Behavior & Environment
You’ve navigated a difficult moment with your child, acknowledged their big emotions, and helped them calm down. So, what’s next? How do you help your child understand and process the lessons from these challenging situations? Here’s a guide to support you and your child in moving forward with empathy and love. Provide Reassurance It’s crucial […]
Parenting is a challenging yet rewarding journey. When faced with a child’s misbehavior, it’s natural to seek immediate solutions, and punishment might seem like the easiest path to take. However, while punishments can stop unwanted behavior in the short term, they come with significant drawbacks. Evidence-based approaches like Conscious Discipline and Positive Guidance show us […]
Rewards and punishments are a part of many behavior management programs taught to child care professionals and teachers. At first glance, they make sense. You offer incentives (rewards) to reenforce good behaviors and you impose disincentives (punishments) to move them away from bad behaviors. The goal is for the child to land on the behaviors […]
In the dynamic world of child care, effective communication is key to fostering a supportive and engaging environment. One powerful technique that child care professionals can use to enhance interaction and connection with children is sportscasting. Coined by early childhood educator Magda Gerber, sportscasting involves narrating children’s actions and behaviors in real-time, offering numerous developmental […]
As child care providers and parents, it’s crucial to recognize that when children exhibit challenging behaviors, they’re not intentionally trying to be difficult. Beneath their actions lies an attempt to fulfill their personal needs. They’re not seeking to disrupt or upset us; rather, they’re expressing their emotions in unproductive ways. So, how can we support […]
Guiding children to recognize, articulate, and manage their emotions is a nuanced skill that forms the bedrock of emotional intelligence. Here are three key areas to prioritize. 1. Give them context for their feelings.When children are small, we can sportscast to connect what is happening in the moment with how they’re feeling. For example, “It […]
Spring is here, and now’s the perfect time to start planning a garden with the kids. Optimally, your garden will be outside, but even those with limited outdoor space can enjoy the benefits by being creative with indoor and patio space. There are so many benefits to gardening with kids; here are our top three. […]
Temper tantrums are one of the most common and most frustrating challenging behaviors to handle. They’re not just restricted to the toddler set, they can happen with kids of all ages. Tantrums happen when a child is overwhelmed by a big emotion they’re not developmentally able to manage or they don’t have the skills to […]
Even when we understand child development in-depth, we often find ourselves falling back into old patterns that are at odds with what we know. Our reactions reflect how we were brought up rather than how we want to be as caregivers. How do we change that? 1. Work Through Your ChildhoodThis isn’t as odd as […]
One of the biggest decisions a parent will make is who will care for their children they’re not able to themselves. And for a child care provider, as a business owner, choosing the right families for their program is essential to their job satisfaction and continuous income. Each person’s child care approach is uniquely theirs […]
When kids are fighting with each other, for many of us, our first instinct is to jump in and solve whatever problem they have. We want the squabbling, the fighting, the poking, the whining, the annoyance to stop. However, when we solve the conflict for them, we take away their opportunity to learn how to […]
Intellectually, we know kids aren’t perfect. However, emotionally we often have unrealistic expectations around their behavior. We expect things we wouldn’t expect of ourselves or other adults. Here are three behavior areas we often struggle with. 1. Play Nicely with Others We want kids to share, speak kindly, include others, and display all kinds of […]
