Know

The preschoolers in your care should have daily opportunities to participate in activities that help them learn new skills and help them practice existing ones in fun, stimulating, and supportive environments. As you learned in Lessons One and Two, children’s behaviors develop in the context of their relationships with their primary caregivers and within their families’ and communities’ cultures. You also learned that being able to listen, follow directions, manage emotions and actions, and peacefully coexist with other individuals are essential skills for meaningful and successful participation in life experiences. Overall, it should be evident that positive child guidance helps promote the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children in preschool. In your daily work, you should embed opportunities for helping children learn the expectations for behavior in a variety of settings. You should also help children learn from their mistakes and make positive choices by guiding them toward and modeling appropriate behaviors. 

Embedding Opportunities for Positive Guidance in Preschool: Guiding Behavior through Interactions

Planning for positive guidance should be done throughout the day, rather than just in response to children’s challenging behaviors. As you learned in Lesson Three, you set the stage for children’s success and positive behaviors by establishing predictable routines, setting clear rules about expectations, being attentive to children’s needs, communicating with children’s families, and modeling kindness and respect. All of these experiences take place in the context of the relationships you build with children and families in your care. These relationships set the foundation for guidance. Relationships are formed through the many simple interactions that happen each day. This section will explain two key strategies that promote positive behavior in children: providing positive directions and providing positive feedback. It will also discuss how to respond to challenging behavior.

Distinguishing Between Positive and Negative Directions

When a child engages in potentially unsafe or inappropriate behavior, the first instinct of many preschool teachers might be to tell the child to stop. It is simply easier to ask the child to stop that one behavior than to think of the many other options the child has. Using directions like “No,” “Stop,” or “Don’t,” however, is not effective in the long term, and it may not be effective in the short term—think about how you might respond if someone told you to stop doing something you liked. Providing positive directions that help the child know what to do is much more effective at preventing challenging behavior. Consider the following:

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 their 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 external approval.

Strategies for Responding to Behavior that Challenges

Even though you may use prevention strategies in your preschool classroom, there will still be some challenging behavior. You must be prepared to respond appropriately when this happens. This section will present three strategies: redirection, problem-solving, and behavior-support planning. 

Redirection

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

For preschoolers, redirection means providing an acceptable alternative to problematic behaviors. Consider these examples:

Problem-solving

When you notice frequent challenging behavior in your classroom, try to recognize your own role in that behavior. Frequent challenging behavior is likely a sign that some type of change needs to be made. You may consider the following strategies:

• If children become disengaged during group time, make the group time shorter than planned and switch to a more active, child-directed activity. What can you do in group time to build on children’s interests? You may want to invite a colleague, trainer, coach, or supervisor to come and observe group time in your classroom and to give you specific feedback on children’s behaviors. 
• Help bored children find something interesting to do. Get to know the children in your classroom well, be sensitive and attentive to their needs, and take preventive steps before challenging behavior occurs. For example, if a child is wandering around with nothing to do, offer the child suggestions (“The art area is open, Braden. Would you like to paint?”)

Behavior Support Planning

There are excellent resources available to help you learn about positive behavior support planning. For preschool programs, you can explore the resources available through the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations (NCPMI). There is more information about this in the Apply section. If you will be responsible for facilitating behavior-support plans, take some time now to learn about your role using these resources.

Here are a few important points:

• Behavior support is a team-based process and should include those individuals who know the child best.
• Behavior support is person-centered. This involves bringing the team together to clarify a vision for the child.
• Behavior support is focused on understanding the meaning (or purpose) of the behavior—all behavior communicates a message. The behavior-support process helps you understand that message.

Check with a trainer, coach, or administrator for program-specific information related to working with children with challenging behaviors. NCPMI suggests that the team develop a hypothesis, or “best guess,” about why a behavior is occurring and then develop a support plan that includes a young child’s strengths, prevention strategies, ways to meet possible unmet needs, new skills to teach the child, and new ways to respond to behaviors. The team then monitors outcomes.

Conflict Resolution

Disagreements and conflicts are common and inevitable between children from toddlerhood through adolescence, and into adulthood. The way you choose to intervene during these times of stress can directly affect how the situation unfolds. Adults may try to help preschool children resolve conflicts by playing too active of a role. Instead of letting children resolve the disagreement on their own, adults may push them to come to an agreement too quickly, perhaps because of time constraints. Though it may take more time, teaching children how to resolve conflicts on their own is an important part of positive guidance.

Dan Gartrell, in Education for a Civil Society, recommends teaching children the five-finger formula for social problem solving. This method involves assigning a definition or purpose to each finger. Once children are taught this technique, they can use their own bodies to calm themselves down during times of disagreement. The five steps are listed below:

1. Cool down (thumb)
2. Identify the problem (pointer)
3. Brainstorm solutions (tall guy)
4. Go for it (ringer)
5. Follow-up (pinky)

Often, problems involve more than one child. In these instances, group meetings can be an effective strategy. You should take a more passive role and let the children facilitate the meeting. In some preschool programs, a “peace table” is used as a designated space to help provide a setting and structure for problem-solving.

A group meeting should encourage the active involvement of each child, providing a safe space and an opportunity for everyone to be heard by each other. Each child is able to share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas regarding a problem or solution to a problem without fear of correction by peers or adults. Guidelines for group meetings should be consistent. They can occur daily, weekly, or as needed when conflicts arise. According to Gartrell, group meetings help children identify problems and work towards solutions, and they help children build skills to become democratic citizens. It is important to recognize that not all children may be ready to resolve the conflict in the “heat of the moment”. They may need some time to settle before they are ready for problem solving.  Allowing for cool down time is important but remember that follow-through and revisiting the conflict is essential for learning the resolution process. 

Some outcomes to strive for when resolving conflict:

• All parties are satisfied with the outcome. The conflict will not be resolved if the children do not feel comfortable with the outcome. It is important to continue working toward a compromise and mutual feeling of satisfaction. Otherwise, conflicts will continue to come up.
• The relationship among the children involved has strengthened or improved in some way. This does not mean that the children in a conflict will become close friends as soon as the conflict is resolved. Rather, it means that the children involved will have a deeper understanding of each other and will have worked together to come to a mutual agreement on the situation and will avoid conflict with each other in the future.
• The children’s ability to resolve future conflicts in a constructive way has strengthened or improved. Through the process of resolving conflicts, children should learn methods of resolving future conflicts in constructive ways. You want children to be able to resolve conflicts positively and constructively on their own. This is a major life skill that will benefit them academically, socially, and in their future careers.

Guidance and Families: Meaningful Family Participation in Preschool Children’s Positive Guidance

It is critical in your work with preschoolers to acknowledge that families are children’s first and most significant teachers. Families teach children how to be social, how to treat others, and which behaviors are appropriate. Family involvement can help teachers incorporate family values, cultures and beliefs in their classroom and school environment. Along the same lines, involving families helps them understand what is happening in the classroom, which promotes consistency of practices between school and home. High-quality family-teacher relationships fostered through mutual respect and ongoing communication serve as important models for young children.

Consider the following strategies to engage families in children’s positive guidance:

• Have children’s books that discuss feelings and social interactions available in your school lending library.
• Provide resources for families in your classroom library or school resource library.
• Invite families to come to your classroom and observe experiences and activities that promote children’s positive guidance.
• Be responsive to families’ needs or concerns about their children.
• Be sensitive and respectful of individual families’ preferences or life circumstances.

Involving Families

In your daily work, make it a habit to reach out, work at establishing relationships, and engage in ongoing communication with families. Above all, respect families’ preferences and be sensitive to their unique needs and circumstances. In the Apply section of this lesson, you will find resources for families regarding children’s guidance. Spend some time familiarizing yourself with these resources and consider sharing them with families of children in your classroom and program.

With the help of a trainer, coach, or administrator, you should facilitate formal meetings with a family whose child has challenging behavior. There are several things to keep in mind to help facilitate these meetings, suggested by the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning:

• Begin the discussion by expressing concern for the child.
• Let the family members know that your goal is to help the child.
• Ask the family members if they have experienced similar situations and if they are concerned.
• Tell the family members that you want to work with them to help the child develop behaviors and social skills that will help them be successful in the program and beyond.
• Tell the families about what is happening in the classroom or program, but only after they understand that you are concerned about the child and are not blaming the family.
• Offer to work with the family in the development of a behavior-support plan that can be used at home and in the classroom.
• Emphasize that your focus will be to help the child develop the skills needed to be successful in the classroom or program. The child needs instruction and support.
• Stress that if you can work together, you are more likely to be successful in helping the child learn new skills.

Connect families with community agencies that provide behavioral support. The Kids Included Together (KIT) program can also be a valuable resource to share with families. Families can get the individualized support they need in their own homes from experts. Behavior consultants may work with your program, as well, to make sure the child has a consistently implemented plan.

When there is reason to think that an individualized behavior support plan is necessary for a child, families should be involved from the very beginning. Families should participate in observations of the child, share their perspectives on concerns across home and the program, participate in developing a hypothesis about the child’s behavior, contribute strategies to the plan, and be involved in implementing and evaluating the plan. The National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations (NCPMI) provides numerous resources to help you involve families in every step of the behavior-support planning process.

See

Do

In your daily interactions with preschool-age children, consider the following:

• Be responsive to children’s attempts to use social skills or to express emotions. Build on what they are saying or doing.
• Provide frequent, developmentally appropriate models through daily activities and routines.
• Follow children’s cues and preferences.
• Embed activities about emotions into daily routines. For example, during center time, have children play an activity involving sorting, matching, or identifying emotions with friends or peers. Narrate and talk about your own emotions.
• Ask children questions about their feelings, actions, interests, or life events. Reinforce them for using emotion words, appropriately sharing emotions, or demonstrating appropriate social skills.
• Provide puppets or stuffed animals to act out situations or events in which children were experiencing big emotions (e.g., feeling mad, sad, or excited). Ask children how they think the puppets or stuffed animals are feeling. Talk about these emotions and ask children to practice using these emotions throughout the day.
• Identify times of day when a child, or group of children, seems to be experiencing big emotions. Create small books or simple stories with pictures about these times of the day using appropriate feeling words and responses. Read the books or stories to children throughout the day and remind them to use the appropriate emotion words during these times of the day.
• Incorporate multiple books that help children discuss emotions and social challenges that are common for preschoolers (e.g., a friend gets a new toy you really want, a child saying, “You’re not my friend anymore!”). Encourage children to consider how the characters feel and what they could do in similar situations.
• Tell families about some of the activities, experiences, or strategies you use in your classroom to help children practice social-emotional skills at home.