What most early childhood teachers never realize is that what you learned in school automatically sets you up for failure when it comes to challenging behavior.
If you implement the same systems and ways of interacting as you were taught in school, you inevitably get kids, who don’t care about your consequences and rewards and love, to limit test and power struggle.
If you implement what you learned in your ECE or child development courses you most likely didn’t get what you needed when it comes to challenging behavior and if you’re like many you’re being overly permissive.
In other words what you learned in school (whether it’s your own schooling or your early childhood coursework) will keep you forever stressed and struggling with children who hit, bite, throw things or just won’t listen.
Now that’s not your fault.
If you were a student in our public education system here in the US, then, you were deeply indoctrinated in the idea of grooming children to be “good” when you yourself were in school. The emphasis is on raising hands to ask permission, doing what you’re told, and waiting for your turn. This model was created to groom kids to work in factories and be well-behaved workers!!! (No, really: industrialization) …and yet it continues to dominate most schools today.
AND, if you learned about alternative approaches in your ECE or child development courses: GREAT!
BUT, did you get in-depth and practical information on how to prevent and address challenging behavior in your schooling?…how about with the MOST aggressive children and the one who have survived trauma? Probably not.
So, most ECE professionals fall back on the behavior management strategies used by the schools they attended when they were kids, maybe incorporating things your own parents or families did.
…OR they try to use a more progressive approach taught in their ECE courses but they end up being overly permissive and the kids run wild!
We’ve learned either to stress rule following and compliance to prevent and address challenging behavior…OR we've learned to always state things in the positive and never say no…
BUT neither of these approaches is effective.
If they were, then all the early childhood teachers we know that operate by being super strict or being super child-centered would be wildly successful and teachers and directors wouldn’t be constantly telling me that they see more kids, exhibiting more severe challenging behavior, more often than ever before.
So, we know that most of what we’ve learned about how to prevent and address challenging behavior simply is not working.
That’s because when you adopt strict classroom management strategies (like the ones you or I experienced in school) we aren’t connecting with children, we aren’t speaking their language – the language of play, and we aren’t motivating them to want to be in our classroom and want to do what the group is doing.
This compliance approach designed to train factory workers is destined to fail when we are working with children 2-5 years old.
Successful, masterful early childhood teachers, who are confident in both preventing and addressing challenging behavior adopt a very different mindset.
...and, they focus on connecting with children, they center play and being playful…BUT they also don’t run their classrooms as “anything goes.” They know how to powerfully set limits and they don’t fall into the trap of making the many mistakes so common in “progressive” or child-centered classrooms.
Think about a teacher you know who never complains about behavior problems…
She or he undoubtedly embraces “challenging behavior” as part of the job, relishes the opportunity to support the children who challenge them most, and probably connects with those kids through play and by being playful…maybe she sings her way throughout the day or he works his magic with puppets – kids pay attention, are motivated…and these teachers set limits in a calm, compassionate and FIRM way ...and kids listen!
Teachers like that don’t fall into the trap of trying to train and control future factory workers…and they aren’t overly permissive.
Find me any successful teacher working with children 2-5 years old who doesn’t complain about children’s behavior and who operates their classroom with a focus on getting children to sit still, raise hands, and do what they’re told.
You can’t because they don’t exist.
Find me any successful teacher working with children 2-5 years old who doesn’t set limits or ever say no.
You can’t, because they don’t exist either.
We've learned these are the only two ways, but...
Now you know that you’ve been caught in a trap.
You’ve been either instituting a factory model approach to discipline that doesn’t work with children in the age group we work with…OR you’ve been told that model is wrong, that it’s developmentally inappropriate and so you are using a child-centered approach BUT you’re being overly permissive and the kids are running amok. (Or you vacillate between the two approaches and that can create a REAL MESS!)
But, those are NOT the only two options.
Now that you know there’s another way you have a choice: you can continue to try to get your kids to be well behaved factory workers, or you can continue to be overly permissive and feel betrayed by the fact that a child-centered approach has failed you...
....OR, you can recognize that there is a THIRD option.
The third option is to be the masterful, magical teacher who adopts a mindset of “I relish the opportunity to support these children”…who connects with kids through play, who is playful throughout the day…AND knows how to confidently, calmly and compassionately set limits and avoid the oh-so-common overly permissive mistakes.
It’s not an either-or. There are not just two options.
Of course, I can’t teach you everything you need to embody and implement option #3 here right and right now. But now that you know why your approach is not working, you have a choice:
What kind of teacher do you want to be?
If you decide to break out of the factory worker classroom or overly permissive progressive educator roles and choose to stand in your power as a playful teacher who embraces challenging behavior and sets limits it’s going to be really uncomfortable for you in the beginning. It might even be SCARY to break out and do something different. Or, you may feel unsure of how to do that in the setting in which you work.
But I promise it will be worth it in the end.
I’d love to know what kind of teacher you want to be in the comments below!