Preschool & Parenting Blog

Child Behavior Issues & Problems – Part 1 I took a workshop on ‘Behaviors in Children’ at a early childhood education conference I recently attended. I was hoping to walk away with some effective strategies on how to deal with, and stop certain child behavior issues I was seeing in some of the pre k children in my classroom. Instead I walked out with a totally new way of looking at behavior problems. I quickly learned how “dealing” with them isn’t going to change anything, but how understanding these ‘child behavior issues’ and working with the child(ren) will make for a much more calm and happy teacher, child, and preschool classroom. I couldn’t wait to get home and share it will all of you Parents, Early Childhood Educators, and Child Care Providers. This, in an effort to make your job much easier and a little less stressful with a better understanding of (preschool) children and their behavior issues. I am going to write a few parts to this preschool article and make it into a series for everyone. I will write about one point at a time so I can really focus on it, explain it, and it won’t be consuming so much of your time to have to sit and read a 50 page article on every subject at once. In This Child Behavior Article: So in this article, (Part 1) I am going to explain what I learned about understanding behavior issues in preschoolers and young children. Once we have the meaning of that then in the next articles it will be easier to follow along with the examples, specified behaviors, and strategies to use to respond to them. The Child Behaviors Presentation Begins: The presenter talked about all types of behaviors which I myself and I am sure you have come across throughout many years of working in the Child Care field. Some of those behaviors are, irritability, anger, tantrums, kicking, hitting, moodiness, verbal aggression, clingy, rocking, fidgeting, power struggles, self inflicted injuries, screaming, no energy, selfishness, and that’s just to name a few. There are also children who have diagnoses like Autism, ADD, FAS, and more. Did you know that most, if not all behaviors have a real underlying issue behind them? And what has been the most common response we have all been guilty of responding with? I know I have been guilty of responding with ignoring the behavior, sitting on a “time out chair”, telling them to stop or a privilege will be taken away, and I am sure there are more maybe you have tried. The result is usually a frustrated teacher, negatively interrupted classroom, and emotionally unstable child. Why do we respond the way we do? Well for me, it’s what I was taught to do in College, society, and it seems like the easiest way to stop that behavior in the child and get on with things. What if we took a few minutes to get to know the child and figure out why […]