Hi,
Well i am an Early Childhood Educator and have taught in various schools systems from Kindergarten to grade 8 and owned operated my own daycare for over 20 years as well as was a Nanny to a ECA Supervisor and Manager for over 3 years. I also worked as the Director of the Nursery for 4 years at the church and taught grade the 3/4 , grade 2, grade 4/5 and Kindergarten class at the church for over 5 years. And i have one son who has mental disabilities and is almost now 29 years old. Lets say, i have spent a lot of years teaching and learning how to manage children's behavior as well as trying to help them over their life.
What i have found is you need both. You always need to be a constant positive support and influence them with constructive and sound feedback. They thrive on knowing they did something well!
They also need to know when their behavior is negative, so you also need to be aware of this and it too needs to be acknowledged. But in such a way that it is not detrimental to them physically, mentally or emotionally. Each child is different. Start with verbalization and explaining why they have done something wrong, but gently. and show them the reason why they should not do it. Again it depends on age, but with reason.
Time outs can work too, and this works as follows, - each minute per age of child. To sit alone no talking, playing and told to think about the choices they made and when the time comes to be released from the spot, perhaps the child can think of new concepts of choices he or she might have made differently and you will discuss them together after. (But don't drag it out. Just keep it brief and let the child go off and play so they are not made to feel subject to further punishment)
Their are more ways, but these are some of the main things i guess. The important thing is that all kids love attention and they will try to get it no matter what, even if its the wrong kind of attention meaning doing something bad, just to be noticed if they are starving for affection. Somtimes, We have to look underneath the lining to get to the real problem to see that the reason a child might be acting out is due to not getting enough love at home.. So if you started paying a bit of attention to that child more, like a hug here or there, making him or her feel special, you might notice that those little once very noticeable bursts of acting out in the play yard or in the classroom, suddenly stop and they are the perfect child..
Its like night and day...
Just like John Lennon says,,,, All we need is Love!
Anyways,, hope this helps!
Dotann
