Guiding Behavior

Rule-Making To Prevent Rule-Breaking

Yesterday we talked about teaching your children about good choices, especially when we are following up with inappropriate behavior because we need to teach our kids alternate ways to conduct themselves.

Well, today we are going to brush up on some facts that will prevent SOME of the behaviors that you consider inappropriate. 

In a classroom, teachers always have rules posted on the wall.  We talk about rules before group time, small group, recess, lunch, and just about every time of the day, every day!  Teachers are CONSTANTLY setting expectations for children and warning children about what will happen if those expectations aren’t met. 

Casey and I were just talking yesterday about the times she goes into grocery stores with her little boys.  Beforehand, in the car, she might tell them “When we go into the grocery store, you need to stick by me, and use an inside voice.  You may ask me for __ things that you want, but mommy will make the choice that is best and you need to have a good attitude.”  Wow!  Right there the child knows what is expected….even before entering a daily errand!  Then she might say “If you are not making those good choices, then _________(fill in the blank with a consequence)” BAM!  They even know what consequence to expect if they do not stick to the guidelines she set. 

As a mommy, daddy, or caregiver, we have a big responsibility…that is, whether or not we set our kids up for success or failure.  House rules are a great way to set expectations and hopefully teach our children how he/she can be the best they can be! 

So, let’s talk house rules.  It’s time to make and display the house rules…I feel a writing activity coming on!

Get out your materials (whatever you want to use) and gather your child/children for a little meeting.  When making the rules, ask your child what rules are important for a safe, happy home, and ask them leading questions to build your list of rules.  Including your kids in the rule-making is one great way to make clear boundaries because it gives the children ownership of the rules they help to make.  Also, talk about what kinds of things happen if we act the opposite of those rules.   However you do it, EXPLAINING and GIVING EXAMPLES for the rules are imperative.

Any way your family chooses to write the rules will be special, you might use pictures to remind them what that rule says, or you might let them draw a picture for each rule, or not use any pictures at all. 

Here is an example of Casey’s House Rules:

This is a great visual reminder of expectations you have for your children, and tomorrow I will be writing about a way to follow up with these rules in a meaningful way through another visual reminder.

Casey adds: “Rules are a GOOD thing to have around the house and kids need to understand WHY they are good: to keep us safe, to remind us to be respectful, to teach us how to behave as good citizens. That being said, it is necessary for rules to be worded in a POSITIVE way. For example, instead of saying “No running” rephrase the rule to say “Please walk.” This helps children to understand that rules are not meant as a punishment, but as a way we can all cooperate and play safely.”

 

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Teaching Good Choices

I’ve talked to a lot of friends lately who want to learn more about teaching their child how to manage their feelings, manners, and social skills.

As a teacher, building on children’s emotional development is somewhat like clockwork because you have a bird’s eye view of the behavior and have the resources to teach about the behavior. Whereas, as a parent, you have been so entwined with these emotions since your child was born, that it is hard to see beyond what you know about them and you often try to “fix” your child’s behaviors.

Well, the good news is that you can TEACH your child positive behaviors and encourage your child to PRACTICE these interactions and eventually you may not have to focus as much on their “misbehavior.”

Some of my “tricks” include REINFORCEMENT (a lot of repetition), REFERENCE (referring to characters in books that the child does want to be like/doesn’t want to be like), ROLE PLAY (allow your child to act out behaviors through characters they become), and CONSISTENCY (choose methods for teaching and consequences that work and stick to them).

I cannot cover the whole spectrum of teaching positive behaviors in one post, but I will introduce some things that I find effective in most circumstances.

As a first example, when I observe that a child is acting out on their anger, I have them go sit at a designated table/desk where I will meet them shortly after they cool down a bit. At this table I keep a basket of books and dolls/puppets under the table (not to be a play table but a table to work out emotions). This can otherwise be referred to as the “PEACE Table,” where you will HELP your child resolve and learn from these issues. When I bring children to this space I might say something like “I see that you do not have control of your feelings and you need time to get control. I will be back in ____minutes, (a minute for every year old) so we can talk about it and solve this problem.”  **Casey suggests not starting the timer until the tantrum has settled because children can’t cognitively reflect and process their behavior or consequence until the mood swing has subsided.

If you are not at home, take their hand (as early as possible), and walk them over to any private area, out of the environment where they lost control.

I will make sure to tell the child that it is not bad to be angry but that it is NOT okay to act on it. I will give them examples by taking out a doll/puppet/g.i.joe. “This is Jack, and his toy was taken away from him. How do you think he feels? (mad). Yes, mad, and that is okay but what if jack hits the table because he is mad? Is that going to help him get his toy back? No, what is something that he can do to earn his toy back?” This starts to get your child to think about alternative behaviors to solve their problems. Then I would act out a similar situation WITH my child, and then I would have my child reenact the situation of their anger from earlier and talk about what went wrong and have them reenact what happened with a different ending to the story.

Children WANT to learn alternative behaviors! Most of their behaviors are instinct or habit. I am not encouraging you to stop issuing discipline and consequences…not at ALL. I am just giving you ideas of how you can start TEACHING positive behaviors in addition to discipline.

Additionally, reading books that discuss feelings, pose problems that need resolution, and identify children with different characters is a GREAT way to model inappropriate and appropriate behaviors.

So, here are some ideas of books that you can read so that when you are at the peace table you might either close with one of the books, OR refer the child to one of the characters in the book and how that character dealt with their similar problem. Go to your local library or thrift store and see if you can find any of them!

Summarize longer books for children with shorter attention spans 🙂

Hope this helps!!!!

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“Writing” About Feelings

What do you do when you are overwhelmed with emotion?

 I tend to journal a prayer or call a close friend.

Kids definitely get overwhelmed with emotions at times.  In fact, your child could be kicking and screaming for your attention right now as you read this post!

The teacher that I am believes that every moment could be a teaching moment and maybe you can turn this lack of communication into a writing activity that enables your child to express their feelings in another way. Besides, writing doesn’t begin with formation and technique, it begins with scribbles and pictures!

So get out a notebook, a piece of paper, an easel, or a sketchbook and after appropriately dealing with behavior (I’m a fan of super-nanny’s technique myself), allow your little one to express his/her emotions in a constructive way.

Afterwards, write on the back what your little one said in verbatim and the date because it is like keeping a diary or keepsake book.

Use this activity when your child is overwhelmed with excitement as well; you want your little one to express the highs of his/her day too!

Before you do this activity, another fun incorporation is to read a book on feelings to them so they start to have a bird’s eye view of their emotions.  I love the book Yesterday I Had The Blues by Jeron Ashford Frame so maybe you can stop by the Library when your running errands today! Yesterday I Had the Blues

Here are some snapshots in action:

 One of my former students painting about her happy feelings.

A candid shot of me sharing the completed feelings book with all the friends who made it!

Another student reading her personalized page in the Feelings book to a classmate.

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Read A Songbook!

I love to sing.  More than that, I love to sing to kids.  Whether I am singing “This is the way we pick up our toys…”

Or “This is the day the Lord has made…”

Kids seem to be mesmerized by music, and shame on me, but they are so pleasant when they are in a trance. 

Today, I want to help you mesmerize your little one for academic purposes, and maybe even for a quiet car ride on an errand run.

 The cheap-o that I am will warn you that you may want to invest in a binder and sheet protectors for today’s activity, but you can technically do without it. 

This is a songbook that I made for my sweet little friend Carsyn.  I wanted it to be meaningful because I was filling it with a lot of educational songs too.  So I simply uploaded a picture of her into a word document and picked a fun font  (Kristin ITC).

Then I simply picked the songs that I targeted with the skills I wanted to teach her at the time.  The FREE printables for these songs can be found at Kelly’s Kindergarten, Kid’s Count under School Is Cool Big Books , New Jack Hartmann Big Books, and Dr. Jean Big Books, as well as  Dr. Jean.org.

Print them and put them together in sheet protectors back to back. 

The book will be unique depending on the songs you pick. 

If you are an over-achiever like me, you can download the songs you picked to print and make a CD that goes with the book.  Or find a friend who has a lot of children’s songs on their computer and borrow.

 **Sing-along books are great for SO many reasons**

Sing-along books:

  • Make it easy to follow along with the pictures and words.
  • Engage and maintain a child’s interest.
  • Help children follow along with print, one word at a time (one-to-one correspondence).
  • Teach children to read independently and with purpose.
  • Teach skills through rote memory (just from hearing a “Days of the Week” song over and over a child will memorize and learn the days of the week).
  • Help kids connect stories with pictures.

 “Carsyn loves her songbook! She reads it all the time. She loves to sing along and read it to her little sister.” ~Kasey of Baton Rouge, La

The Starter songbook I made for Carsyn were the following picks:

  1. Alphardy –sing to learn Album by dr jean  (Letter Naming and Sounds Awareness)
  2. Down by the bay – raffi singable songs (Rhyming)
  3. Color farm –sing to learn (Colors and Color Word Recognition)
  4. The Shape Song – Shape-A-Loo song fromTotally Math by dr jean (Shape Identification)
  5. Five Fish – Sing Silly Songs Album by dr jean (Adding On)
  6. Chant and write – totally math Album by dr jean (Number Identification and Formation)
  7. Today is Sunday –dr jean and friends Album (Days of the Week)
  8. The twelve days of school –keep on singing and dancing Album by dr Jean (Ordinal Numbers)
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Patterns (Round 2)

Following up on the “Pattern Introduction” post, here is an activity and some info on the next phase of introducing patterns….

Before we start, if you have been doing the rhythmic patterns I want you to practice some more, introducing the letters ABC.

So you might clap, snap, snap, clap, snap, snap while saying “A, B, B, A, B, B” because you are doing one thing and then another so you move to a different letter of the alphabet to name that movement, and so on and so on.  This is due to the fact that universally movement patterns, color patterns, and shape patterns are often represented using the letters of the alphabet. 

You can teach them this by saying “If I am doing two motions then I need two letters to stand for them so I am going to use the first two letters of the alphabet ‘A’ and ‘B’.  Let’s try an AB pattern: stomp with the right foot, stomp with the left foot, but lets use the letters to stand for our stomping, ‘A, B, A, B’ while stomping left, right, left, right.  If I clap when I say ‘A’ and I snap when I say B then it would sound like this ‘A, B, B, A, B, B’ but if I made up a beat with 3 movements then I would need the next letter in the alphabet to stand for the new movement: Touch your head, shoulders, knees, head, shoulders, knees…. ‘A, B, C, A, B, C.’”

So, the next phase of patterns is allowing some symbol (like letters) to represent the movement, but other than introducing letters verbally as we just have as a listening and doing activity, we are going to incorporate visual representations of the movement.  So your child is going to follow a pattern, by looking at pictures, not just listening and following along with you.

Here are 3 separate patterns to follow, click on the image and print it out; see if your child can tell what movements to do by “reading” the directions: 

Take pictures of your child doing other movements, put them into a word document in a pattern, and print.  Your child will have so much fun with that!

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