Being In Control Is The Basis Of Effectively Managing Children’s Behaviour
Posted By on November 11, 2009
I’m quite often asked if my successful behaviour management techniques are about control.
A woman walked by my house a couple of days ago with a beautiful border collie. She was having a great deal of trouble getting the dog to walk on the lead – in fact it sat down and refused to move – it wanted to go the other way. The lady pulled at the lead, the dog resisted, slipped its collar and turned to run towards a busy road. Panic… she shouted the dog and luckily, although it didn’t return to her it sat down, allowing her to put the collar back on. Try again – failed again. This was getting dangerous. Wrong place, wrong equipment, wrong tactics. It could have led to carnage. So what did she do? She gave in and walked the dog back up the road in the direction it had wanted to go. Not a very good lesson for the dog. The woman didn’t have control of the dog and without it the dog wasn’t safe.
When I was driving in town a lady was at the roadside with two children and a pram, waiting to cross the road. Luckily I was driving slowly and as I approached one of the children darted into the road. I stopped in time but things could have been very different – the child could have been seriously injured or worse. What could the mother do? Leave the others and run into the road to save the escapee, shout and hope the child ran back (unlikely), take the others into the road as well – any decision would put all of them in danger. As with the lady and dog the one who should have been in control wasn’t, leading to a potentially disastrous situation.
The question I raised earlier was to ask if control is the basis of effectively managing children’s behaviour. And the answer? Yes it is about control but controlling in the correct way.
People these days seem to have trouble with the words discipline and control. ‘It limits development,’ – ‘It doesn’t allow for free expression,’ – ‘It inhibits imagination,’ we hear. We see tiny children wandering around in dangerous places – roads, shopping centres, super markets, by water – with adults nearby but not close enough to have full control if something were to go wrong. Little kids used to be physically attached to adults – reins… is it so abhorrent to show that you have control that we’re willing to put children into danger?
Let me say that the child that ran into the road wouldn’t have developed much further if he or she had been hit by my car! The development of expression and imagination wouldn’t have progressed much further! And as for the dog and the out of control owner – it would have been under a truck – not a good result!
But children have changed, it’s argued. I don’t think so. Children haven’t had time to evolve into something else. The thing that’s changed is grown ups’ attitdude towards child discipline and upbringing.
Children have to learn how their world works, and to mature into confident and successful adults they have to have the guidance and training from the adults around them. Without the essesntial lessons in ‘growing up’ they are unable to mature appropriately. These lessons are discipline – necessary if we want to avoid maturation coming to a halt at the age of 3 and children unable to control their own behaviour when something doesn’t suit them.
Control is an essential part of discipline and managing children’s behaviour. Until a child matures to where they have learned self control they have to be controlled. It’s a strong but essential message.
However, it is equally important that the correct ways to control and discipline are employed. Children have to be encouraged to be self controlled, independent and confident. Effective behaviour management techniques can be easily learned by anyone. In Behaviour Bible you can read, put into practise and use consistently the techniques I have developed and used successfully with the most demanding behaviour.
Liz Marsden successfully manages children’s challenging behaviour every working day. You can take advantage of her expertise and skills in her book, Behaviour Bible where she gives you the same invaluable advice that she uses herself and teaches to teachers, students and classroom assistants. Read about her daily classroom experiences and gain gain further insight into her work.