Setting Boundaries: Managing Child Behavior Problems

Setting Boundaries

What’s acceptable and unacceptable to me.

Something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently regarding my preschool classroom is behavior. Moving into a classroom of mainly three-years-old and many with serious behavior issues have kept this at the forefront of my thoughts.

Before even attempting to change these behaviors the most important step is to analyze oneself;

what do I find acceptable and unacceptable in regards to behavior?

The goal is, to be honest with the child or children you care for, and being honest means sharing with them the things that you don’t like.

And it’s okay to let them know when you find something unacceptable.

That honesty will create a better relationship and the child will know that they can trust you.

At my child development center, we focus on social-emotional development, we work to teach the children to regulate themselves but we can’t do it alone we need a partnership with parents and caretakers.

Remember, a child cannot change what they don’t know, be vocal but sensitive.

For parents, it’s important to know how you feel about things. Allowing your children to do the things you find unacceptable and letting them slide start to build up negative feelings.

How many times have you found yourself getting angrier and angrier at something your child is doing but you don’t do anything about it because you don’t want to upset your child or make them cry?

It’s okay if your child gets upset, they need to learn how to process feelings and what is socially acceptable.

Don’t fix it by offering something they like, an electronic device, candy, they need to work through their feelings and learn what helps them cope. Don’t reward unacceptable behavior.

If you as a parent don’t address your feelings, you may feel annoyed and frustrated and these feelings may turn into passive-aggressive interactions where the child has no clue what brought it on because they were just doing what they typically do.

Or you explode because you just can’t take it anymore, and that’s more damaging.

You could literally make a chart and separate the behaviors by what you’re okay with and what you don’t like, but also consider the social consequences of their behavior.

If you let your child jump on the sofa and climb all over the furniture, will this be acceptable everywhere your child goes?

Share your standards with the people in your child’s life, babysitters, teachers, grandparents.

I know grandparents is a tricky one, especially for you parents who rely greatly on them for help with your children. Once you work this out the next step is communicating it to the child, of course, that may look different depending on their age, but here I’m focusing on 3 to 5-year-olds.

In my next post I’ll be discussing ways to communicate these feelings, and ways to work through these issues; mainly methods that have worked for me in my classroom to lessen unacceptable behaviors.

I hope you found this informative, stay tuned for my next story and part two of Setting Boundaries