ‘special educational needs’ to which it gave rise. Untypically, the Report dithered about giving up ‘maladjustment’. ‘The term...is ..open to objection on the grounds that it can stigmatise a child unnecessarily: in addition, it can be criticised (because) the description is meaningless without details of the child’s circumstances. Worst of all it suggests a permanent condition and fails to give any indication of the type of special educational provision required. However, although there is a good case for referring to children as having emotional and behavioural disorders, we think that the term “maladjusted” also remains a serviceable form of description and should be retained”. (Para 3.27). It is hard to know what caused the hesitation about dropping this category when every other disability was to be described in terms of the educational needs to which it gave rise. Was it some feeling of a mysterious, internalised condition that teachers were not competent to understand?
Whatever the background, in the resulting 1981 Education Act ‘maladjustment’ was dropped and ‘emotional and behavioural difficulties’ came in. Much of the debate at the time held the ‘medical model’ up to scorn. (Special educational placement till then could not take place without the child having been ‘deemed maladjusted’ by a doctor; not a situation pleasing to the developing profession of educational psychology). Moreover, with more sensitivity to children’s needs and less to professional pecking order, regarding maladjustment as an ‘in-child’ condition diverted attention from the contributory circumstances and from what could be done to change them.
Behaviour modification was becoming popular with educational psychologists and with specialist teachers. Roughly speaking, this says that all we can observe and measure is the behaviour, so that is what we will work with. This has the benefit of showing that there is a great deal that teachers can do to change the child’s behaviour, which is good for teachers’ confidence, central to the management of children in difficulties. But behaviourists often went further. (In its origins, behaviourism was mainly a reaction to the ‘armchair psychologists’ at the turn of the last century who made extensive and in the end sterile attempts to study what was going on in the mind). It is an easy step from saying that if all that we can work with is behaviour, what cannot be seen does not exist. This view is, of course, diametrically opposed to that of the psychodynamic schools, Freudian and others, which said that what really mattered was the inbuilt structure of the child’s inner world not the outer circumstances. Ideological battles raged.
Circular 9/94
As part of the wide ranging reform of education, the DfEE in 1994 published the Pupils with Problems pack which included The Education of Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. (4) This has been the foundation of much subsequent policy making, and, on re-reading, still impresses as comprehensive, highly intelligent and well–written, setting out most of the parameters that need to be considered.
We have to declare an interest; our Executive did a hard day’s work with the DfEE official who drafted much of the paper. He was new to ‘EBD’ and, seeking clarity of definition, thought that if we looked at all the behaviours that showed disturbance, listed and counted them, we could get a score that would separate those with EBD from the rest. We understood the desire for precision but said that if the question ‘How often does s/he burn down the school?’ were included, a child might have a low score yet clearly be in need of some special treatment. The point was taken and that attempt at precision abandoned.
What the Circular says in its summary is: ‘children with EBD are on a continuum. Their problems are clearer and greater than sporadic naughtiness or moodiness and yet not so great as to be classed as mental illness…EBD may show through withdrawn, depressive, aggressive or self-injurious tendencies. There may be one or many causes. … Whether the child is judged to have EBD will depend on the nature, frequency, persistence, severity, abnormality or cumulative effect of the behaviour compared with normal expectations for a child of the age concerned……..The difficulties are genuine. But EBD is often engendered or worsened by the environment. (p.4). (This recognition of the contribution of social circumstances is already explicit in practice in Scotland where our group of children are referred to as having social, emotional and behavioural difficulties’.)
The circular (paras 1-9) then discusses at length the issues summarised, in terms that this Association thought admirable. So do we need to change?
Agreeing on a definition
Why do we need agreement on what is ‘EBD’? And what has changed since 1994? First, policy papers matter. They have legal implications; for instance, they govern children’s rights to an appropriate education. They also shape practice in LEAs. Perhaps most of all they matter because they influence the ethos of schools. This since Rutter’s Fifteen Thousand Hours in 1979 (5) and the Elton Report Discipline in Schools in 1989 (6) has been widely acknowledged to be central to the good educational progress of children. The ethos of the school will significantly influence the proportion of its pupils who come to be regarded as having ‘EBD’. This holds true today, as the recent Birmingham research demonstrates. (7)
What’s new since 1994?
In the last few years, there has been a significant growth in the understanding of what in the child lies behind the behaviour. Most of us who work with children with EBD have for a generation accepted that early childhood experiences are centrally relevant to later development. Highly influential in this, of course, was John Bowlby’s work from which much research has flowed. His early work on parent-child bonding made it possible to formulate testable hypotheses on the links between early relationships and later emotional, social and intellectual development. Because Bowlby started out as a Freudian he was and still is suspect in many quarters, since Freudian insights are regarded by many as unscientific (and therefore worthless) because they are for the most part untestable. Bowlby was indeed in analysis with Melanie Klein, a powerful figure in the Freudian movement in her time if somewhat dethroned by now. She maintained that what happened in children’s psychological development was essentially to do with the unfolding of the intense and innately laid down relationships of mother and child, the wider social setting being little considered. Bowlby’s growing insistence on the centrality of the quality of the earliest relationships and the social circumstances in which they took place was at odds with this view and led to a rift with Klein and with many other Freudians.
Attachment theory
By now there is a considerable body of experimental work on what has come to be called attachment theory.(8) This throws light on the growth of the self concept which is internalised from early relationships and which then significantly influences later emotional, social and intellectual development. There are now scales which can delineate the attachment experiences of adult and their effects, amongst other things, on parenting attitudes. Damage can be shown to be trans-generational, which is no surprise to those of us working with children with EBD and their families.
Selected response from:

Meturgan
Hungary
Local time: 18:42
Grading comment
This exactly explains what I was looking for. Thank you very much.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



Summary of answers provided
5 +13Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties „EBD”
Meturgan
4 +3difficult
Ann C Sherwin
4 +1hard-to-raise children
Robert Kleemaier
4at-risk children and youngsters
Kim Metzger
3 +1problem children
writeaway
4problematic
Jo Mayr
3requiring special education or just 'special ed' as an adjective
Protradit


  

Answers


15 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
at-risk children and youngsters


Explanation:
Here's another possibility. These are students who are "at risk" of failing in school.
--
ISSUE: Students identified as being at risk of educational failure often receive a watered-down curriculum that emphasizes the acquisition of basic academic skills. All students--especially those at risk--need to be engaged in interesting and challenging learning that goes beyond basic proficiencies. One of the best ways to ensure meaningful, engaged learning for all students is by developing whole-school programs in which classroom teachers, specialists, administrators, and support staff collaborate to provide improved schoolwide instruction. Supportive instruction within the regular classroom can be provided for those students who need additional help in meeting high academic standards. Strategies for promoting learning for at-risk students can be enhanced by appropriate assessment, ongoing professional development, and parental involvement.

http://www.proteacher.com/cgi-bin/outsidesite.cgi?external=h...


Kim Metzger
Mexico
Local time: 10:42
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 64

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  writeaway: this could be one of the problems-but without more context, I find it a bit too specific (could also included emotionally disturbed kids, autistic... etc. )
2 mins
  -> Très vrai!
neutral  Robert Kleemaier: Kim, I'm going 'neutral' here on this one, 'cause 'at-risk' doesn't necessarily involve being difficult to raise, does it? It's the 'erziehbar' that I'm missing in your solution, i.e. I'm not sure the translation adequately reflects the meaning. RSVP.
5 mins
  -> Very true, you two! The long solution would have to be "children at risk of educational failure," I suppose.
neutral  msherms: At-risk is used but these kids are at risk of later engaging in criminal activity or taking drugs, etc. It is a great term depending on the context, but doesn't necessarily match schwer erziehbar in my opinion
11 hrs
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)

16 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 3/5Answerer confidence 3/5 peer agreement (net): +1
problem children


Explanation:
was my initial reaction and is confirmed by Langenscheidt (to my surprise). It is literally children who are difficult to raise. Very vague since no indication of what the prob(s) is/are.

writeaway
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 8

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Schwabamädle
2 mins
agree  Johanna Timm, PhD: this or 'difficult' children: the text does not go into a detailed diagnosis
4 hrs
disagree  Francis Lee (X): There are several more politically correct alternatives to "problem child", e.g. "children with behavioral difficulties" as suggested elsewhere
1 day 8 hrs
  -> There may well be a better answer but I don't see the term 'problem children as being politically incorrect'.
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)

17 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
hard-to-raise children


Explanation:
The Dutch have a similar term (moeilijk opvoedbare kinderen, MOK) which can be rendered this way. Plenty of Web references on Google by typing in "hard-to-raise children". This is building on Ann's answer, too. Cheers, Rob.

Robert Kleemaier
Canada
Local time: 09:42
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Ellen Zittinger
2 hrs
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)

19 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
problematic


Explanation:
another option

Jo Mayr
Germany
Local time: 18:42
Native speaker of: Native in GermanGerman
PRO pts in category: 4
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)

28 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 3/5Answerer confidence 3/5
requiring special education or just 'special ed' as an adjective


Explanation:
or just with learning disabilities 'LD' (lernbehinderte) is widely used too. This does include those types of emotional and physical problems that lead to the same situation with children and adolescents.

"Difficult" is a good choice but some sociologists feel that the term carries negative connotations -- especially without a qualifier indicating 'education' -- that children in this category do not deserve and only serves to contribute to the children's own sense of inferiority.

Protradit
Local time: 09:42
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  msherms: Special ed usually entails that the child has learning difficulties, whereas, as far as I know, schwer erziehbar indicate behavioural problems. These two do not always go hand in hand.
10 hrs
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)

2 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +3
difficult


Explanation:
Collins give this

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 33 mins (2004-09-18 23:20:57 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Natalie, you asked me to resend. My proposed answer is simply \"difficult,\" which is the translation given in the HarperCollins German Unabridged Dictionary. (Sorry I failed to put a period at the end of my explanation and to give the full name of the dictionary.)

Ann C Sherwin
Local time: 12:42
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  swisstell: yes "short and sweet"
1 min
agree  Johanna Timm, PhD: would be my first choice- leaves enough room for interpretation; after all. the author does not mention specific conditions like ADD etc
4 hrs
agree  Eva Scherz: this sounds good, the other solutions are too complicated and not even better
5 hrs
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)

39 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 5/5 peer agreement (net): +13
Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties „EBD”


Explanation:

Robert Laslett’s book Changing Perceptions of Maladjusted Children (1), was essential reading when it was published in 1982. It was re-issued in 1998 as Changing Perceptions: emotional and behavioural difficulties since 1945 (2) and covers the field authoritatively.
From 1944 to 1994
The recognition in the 1944 Education Act of ‘maladjustment’ as an educational handicap was regarded as a great step forward, giving children considered to have this condition the right to an appropriate education, and leading to the setting up of much special provision. In 1978, the important Warnock Report (3), reviewing the ‘education of handicapped children and young people’, shifted the focus from the ‘handicap’ itself to the ‘special educational needs’ to which it gave rise. Untypically, the Report dithered about giving up ‘maladjustment’. ‘The term...is ..open to objection on the grounds that it can stigmatise a child unnecessarily: in addition, it can be criticised (because) the description is meaningless without details of the child’s circumstances. Worst of all it suggests a permanent condition and fails to give any indication of the type of special educational provision required. However, although there is a good case for referring to children as having emotional and behavioural disorders, we think that the term “maladjusted” also remains a serviceable form of description and should be retained”. (Para 3.27). It is hard to know what caused the hesitation about dropping this category when every other disability was to be described in terms of the educational needs to which it gave rise. Was it some feeling of a mysterious, internalised condition that teachers were not competent to understand?
Whatever the background, in the resulting 1981 Education Act ‘maladjustment’ was dropped and ‘emotional and behavioural difficulties’ came in. Much of the debate at the time held the ‘medical model’ up to scorn. (Special educational placement till then could not take place without the child having been ‘deemed maladjusted’ by a doctor; not a situation pleasing to the developing profession of educational psychology). Moreover, with more sensitivity to children’s needs and less to professional pecking order, regarding maladjustment as an ‘in-child’ condition diverted attention from the contributory circumstances and from what could be done to change them.
Behaviour modification was becoming popular with educational psychologists and with specialist teachers. Roughly speaking, this says that all we can observe and measure is the behaviour, so that is what we will work with. This has the benefit of showing that there is a great deal that teachers can do to change the child’s behaviour, which is good for teachers’ confidence, central to the management of children in difficulties. But behaviourists often went further. (In its origins, behaviourism was mainly a reaction to the ‘armchair psychologists’ at the turn of the last century who made extensive and in the end sterile attempts to study what was going on in the mind). It is an easy step from saying that if all that we can work with is behaviour, what cannot be seen does not exist. This view is, of course, diametrically opposed to that of the psychodynamic schools, Freudian and others, which said that what really mattered was the inbuilt structure of the child’s inner world not the outer circumstances. Ideological battles raged.
Circular 9/94
As part of the wide ranging reform of education, the DfEE in 1994 published the Pupils with Problems pack which included The Education of Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. (4) This has been the foundation of much subsequent policy making, and, on re-reading, still impresses as comprehensive, highly intelligent and well–written, setting out most of the parameters that need to be considered.
We have to declare an interest; our Executive did a hard day’s work with the DfEE official who drafted much of the paper. He was new to ‘EBD’ and, seeking clarity of definition, thought that if we looked at all the behaviours that showed disturbance, listed and counted them, we could get a score that would separate those with EBD from the rest. We understood the desire for precision but said that if the question ‘How often does s/he burn down the school?’ were included, a child might have a low score yet clearly be in need of some special treatment. The point was taken and that attempt at precision abandoned.
What the Circular says in its summary is: ‘children with EBD are on a continuum. Their problems are clearer and greater than sporadic naughtiness or moodiness and yet not so great as to be classed as mental illness…EBD may show through withdrawn, depressive, aggressive or self-injurious tendencies. There may be one or many causes. … Whether the child is judged to have EBD will depend on the nature, frequency, persistence, severity, abnormality or cumulative effect of the behaviour compared with normal expectations for a child of the age concerned……..The difficulties are genuine. But EBD is often engendered or worsened by the environment. (p.4). (This recognition of the contribution of social circumstances is already explicit in practice in Scotland where our group of children are referred to as having social, emotional and behavioural difficulties’.)
The circular (paras 1-9) then discusses at length the issues summarised, in terms that this Association thought admirable. So do we need to change?
Agreeing on a definition
Why do we need agreement on what is ‘EBD’? And what has changed since 1994? First, policy papers matter. They have legal implications; for instance, they govern children’s rights to an appropriate education. They also shape practice in LEAs. Perhaps most of all they matter because they influence the ethos of schools. This since Rutter’s Fifteen Thousand Hours in 1979 (5) and the Elton Report Discipline in Schools in 1989 (6) has been widely acknowledged to be central to the good educational progress of children. The ethos of the school will significantly influence the proportion of its pupils who come to be regarded as having ‘EBD’. This holds true today, as the recent Birmingham research demonstrates. (7)
What’s new since 1994?
In the last few years, there has been a significant growth in the understanding of what in the child lies behind the behaviour. Most of us who work with children with EBD have for a generation accepted that early childhood experiences are centrally relevant to later development. Highly influential in this, of course, was John Bowlby’s work from which much research has flowed. His early work on parent-child bonding made it possible to formulate testable hypotheses on the links between early relationships and later emotional, social and intellectual development. Because Bowlby started out as a Freudian he was and still is suspect in many quarters, since Freudian insights are regarded by many as unscientific (and therefore worthless) because they are for the most part untestable. Bowlby was indeed in analysis with Melanie Klein, a powerful figure in the Freudian movement in her time if somewhat dethroned by now. She maintained that what happened in children’s psychological development was essentially to do with the unfolding of the intense and innately laid down relationships of mother and child, the wider social setting being little considered. Bowlby’s growing insistence on the centrality of the quality of the earliest relationships and the social circumstances in which they took place was at odds with this view and led to a rift with Klein and with many other Freudians.
Attachment theory
By now there is a considerable body of experimental work on what has come to be called attachment theory.(8) This throws light on the growth of the self concept which is internalised from early relationships and which then significantly influences later emotional, social and intellectual development. There are now scales which can delineate the attachment experiences of adult and their effects, amongst other things, on parenting attitudes. Damage can be shown to be trans-generational, which is no surprise to those of us working with children with EBD and their families.



    Reference: http://www.awcebd.co.uk/resources/whatisebd.htm
Meturgan
Hungary
Local time: 18:42
PRO pts in category: 4
Grading comment
This exactly explains what I was looking for. Thank you very much.

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  margarete: my mom worked with kids like that. This is the modern term
30 mins
agree  Dr.G.MD (X)
53 mins
agree  TRanslate_me: I think this fits the context of the sentence better
2 hrs
agree  Alfa Trans (X)
6 hrs
agree  Deborah Shannon: I would go with this because solutions like 'problem' or 'difficult', while neat, are using the problem to label the child. AFAIK good practice is to put the person first and then the problem, as in 'children with ... difficulties'
8 hrs
agree  KirstyMacC (X): term of art. Used to be a 'pavillion' for them in a Vienna hospital.
9 hrs
agree  shineda
10 hrs
agree  msherms: yes!
10 hrs
agree  Frosty
10 hrs
agree  John Speese: I prefer this too, as difficult and problem, although still used, do tend to label a child.
13 hrs
agree  Milena Sahakian
14 hrs
agree  roneill: with Deborah. Here is a US reference: http://www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_sebd.html
18 hrs
agree  Lori Dendy-Molz
19 hrs
Login to enter a peer comment (or grade)



Login or register (free and only takes a few minutes) to participate in this question.

You will also have access to many other tools and opportunities designed for those who have language-related jobs (or are passionate about them). Participation is free and the site has a strict confidentiality policy.

Return to KudoZ list

KudoZ™ translation help

The KudoZ network provides a framework for translators and others to assist each other with translations or explanations of terms and short phrases.

See also:
ProZ.com term search
Search millions of term translations
Close search
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search