In general there are four basic categories that reasons four misbehavior are supposed to fall into. I say, "supposed to" because there are definite exceptions when a child has developmental delays. (eg: a child may not have the appropriate social skills to request a toy) I will cover these categories first, as they are the most common. These categories are:
- Attention: I want attention now and this behavior is how I am going to get it.
- Misguided power: You can't make me!
- Revenge: This usually comes a while after you have corrected the child.
- Assumed inadequacy: The "I can't" child.
The positive discipline website has an amazing PDF chart that has some great tips on these here: http://www.positivediscipline.com/files/MistakenGoalChart.pdf
Now, how do you determine why the child is engaging in a behavior? I will walk you through this with an example from my setting this week.
Example 1
My little friend "Logan" is an adorable two and half year old little boy. He loves to play outside. But for the past two days, he has decided he does not want to follow the rules on the climber/slide. He only wants to go up the slide when kids are going down.
His behavior: Going up the slide when kids were on it.
My response: "Get down Logan. Use the ladder."
His response: Tantrum and repeat attempts.
In this process, I do a little evaluation. Does he need additional teaching? In this case, no. He can use the ladder just fine. He wants to go up the climber his way. I also consider my rules. Am I enforcing this with everyone. In this case, yes. It's too confusing to say sometimes you can go up and sometimes you can't. So I determine that initially his goal is power. He just ways to do it his way.
The other kids then leave the climber slide area and I decide to walk away and see what happens. He stops crying until he gets close to me and then resumes full scale tears/tantrum. I amend my original assessment. His goals of behavior are power and attention.
So in this case, I have to consistently enforce the rule and ignore the tantrum. I keep him in my peripheral vision and continue interacting with the other kids until the tantrum is complete. As soon as the tantrum is complete, I give lots of immediate positive attention. It took about 10 minutes, but we didn't have any more issues outside after this.
Links
- http://www.positivediscipline.com/
- https://www.pbis.org/community/early-childhood
Do you have a real life example that you would like me to post? Just write a comment. :-)
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