Learning to be Buddies

If you are a teacher, you have probably experienced working with a child whose behaviour has puzzled or frustrated you.  You seem to be constantly picking up and comforting children in their wake.  You have tried negotiation, reasoning, pleading, rules and rewards, ignoring, “I” statements, time out (oh dear) and the only result seems to be a thinning of your patience and a slow greying of your hair.

So what can you do?  How can you change the situation?

One of the first things you might like to consider is taking the time to sit back and observe… up to the point that another child may be about to be hurt.  Then you need to step in, of course – LOL! 

Alternately, you might ask someone else to come and observe.  Sometimes it is hard to pick up all the little things that are happening, or the triggers for the child’s behaviour, if you are in damage control mode.  Get them to do an anecdotal or running record of what is happening.  This will give you a written record that you can analyse.  Again it will help you pick up clues to what is happening.

Once you have watched the child, try thinking about what might be the function or purpose of the child’s behaviour.   For example, if you read literature about the function of behaviour it suggests that behaviour usually occurs for one of three reasons… to get something, to avoid something or to communicate something.

When thinking about what you observed of the child’s behaviour, you might want to think about these scenarios.

A child may be rough with other children to get attention.  They may find that this is the best way to get your attention and keep it all to themselves for a while. 

There are two things you might need to do to help address this.  One, set aside a time to spend doing something fun with that child – like reading a story together, or kicking a ball around.  Two, make sure you spend more time helping the child who was hurt than reprimanding.  This means you are deflecting your attention away from the inappropriate behaviour while not ignoring it.

A child may also be rough to avoid feelings of isolation.  They may want to join in the game but not know how to do this effectively.

If this is the case, you may want to try teaching the child “play entry” skills.  This could be as simple as teaching them a simple phrase such as “Can I play?”  You may also need to work on helping the child wait until they get a response, or what to do if the other children say, “No.”   If this is the case, start another game with the child and it will be likely that other children will want to join in your game.

Another reason a child may be rough over a long period of time is because they need to communicate their feelings but do not know how to do it.  They may be acting impulsively in response to anger, frustration, sadness or confusion.

Working out what the child is feeling can be difficult if they can’t put it into words.  You may want to spend some time reading books, playing games, doing role plays and chatting about feelings and what to do in response to those feelings.  Then when the child displays the rough behaviour you can encourage them to use these appropriate responses.  For example, instead of hitting out when angry the child could be encouraged to use body language and words to communicate their feelings.  Then you will hopefully be able to help resolve the situation by addressing the source of the child’s anger or frustration.

These thoughts have helped me facilitate change in children’s behaviour, including children who have a range of disabilities such as hearing impairments and ADHD.  I hope they will be useful to you.