In the fourth grade, Mike (not his real name) was very aggressive and defiant. He acted up to get attention, was rejected by his peers, and did poorly in class. Without a change, Mike stood a good chance of getting into major trouble as he grew older.

But something did change Mike's life. A two-year intervention program for children at risk for academic, social, and behavioral problems, begun by Virginia Tech psychology professor Thomas Ollendick, turned Mike's life around. One of the most dramatic of the cases in Ollendick's study, Mike improved gradually, becoming better liked and less of a problem as the years went by. He made it through middle school--a time of stress for children like him, making better grades and showing no major behavior problems. In high school, Mike joined several clubs and was elected to class office. He graduated and got a scholarship to a major university.

Not all stories in the program have such happy endings, but for many of the withdrawn or aggressive students, the program began a cycle of change that may have saved them from serious problems later in life.

Using psychological testing, Ollendick determined that fourth-grade children he had previously identified as aggressive and withdrawn were more likely to believe that the things that happened to them were due to some outer force such as chance or fate than to believe that they have some control over their destinies. They also had low belief in their own abilities and lower assertiveness skills than popular or average children.

In follow-ups, Ollendick found that, without intervention, aggressive children, by the ninth grade, do more poorly academically, have a greater drop-out rate, fail more grades, are less well liked by their school peers, and have a higher incidence of serious behavior problems than average children have.

Withdrawn children, without intervention, have less serious problems than aggressive children, but have more problems than the average student, and tend to be loners, isolated from their peers.

Ollendick set up structured social-skill competency groups in the schools so that people like Mike could learn to deal with problem situations, give and accept compliments, refuse unreasonable requests, ask another person to change behavior, and perceive how others are feeling.

Ollendick, his colleagues, and graduate students helped the children develop social skills, problem-solving skills, and social-perception skills. "We taught them how to get along with others and how to reverse the patterns that they had become accustomed to, how to build skills and to be more in control of what happens to them," Ollendick says. This gave successful experiences to children who had failed miserably in social interaction before.

Follow-ups in the ninth and 12th grades showed that the majority of the withdrawn children and a significant minority of the aggressive ones showed a marked decrease in behavior problems after participating in the program. Many of the withdrawn and aggressive children who did not participate in the program continued to have poor outcomes that included teen pregnancy and shoplifting by withdrawn students, and much earlier dropout rates and even serious infractions of the law by the aggressive group.

By the end of their high-school years, 92 percent of the withdrawn students in the program had graduated compared to 74 percent of the control group. Of the aggressive students, 64 percent graduated, compared to 54 percent of the control group.

The overall grades for the program participants had risen from about C- before the project to C+ after. Fewer of them failed grades than those in the control group, probably because the program helped them expect to succeed, Ollendick said.

Ollendick cautions, however, that the program was simply the catalyst for a whole group of changes that account for the improved performance. "We helped the students access a whole community of support and reinforcers, and we showed them how to reduce and cope with stresses," he said. "They now have the skills to obtain things they couldn't before — good grades, friends to help them, and parents and teachers who will talk with them and help them. The groups were the stimulus that allowed this process to occur. Much of the change occurred following completion of the groups."

Yet, the program was critical, he said. "The control kids didn't have the same kind of outcome. Different experiences that allowed children in the project group to grow didn't happen with the control group, and they fared less well."

(Dr. Ollendick's program won the Jeannie P. Baliles Child Mental Health Research Award given to promote research in child mental health in Virginia.)