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Children’s Challenging Behaviors

All children engage in challenging behaviors from time to time. As adults, we can help children learn new and better ways to communicate their wants and needs instead of using challenging behavior.

These can vary depending on who is encountering the behavior. To a parent, whining may be viewed a challenging behavior, but to a child care provider, the whining indicates that the child is communicating a want or need. The provider may see other behaviors as challenging (such as hitting), but easily tolerates whining.

Challenging behavior can be exhausting for both children and adults. Preventing the challenging behavior from occurring is ideal. In Lesson Three, you learned how daily schedules and predictable routines can promote positive guidance. You also learned that understanding various stages of child development helps you know which behaviors are age-appropriate and which behaviors are not.

Children’s behavior is a form of communication. Adults have to think about what a child may be trying to communicate by engaging in a challenging behavior. The adult must think about what may be behind the child’s behavior and take the time to understand how to help the child learn better forms of communicating. Parents must be involved in helping you change children’s challenging behavior. It is not something a child care provider can do without parent input. Changing challenging behaviors can be difficult if a child has learned to obtain adult or peers’ attention or preferred items (e.g., toys, candy, etc.) by using these behaviors.

Documenting and Minimizing Challenging Behavior

To understand what a child is communicating, it is important write down information about when the challenging behaviors occur. Keep a notebook or an index card handy so you can jot down what happened before, during, and after the challenging behaviors. In the Explore section of this lesson, there is a helpful tool to help you detail the behaviors you observe. You may be able to see a pattern that tells you what triggers the behaviors. Having written documentation over time can help you share specifics with parents and work with them to find ways to decrease a child’s challenging behavior.

The Illinois Early Learning Project tip sheet, Helping the Often-Angry Child describes actions that a provider can take to help children learn how to manage their emotions and minimize challenging behavior:

Providing Feedback on Children’s Behavior

In your daily interactions with children you should strive to provide them with specific feedback about their behaviors. Cases of positive feedback should outnumber cases of negative or corrective feedback. Educational researchers recommend a ratio of five positives to every one negative comment or correction (Walker, Ramsey, & Gresham, 2004). The table below provides examples of nonspecific and specific feedback.

Notice in the examples above, there is also an emphasis on describing what the child is doing and on his or her efforts rather than ability (e.g., being smart). Messages like these help children persist in challenging tasks or situations and help children derive internal satisfaction from their work or good deeds, rather than continually seeking outside approval.

Redirection

When a child engages in a challenging behavior, you must be responsive and prepared to provide the child with acceptable alternatives.

Redirection means providing an acceptable alternative to problematic behaviors. Consider these examples:

Helping Children Learn to Resolve Conflicts

Another way to minimize challenging behavior is to teach conflict-resolution skills. Adults can teach preschool and school age children to resolve their differences in calm, peaceful ways. Children who can solve problems and resolve conflicts peaceably have more friends and are more likely to be chosen by their peers. Children can learn how to negotiate without hurting others—a skill that will help them throughout their lives.

As a family child care provider, you will need to support children as they learn the conflict-resolution process. For younger children, you will have to be their voice to help explain what they want to an older child. You will serve as a facilitator, and your presence during the conflict-resolution process will help children feel safe and secure as they learn to mediate their own problems.

When children have decided on a plan to resolve a conflict, you will still need to be there to support them in following their agreed-upon plan. You can help them write down the plan and refer to it if they forget their decision. Reading stories that involve characters who solve conflicts peaceably can help children learn problem solving skills that will serve them both at your home and in other settings.

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The following video shows how a child care provider teaches children how to resolve a conflict.

Unique Situations in Military Families that May Impact Children’s Behavior

Children in military families may encounter many more life transitions, moves, and separations from parents. Children may engage in challenging behavior when these types of unique transitions occur. It is important to provide children with loving, responsive care during these difficult times.

Unfortunately, children in military families may also experience death of a parent or significant adult. Be sure you have resources available to you, the child, and the family to help a child cope with mourning. Learn about installation resources, community resources (e.g., programs for grief counseling, school-based social workers and counselors, etc.) so you can be prepared to support a child who may be experiencing stress, anxiety, and fear due to loss or separation from a loved one.

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Communicating with Families about Challenging Behavior

It can be difficult to start conversations with families about their child’s challenging behavior. Some parents may truly never see their child behave the way you describe him or her because children may act very differently in different settings. To be able to have difficult conversations, you must first build a trusting relationship with the family. Jodi Whiteman of Zero to Three describes three practices that help with those difficult conversations:

Building relationships with families takes time and attention. Having a family’s trust makes it easier to work together when addressing children’s challenging behavior. Solving a child’s challenging behavior takes a team effort (family child care provider and parents). Online resources can be helpful in learning strategies to try with a particular child. The Kids Included Together (KIT) program can also be a valuable resource for ideas and techniques to address challenging behaviors.

Sometimes, finding solutions extends to collaborating with professional personnel from community agencies and schools. As a family child care provider, you can create and share a resource list of local and installation services that may be helpful to families in addressing children’s challenging behavior. Your careful attention to addressing children’s challenging behavior will leave a lasting impact as each child in your care grows and develops into a caring, emotionally secure individual.