Difficult Behaviour

[Guest]

We have a little boy in our Kindergarten who wont be four until August. He is delightful in many ways, he is extremely bright, very articulate and faultlessly polite. In a 1:1 situation he is a dream - a very rewarding child. However he cannot sit ona chair and he is always hurting other children. He always says sorry and infact he just goes and sits on the naughty chair!! You would expect such a bright child to learn how to behave but he cant help himself.

Parents are very supportive, they see the same behaviour at home - he often hurts his little sister but they dont know what else to do.

Does anyone have any ideas??

[wellerkaren]

we have a child like this in y settign he is leaving for school in januarythe way we help him was though lots of praise and having a visual routine up for him. is it certain children he hurts the child we have only hurts the chilren he likes we found out after lots of dicussions it was becouase he didn't know how to ask to play with them. the child in my group spent lots of time with the adults in and outside of the setting. so found it hard to socalise with children. so what we did was work with him in small groups gradually adding more children ,we started with the children he liked most first of all in activities he liked. if you have any more details or would like more information I will be happy to help. I have had lots of children with behavior problems in the settings i have worked in.

 

hope this helps so far

Karen

[Guest]

We too have a little boy, who started with us in September, who scratches faces. He tends to pick on one or two children that he wants to befriend and then moves on to somebody else. He doesn't realise that he is doing something wrong and thinks it is a way of showing affection. He doesn't play with children outside the setting and spends a lot of time with his grandmother. Although he has been with us for a term he has only started showing this behaviour over the past few weeks-mainly I think because he has taken quite a long time to settle and spent the first half term following his keyworker around. Now he is becoming more independent and trying to play with the others in his own way.

We are going to spend time after Christmas working with him in small groups and with one other child. We want to develop his social skills and hope that he can learn to play with other children without hurting them. He isn't aggressive or nasty when he scratches them and it's not through frustration or because he can't share. I feel that small groups are the best way for him. He has poor concentration and a lack of understanding about what he is doing.

Linda

[Guest]

Have you read the article on "Emotional competence, handling relationships" (one of the Member's articles). I found it helpful when thinking about how to handle children who don't know how to relate to others.

I find this area one the hardest to deal with so you have my sympathy.

Carolyn

[Beau]

Vivien,

It's important to remember that social skills are something that develop, just in the same way that language or motor skills do and that the development of individual children will vary a lot. The fact that he seems to recognise that hurting other children is not appropriate behaviour is a big start. Try to explain to him why it not a good thing to do, perhaps relating it to a time when he has been hurt by another child. As the others say, it's best to give as much praise as you can when he is being good and interacting well with another child. Also, try not to focus on his bad behaviour too much, giving more attention to the child who has been hurt. This may take a long time to resolve but by working with the parents so that he's getting a consistent message it should be something which will improve!