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Connecting Challenging Behaviors to Early Childhood Development Theories…

- - - - RESPONSES
        
        PIAGET
        
        "ADAPT" Act calm; De-escalate; Acknowledge feelings; Problem-solve; and Think refelectively.
        
        2. Strengthen the relationship or connection between you and the student. So often, a child with challenging behaviors needs connections. Spend time getting to truly know them, their likes and interests and the respect will follow.
        
        Meet Privately with Student Not punitively, but meet with the student to talk with them and find out what the problem may be. Listen intently to the student's answers or explanations.
        
        Provide Social and Emotioal supports. Have the student talk to someone about how they are feeling and what's going on in their world...Teach SEL Skills Teach your students SEL skills in class to create a more positive classroom and socio-emotional awareness.
        
        JOHN WATSON
        
        Consider skill Deficits First consider how the students's disrespect could be because of a lack of social skills or self regulation. If a child says that your shirt is ugly, they may not be trying to be disrespectful, but lack a strong social filter.
        
        2. Keep them in the room As much as possible, keeping the students in the room helps them to keep learning, even if they refuse to do their work. They would pick up a lot more than being in the "office" or outside of the classroom.
        
        3.Make a plan together Brainstorm and create a plan of action with the student to help de-escalate or avoid the behavior in the future. Come up with at least one thing that the student can do and one thing that you can do.
        
        Be Consistent with Expectations Young students need boundaries. Spend time teaching, discussing, and practicing classroom expectations so that the students know and understand them.
  - - - JOHN WATSON
        
        A reward system for good behavior or Removal of an item or priviledge for misbehavior.
        
        Practice Kidpowers When the student is calm, practice "Kidpower" skills such as calm down; hands down; walk away; and mouth closed; as a fun and intereting way to be safe and subsequesntly stop aggressive behavior in the moment. Provide Ways to Use Aggressive Energy Safely Help students learn to stay in control and remain physically and emotionally safe.
        
        Create a Plan Together Co-create a plan to prevent and handle aggressions for each situation in which the student may be triggered . Break each situation, feeling and response down, and come up with ways to alter the response to what the student may be feeling.
        
        1.. Alter the student's environment, in order to alter his or her thoughts, feelings, and behavior. methods like Isolation away from the trigger, a change of classroom,and a "calm down" space are all methods that can be used to change the student's environment, perspective and susequent behavior.
      - RESPONSES
    - - Reduce the causes of stress within the child's environment that trigger outbursts, (removing the student from the situation with the use of a "calm down" corner, identify and attend to physical needs like tiredess, hunger, need for more space, difficulty with transitions, over-stimulation, need for more activity, and need for more physical adult contact or interaction.
      - Help the student 's cognitive development by bringing awareness to the behavior and triggers, teaching students how to recognize and giving them tools to manage their feelings, teaching alternative actions that they could take. Having students role-play or put themselves in the other person's shoes would help the students safely express their feelings, while making the aggressor aware of the consequences of their interaction with their peers. Allowing them to choose an alternative response, and giving them the opportunity to apologize shows that they are now cognitively aware of their actions.
        
        Teach Students to Recognize and Manage Feelings. Teach the Socio-emotional skills that students need to recognize, acknowledge and manage the feelings that lead to unsafe behavior by using toys or books to show the problem and safe solutions.
        Create little SEL books about the behavior the child is working on, and practice De-escalation and calm down skills.
        
        Be a Powerful, Respectful Adult Leader Students need to see adults taking charge of safety in ways that are calm, respectful, but firm. Avoid acting in "shaming" or emotionally hurtful ways toward the student's behavior.
- - - - Ignoring of undesired behaviors in order to lessen them.
      - Praise of positive agreeable behaviors, which will result in the reduction of negative or unwanted behaviors
      - Reward good behavior: tokens, stickers, free time, free choice, etc.
      - Alter environment:
        
        Needed materials are easily accessible.
        
        Create a separate work area.
      - Positive reinforcement: no access to the Game Area.
      - Negative reinforcement: eliminate homework if the student behaves.
    - - Relate new concepts and ideas to those student knows- using existing knowledge to create new knowledge; this way, the child will not be frustrated.
      - Curriculum adjustments: Break assignments into manageable sections / Personal interests used for motivation
      - Depending on the student ability, select activities that stimulate the student at his level of cognition.
      - Plan a number of activities to offer as choices.
      - Encourage student to learn from peers through game-based activities and role-plays.
- - - - Piaget’s Theory of Learning focuses on learning as construction, schemas, and developmental stages. Students in the ECE classroom typically fall into the Preoperational Stage where they are egocentric and have difficulty seeing things from others’ perspectives or the Concrete Stage where they move into a more socially conscious period. Piaget believed that children need to participate in experiences in order to learn and that teachers must align their strategies with students’ cognitive level. The goal is to help students construct knowledge, which includes social and emotional learning as well.
        
        Build positive student-teacher relationships
        
        Use play-based learning to teach and reinforce interactional rules and norms
        
        Daily story time with stories focusing on cooperation and team work
        
        Teach why rules are in place; ask what would happen if we didn't have rules?
        
        Plant the seeds of empathy by working with the child calmly and getting him/her to consider how he/sher might feel if the situation were reversed
        
        Teach how to respectfully disagree
      - Watson and Behaviorism
        From the behaviorist view, all behavior is learned from the environment. According to Watson, the goal of psychology is the prediction and control of behavior. If a child who needs to feel significant perceived him/herself as losing power or with no power, they become defiant. Since, (according to behaviorists) behavior is the result of a stimulus response, defiant behavior can be altered or eliminated through reinforcement and punishment.
        
        Reinforce progress and effort
        
        Hold defiant child (and all students) accountable for classroom rules
        
        Reinforce desired behaviors through praise and reward
        
        Ignore defiant behaviors unless issues with safety arise
        
        Offer limited choices for consequences as a means to allow the defiant child to have some power
        
        Redirect defiant behaviors by making the student a leader or peer-helper
        
        Keep defiant children task oriented...give them a job in the classroom
- - - - Watson and Behaviorism
        From the behaviorist view, all behavior is learned from the environment. According to Watson, the goal of psychology is the prediction and control of behavior. Since, (according to behaviorists) behavior is the result of a stimulus response, defiant behavior can be altered or eliminated through reinforcement and punishment.
        
        Develop clear boundaries, rules, and routines. Establish clear expectations and clearly communicate when periods of high intense activities will occur
        
        Reinforce desired behavior through specialized rewards. Stickers just might not be enough, so take the time to figure out what wiggly children value and design a reward system based on that.
        
        Behavior modification via positive punishment - i.e., allowing natural consequences to occur. By allowing natural consequences to occur, such as falling off of the chair and getting hurt from too much rough play, children are essentially learning the limits and consequences of their behaviors.
      - Piaget’s Theory of Learning focuses on learning as construction, schemas, and developmental stages. Students in the ECE classroom typically fall into the Preoperational Stage where they are egocentric and have difficulty seeing things from others’ perspectives or the Concrete Stage where they move into a more socially conscious period. Piaget believed that children need to participate in experiences in order to learn and that teachers must align their strategies with students’ cognitive level. The goal is to help students construct knowledge, which includes social and emotional learning as well.
        
        Provide opportunities for "risky play." Risk taking is natural part of childhood and needs to be encouraged in a safe environment. More on Risky Play
        
        Provide activities for the development of risk perception through play
        
        Build strong teacher-student relationships
        
        Allow students more opportunities to engage in "schema play" and "destruction testing." Main types of schemas developed in this play include:
        
        Orientation
        
        Rotation
        
        Enveloping
        
        Trajectory
        
        Positioning
        
        Enclosing
        
        Connecting
        To read more on Schema Play, click here
        
        Provide balance and coordination activities to develop greater body awareness
- - - - Reward coping behavior: Focus on the means, not the end. Reward taking on challenges and recognize partial successes. Encourage and reward the use of coping strategies. We can't all control our own anxiety. There are times when a child is going to cry and they might not be able to control that. We can't always control when we worry or when we are anxious. What we do have control over is whether or not we engage in some of those coping behaviors.
      - Extinguish excessive anxious behavior: Reduce anxious behavior by not responding to it excessively, either with concern or anger. Try to be calm.
      - Manage own anxiety: Limit displays of distress; don’t introduce their worries into the mix.
      - Authoritative/Democratic caregiving style: Caregivers direct children’s behavior while valuing independence. This is associated with lower levels of anxiety and higher self-confidence. Allow children to fail or to struggle sometimes. This tells the child, "I believe in you in so much that I'm willing to let you do it alone even though it might be scary and even though you might not do it right. I trust that you're going to figure it out."
      - Spacial management: Provide classroom seating where the student is most comfortable (near a door, near the front of the room, near the teacher or a friend).
    - - Modeling: For young children (ages zero to two years), start to name feelings for them. For example: "It looks like you're feeling sad right now. I can tell by your face and what your body looks like." For children ages three to five years, you can start helping them name their own feelings.
      - Externalizing anxiety/worry: We often use something we call a Worry Monster in my class. Children can learn that their worries aren't necessarily true and that their worries are something outside of themselves. We'll say, "Is that the Worry Monster again?" Then, you could have children tell you their worry, you could write it down or they could draw a picture of their worry. This particular monster has a zippered mouth so that you can fold up their worry and have the Worry Monster eat it. You can teach children that this is something that they can externalize or make separate from themselves. They can even learn to boss back the Worry Monster. They can learn that their worry is, to some degree, within their control.
      - Zones of regulation: Zones of regulation is an intervention tool that is often used by therapists but also can be used by caregivers, and in preschools and day care centers. Zones of regulation teach children how to identify their emotional states, as well as simple coping strategies that they can use to deal with those different emotional states. The emotional states are coded with different colors (e.g., angry/frustrated = red; yellow = distraught; green = calm).
      - Feeling chart: Using charts that show common feelings: happy, sad, mad, scared, guilty. Encourage students to start observing and naming their own feelings. Model and name the teacher's own feelings and demonstrate good self-control. The teacher could demonstrate, "I'm feeling really frustrated right now. I'm going to take a calm breath." Giving the children a positive cognitive example
        .
- - - - HYPERACTIVITY
        
        Behavior: Hyperactivity is not easily defined. It often depends on the observer. Behavior that seems excessive to one person may not seem excessive to another. But certain children, when compared to others, are clearly far more active. This can become a problem if it interferes with school work or making friends. Conditions that may lead to hyperactivity include ADHD, Brain or central nervous system disorders, emotional disorders and an over-active thyroid.
        
        Responses
        
        Watson's Application of Behavioral Interventions The 1913 paper "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" by John B. Watson is commonly regarded as the "behaviorist manifesto" that established behaviorism as a subject and academic topic. While the purpose of the paper was to present behaviorism as psychology's path to becoming a natural science, Watson also insisted that for the science to have substantial meaning and validity, empirical data and principles generated by such a natural science must be applied to solving human and social problems.
        
        Ensure rewards for good behavior Rewards and incentives should always be used before punishment to motivate a student. To prevent boredom, change up the rewards frequently. Do not use the loss of outside time as a consequence for negative behavior.
        Hyperactive kids benefit from physical activity and may be able to focus better after being outside or in PE class. Prioritizing rewards over punishment will help ensure that school continues to feel like a positive place for hyperactive kids.
        
        Use of tools While a standard classroom rule may be that students must sit in their seats during lessons, a a hyperactive may be able to stay on task better if they're allowed to stand up.
        For kids who tend to fidget, holding a small “Koosh Ball" or something tactile to manipulate (like Silly Putty) provides a little stimulation without disrupting the classroom.
        
        Give second chances When grading the student's work, mark errors and allow them to recoup partial credit for corrections they make. This, too, will teach them to pay closer attention to detail and provide motivation to revise their work.
        
        Encourage Attention to Detail If the student rushes through their work, prompt them to check it carefully before turning it in. This will teach them to pay attention to details to avoid making sloppy mistakes that can hurt them academically. Breaking down tasks into smaller pieces can also help students with hyperactivity succeed.
        
        Piaget's Cognitive Interventions Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive explanation of human intelligence's nature and development. Piaget felt that one's childhood had a significant impact on one's development. Piaget's approach is commonly referred to as a developmental stage hypothesis. The idea focuses on the nature of knowledge and how humans acquire, develop, and use it across time. According to Piaget, cognitive development is the gradual rearrangement of mental processes that occurs as a result of biological maturation and contextual experience.
        
        Alternate high- and low-energy lessons: Follow a high energy music class with a period of creative writing. Schedule a subject that requires great concentration — such as math — after outside time or physical education.
        
        Give them movement opportunities Hyperactive students tend to struggle with sitting still for long periods of time, so giving them frequent opportunities to get up and move around can be a big help. You can provide them with a physical break by having them hand out or collect papers or classroom materials, run an errand to the office or another part of the building, or erase the board. Even something as simple as letting them go get a drink of water at the water fountain can provide a moment of activity.
        
        Don't overload them For a a hyperactive child who is prone to becoming overwhelmed, it can be helpful to reduce the total workload by breaking it down into smaller sections.
        
        Allow the Child to Stand Consider using a standing workstation or work area with a beanbag chair at the side or back of the room that allows the student to stand to do work. If this helps, allow the student to choose to stand to work or move to the beanbag when they feel the need. Beanbag chairs can sometimes help students with sensory integration problems, which some hyperactive children have.