Because the social adaptation - this is the inclusion of an individual or group in the social environment, adapting them to the appropriate rules, system of norms and values, practices and culture of the organization, then social maladjustment - This disruption of the process of social development of the individual. Signs of child and adolescent social maladjustment : violation of moral and legal norms, asocial forms of behavior and deformation of the system of value orientations, loss of social ties with family and school, a sharp deterioration in neuropsychic health, early teenage alcoholism, suicidal tendencies.
The research literature lists several factors influencing the process of maladaptation of adolescents: heredity (psychophysical, social), psychological and pedagogical factor (defects in school and family education), social factor (social and socio-economic conditions in society), social activities the individual himself, i.e. an active and selective attitude towards the norms and values of one’s environment, its impact, as well as personal value orientations and the ability to self-regulate one’s environment 2.
In the conditions of school, family, and public education, certain forms of children's maladjustment are perceived by teachers and parents as “difficulties in education.” “Difficulty in education, characterized by social deviations and social maladjustment, is accompanied by deformation of social ties and alienation of adolescents from the main institutions of socialization and, above all, family and school.”
IN in this case Difficulty in education manifests itself during crisis periods of psychophysiological development, which are characterized by qualitatively new psychological formations, which requires a restructuring of the nature of relationships between adults, parents, educators, teachers with a child, teenager, as well as changes in the entire system of educational measures and influences, the social situation of development.
L. S. Vygotsky, one of the first in Russian psychology to develop the problem of periodization mental development, identified crises of newborn, one year, three, seven, thirteen years. The crisis of the newborn is associated with a change in the social and biological environment, the crisis of one year - with the child’s mastering upright walking, three years - with mastering speech, seven years - with a change in the social situation of development (entry to school) and thirteen years - the crisis of adolescence age. The crisis of adolescence is one of the most difficult that a child experiences in the process of his mental development. During this period of transition from childhood to adulthood, as noted above, serious changes occur both in the body, psyche, and in the nature of the teenager’s relationships with others, adults and peers.
Depending on the nature, character and degree of maladjustment, we can distinguish pathogenic, psychosocial and social maladaptation of children and adolescents.
Pathogenic maladjustment is caused by deviations, pathologies of mental development and neuropsychiatric diseases, which are based on functional-organic lesions of the central nervous system. In turn, pathogenic disadaptation in the degree and depth of its manifestation can be stable, chronic (psychosis, psychopathy, organic brain damage, mental retardation, analyzer defects, which are based on serious organic damage).
There is also the so-called psychogenic maladjustment (phobias, obsessive bad habits, enuresis, etc.), which can be caused by an unfavorable social, school, or family situation. According to experts, 15-20% of school-age children suffer from some form of psychogenic maladaptation and need comprehensive medical and pedagogical assistance.
In total, according to research by A. I. Zakharov , up to 42% of children preschool age, attending kindergartens, suffer from one or another psychosomatic problems and need the help of pediatricians, neuropsychiatrists and psychotherapists. The lack of timely assistance leads to deeper and more serious forms of social maladaptation, to the consolidation of stable psychopathic and pathopsychological manifestations. 2
In solving this problem, it is important preventive measures, which are measures of a medical-pedagogical, health-improving and rehabilitation nature, which should be carried out both in general educational institutions (kindergartens, schools) and in special medical and educational rehabilitation institutions. 3
Psychosocial maladjustment associated with gender and age and individually - psychological characteristics child, teenager, which determine their certain non-standard, difficult to educate, requiring an individual pedagogical approach and, in some cases, special psychological and pedagogical correctional programs, which can be implemented in the conditions of general education educational institutions.
Stable forms of psychosocial maladaptation include character accentuations, which are expressed in a noticeable specific originality of the character of a child or adolescent, require an individual pedagogical approach in the family, school, and in some cases psychotherapeutic and psychocorrectional programs, various unfavorable and individual psychological features of the emotional-volitional, motivational-cognitive sphere, including such defects as decreased empathy, low cognitive activity, a sharp contrast in the sphere of cognitive activity, defects of the volitional sphere (lack of will, pliability to the influence of others, impulsiveness, disinhibition, unjustified stubbornness, etc. ).
Temporary unstable forms of psychosocial maladjustment include, first of all, psychophysiological and age-sex characteristics of individual crisis periods in the development of a child and adolescent.
Social maladjustment manifests itself in violations of moral and legal norms, in asocial forms of behavior and deformation of the internal regulation system, referent and value orientations, and social attitudes.
In fact, with social maladjustment we are talking about a violation of the process of social development, socialization of the individual, when there is a violation of both the functional and substantive aspects of socialization. At the same time, socialization disorders can be caused by both direct desocializing influences, when the immediate environment demonstrates patterns of asocial, antisocial behavior, views, attitudes, and indirect desocializing influences, when there is a decrease in the referent significance of the leading institutions of socialization, which for the student, in particular, are family, school.
Highlight two stages of social maladjustment in school-age children: pedagogically neglected and socially neglected students.
The first stage of maladaptation is represented by pedagogically neglected students. Both at the level of content and functional aspects of socialization, the main deformations are associated with the school educational process, attitude towards educational activities, teachers, norms of school life and school routine.
Pedagogical neglect is characterized by a chronic lag in a number of subjects of the school curriculum, resistance to pedagogical influences, insolence with teachers, a negative attitude towards learning, social maladaptation and various antisocial manifestations (foul language, smoking, hooliganism, skipping lessons, conflictual relationships with teachers and classmates).
At the same time, despite the lag in their studies, a significant part of pedagogically neglected students are hard-working, have fairly clear professional intentions, possess various work skills, strive to obtain a working profession, to economic independence, which can serve as a support in their re-education. Overcoming the educational difficulties of pedagogically neglected students requires teachers and educators to establish trusting relationships with them, control and assistance in educational activities; advance trust in school from teachers and classmates; organizing leisure time, expanding the sphere of interests; reliance on the best qualities of character; formation of professional plans and life aspirations; instilling skills of self-analysis and self-education; assistance in improving the conditions of family education.
The second stage is socially neglected students. They not only study poorly, have a chronic lag in the subjects of the curriculum and resist pedagogical influences, but, unlike the pedagogically neglected, they are not professionally oriented, they have not developed useful skills and abilities, and their sphere of interests is narrowed.
They are characterized by deep alienation from family and school, their formation and social development is mainly under the influence of asocial, criminal teenage groups, the assimilation of group norms and values leads to deformation of consciousness, value orientations and social attitudes of minors. Socially neglected adolescents are characterized by various serious social deviations (vagrancy, drug addiction, drunkenness, alcoholism, delinquency, immoral behavior, etc.).
In relationships of this kind of difficult-to-educate teenagers, special measures are needed social support and resocialization, which should be carried out by special preventive services and resocialization centers. In cases where special educational and preventive influences are insufficient, adolescents with a high degree of social neglect, who regularly commit offenses and other gross social deviations, are placed in special closed educational institutions for re-education.
The following are distinguished: main causes of social maladjustment minors:
1. Family dysfunction.
There are many possible reasons that lead to family dysfunction, and all of them inevitably affect the children.
- · Economic reasons: a large number of families have a standard of living below the poverty line due to the excessive dependency burden per working member. Need deforms everything
- · the system of family functions, curtails their implementation to complete inaction.
- · Antisocial reasons: alcoholism or drug addiction of the family or one of its members, illegal behavior, prostitution, low cultural level. As a rule, children from such families are more likely than others to end up in criminal companies.
- · Psychological reasons: cruelty, aggressiveness, conflict, jealousy, adultery, selfishness, greed, imbalance of character.
- · Medical reasons: chronic infectious (for example, tuberculosis) and sexually transmitted diseases, mental and sexual deviations, impotence.
- · Single-parent families: The number of single mothers and their children is growing. According to the State Statistics Committee, 500-600 thousand marriages break up every year, resulting in an increase in children from “at-risk families” 1 .
Currently, an increasing number of families need the help of specialist psychologists and psychotherapists. But low level psychological and pedagogical literacy makes the services of psychologists inaccessible to most families. In every dysfunctional family, during its existence, strict protective and compensatory mechanisms are formed, aimed at maintaining the existing balance.
Family dysfunction usually affects all areas of a child’s life: school performance declines, street company becomes a substitute for parental authority, and the child receives recognition in it. All this, in turn, leads to a violation of the personal sphere, and sometimes to mental disorders. And then there are natural consequences: the use of psychoactive substances, crime, which only becomes a reason for attention from government agencies.
2. Personal characteristics of the child.
The child’s personal characteristics themselves often become the cause of social maladjustment. Thus, even a disabled child can be completely socially adapted, provided that parents and the social environment have a competent attitude towards his status. But quite often, the child’s character traits, temperament, and restlessness cause inappropriate reactions in parents. The idea of a “good” child as comfortable, obedient collides with the characteristics of a real child that do not correspond to this idea. The alteration begins, the “fitting” of the child to the general “standard”, the struggle against his individuality. The result of this struggle may vary, but disruption of family functioning is inevitable. A child, feeling rejection, may give up, and the conflict will be transferred inside him, may leave the family and find recognition in another environment, in other forms. Most often, the aggravation of such contradictions occurs in adolescence, when the child has a real opportunity to find other forms of self-realization, when his self-awareness grows, when peers become authorities, and the opinion of adults ceases to be the only correct one.
Parents in such families, under certain conditions, could successfully fulfill their parental duty. But the deviation of the real situation from their ideas and expectations, and the negativity to accept the child as he is, leads to conflict and, often, dysfunction of the family as a whole.
What has been said in relation to the family often turns out to be true when teaching a “non-standard” child at school. Unfortunately, teachers are not always ready to take into account individual characteristics student. This circumstance is one of the reasons for another phenomenon - school maladjustment.
3. School factor.
It's no secret that schools are going through difficult times these days. Overcrowded classes, a lack of specialists, and often their low professional level, lead to an increase in the number of conflicts between teachers and students. The school has practically abandoned its educational function and most often uses repressive measures, pursuing the goal of maintaining discipline by any means. available means, of which there are not very many left. Often, a student’s performance in a subject is directly dependent on the teacher’s attitude towards him. Unscrupulousness, elementary rudeness and bias of teachers, their psychological and pedagogical helplessness, and many other large and small mistakes become the cause of family conflicts, contribute to the emergence of alienation and the development of family dysfunction.
Pupils of institutions social protection attend a nearby school, regular classes. Having large gaps in knowledge and low social status in the class, they try to skip classes, which is the cause of conflict between the school and the institution, and the cause of escapes 1 .
4. Impact of an asocial informal environment.
This factor is often attributed to an inappropriately large influence on minors. And this can be understood - “informals” of various directions, simply “parties” of idle youth, stand out noticeably on the streets. But not all groups are truly antisocial.
Being under the influence of groups, the number of family conflicts between a teenager and his parents increases as a result of value discrepancies.
Many parents are unable to accept the existence of values other than those that guided their lives. As a result, they reject not only the really low, tasteless, vulgar, but also the positive component of their children’s lives: freedom of self-expression, self-realization, personal value, etc. The teenager’s reaction to this is to strive for everything that is rejected by his parents, including negative things. At the same time, leaving for “informals” is usually only a consequence of the relationships that have developed in the family.
5. Underdevelopment of the system for preventing deviant behavior of children and adolescents in the family and school, late detection of neglect and delinquency of children and adolescents.
Social protection institutions are indeed increasingly receiving children and adolescents in socially neglected form, using toxic substances, alcohol, with pathologies in intellectual development, with persistent forms of deviant behavior.
Socially neglected children and adolescents with deviant behavior most often do not adapt to institutional settings. They force the weaker to earn money, beg, drink alcohol, take toxic substances, and strive to dominate among children.
Insufficient qualifications of specialists working with children, the inability to find an approach to them lead to the escape of minors, the desire of older children to impose a criminal culture of relations in the children's team is not monitored or is poorly suppressed.
Thus, to prevent maladjustment in children and adolescents, it is necessary to radically change educational work with them in all those areas in which the formation of personality and socialization of children and adolescents is carried out: family, school, leisure, employment, health. And we need to start with the family, since this is where the main values and life orientation are laid.
Since social adaptation is the inclusion of an individual or group in the social environment, their adaptation to the appropriate rules, system of norms and values, practices and culture of the organization, then social maladaptation of children and adolescents is a violation of the process of social development and socialization of the individual.
Signs of social maladjustment are:
§ Violation of moral and legal norms;
§ Asocial forms of behavior and deformations of the system of value orientations;
§ Loss of social ties with family, school;
§ Sharp deterioration in neuropsychic health;
§ Increase in early teenage alcoholism;
§ Suicidal tendencies.
Among many unfavorable factors, which characterize the current situation of families that belong to the “high-risk group” and produce the largest number of maladjusted children, it should be noted socio-demographic, psychological and criminal, contributing to the emergence of social deviations in the behavior of children and the growth of their maladjustment.
Parental unemployment becomes an additional risk factor. In many regions of Russia, unemployed women with children make up more than 50% of the total number of unemployed. About 60,000 single mothers are looking for work in the labor market. Social work technologies. Textbook. M., 2001. p.145..
In addition to a dysfunctional family, a powerful factor in child neglect, undoubtedly, is the violation of children’s rights in the field of education, health, in obtaining a profession and housing, and the non-prompt resolution by guardianship and trusteeship authorities of issues related to the life management, upbringing and future fate of children left without parental care. In recent years, Another category of minors belonging to the “high-risk group” are children of refugees and internally displaced persons who appear due to the collapse of the USSR and numerous armed conflicts.
Maladjustment is closely related to the deterioration of children's mental health. Psychological pathology among socially maladjusted minors is quite large and reaches 95% Social work technology. Textbook. M., 2001. p. 146.
There is a growing trend in the number of adolescents hospitalized due to drug addiction. Neglected children with various pathologies and mental illnesses in most cases require serious medical care along with social rehabilitation.
In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the number of sexually transmitted diseases among children, especially among socially maladjusted children and adolescents, many of whom become victims of sexual abuse. According to social services, only 75% of those who have suffered violence contact law enforcement agencies, but the real number of cases of sexual violence is tens of times higher than statistical data, since many assaults remain a “secret” of children. They cripple their psyche, negatively affect the further development of the individual, and lead to an all-consuming thought about the futility of life. Suicide among children remains a serious social problem. Its causes are family (neglect or divorce of parents, death of one of them), personal (loneliness, disability, failure) and economic problems. Children who did not receive support in difficult times pass away from life. life situation, left alone with their troubles, grievances, problems, faced with violence and perverted cruelty. Minors whose parents are deprived parental rights, for a long time (sometimes several years) are forced to live in an extremely dysfunctional family environment, since the problem of their living arrangements is solved by the guardianship and trusteeship authorities extremely slowly. This category of children is most prone to vagrancy and is at risk of becoming a victim of violence and crime or being involved in criminal activity.
Neglect among adolescents is observed against the background of drunkenness, drug addiction, and unemployment among both parents and minors themselves.
One of the manifestations of social maladjustment in children and adolescents is substance abuse. Minors who frequently use alcohol, drugs and intoxicants experience serious learning difficulties. They are characterized by low academic performance and systematic absences from classes; many remain for the second year or even voluntarily stop studying and refuse to attend school or other educational institutions. Among the reasons influencing the spread of alcohol, narcotic and substance abuse among teenagers, not the least takes their availability.
Depending on the “nature” of the character and degree of maladjustment, pathogenic, psychosocial and social maladjustment of children and adolescents can be distinguished.
Pathogenic maladaptation is caused by deviations, pathologies of mental development and neuropsychiatric diseases, which are based on functional and organic lesions of the central nervous system. In turn, pathogenic maladaptation in the degree and depth of its manifestation can be stable, chronic (psychosis, psychopathy, organic brain damage, mental retardation). There is also the so-called psychogenic maladjustment (phobias, obsessive bad habits), which can be caused by an unfavorable social, school, or family situation. According to experts, 15 - 20% of school-age children suffer from some form of psychogenic maladaptation and need comprehensive medical and pedagogical assistance (V. E. Kagan). In total, according to research by A.I. Zakharov, up to 42% of preschool children attending kindergartens suffer from one or another psychosomatic problems and need the help of pediatricians, psychoneurologists and psychotherapists. Ibid. With. 12. . The lack of timely assistance leads to deeper and more serious forms of social maladaptation, to the consolidation of stable psychopathic and pathopsychological manifestations.
Among the forms of pathogenic maladaptation, the problems of mental retardation and social adaptation of mentally retarded children stand out separately. As we have already noted, oligophrenics do not have a fatal predisposition to crime. With methods of training and education that are adequate to their mental development, they are able to assimilate certain social programs, obtain simple professions, work and, to the best of their ability, be useful members of society. However, the mental disability of these children certainly complicates their social adaptation and requires special rehabilitation socio-pedagogical conditions.
Psychosocial disadaptation is associated with the age-gender and individual psychological characteristics of a child and adolescent, which determine their certain non-standardism and difficulty in educating. Psychosocial maladaptation requires an individual pedagogical approach and, in some cases, special psychological and pedagogical correctional programs that can be implemented in general educational institutions. By their nature and nature, various forms of psychosocial maladaptation can also be divided into stable and temporary.
Stable forms of psychosocial maladaptation include character accentuations, defined as an extreme manifestation of the norm, after which psychopathic manifestations begin.
Temporary unstable forms of psychosocial maladjustment include, first of all, psychophysiological, gender and age characteristics of individual crisis periods in the development of a child, adolescent,
In this case, maladaptation manifests itself during crisis periods of psychophysiological development, which are characterized by qualitatively new psychological formations, which requires a restructuring of the nature of relationships between adults, parents, educators, teachers with a child, teenager, as well as changes in the entire system of educational measures and influences, the social situation of development. L. S. Vygotsky, one of the first in Russian psychology to develop the problem of periodization of mental development, identified the crises of newborn, one year, three, seven, thirteen years. The newborn crisis is associated with a change in the social and biological environment, the crisis of one year - with the child’s mastering upright walking, three years - with mastery of speech, seven years - with a change in the social situation of development (entry to school) and thirteen years - the crisis of adolescence. The crisis of adolescence is one of the most “difficult” experiences a child experiences in the process of his mental development. During this period of transition from childhood to adulthood, as noted above, serious changes occur both in the body, “psyche” and in the nature of the teenager’s relationships with others, adults and peers Abramov G.S. Age-related psychology. Ekaterinburg. 2002. p.78..
However, the crisis, the well-known difficulty of education of adolescence, as well as the difficulty of education of other age-related crisis periods of development, can be overcome if the educational process, educational efforts, the nature of relationships with teachers and parents are built taking into account the age-related psychophysiological patterns of development of the child and adolescent.
Temporary psychosocial disadaptation can be caused by certain mental states provoked by various psychotraumatic circumstances (conflict with parents, friends, teachers, emotional uncontrollable state caused by the first youthful love, experiencing marital discord in parental relationships, etc.). All these conditions require a tactful, understanding attitude from teachers and psychological support from practical psychologists.
Social maladaptation manifests itself in violations of moral and legal norms, in asocial forms of behavior and deformation of the system of internal regulation, reference and value orientations, and social attitudes. In fact, with social maladjustment we are talking about a violation of the process of social development, socialization of the individual, when there is a violation of both the functional and substantive aspects of socialization. Socially neglected adolescents are characterized by serious various social deviations (vagrancy, drug addiction, drunkenness, alcoholism, delinquency, immoral behavior, etc.). In relationships of this kind of difficult-to-educate teenagers, special measures of social support are needed, which we will talk about in more detail later.
So, there are two circumstances that are the most important prerequisites for maladjustment:
1. family factor. For a child who is in the most early age, parents' drunkenness, their indifference, bordering on cruelty, are factors contributing to his pathological development. For children of a later age, an unfavorable family environment is only an aggravating, and not at all a necessary precondition for maladjustment;
2. congenital pathology: brain dysfunction expressed in a rather erased form, caused by birth or postpartum trauma, increased mental excitability of the parents themselves. Social work technologies. Textbook. M., 2001 p. 145..
Together with the first factor, they create those special conditions, burdened in comparison with normal conditions, in which mental deviations that contribute to maladaptation initially appear and are formed.
Already at an early age, such children demonstrate rapid fatigue, difficulties communicating in children's rooms. preschool institutions, difficulties in engaging in games and activities typical for their age. However, real difficulties arise for them, as a rule, after entering school. Firstly, they are poorly prepared and are able to catch up only if favorable conditions are created for them, so it is usually difficult for them to learn. Secondly, they get tired faster than others, become fed up with activity, are more irritable, and are not capable of long-term and systematic stress.
And yet it would be blunder that early inability to educate and a weakened nervous system, and therefore initial maladaptation with its deviations in behavior, are the direct causes of the asocial orientation of the individual. It is necessary to consider the child’s personality throughout the entire path of formation of the phenomenon of maladjustment and at the same time strictly separate the physiological conditions and the actual psychological process that takes place within this framework. The following points can be noted as the most significant.
As the requirements and school programs become more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult for such Dey to achieve success due to these violations. They are usually unable to concentrate their attention for a long time (15-20 minutes), so during the lesson they are distracted, answer inappropriately, irritate the teacher, and become objects of ridicule from their peers. Without the organizing and mobilizing help of adults (which parents in a dysfunctional family cannot provide them with), they are unable to overcome difficulties, endure accusations of inferiority, are subject to punishment (often very severe), and deprivation. The most important needs of a child at this age - approval, respect from others - are not satisfied, which creates deep internal discomfort in him.
In other words, mild or erased hereditary pathology combined with the lack of pedagogical and psychological assistance causes the child’s gradual alienation from society. This is also facilitated by an unfavorable family environment, drunkenness and parental cruelty.
As we move into adolescence, which involves the formation of new needs, the prevalence communicative activities, communication with peers, the need to know oneself, to assert oneself, there is a need to develop one’s own point of view on certain phenomena and events.
Of course, it would be a mistake to assume that a “difficult” teenager, due to his burdened mental development, is inclined to choose only “bad” and “bad” as new needs. However, as a rule, they choose a group of friends, in communication with whom (unlike school or family) they can assert themselves, gain a certain status, and feel (finally, self-respect).
As the values of such a group begin to dominate in a teenager, conflicts with teachers, parents, and neighbors become inevitable. Pedagogical illiteracy of parents who are convinced that the best remedy education - rude swearing and assault, and calling the local police officer, prevents the satisfaction of the true interests and emotional needs of the teenager.
The rapid formation of deviant behavior is explained by the lability and excitability characteristic of adolescents, which extremely accelerate the formation of the desire to live carefree, noisy, and fun. Addiction to alcohol and drugs, thoughtless participation in street fights compensate the teenager for all the infringements and oppression that he endures in everyday life.
However, participation in fights and the commission of other minor offenses, which become more and more habitual, inevitably begin to cause personality changes, which develop much faster in the group - the teenager tends to demonstrate these pathological changes long before their true appearance, following the requirements and codes of the group. This is how a delinquent personality develops (from the Latin delinquens - delinquent, criminal), a person who has not yet committed, but is ready to commit a major offense. In a teenager whose personality has not yet been formed, negative experiences cause genuine deviations and a tendency to commit crimes. At the developed stages of deviation and maladaptation, distortion and deep deformation of the personality of the delinquent are observed, which sinks to the most primitive state. Thus, maladaptation is not congenital and does not arise unexpectedly; its development is preceded by a number of stages that can be considered stages of the ontogenesis of negative psychological formations.
1. difficult-to-educate children who have a level of maladjustment close to the norm, which is due to their temperamental characteristics. The presence of mild brain dysfunction, impaired attention, insufficiency of age-related development, peculiarities of the socio-psychological and pedagogical situation of upbringing and development.
2. nervous children, incapable due to age immaturity emotional sphere independently cope with difficult experiences caused by their relationships with parents and other significant adults.
3. “difficult” teenagers who are unable to solve their problems in a socially acceptable way, characterized by internal conflicts, character accentuations, an unstable emotional-volitional sphere, personality changes that, under the influence of the family environment, upbringing, and immediate environment, become pronounced and irreversible over time.
4. teenagers are delinquents, constantly balancing on the edge of permitted and illegal behavior that is not consistent with socially acceptable ideas about good and evil Technologies of social work with children and adolescents. St. Petersburg, 2001. p. 175..
A large amount of data has been accumulated in domestic and foreign science, convincingly indicating that the formation of maladjustment is influenced by the following factors:
· neglect as a consequence of apparently unfavorable living conditions and upbringing, lack of attention to the child;
· deprivation as a result of the complete absence on the part of parents of a warm, close relationship with the child, necessary for his full development;
· frustration due to the fact that very often insurmountable difficulties prevent the satisfaction of the child’s vital needs;
· internal conflict that arises after the first disturbing factors, which determines the formation of a set of personal problems as obstacles to a normal perception of the world in the sphere of communication and activity, relationships with people Social work technologies. Textbook. M., 2001, p. 311.
We have listed several factors influencing the process of adolescent maladjustment, which indicate the need for social work with maladjusted adolescents. Let's consider the basic technologies of social work with maladjusted children and adolescents.
Today it is a fairly common concept that is used by researchers to denote the loss of the ability to organize successful and effective social contacts of a person with other people. Because of this demand for obtaining new information about this phenomenon, social maladaptation is recognized as a real phenomenon in the sociological, psychological and pedagogical fields. It is these areas that give different meanings to the concept.
Definition 1
So, social maladaptation is a term that researchers use to designate a person’s complete or partial loss of the ability to adapt to environmental conditions.
When a person experiences internal discomfort and loses adaptation skills, he cannot effectively interact with other people, which leads to isolation and the development of various mental illnesses and psychological disorders. At the same time, there are two ways in which a person’s behavior develops: either he deliberately avoids contacts due to fears, or he displays aggressive behavior towards others.
Social maladjustment has a number of characteristics. These include increased irritability, deliberate avoidance of contact with others, the desire to spend most of the time alone, without communicating even with family members. In addition, a person withdraws so much into himself that he is no longer able to understand another and accept his point of view, or listen to someone else’s opinion.
Note 1
Maladjustment can be diagnosed at the moment when a person ceases to notice the most important events and phenomena occurring in the world around him. In addition, he moves into a reality invented by himself, partially replacing relationships with people with it. In this case, he loses not only the opportunity for full communication, but also for his own personal growth, since, by withdrawing into himself, he loses all the ways to find inspiration, new experience and knowledge.
Types of social maladjustment
Disadaptation is an integrative phenomenon. This means that it can be divided into several types, depending on the degree of distribution and the complexity of diagnosis. For example, T.D. Molodtsova identifies the following types:
- Pathogenic type of social maladjustment;
- Psychosocial maladjustment;
- Social maladjustment.
A pathogenic type of maladjustment is defined not only as a process, but also as a result of various age-sex changes that an individual experiences. In addition, on this type maladaptation is influenced by personal characteristics, unfavorable manifestations of the emotional and volitional spheres, mental development and its features (or disadvantages).
If we talk about psychosocial maladaptation, it also includes characteristics of gender and age, disorders of the nervous system, and the manifestation of various fears, which are then formed in the form of phobias. To fight here, a real specialist is needed, since only he will allow a person to look deep inside himself, understand his fears and overcome them through therapy.
Social maladaptation manifests itself in several main types. Firstly, this is a violation of moral norms, a substitution of basic concepts about values and rules of behavior in society. secondly, antisocial forms of behavior, deviant behavior that harms not only the people around them, but also the deviant himself. Thirdly, this is a deformation of the individual’s internal regulation system, a distortion of the concepts of referent and value orientations. In addition, due to social maladaptation, social attitudes are deformed. The individual loses a sense of motivation to perform any activity and does not see the point in his further development and self-improvement.
Main forms of social maladjustment
Social maladjustment has several forms, which at the same time have a feature inherent in each: any type of maladaptive behavior or its form goes beyond the scope of normal behavior. In addition, there are also conditions that lead to the emergence of not only dangerous diseases, but also the desire to end one’s life (suicidal tendencies).
A number of works on psychology and social psychology describe the following forms of maladjustment:
- Reaction to anxiety. A person experiences discomfort on a psychological level, and its intensification occurs precisely in a state of increased anxiety. Everyone struggles with it in their own way: someone starts drinking alcohol or smoking, which temporarily relieves stress. But this is only an illusion, since alcohol intoxication leads to other negative consequences;
- A conscious feeling of compulsion is a so-called compulsive state. Despite the fact that a person may be aware of his problem, he feels that he simply must drink, starve, or abuse food, illegal drugs, or perform any certain actions. It is not easy for him to stop doing these actions because it becomes an addiction. In this case, only a specialist can help a person cope with a compulsive state.
Conflict behavior is also a form of social maladjustment. The lack of social connections and isolation leads to aggressive manifestations towards one’s family, acquaintances, colleagues or ordinary passers-by. Considering that today plays a big role in human life global network Internet, he can throw out his aggression on social networks, in comments and news. At the same time, he experiences impunity, because it is unlikely that anyone will look for a person from the Internet in real life. In this regard, he can threaten, extort money, persistently impose his point of view and suppress the will of other people. In this case, he again needs the help of a specialist in order to find the main reason for this behavior and eradicate it.
The process of socialization is the introduction of a child into society. This process is characterized by complexity, multifactoriality, multidirectionality and poor forecasting in the end. The socialization process can last a lifetime. One should not deny the impact of the innate qualities of the body on personal properties. After all, the formation of personality occurs only as a person is included in the surrounding society.
One of the prerequisites for the formation of personality is interaction with other subjects who transfer accumulated knowledge and life experience. This is accomplished not through simple mastery of social relations, but as a result of the complex interaction of social (external) and psychophysical (internal) developmental inclinations. And it represents the cohesion of socially typical traits and individually significant qualities. It follows from this that personality is socially conditioned and develops only in the process of life, in a change in the child’s attitude to the surrounding reality. From this we can conclude that the degree of socialization of an individual is determined by many components, which, when combined, form the overall structure of the influence of society on an individual. And the presence of certain defects in each of these components leads to the formation in the individual of social and psychological qualities that can lead the individual in specific circumstances to conflict situations with society.
Under the influence of socio-psychological conditions of the external environment and in the presence of internal factors, the child develops maladaptation, manifested in the form of abnormal - deviant behavior. Social maladaptation of adolescents arises from violations of normal socialization and is characterized by deformation of the referent and value orientations of adolescents, a decrease in the significance of the referent character and alienation, first of all, from the influence of teachers at school.
Depending on the degree of alienation and the depth of the resulting deformations of value and reference orientations, two phases of social maladjustment are distinguished. The first phase consists of pedagogical neglect and is characterized by alienation from school and loss of referent significance at school while maintaining a fairly high reference significance in the family. The second phase is more dangerous and is characterized by alienation from both school and family. The connection with the main institutions of socialization is lost. The assimilation of distorted value-normative ideas occurs and the first criminal experience appears in youth groups. The result of this will be not only a lag in learning, poor performance, but also increasing psychological discomfort that adolescents experience at school. This pushes adolescents to search for a new, non-school communication environment, another reference group of peers, which subsequently begins to play a leading role in the process of socialization of adolescents.
Factors of social maladaptation of adolescents: exclusion from the situation of personal growth and development, neglect of the personal desire for self-realization, self-affirmation in a socially acceptable way. The consequence of maladaptation will be psychological isolation in the communicative sphere with a loss of the sense of belonging to its inherent culture, a transition to attitudes and values that dominate the microenvironment.
Unmet needs can lead to increased social activity. And it, in turn, can result in social creativity and this will be a positive deviation, or it will manifest itself in antisocial activity. If she does not find a way out, she may seek a way out by becoming addicted to alcohol or drugs. The most unfavorable development is a suicide attempt.
The current social and economic instability, the critical state of the healthcare and education systems not only does not contribute to the comfortable socialization of the individual, but also aggravates the processes of maladaptation of adolescents associated with problems in family education, which lead to even greater anomalies in the behavioral reactions of adolescents. Therefore, the process of socialization of adolescents is increasingly becoming negative character. The situation is aggravated by the spiritual pressure of the criminal world and their values, rather than civil institutions. The destruction of the main institutions of socialization leads to an increase in crime among minors.
Also, the sharp increase in the number of maladjusted adolescents is influenced by the following social contradictions: indifference to smoking in high school, lack of effective method combating absenteeism, which today has practically become the norm of school behavior, along with the ongoing reduction in educational and preventive work in government organizations and institutions that deal with leisure and education of children; replenishment of juvenile gangs of criminals due to teenagers who have dropped out of school and are lagging behind in their studies, along with a decrease in social relationships between families and teachers. This makes it easier for teenagers to establish contacts with juvenile criminal groups, where illegal and deviant behavior develops freely and is welcomed; crisis phenomena in society that contribute to the growth of anomalies in the socialization of adolescents, along with a weakening of the educational influence on adolescents of public groups that should exercise education and public control over the actions of minors.
Consequently, the increase in maladjustment, deviant behavior, and juvenile delinquency is the result of the global social alienation of children and youth from society. And this is a consequence of a violation of the immediate processes of socialization, which have become uncontrollable and spontaneous in nature.
Signs of social maladaptation of adolescents associated with such an institution of socialization as school:
The first sign is poor academic performance in the school curriculum, which includes: chronic underachievement, repeating a year, insufficient and fragmentary acquired general educational information, i.e. lack of a system of knowledge and skills in studies.
Next sign– these are systematic violations of an emotionally charged personal attitude towards learning in general and some subjects in particular, towards teachers, and life prospects related to learning. Behavior can be indifferent-indifferent, passive-negative, demonstrative-dismissive, etc.
The third sign is regularly recurring anomalies of behavior during school learning and in the school environment. For example, passive-refusal behavior, lack of contact, complete refusal of school, persistent behavior with violation of discipline, characterized by oppositional defiant actions and including active and demonstrative opposition of one’s personality to other students and teachers, disregard for the rules adopted at school, vandalism at school .
