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In their Exchange article, "Challenging Behavior", Holly Bishop and Douglas Baird suggest that we look at challenging behavior by considering the child's point of view...

"In order to understand better the meaning of challenging behavior, sometimes it is helpful to try to feel inside of, or empathize with, a child’s experience. What does it feel like to be out of control of one’s feelings, at any age? What is the internal experience that usually accompanies aggression or disruptive, defiant behavior? Do we think this child is enjoying himself? Of course, these behaviors are signals that something is not right in the child’s experience. The child is communicating the pain and distress of this not-rightness to the adults around him, in the way that children under six mostly do communicate about important emotional issues, i.e., through behavior. So the first level of intervention is to see how much information about the problem can be gathered from observing and interacting with the child himself; watching and recording the concerning behaviors very closely; trying to identify common precursors and/or results of the behaviors; forming ideas or hypotheses about what is going on for this particular child. At this stage it is important to rule out any medical condition or physical problem that may be causing the behavior, such as poor hearing or undiagnosed pain from some hidden condition like dental decay.

"When our mental health staff is asked to help out with a child who is exhibiting these kinds of behaviors, the first thing we do is go into the classroom or provider home and observe the child and her interactions with others. Through observation and through teacher or provider report, we identify what kinds of circumstances seem to precede or trigger the child’s meltdowns, aggression, or out-of-control behavior. We also note what generally happens as a result of the behavior, i.e., what kind of attention results? We talk with the teaching team or provider about how they see the child and what strategies they have already tried to improve things."

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Exchange has a number of extremely helpful resources for supporting teachers in dealing with children with challenging behaviors:

• Our Beginnings Workshop book, Behavior, 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.
• Two Exchange CEU modules, "Managing Challenging Behavior" and "Social and Emotional Development", provide credit for reading Exchange magazine articles.
• Exchange's newest resource, the DVD, Facing the Challenge (an expertly crafted video training tool).

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