With behavior, what are the pieces of information that will be helpful?
- The setting in which it occurs (For example, always during group time)
- Temperament of the child
- Is the child missing any skills that he/she needs to be successful?
- What happened before the behavior? (The trigger: Very important-You want to know if it is consistently the same)
- What happened right after? (Very important: You want to know if adults or other kids are reinforcing the behavior)
To illustrate the process, I am going to use a few examples from my classroom experiences.
Example 1: Knowing Temperament (The logical child)
All of the kids in my classroom are taught, from day 1, simple problem solving steps to avoid frustration. The basic ones are: try a different way, ask for help, etc.
A little guy in my room was sitting at the table assembling blocks. He stacked them, and they fell, and he cried. He repeated this cycle over and over. He didn't want my attention, or anything from me. He wanted these blocks to stack. He was so flustered that he couldn't talk. I initially thought he had be having difficulty with solving problems in play, but there were no red flags in his development so I initially ignored the behavior and just observed. I needed more information.
The next day, I needed to complete a scheduled developmental assessment with this little guy. As I was going through the questions, I asked him to put something under the table. (I just needed to see if he knew the concept) He said, in a matter of fact way, "Why, that's silly?" I told him I just wanted to see if he knew what under was. He lifted up my assessment, pointed under it and said, "Teacher, this is under." So, no problem solving issues there. He is an incredibly logical 4 year-old.
Later on the same day, he was back at the block table. I heard a crash and tears but, I had my knowledge of his need for logic this time. I sat down next to him and said the blocks weren't working and we needed to fix them. He agreed and together we discovered that they weren't working because the big Lego blocks have to go on bottom to keep the tower stable.
Example 2: Identifying and Teaching the Missing Skills
A few years ago, I worked with a center and the parents of an older 2 year-old. They were very concerned that he was aggressive towards the other children. There was hitting, biting, and pushing. Other parents had started to notice so I was called in to problem solve with the teaching staff.
Before deciding on an approach, it is really important to know what happens before a behavior and what happens after. Sometimes the ONLY way to do this is just to watch and see how things play out normally, so that is what I did. Day 1, the little one approaches his friends (Several look scared as the child approaches) and it looks like he is trying to join the play. He smiles and touches, the child withdraws, and he hits the child. The other child cries, the offender is swept up by a teacher with a quick "no hitting" correction and taken to another area of the room. The child who hit plays alone in a corner until outdoor time.
In this situation I got several clues: The child doing the hitting was not hitting out of anger. He wanted to join the other kids play and it didn't look like he knew how. Corrections were given as no hitting so he wasn't learning the skills he needed. Even though he was being corrected consistently, he still didn't know how to play so he was relying on the only "tool" in his box.
I met with the teachers and shared my observations and then set to teaching a few nicer ways to make friends. It involved sitting with him and a few others during play and modeling age level peer interactions. It was really simple stuff like greetings, asking to play, asking for a toy, etc. It took about a month of daily practice to undo to "aggression for peer attention" but the little one was successful with the support of teachers.
You can take just about any behavior scenario and problem solve it by looking at the setting, the triggers, etc.
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