Shop by Topic
Shop by Product
ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues
<< Previous Issue
| View Past Issues | | Next Issue >> 
Why Children Act Out
February 26, 2008
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
"The child considers a situation only from what she can perceive at the moment. She has difficulty thinking about events that led up to something, or what might happen in the future because of an action. The sequence of cause and effect events is too difficult to project -- it requires abstract thinking and the child is still in a very concrete mode. The child has to be able to perceive something with his senses to understand it. Therefore, responses to behavior situations should be immediate. Waiting until the end of the day to discuss a problem with a child works less well.
"The child is not skilled at hypothetical thinking. For instance, the common adult response to a child's aggression -- 'How would you like it if someone did that to you?' -- is usually completely ineffective. The child doesn't 'get it.' In fact, it is usually taken as a threat. When a child throws sand and hurts another child and the teacher says, 'How would you like it if someone threw sand in your face?' the child hears it as an offer ('Would you like me to throw sand in your face?'). That typically causes fear and alienation rather than empathy."
Exchange's Many Resources on Challenging Behavior
Exchange has a number of extremely helpful resources for supporting teachers in dealing with children with challenging behaviors.
- The book, Behavior, cited above, has 24 articles written by experts in the field on how to deal with challenging behavior.
- Ten Out of the Box Training Kits on "Positive Discipline" provide directors with all the resources you need to conduct in-house training sessions.
- An Exchange CEU course on Managing Challenging Behavior provides credit for reading 10 Exchange articles on the subject.
- Exchange's newest resource, the DVD Facing the Challenge, is an expertly crafted video training tool.
ExchangeEveryDay
Delivered five days a week containing news, success stories, solutions, trend reports, and much more.
What is ExchangeEveryDay?
ExchangeEveryDay is the official electronic newsletter for Exchange Press. It is delivered five days a week containing news stories, success stories, solutions, trend reports, and much more.
GOOGLE HIRING EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS:
Google has expanded its employee child development program by opening a world-class children's center in Mountain View, California and is now hiring teachers.
Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 Commentstlingit and haida head start
ketchikan, alaska, United States
I realize the children live mostly in the hear and know. I have also witnessed children who have tissed or been mean to others. Discussions of empathy respect and what the person can to to help a hurt peer should be one of the first things a preschooler should be taught. Its not enough to have the child say sorry The child should help the peer feel better by action example children are running playing tag. One gets bumped and falls not only should the offender tell peer his sorry but could help with getting the baind aid towel or ice to help the other feel better. The offender should stay with the hurt person until alls well or is told its O.K. to leave. This helps the youngsters learn there is a proper way to deal with a problem. like a action causes a reaction. Problem solve is great but preschoolers need to be held responsible for their actions as well as praised.
cambridge, mA, United States
I agree with much of this article. And emotionally charged child is lost in his or her feelings, just as adults are. We do need to help kids immediately. Curriculum should always be designed to flow smoothly without the teacher's input so she can seamlessly move over to help the child in need.
But I do take exception with the global nature of this report on the difficulty of children to move into empathy as part of their recovery from an event.
The tone is the thing. The question of how a child would feel with the shoe on the other foot can be quite helpful if the question is delivered at the right time and in the right tone, and with good support to the child in need. This is where the skill of a teacher comes into play.
And of course we must always remember the peanut gallery of other kids who stop all action to see how it is that the culture of the program helps or hinders a child's progress through the pain of loss of control. They are learning powerful lessons also.
As is often the case with what teachers are 'told' in short articles like this, the simpler one makes the concepts the easier it is to be rigid in using such concepts. I can just hear a teacher say, "I read somewhere that you can't say to a kid, 'how would it feel to you to ...'."
The social training and emotional navigation of the world of young children is deep and rich, and in fact should be the front and center 'curriculum' in each program. Teachers need much more complex conversations about these topics. This article is a small starting point for such discussions, which should be about teachers own experiences in their practice, as well as in their childhood. Each teacher will come to her own way of helping kids through the emotional thickets of early childhood.
The field would move forward more quickly, and have happier kids as well as teachers if we realized more fully the fact that it is the emotional and social life of young children that needs the bulk of 'teaching', not the finite and simple cognitive things that we focus on so much.
Post a Comment