What is behaviour management?

Behaviour management is exactly that, how adults manage a child’s behaviour whether it is age appropriate, socially appropriate or not. The adults management of the child’s behaviour is essential in maintaining order and structure in the lives of busy families (and classrooms), as well as setting children up for success. Adults being persistent and consistent are the fundamental requirements of a successful behaviour management plan. Importantly adults should only put strategies in place that they can and do follow through on.

Why is behavior management important?

Effective and consistent behaviour management of challenging behaviour by the adult is important because:

• Health and quality of life:Challenging behaviour may seriously affect a child’s and adult’s (parent or carer) health and quality of life.
• Reduce risk:Some risks associated with challenging behaviour include self-injurious behaviour (including ingestion or inhalation of foreign bodies, hitting the head on a hard surface or throwing the body on the floor) can result in serious injuries
• Dietary deficiencies:Oppositional behaviour may result in dietary deficiencies, weight loss or gross obesity.
• Social isolation:Challenging behaviour can often lead to social isolation of both the adult and child.
• Reduce mental health issues:Research also suggests that lack of social skills can lead to loneliness and depression from an early age.
• Appropriate behaviour is necessary to support entry to most preschool and school settings, as well as other typical children’s experiences such as peer parties, swimming lessons, Christmas concerts etc.

What are the building blocks necessary to develop the adult’s behavior management?

• Adult Self-Regulation:The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behaviour, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner. Most importantly, the adult must be able to “keep their cool” before and during the behaviour challenges
• Adult Emotional regulation:involves the ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and to regulate emotions. This also involves the adult being able to distinguish between the child and their behaviour: love and respect the child but dislike and discourage the negative behaviours.
• Adult Understanding of age expectations:is the knowledge of what is appropriate behaviour at the various stages of development so the adults can hold appropriate expectations.

Adult Persistence: Adults must be committed to the cause and be prepared for the need for consistent repetition in behavior management, all day every day for fastest gains.

When you see behavior management difficulties, you might also see difficulties with:

The child:

• Self-Regulation:The ability to obtain, maintain and change one’s emotion, behaviour, attention and activity level appropriate for a task or situation in a socially acceptable manner.
• Receptive (understanding) language: The ability to understand what others are saying to you.
• Expressive (using) language: The ability to use language and communicate needs and wants to others.
• Executive Functioning:Higher order reasoning and thinking skills
• Emotional regulation: Involves the ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and to regulate emotions.
• Social skills:Determined by the ability to engage in reciprocal interaction with others (either verbally or non-verbally), to compromise with others, and be able to recognize and follow social norms.
• Planning and sequencing tasks or activities:The sequential multi-step task or activity performance to achieve a well-defined result.

If you have difficulties with behavior management, it is recommended you consult an Occupational Therapist or Psychologist.