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While working as a substitute teacher for three years in Long Island, N.Y. and Indianapolis Public Schools in Indianapolis I theorized and tested a technique to drastically change the anti-social behavior of inner city children. It seemed to work well when used but I soon left teaching and so this technique was never fully developed. I planned to use this technique as the basis for my Master's or Doctorate thesis should I ever return to higher education. This was not to be. But now anyone who wishes to pursue this technique and use it please feel free to borrow this knowledge and experience in this article.

First, a little background understanding. While visiting my grandmother's farm in Tipton, Indiana I notice feral cats. If a human did not befriend and pet kittens when they were very young they will grow up feral or wild. They will avoid humans and not allow humans to touch them like most wild animals act.

When I started teaching in inner city schools I noticed that many of the children acted just like feral or wild cats. They avoided touching at all cost and were fearful of everyone. Their primary defense was to run away or if cornered to fight viciously like their very lives depended upon it. These are the behaviors of problem children that are born of young teenage mothers who have no fathers around to guide them. These are the children of poverty and neglect and a hundred other sad stories. But I recognized them all right away as feral cat children of the hood.

I am a longtime student of Natural Hygiene of Dr. Herbert Sheldon. This is the teachings which looks to nature to understand life and man. Dogs and wolves in nature must discipline their cubs quickly and effectively. Wolves especially must keep cubs from running far from their mothers into danger or from becoming lost. Nature's penalty can often be death for a young wolf who does not mind their mother and strays from the pack.

Wolves, dogs, and cats have a simple but effective technique to discipline their cubs -- they either pick them up off the ground in their teeth and hold them there until they stop squirming. Or they clamp down upon them with their mouths and hold the cub tightly until they stop resisting. This works extremely well to discipline wolf cubs and make them mind their mothers in most every respect. And so few baby wolves are eaten by predators because they do not follow their mothers directions. It is an extremely effective technique to quickly teach dominance and obedience to young wolves and other animals in nature.

I next thought that this is exactly how humans learn this respect and submission to adults. When and older brother, uncle, or father plays with a child and wrestles a child to the ground they are naturally teaching this lesson of dominance and obedience of the stronger adult. They are teaching, "I am stronger than you, stop resisting and yield to me and I will release you." Or they are teaching, "I am an adult human and I am your protector, I will never really harm you." Or again they are teaching, "It is all right to yield and be vulnerable, you can trust adults." This lesson of touch and human contact is learned well by most children. They are taught to trust humans and they are welcomed and initiated into the community of man for the rest of their lives by these simple playful gestures of humans. It is this simple trust of fellow humans that truly makes a man civilized for the remainder of their lives. Children become new members of the tribe of man by simply playing with adults. And no one has ever observed these profound initiations of children into humanity and understood them because they were so natural and transparent activities.

The problem children of the inner city and also of the suburbs grow up wild and feral and have never learned to trust adults nor most any other humans. These are the children that become lifetime criminals who can not hold a regular job nor find their place in societies. And these are the children that grow up in prisons to one day be powerful frustrated men and women of crime and poverty. Men and women who have children of their own who become most often the same feral, wild, anti-social children as their parents.

This is what I see clearly when I teach in the inner city schools and also to a lesser degree in suburban schools of wealthier neighborhoods.

The technique I tried was to simply ask the child or teen to wrestle me on a mat. A simple challenge either alone and in front of his peers if he was reluctant to accept. Upon lightly defeating him I would let him up quickly the first time and do it again. I would pin him again and hold him down until he yielded and stopped resisting. Again I would let him up and we would go again. Each time holding him lightly but firmly until he stopped resisting. After a few falls and a light playful attitude I would end it. I might again challenge others who were discipline problems and do the same.

In a short time the boys bonded with me and often tried to please me with small things. It was a dramatic reversal once they befriended me and later teachers remarked when I returned to the schools that the teens had now become model students and no longer were a problem for them.