Guiding Children

1. Guiding Children

2. Objectives • To explore the concepts of guidance and discipline • To examine anticipated difficulties throughout each developmental stage • To identify appropriate guidance strategies and techniques for dealing with children of all ages

3. What is Guidance? To lead or to show someone the way to reach a goal

4. Guidance • Involves ways of helping children learn to behave appropriately • Teaches children to control their actions and to make decisions • Combines support, encouragement, and setting limits • Encourages appropriate behavior and helps stop problem behavior • Promotes the development of self-confidence and self-control • Needed to keep children safe and healthy • Helps children to like themselves and to get along well with others. When combined with love and respect, children develop an inner sense of self-control and self-confidence

5. What is Discipline? • To train someone physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially • When combined with love and respect, it helps children to develop self-esteem and responsibility • Parents, teachers, caregivers and others train children when they talk, teach, hold and spend time with them

6. Tools to Guide & Discipline Children • Divert attention • Set limits • Offer choices • Redirect • Timeouts • Reinforce behavior These tools can be thought of as a group of tools used to help shape children’s behaviors and their personalities Tools this powerful are often hard to use because they take a great amount of practice

7. Positive Tools Help Develop Self-Control • When children have self-control they know • What to do • When to do it • Can behave appropriately even when caregiver is not around • Self-control helps children • feel safe • feel confident • be able to think for themselves

8. Effects of Negative Tools • Negative tools like spanking, hitting, yelling or making fun of children tend to • make them timid and withdrawn or rebellious and mean • lead children to feel bad about themselves and to develop fewer feelings of self-control • lead children to question parents’ love and discount the times they really do want to talk, hold, or spend time with them • Constant questioning and discounting of children leads to discouragement, and a discouraged child is more likely to misbehave

9. Reasons Children Misbehave • Curiosity • Illness • Boredom • Angry feelings • Need for attention or love • Low self-esteem • Anxiety • results from caregivers who are not familiar with ages and stages of children’s growth and development • Confusion • results if caregivers are not familiar with family and household rules

10. Understanding Development • Understanding child development helps a parent or caregiver to guide behavior • Physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development influence guidance techniques that a caregiver or parent can use

11. Developmental Stages & Guidance Techniques • Infants • What to expect: • cry when they need something • want their needs met by their caregivers • explore their bodies • curious about everything • sleep less as they grow older • learn by using their senses • play with their food and eat with their fingers • When babies cry they need something • If ignored or punished each time they cry, needs are not met. Therefore they learn to mistrust their caregivers and think of their world as an unsafe place.

12. Guidance & Discipline for Infants • Diverting attention • babies have short attention spans, so their interests are easily shifted from item to item • an example of a diversion tactic is to catch a child’s interest with a favorite toy if he or she is upset about something else

13. Developmental Stages & Guidance Techniques • Toddlers • What to expect: • say “no” to be independent and in control • enjoy “messy” activities • curious about everything, want to explore • begin walking and talking • possessive of belongings, saying “my” or “mine” • take their time eating, dressing and picking up toys • restless; short attention-spans • cry or scream when asked to take turns or share • temper tantrums

14. Guidance & Discipline for Toddlers • Set limits • make rules in order to manage children’s misbehavior • a rule or limit should be clear enough so children understand what part of their conduct is misbehavior and how they can change it into acceptable behavior • Offer choices • allowing toddlers to choose between two activities that are acceptable may be more effective when they refuse to behave by the rules • allows them to be in control

15. Developmental Stages & Guidance Techniques • Preschoolers • What to expect: • many questions • need physical activity • interested in same age friends • exaggerate or make up stories • bossy • say “no” when asked to help clean up

16. Guidance & Discipline for Preschoolers • Redirection • suggest acceptable behaviors to replace misbehaviors • turn a problem activity or action into an acceptable one • Time-out • remove child from activity for a specific period of time until they calm down, think about what they did, and realize they will not be allowed to misbehave • a set time in a safe place away from other children, activities and distractions • be sure to talk to children about how time-out works

17. Developmental Stages & Guidance Techniques • Early school-age children • What to expect: • want to please adults, teachers and friends • flip-flop back and forth – sometimes seeming grown-up, sometimes babyish, acting differently at home than at school • forgetful, messy, creative, and spontaneous • enjoy playing more than helping • interested in “right” or “wrong” • misbehavior often happens when children are feeling ignored, mistreated, or neglected • misbehave to get attention- even if the attention is negative

18. Guidance & Discipline for Early School-Age Threes types of behavior reinforcement • Positive: pay attention when children do what you want • praise child when you approve of their actions • spend time with child while they do what you want • Negative: pay attention to children when they misbehave and do what you do not want • using this method unintentionally teaches children to misbehave in order to get attention • Ignore: pay no attention to misbehavior and attempts to be noticed • do not use this method if child is in danger

19. Other Types of Guidance Techniques Direct Methods of Guidance • Talk to child at eye level and use simple, positive directions • Use “do’s” instead of “don’ts” • Prevent child from hurting self or others • Assist child in dealing with conflicts • Give child a choice whenever possible • Demonstrate or model desired behavior • Touch, guide, or lead child by the hand for further direction • Encourage child with positive feedback

20. Other Types of Guidance Techniques Indirect methods of guidance • Provide an environment with appropriate activities to promote acceptable behavior • Encourage independence by providing accessible behavior • Arrange space of cues regarding appropriate behavior • Provide a regular routine; schedule activities according to child’s needs • Provide appropriate adult supervision

21. Do's and Don'ts • Tell children what they can do instead of what they can’t do • Don’t • “Don’t drop the egg” • Do • “Carry the eggs in both hands, like this…” • Don’t • “Don’t drag your jacket in the mud” • Do • “Tie your jacket around your waist, like this…”

22. Do's and Don'ts • If adults use many negative words such as no, don’t, stop it, cut it out, or shut up, children may decide to tune the parent or caregiver out • Too many “don’ts” also cause negativism in children

23. Protecting & Preserving Children's Feelings • Caregivers sometimes damage children’s self-esteem • Situation • four-year-old Juan spills the milk he was carrying to the table • destructive response: “Can’t you do anything right?” • better response: “That’s a hard job; we’ll wipe it up and you can try again”

24. Protecting & Preserving Children's Feelings • Situation • three-year-old Hannah runs away from you in the store • destructive response: “What’s the matter with you? You’re acting like a baby; I thought you were a big girl” • better response: “I need your help pushing the cart”

25. Offering Children Choices • Offer appropriate choices to avoid problem situations • Situation • you are having dinner in a restaurant and have a limited supply of money • likely to lead to trouble: “What would you like to order?” • instead, try: “You may order the chicken dinner or the spaghetti plate”

26. Changing the Environment to Shape Behavior Try to avoid power struggles between adults and children • Behavior • six-year-old Jermain comes home from school each day and makes a beeline for the cookie jar, washing down a handful of cookies with two bottles of cola from the refrigerator • Environmental change • stock the cookie jar with graham crackers and the refrigerator with fruit juice, yogurt, and fruit

27. Work with Children Working with children instead of against them helps when meeting the needs of children as well as caregivers • Situation • eleven-month-old Savannah turns her head away when offered food on a spoon, if the food is placed on the tray she dives in with both hands and eats with obvious enjoyment • Compromise-Solution • put newspaper on the floor, find a big bib and stand by with a washcloth, let the child feed herself

28. Give Children Safe Limits • Explain the rules and the consequences for breaking them • When children do not follow the rules, follow through with consequences • Situation • five-year-old Tong is having a screaming tantrum because he cannot go out to play, he has been sick and the weather is cold and windy • Setting/Enforcing Limits • tell him you know that he is very mad and disappointed but he can’t go outside today because the wind might make his head hurt again, suggest a card game

29. Remember! • Disciplining and guiding children is not easy • All children misbehave or argue some of the time • You can respond quickly when children need guidance if you understand the reasons for their behavior and know your options

30. QUIZ • What is the purpose of guidance and discipline? • List six tools that a caregiver can use to guide and discipline children • Why do children misbehave? • What guidance technique should you use with infants?

31. QUIZ • Toddlers are characteristically very _______ of their belongings and often say “mine” • The guidance and discipline techniques to use with toddlers are: • do nothing • set limits • offer choices • both B and C

32. QUIZ • Give an example of using redirection with a preschooler. • Early school age children respond well to behavior that is___________. • An indirect method of guidance is: • What happens to children if you use too many “don’ts”?

33. References New Mexico State University. “Guiding Young Children”. 2002. http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_f/f-108.html National Network for Child Care . “Guidance and Discipline- A Developmental Approach”. 2002. http://www.nncc.org?Guidance/guide.dev.apprch.html The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences Texas Tech University. 2002. www.hs.ttu.edu/ccfcs Additional Websites: www.kidsource.com www.keepkidshealthy.com www.naeyc.org www.cps.ca Production Coordinators Treena Aston Allison Mangold Production Manager Geoff Scott Graphic Editor Lauren Mangold Executive Producer G.W. Davis © MMIII, MMIV CEV Multimedia, Ltd.