Using Biofeedback to Help Train Your Dangeorus Child

It is not easy to raise a truly dangerous child. Necessary, yes, but not easy. As we learn more about brain development, we are likely to develop better tools to assist us in this difficult work.

Biofeedback is one such tool which is likely to be of great help in dangerous child training, to assist the child in learning to keep a level head.

A new game developed at Boston Children's Hospital... helps children with anger problems to control their temper, so they’ll get along better with other people.

The game, appropriately called RAGE Control, requires the young player to shoot at enemy spaceships while sparing friendly ones. The child’s heart rate is monitored and displayed on the screen, via a sensor attached to one of their fingers. As long as they keep calm and their heart rate stays below a certain threshold, they can keep blasting at the spaceships. If they lose control and their heart rate goes too high, however, they lose the ability to shoot – the only way to regain that ability is to calm back down and lower their heart rate. _Gizmag

Dangerous children are taught a broad range of skills -- including several skills which could be hazardous to the health of the child and those around him, if they are misused. Emotional control is one critical skill which, if mastered, will help to make the mastery of other dangerous skills much safer.

The biofeedback method used in the Boston Children's Hospital game is quite primitive. Heart rate is a couple of levels removed from actual brain function -- which is what we are truly concerned with. A better approach would be to use neurofeedback, which will allow for more precise monitoring and response over a wide range of emotions.

The concept of developmental windows is crucial in the training of emotional control and executive functions. This type of training is best done between the ages of 4 years and 7 years.

Emotional resiliency and emotional mastery are skills which should become intuitive before the child reaches puberty. If the parents neglect this training, they are in for some turbulent years ahead.

Remediation is possible if developmental windows are missed. But only to a limited degree. If you want to save yourselves worlds of trouble in the training of your dangerous children, you will want to act in a timely and well sequenced manner.

Adolescent Psychiatry