Behaviour management

[LaurenClay]

Hi everyone.

I wonder if anyone would like to share what your behaviour management strategies are in your setting?

We use a positive reinforcement technique and a range of intervention techniques. Using talking at children’s levels, games, stories and puppets to model positive behaviour choices.

However, my daughter’s preschool use “time out”. This is not something we use or need to use at our setting but just wanted to know what you all use and maybe can swap some tips or advice?

[sarahcampbell]

We use a time out chair if we really have to but mostly we explain to the child that they must say sorry to whoever they need to and be kind with their hands etc… or if needed stop them from playing where they were playing for a bit. We do look for times we can praise more with children who struggle behaviourally.

[LaurenClay]

I love this from The Ark Childminding Facebook page

“So, we currently have mostly toddlers at our setting (ages from 1-2years). They love nothing more than to rough and tumble! Run, scream & shout!

They are exhausting, gorgeous and lots of fun!

Standard Toddler rules apply in regards to EVERYTHING: “If I see it, it’s mine! If I have touched it, it’s mine! If I want it, it’s mine! If you want it, it’s mine!” (you get the picture)…which can obviously result in lots of conflict and high emotions.

We now affectionately term this period as our ‘Toddler wars’. 😆

During these moments of conflict some little ones will hit out, others push and bite and we also have a silent & slow ‘head butter’ (we think this could be to do with a high interest and regular visits to the rhinos 🦏🙊…so our fault really 😬).

So, how do we deal with this phase?

Firstly, we DO NOT enforce apologies. They are meaningless for our young children and can often cause more problems if you insist on getting one! I have backed myself into a corner more than once in my old stance of enforcing an apology with a toddler who point blank refuses! (We live and learn🤷‍♀️)

If a child hurts another child here we will immediately respond to the hurt child and will apologise to them on the other child’s behalf. So for example, “I’m sorry xxxx has hurt you. Are you okay?” (We really big this part up)

After making a big fuss of the child who has been affected we will then quietly respond to the other child. We do this by acknowledging they may have been trying to communicate something but it is not okay to hurt each other.

Then together we check if the hurt child is okay and depending on the level of communication skills we ask If there is anything they need. Sometimes it’s just a rub and a ‘awhhhh’ from our younger friends, but it’s a moment of empathy and acknowledgement. And then it’s over…..until the next time of course.

The child who has hit out is not made to share their play either. If a child wants to play alone, the other children must wait and we will ask them to let their friends know they are waiting for their turn rather than to just take.

Sometimes however this approach is just not enough if a child is persistently hitting out. Toddlers, like us, have good days and not so good days 🤷‍♀️ On a not so good day we may help a child to regulate their emotions by removing them from play for a moment. This is not a punishment, we don’t agree with ‘Time out’.

There is no anger directed to the child. This is an exercise in co-regulation. The removing from play could be simply holding our hands for a moment, sitting with us for a story, being picked up, or sitting in their high chair with a drink/snack whilst they have time to ‘reboot’ (regulate) before starting afresh in play.

We acknowledge that they may be feeling ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘frustrated’ and reassure them that it’s okay to feel this way…. even though they don’t fully understand yet what these feelings are. We want them to be familiar with the words, we want to give them the tools to be able to regulate these feeling independently….eventually!

We understand that ‘Toddler wars’ is completely developmental and mostly stems from lack of communication and having not yet developed feelings of empathy. It’s so much easier just to bop someone on the head than to force out words when you are only just at the cusp of learning to speak 🤷‍♀️

It’s a really difficult stage to observe and manage, and don’t get me wrong, on occasion we still find ourselves bellowing “NOoooooooo!” across the room in a moment of pre-incident panic. But that’s okay too, as long as we can explain “I’m sorry for shouting, I panicked and I wanted to make sure xxxx was safe”

The main point to be made is that an approach of understanding and tolerance for ALL involved is the only way to deal with ‘toddler wars!’

Wish us luck 😬

“If it’s mine, it’s mine, if it’s not mine, it’s still mine and if it’s yours, it’s also mine!”

[arlene]

I’m a fan of that Lauren, thanks for sharing!

[kdilworth]

Hi Lauren,

I have actually just had some behaviour management delivered to all staff in our setting from an EY Partner at our local council. I organised this because I felt that after lockdown we were seeing some challenging behaviours, and the staff just didn’t seem to know what to do with some of the children.

I am going to write up a new Behaviour Management Strategies document for my staff (summing up the session) and I’d be happy to share that on here once it’s done if people were interested.

A few interesting points from the trainer were:
– She was not a fan of time out, naughty chairs or token charts. We did use TO and token charts, but won’t be using them anymore.
– She was anti token charts because she said it can mean that children do something in order to get a token, rather than just for the sake of it (e.g. tidy up to get a token rather than to help their friends)
– She talked a lot about remaining calm yourself, getting down on the child’s level, using a low voice and explaining the child’s feelings to them – giving them the words to understand how they are feeling. Lots of empathy, no anger etc.
– If a child is hit/bitten – ideally have one member of staff dealing with the child who was hit and another with the child who did the hitting. Don’t force the children to play together afterwards (the hit or bitten child may be scared) or force any child to say sorry (no point – they don’t understand and may think they can do what they want if they just say sorry after). Do need to explain to the hitter/biter that it’s not OK to do that, that they have hurt/upset someone etc, but don’t get angry.
– She suggested getting children to help tidy up/fix something if they do something wrong. E.g. if they deliberately pour water all over the floor, get them to help you tidy it up. So you’re not telling them off or putting them on a time out, but there is a consequence for the behaviour (which they may not enjoy that much!)
– There was lots of talk about understanding children’s behaviour and actually putting things in place to try and prevent it in the first place, e.g. understanding changes in child’s life, issues at home, even things at nursery like staff changes or a different sleeping spot!

This is a bit of a rushed summary, but hope some of that is helpful and the document I draw up will probably be a lot more coherent!

[LaurenClay]

Your trainer sounds very much on my thinking level. Yes please if you could share it that would be fabulous 🙂 thank you

[Nicola Robertson]

I have found all of this an interesting read. I am currently based in the Nursery room of a nursery school and our whole behaviour policy is introduced from the start of their time with us. The children all start on the sun and can be moved to the rainbow then the pot of gold. We do have a cloud that they are moved onto if things go wrong. For hitting and hurting we do use thinking time but I personally don’t think this is understood (the children are 3-4 yrs). At our next team meeting I think I will raise this.
Thank you for sharing.

[LaurenClay]

Thanks Nicky.

I did an interesting activity with my staff during a staff meeting once when I first started managing their setting. They had the same sort of thing… cloud to sunshine type of thing.
I got everyone together and I wrote a scale on a whiteboard. I then wrote their names on the scale top to bottom and told everyone about the things that had happened this week: for example “Tayla, well done this week, you cleaned the rabbit out with the children and did a lovely activity on that, really good, and thank you for listening to me when I asked you to do this”… “Sarah, you’re at the bottom here, why do you think that is?” She smiled sheepishly and said she didn’t know. “Well because when I asked you if you could wash up after lunch time you did it really slowly” (I was literally clutching at straws because my staff were an amazing team)

Then we discussed how that made everyone feel. We had a good giggle about it but I reminded them that public humiliation is actually mortifying, and for some children even being moved to a sunshine and making a song and dance about it can be so embarrassing. We discussed ways to praise the children without embarrassing them the way that I did with them. It was interesting. We found that praising the children in front of their parent was lovely, and the children started asking us when they did something lovely “are you going to tell mummy?” like they were proud. The parents loved it too. Sometimes parents feel that the only time we need to “have a word” is when their children haven’t behaved to our expectations, and when the parents picks up and the fist thing that child receives from their parents is a disappointing look or feeling ashamed and embarrassed it must feel so awful for that child when they have so looked forward to seeing their family all session.

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