Reframing Behaviour in Early Childhood Classroom

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Inc. Conversation with the early childhood training, I'm Baz. - And I'm Megan. - And today, Megan, we're talking about supporting children to regulate their behaviour. We have a very special guest with us today. Her name is Karen, hello Karen. Hello Baz and Megan. Very nice to have you here. - I'm Magic One. That's what we want. That's actually the answer. Can you give us a Magic One? - There is absolutely no Magic One. There is no recipe. Every situation is individual. So we're just gonna take it. We just have to get to know our children and go from there. - Great. - Okay, so from birth, you know, children begin to explore how the social world works. Exploring and learning to manage feelings, behaviour, rights and responsibility is a complex process. So can you help us unpack that little bit Karen? - Okay, well first of all, we have to understand that children don't know yet. Okay, so we need to help them learn. And I've always said, when children challenge us in any particular way, that's almost like their job. Okay, it's what they do. They try to understand the world. They're testing us out. And so we need to look at it as that, as this is typically, typical development. And instead of getting angry or frustrated, we need to be able to try to understand where it's coming from. - So once you start to unpack that and you start to think about where is this behaviour coming from, what are some tools or strategies, perhaps that educators can appoint to each other and to themselves to be able to actually do this? - Yeah, I think the most important thing first of all, is to build a relationship, build a relationship with the child, build a relationship with the family, understand the family circumstances, understand where they're coming from, build a trust in the family, so that when there are concerns, we can easily go and work with them in partnership, because we've got to remember that partnerships with families is the key. Of course it is, okay. But building that relationship with the child, they learn to trust us. Okay, we bond with them, we attach. They learn to attach. And when they feel safe and secure, then regardless of the behaviours that are happening, it opens the door for us to be able to support them. - So once you've built this relationship with the child, and there are behaviours, or perhaps they're struggling to regulate their behaviour, or the way that they're feeling within the classroom, what are some things that you can give educators out there as a tool that they might want to appoint further along from, the fact that they've built the relationship where to now? I know this child, I've been in my care for many years, how am I gonna support what I'm gonna do? - The very first thing is to do your observations. You need to identify where the behaviour is coming from. I mean, this child may be travelling along perfectly fine, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, there's all these behaviours happening, and you're trying to understand what's happening. Well, we don't fully understand by watching and knowing. We need to actually physically put together a set of observations, and they could be an ABC chart, which looks at antecedent behaviour and consequence. It could be an event sample, it could be a time sample, it could be an anecdotal, it could be a jotting, anything like that, just to start to document what is happening. That's the first thing that I would do, is start to watch and listen, be present and be available, and enlist all the educators to do it together. One educator, it's not their responsibility. Everybody in the team needs to work together so that we can all form a joint idea of how it's happening, and what is happening for that child. - I suppose the biggest thing, or the thing that I talk about a lot with a lot of educators, when we have, I mean, I suppose the biggest hot topic that Baz and I get when we're going to services, is it age appropriate? And I think sometimes we put them in this little box of, well, the milestones say this child should stop biting at the age of 18 months, because now they've got language, so why would they be biting in a three-year-old room? But there's so many reasons behind all of that, and so yes, we take the observations, and yes, we do all of that. But actually, is it relevant for that child? Age of law for the child? - So I think ages and stages is one, way to sort of identify behaviors, but I do think we also need to look at sort of developmentally. What is actually happening for that child? We need to, you know, not always count on those assumptions that at two years old, this is typical, so therefore if the child's doing it at four, they're misbehaving or acting out. I think something else that you brought up that got me thinking is, we need to consider are there any medical issues that are happening? And often I will say to my families or encourage educators to talk to families, maybe it may be worthwhile to have the child, you know, go and have you checked out by doctor. I know a lot of children that have had ear infections or as a result, can't hear, which in turn triggers them to act out in some way, or they have poor eyesight, so, you know, or there is some other kind of learning thing happening. I'm not saying that we need to diagnose, we are certainly not in a position to do that or assess children in that way. It needs to be professionals that do that, but certainly we understand development enough. But I guess we need to be able to identify red flags. Absolutely. To be able to know what children should or shouldn't be doing at certain age and stages. And therefore we are well informed to better identify some of these things that you're talking about. So no development, well, you need to understand development and what it looks like. So the ages and ages is helpful for that, but also understand your children and what they're typically able to do at the stage. And so that we can clearly see when there's something off. There's other factors that impact behavior as well. Size medical stuff. There's has a family circumstance change. Is somebody ill? Is the child ill? Is it does a child blood sugar drop dramatically at a certain time of day if they don't eat something? So then they start to whine or act out or do something. And then start to think about what can we do? So it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario. We really just need to look at each child and go, how are we going to support that particular child? I always talk about the difference between equal and equitable. Because when you're putting strategies into play, somebody might say, but that's not fair. He got to sit for longer reading a book. Or he got to wear the headphones. And I try to explain, well, for him or her, what they need is that right now. And we would do that for others. So that's being equitable to the child. And that's what inclusion is all about. I should have probably like that. And I think it's a really good way or tool for educators to adopt in their environments, or in their classrooms, or in their services, and really go back and challenge each other and think about. When we're talking about some of these things, something that was coming into my mind was limits and limitations. So talk about limits and setting limits in a classroom, and what that looks like, and how that supports regulating behavior for children. Well, I think, first of all, we need to be very clear. And I think all educators need to be in the same place. And that includes all casual educators coming in, all students that may be in the service. Everybody needs to know. And so there should be some kind of a, whether it's a chart on the wall, whether it's a handout you give to the new students that come in, whatever it is, these are the rules of our room, these are the limits, this is how we talk to children. Suddenly, newer learners will tend to use things like, good boy, bad boy. And we really want to discourage that. Because we don't want to put a value on children and their behavior. And we also need to learn about separating the behavior from the child. This is the child's behavior. This is not who the child is. The behavior should not define the child. Something that I find really interesting is, often when there is a child that is very, very challenging in a room, the focus is always so negative. And so the very first thing I say to educators when they're saying, what do I do? I said, tell me something positive about this child. What is, tell me about child strength. And for some, it takes a few moments. But I talk about reframing how you think about the child. And think about what they can do, what they like, what they enjoy. And that will help you focus on that side of it, so you can provide them with tools that bring out their strengths and support their strengths to manage and support those challenges. And so many don't think about those strengths. I think that that is something that stumps a lot of people. I think you look, look, you get six months, 12 months down in the year. And you don't feel that you have support from managers and other people in the centre. And you're on your own. I think that's when it all becomes too much. They get to us and when we go into the rooms. It is a thing that they have and it's not about what this child actually likes. And some actually really struggle with the strengths of that child. And I think if we could all just take a step back and actually look at what that child brings to the room, not just the chaos, but the actual other parts of that. I think there'd be so many more opportunities to support the children. And not get six months down a track where it's so hard now to even find a positive because you're just constantly trying to manage the behaviour and try and make sure that they're running us to safe and you've got parents probably by now yelling at you, being angry that their child isn't safe because there's other child turning them. And that child that has the behaviour is now labelled as that child. And every parent knows that child's name and every single one of you I'm sure are thinking about that child in your service. And it's horrible. And as much as we try and think about not doing that. It happens and it's because we haven't thought about it in a different way and changing it outside the box. I think that's important as well. Well the other point that you made and I think what we need to really emphasise this is very hard to do. Taking care of children, educating children, supporting children, running a room with all the other things that you're expected to do, filling out forms and documentation and writing programming and everything and dealing with all those other children through all the routines and so on. It's a hard job and it's easy to, after a while, it does start to great on you when you have a child that is constantly challenging you. I think something that's really important for educators to do is use their self-reflection time to reflect on this. I was just thinking about reflection and how that is a really good tool to use in this. Really think about how they're responding and are they being triggered by something a child is doing. I always talk about how we deal with conflict. Sometimes some of us are much better at dealing with conflict and other avoid conflict. When a child is acting out, that's conflict. We may want to run the other way or we don't know how to deal with it so we don't respond in the appropriate ways or not in a way that a child needs us to. We need to really reflect on that and think about how do we manage conflict. We have to learn how to be able to handle that feeling, that feeling of not knowing, that feeling of anxiety when conflict happens and learn how to contain, support and contain that child. Sometimes that is really, really hard. Some people do it really easily. Some people I speak to, some educators just love the side of the job. I'm one of them. I love the side of the job. When a child challenges me, it just becomes more of a challenge and I do whatever I can to wrap them in kindness and support and whatever I can do. It feels natural for me. But for a lot of people it doesn't, especially new educators that are still learning how to navigate relationships in general. It is difficult. For those new educators who are perhaps struggling earlier on, you mentioned about observation starting with that at the very beginning. So once they have started to observe the children's behaviour, what happens next? What should they be doing or how can they continue to support that child? Maybe just even before you even answer that, probably a thing that we need to be thinking about is that it's not so much about us observing that. But is the behaviour really bad? Or is the behaviour instructive? Or is it our bias and we are showing, oh this is so loud. I talk, I use a lot of talking about looking at a photo frame and then you look at each activity and you go, okay, well these children here are being really, really loud and they are screaming. But if I look at just through a picture frame and I look at that group of children, they are so engaged in what they are doing. It's loud. It's annoying to me personally. But if I just take a step back, instead of them being in trouble and that's, you know, hyper, whatever that is. But instead of that being the issue, it's actually more the fact that it's me who's not coping with the situation and actually the behaviour really isn't as dreadful as I think it is. So when we're doing those observations and we're looking at that, what are we needing to observe that isn't with our bias, with our knowledge? I mean there's probably only things we've been thinking about and I don't have any answer even the question I'm asking because I'm unsure of what kind of a tangent here. Hopefully you'll get your brain as working. But it's a big thing for me in the fact that sometimes the behaviour really, the expectation of the behaviour isn't actually that bad. It's actually more us going, oh this is just not okay for me. And I think you make a good point because I always talk about we need to differentiate between the babies that are annoying and the behaviours of the behaviour of concern. And so again this is about talking with your team and about sort of identifying what behaviours can we sort of ignore or redirect or use typical behaviour quite as strategies and when does it become a behaviour concern? And obviously a behaviour concern if it's hurting themselves, others or the environment. That's usually how I define a behaviour of concern. So those are the kinds of things that you need to be looking for. So you're watching children and they're spreading around the room. And doing any harm to anyone knows, just a bit annoying and driving you crazy because they're being a bit loud. But are they spinning across the room and bashing into shelves and knocking things over? That is something that obviously we're going to go over and try to redirect them and address that behaviour. So when you're doing an ABC for instance which is a chart you would write the behaviours, child spinning around, hitting into shelves, so on and so on. So what happened just before that and then what was the result of that? Or if you're just documenting a time sample of how many times the child spins around and destroys the room. If that is something that you're concerned about or how many times the child bites or how many times whatever it is where somebody is being hurt or the environment is being hurt. Some people just remind me, when we talk about books for instance and people get really angry because the child rips a book. And sometimes I think, is that really a terrible, I mean, look, it's not nice that they're ripping books. But there's a need there. And that is another way that we need to think about, is that behaviour meeting a need? Maybe they're just curious. Maybe the book is open, they're two years old. They don't know any better. And you give them a book that maybe is a little bit not age appropriate for them. And then you get angry with them because they're ripping the pages out or chewing on it or whatever they're supposed to be doing with these things. So you're right, we've got to figure out what are the things that are really damaging and where we need to get potentially additional support in. Because again, we're not diagnosed, we're not experts in things. I get stumped, I've been doing this for over 30 years. And some children's behaviours still stump me and I'll just go, I don't know. But let's try and figure this out together. So, you know, and every situation is different. And you've got to look at what is what's happening in the environment? What's happening in the speed? Exactly. I mean, as much as we talk about the wand at the start, there is no wand because each child is different. I mean, look, I mean, I've been challenged by behaviours of children. My son is also one of them that challenged my thinking and how I saw children with behaviours that I never looked at his positives. And, you know, that I look at the children in the rooms. There's a moving things that I'll go through and check off before I even then go, well, this now needs to go to that next stage. Yeah. Because I need to make sure the educators are educated enough that they understand those things. And, you know, look, there's the hot topics of behaviours. There's biting, always. There's knocking everything over. And they're the two main things that probably drive us the most crazy. But if you look at it, both of those are very age appropriate. And if you've got a room full of one or two year olds, you're going to have biting. Their language is not there, but it's the three year olds. When they hit three, you know, a lot of diagnosis happens there because they are becoming a bit older. And there's that age where the milestones do change and they have to be able to do certain things. But my biggest conversation that I have with three year old teachers is children are only now learning how to invite themselves into play. And if I look at my son when he was in the three year old room, he's way of inviting himself into play was to come in and knock everyone's toys over. Because he didn't know how to say, hey, can I come play with you, Karen? Because you're looking like you're having some fun over there and I want to build with you. So he thought, I'll knock everything over. And then all the children will be playing then and they'll focus on me and it will all be about me again. We as educators have to know what each age group is meant to be able to start to learn. So we can put those things in place at the start. You know, the three year old room should be everyone role-muggling how to invite yourself into play. It should be that when we go and sit with the group of children, we ask them, can I sit with you? What are you playing? Can I play too? Yeah. Because those children that don't have that language or don't understand that don't know how to invite themselves into play. I think that's very important to me and all that you're saying there and we have to be aware of that. But I think we also have to be aware of our expectations, educators, and what we're expecting children to do or not do. Absolutely. And I think we need to consider our space. I think we need to set up the spaces. So if we want to have children learn how to be with each other, we need to set up those spaces so it invites children to play together. But the biggest thing, supervision. I mean, I was just at a service and they were talking about this one trial that, you know, there were definitely red flags and concerns for this trial because these behaviors were beyond what I even understood what to do. But he would deliberately go over and try to bite children. He was four and he would talk about, you know, biting their necks off and blood and all of it. And they were just trying to figure out, you know, what do I do when that happens? So I gave them some ideas. But the bottom line is supervised. And you know, I was thinking about that thing that we talked about in terms of considering it has it and doing a risk assessment and it sort of came back. And I said, you know what? Sometimes if children have behaviors that are really damaging something, they are risk. And it doesn't mean that they're bad children, but they are causing risks. So something that you can do that I never even thought about until we talked about it, you know, ages ago, was it's important to assess your space and assess the risk that this particular child in these particular situations may be. need to happen. But the other thing that really struck me was there were times when this child was not, there were no adults around this child. And people were running across the playground or running, you know, to go and break things up. And you know what, that child needs someone on him all the time. It doesn't matter what, he's too much of a risk, unfortunately. And in a positive way, let's get involved, get, let's get him playing. The adult isn't there to supervise or negative behaviors don't happen as much as they're there to engage the child, be there to protect and support the space in some ways. But we don't want the child to feel like someone's hovering over you just in case. And even when they're extreme, I mean, look, we've all got extreme stories about behaviors like that. But that's when it takes a village. So that's when we need to have the meetings with the parents. And we need to call on any resource that we have outside our services. And we need to call on our manager, the head leader, every other person that we can think of and have meetings and really discuss, well, what are we going to do? Because the problem, it's not about, you know, expelling the child from child care, which is what parents will want in some educators. And I understand it does get to points where it's like that. But I think we need to actually, this is when we need to get more information. We need to work out what's happening in that child's life outside of the centre. And we may not know everything. And some parents aren't open to talking about things. And that's okay as well. But we have to try these things. When they hit the four-year-old rooms or the kind of rooms, you can have the preschool and the school and the school and the school. And they can come and support. And they do come in with a different set of eyes. And sometimes it's just that new set of eyes to give you some tips and tricks on stuff. There have also been around a lot of different behaviours that maybe you haven't been around. We're lucky all three of us have been early childhood for a very long time. And we've experienced a lot and a lot of behaviours. And still, there are two and every year that's done me. And I just try and go back into the, well, I'll go through the checklist of the things that I need to do. But my biggest thing that I hear from teachers and you can tell me how you would answer something like this, but I always get, I've already tried that. It doesn't matter how many things I say to them. They've already tried everything that's on my list and none of it's worked. And I always say to people, it takes 21 days to form a habit. And you have to try something for as long as possible. But it doesn't work like that in behaviours. Because each day can be so different. The new mum that's just had a baby who's not sleeping every night is the same story. It's like, I'm just going to get through tonight. Tonight we've done this routine. It's going to work. They're like, tonight I'll do it again the next day. That child does not sleep the next day because it's not the same behaviour. It's seem to be a little bit like that. It really doesn't work always. You know, I'm just thinking, if you've always tried that and it doesn't work, why are you keep trying that? You know, there is some saying around that? So I think that you've got to get creative and you've got to get innovative and you've got to think out of the box. We've got enough brain power within services, enough people with experience and even new educators that come in come with experience and knowledge. And we've got to call on all of that. And I want to sort of put a call out to the third three that are out there that are working, that are thinking, no, this is the room leader's job. This is the diploma's job. Well, I'm just a working towards third three. I'm just going to sit back and it's not my job. I don't need to assert myself. You know what, step up. You may have something to offer. You may be the one that actually has that amazing relationship with the child. We want to hear your voice too. And I think that's really important that everybody needs to contribute and participate. But educators also need to be able to look at themselves and recognise when the stress of this is getting too much. Because when you're feeling stressed and uncomfortable, you're not going to not only handle the situation immediately, everything else is going to be coloured through those lenses and you're suddenly going to find yourself not pulling your weight in your job, feeling stressed and anxious, going down that road, taking time or fork, all of a sudden. So I think educator well-being is a really important thing that we need to be considering as well. And these kinds of children, especially that have behaviours that do challenge us, we put our heart and soul into it. It's emotionally and physically extremely draining. You know, and some of the stories that the families come to with you are heartbreaking. And that is something that I don't think a lot of people already think about when they're going into the industry that we're going to be dealing with some things that are going to make us feel very sad and helpless. And I, so what I'm talking about is educators feelings, I guess. Would you say that these feelings can also contribute to the fact that they react to some of the hideous things? How many many times? You know when you're having a bad day and you go in, you're not going to be at your best. And I would just say to educators, you know what, if you know that it's just too much, you need to be honest and say, you know what, I need to take the day. I need to just take the day. And I know, I feel a curve of saying this because I know that we desperately need all our educators in this every single day. And we don't have enough to have. And all of that. But you know what, I would rather have a staff, I don't know, I'm not a manager of a service. But I would, I personally would rather, if I was working there, have that person take the time to just rest and do what they need to do. So they need to do so, but tomorrow they can come in and be fully engaged, then be there, not fully engaged. And look at this. This is the Chasay standard stuff where we're talking about teachers. When you're having your worst day is when you do things that you will regret maybe for the rest of your life. And it can take that split second, the child hits you in the face. And you can push them back. Or pull them back. And you can use your messages. And you don't know. But tell me, you know if you're not having a good day or if your team member isn't speaking to you, imagine how the children feel. Or they're already walking into an environment that feels tense, that's then amplified because they want to get your attention because they know you're not yourself. It is better to just have the day off. And as much as we need to start, when we think about our team, sometimes we're not the best person if we aren't right for our team. And then there's the other side of it. As educators, and I guess I kind of model that a little bit, I try to. You've got to stay well. You've got to stay healthy. You've got to exercise. You've got to eat well. You've got to get the sleep. I know it's easier to say than to do. Absolutely. But honestly, I keep myself active and fit. And as a result, when I go in and I'm working in childcare, I can do more than people that are 20 years younger than me. Because I am, and I can get a hold of my feelings and my emotions much quicker when I'm in a good healthy space. And so I think we really need to consider that and get out there. Go for a walk on your lunch. You know, when I was working against an ed leader every day on my lunch, I would step out and walk for about half an hour, 45 minutes, no matter what was going on. Whereas, you know, other people would just stay in the service on their lunch as well, on their phones or whatever they do. And not get a break, not get out of their head too much. And I found that really helps when you come back. So, you know, I go for walks in the morning, you know, in the evening, whatever suits people, watch what you're reading. You know, as this early childhood educators are sort of a bit infamous for knowing that they eat a lot of junk. And then you just have to walk into a staff room to see the amount of lollies and chocolates and just-- Bill Bainman. And yeah, exactly. And it doesn't mean you can't. It doesn't mean like, if I'm having a bad day and you're having a chocolate bar, I'm not going to down that chocolate bar. But it shouldn't be something you're doing every day and you need to consider that those things too will contribute to your ability to cope and manage and how you feel. But even when we think about that and-- and yes, well being for educators is really important, but for a child, so you need to think about the children that have those height and fatalities in the room. So they've slept or not. Yeah. They've woken up head breakfast. They have sat at the table at breakfast. They've then sat at the couch and watched TV where our mum and dad have got ready, which is nothing's wrong with any of these. They then come into you centre and then they're asked to sit and have a group time at 9 o'clock. And so this child who has heightened behaviours and who can't sit still and I struggle to sit still a lot too, I was fidget. But he more heard of be able to then still continue to sit, even if they've slept all night and they're quite energy now. Now they've to sit for at 9 o'clock to listen to a group time and they spend the whole time telling that child in that group time to sit and please sit still, please sit on your bottom, play a ball, blah blah blah. And the three children that wanted to listen to that group time are missing out on you. Why wouldn't you then look at your programme and go, you know what, 9 o'clock is a really not a great time to get everyone to sit down. Let's do a run around first outside. Then we can come in and sit down with burnt off some energy. Then the children go morning tea and then we can sit down and actually plan the day for the children. Because we are setting children up to fail by not looking at how we run things because they've always done it. You know, why do you do what you do, but says that to everyone all the time. But why do we do it? And we just don't think outside that box. And I think very often when we're looking at our programme we're thinking about what's better for us. How's the routine going to go for us? We have to go for lunch now because it's better for breaks or we have to do this because I have to do that later. Whatever I have to go get my planning time so therefore we have to fit this in here. We're always thinking about it's educators, I know, not everybody's like this. But generally I think that overall I've seen they considering each other they're not considered the children aren't as considered. And I think we really need to be considering them and then coming back to this, children having to sit still or, you know, be in a certain place at a certain time for a certain period of time. And I said, that's not really fair. I mean, we talk about children's agency, we want to give them choice, we want to give them opportunity to have some control. And particularly those children. that are feeling like they don't have control in their world, so that's why they come in and act out because it's their way of gaining some control or feeling like they have some control. So is it absolutely necessary for the child sitting in the circle not to be kicking their legs? No, okay, use just move out a little way so you're not kicking your friends, go ahead. - So get up and go. - You don't need to absolutely stay. And look, I'm a member Steven Bidoff, I mean I talk about raising boys all the time, I harp on about that too, but he talked a lot about boys learning in movement. So if you want a boy to listen to you about anything, so I think of my teenage son now who's never teenager, we go for a walk so I can actually have a deeper meaningful conversations with him. Because sitting and having to listen to me preach to him face to face, he does not listen, he blocks off it's like there's no signals going on, children are the same. And if they're playing in the room, but everyone asks to sit and listening to a group time, they're listening and playing at the same time. And they can do that and don't think that they're not listening to the key things that you think are really important that they need to know. They're listening, but they're able to use their body and move their arms and play with the toys and do those sort of things and listen at the same time. But they're not listening, it doesn't matter, you can talk to him later about it. Because what is important is that you listen to that child and the child got to go and do what they needed to do. And if you're going through an assessment and rating, the assessor wants to see that you're looking at the individual child and you're not making everyone sit because everyone should be sitting in the one spot. And we sometimes create the behavior for these children. This is why ABCs are so important and this way it comes back to this equal and equitable idea is and you know it doesn't have to be the same for everybody. And again, you know that same child could be having an absolutely perfect day on the Tuesday, then on the Thursday something, the wind could be blowing the wrong way. And suddenly they're just not in how many times do you wake up every day feeling exactly the same. I'm wonderful and I'm just going to breathe through my day. We have one maybe for lucky, one day a week like that the rest of the time suddenly we're scrambling and of course, you know, so we should have, I think sometimes we have expectations of children that we don't even have of adults of ourselves. And I think we think that children should be able to sit still, share things. I mean, how many of you are willing to give if you're phone to somebody you don't want to play with your phone? You know, I mean, I might let you borrow it, Megan. But if someone on the street said if they're not in danger, I want to take your phone and go and walk on. You know, or I want to supervere drink or how many of us adults can do that? How many of us as adults, like you say, can sit for more than about five or ten minutes without getting distracted. You know, I mean, we have a hard enough time not looking on our phones every two minutes. You know, so, and when a child is in this is what we need to be looking at. What has set up that behavior? The child is sitting there reading a book comfortably and another child comes over and bumps into them. What tries to take, we may miss that. Yeah, we only see glooms, don't we? Right. And then suddenly we see the child freaking out because somebody's like got into their space and they were so comfortable where they were. And but then we blame the child. The other child's run off. You don't we. So it's about just paying attention, believing the child as well. Being an advocate for that child, I think the children that that act out more need us to be more advocates for them. They need us to step up for them and be their voice. Talking about that. I was thinking then too. So then when we have children who are, I guess, exhibiting behaviors that we want to see more of. How do we encourage that? How do we role model that? How do we? I mean, as soon as you see, and I always talk about, you know, baby steps. So a child that we seem to think is always negative behavior. As soon as you see one positive thing, like the child walks over to another child and makes the decision not to grab something from them. Tiny little things immediately catching that and saying, wow, look at you. Thank you for holding out or, you know, when they say something or when they do any little thing. Oh, you went and picked that up for me. Thank you so much. Just reinforcing doesn't they don't have to be big things every little time. I get what little things are in power. You're empowering that child. But this is where the. And that's where it comes back to focus on try to focus on the positives as much as you can when you see them happening. Obviously negatives that are dangerous need to be addressed. I mean, there's a million. You can only find a million behavior guidance strategies. You know, there's one for every situation and you just have to find what works for you and what you're comfortable doing. And it's about it's about your relationship with that child and that interaction that happens, you know, somebody else might have a different relationship with that child and a different tool would work for them. So, you know, it's we can't one size doesn't fit all whether you're the educator with the child. So we've got to stop thinking like that. And when you can I mean, when you first, I think started talking. You spoke about everyone being on the same page, including the casuals or any person that walks into the moment. It's really important you have an action plan or a clear idea of well, when this behavior happens, these are the words that we use. Or this is the actions that we take or however it is and someone is responsible for making sure that everyone knows in that room. If that's the room later than that's their role. But and everyone being on because I think that's the thing too is especially with the staff process and no one having any staff. So many random people working in our centres because we're just trying to get people in there. If we aren't clear about the expectations that we have of the teachers that come in and how we support the child that's going to probably have an issue because there's now another new staff member in the room as well, which also heightens their awareness of how their behavior is going to be. If we don't know or we don't arm people with the right words and the right tools, things are going to happen and it's not going to be perfect. Of course not and I think even we spoke earlier about reflecting and I think it's really important to ask ourselves am I being consistent? I think you know every behavior is different, every child is different and our reaction should also be of that. Be very different I think depending on the situation. And am I being consistent in how I respond to the child that's one of my favourites versus the child that is the one that drives me quote unquote crazy. They might be exhibiting two of exactly the same behaviors but you may be treating one child differently than the other and we've got a red and that takes some digging deep because and that's not uncommon because we do have favourites and we do have to accept that and something wrong with having favourites is just that we need to make sure that as professionals every child gets the same sort of fair go so to speak from us. And that also comes back to the whole idea of I guess when we are building relationships with those children at the very beginning you said how important it is to build relationships and to have that safe and secure environment for children we all know they thrive in those environment so a lot of that comes back to our relationships. And that's being present, that's being available, that's being there to capture those small little moments that are good so that we can reinforce those children and make them feel good about themselves. Well I mean we could talk all day. I'll just give it like Megan and I think we're doing a rapid after the talk. People might be able to drop you if you can still be seeing the characters and remember that by our conversation. But thank you so much Karen and this won't be the last time that we have you on here we will get you one again you have lots of passions that you are very passionate about this is one of many. So we will have you on and we'll do a bit of a well being one I think about you. Now we do have a checklist that Karen's brought today as well that I think we might if you email through to us we can then email it out to you just to give you some things to think about which is what we've discussed today anyway. Before you actually get in the path of even having meetings with families and doing all of those. It's like a little audit. Yeah a little bit of a bit of a ask yourself checklist audit on what you need to be thinking about before we do those things. So thanks Karen. Yeah well I was going to put an email address. Oh yeah go for it. So email addresses info at early childhoodtraining.com.au And we look forward to hearing from you all. Thanks Karen. Thanks so much. Thank you. [Music]