While I love coming up with
creative, fun, educational things for kids to do, sometimes the behavioral side
of things can be a challenge. A
nicely planned lesson can be thrown off course by some distractions that were
not envisioned in the plan.
Scanning the research for assistance and tips on how to deal
with challenging behaviors, I am reminded of some basics in working with
children, and the importance of prevention. An article on the Teaching Pyramid Model (Fox, Dunlap,
Hemmeter, Joseph & Strain, 2003) popped out at me.
The Pyramid Model stresses that
prevention is important; the best way to deal with challenging behaviors is to
avoid them as much as possible in the first place. What are some things that help prevent issues? The article points out that our
relationships are critical and we can focus on building a warm rapport with the
kids and really show interest in each individual. Also, how we arrange the program is crucial as well; the
flow of the schedule, how the environment is arranged, and how we teach them
our routines and expectations are effective tools. If we spend time on these things, we are building a stable structure. Another basic they mention, which
interests me, is the notion of teaching youth “emotional literacy”.
“Many children need explicit
instruction to ensure they develop competence in emotional literacy, anger and
impulse control, interpersonal problem solving, and friendship skills”. Wow. I could use some explicit instruction myself! I imagine, what it would have been like
in previous scenarios of my life if I or someone else had an instructor who was
coaching us on how to identify what we were feeling and constructive ways to interact
with others......
(read more......)
The article states “key
emotional literacy skills include being able to identify feelings in self and
others and act upon feelings in appropriate ways. Discriminating among emotions such as
anger, sadness, frustration, and happiness requires a
vocabulary of feeling words. Young
children can be taught new and complex
feeling words….(and) match feeling words with their physiological sensations
and the emotions of others.”(read more......)
The article further
mentions “controlling anger and impulse includes being able to recognize anger,
understand that anger can interfere with problem solving, and use strategies to
calm down instead of acting out. Problem solving includes
recognizing when a problem exists, generating multiple alternative solutions,
evaluating the consequences of solutions, acting on a solution, and then
evaluating how effective the solution was. Friendship skills include sharing
and turn taking, making suggestions in play, requesting and receiving help,
giving compliments, and dealing effectively with common
peer problems such as
teasing or bullying.” While this
vocabulary sounds pretty adult to me, how neat it is that there are ways to specifically
and intentionally translate these skills to children. Maybe I need to go back to pre-school!
I admire the role models
who attend to these elements when working with children. Often, we do
not have the time or resources to take the preventative approach. Perhaps some of us had few models to
intentionally instill these skills with us. The prevention route takes some time and investment
for sure. But, imagine what it
could do for our lives as we grow into adulthood and continue the need to
problem solve, deal with relationships, and manage our feelings. I am continuing to explore this website to get more insight
on how to provide positive guidance for young people in groups: http://challengingbehavior.org
Fox, L., Dunlap,
G., Hemmeter, M. L., Joseph, G. E., & Strain, P. S. (2003). The teaching
pyramid: A model for supporting social competence and preventing challenging
behavior in young children. Young
Children, 58(4), 48-52. Retrieved
from http://www.challengingbehavior.org/do/resources/documents/yc_article_7_2003.pdf
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