Managing Children’s Behaviour – Are You Diggin A Hole In The Wrong Place??

Digging holes and managing children’s behaviour – what’s the link?? Let me tell you…

Children in my classes have very challenging behaviour in their schools. Teachers and many other professionals have failed to manage them before they get to me and nobody knows what to do next. The next step is the involvement of mental health services – it’s getting desperate! There’s never any question that the adults may be managing the child’s behaviour wrongly! It’s always that there must be a fault with the child…

So back to the issue of energy. The child behaves badly, the adults can’t cope – the situation goes from bad to worse – and a great deal of energy is being used. However, the kind of energy you’re using is wrong, so all the effort is wasted. Without exception the adults are stuck in the rut of using negative energy – it won’t achieve anything. The outcome is bound to be negative.

I remember a little boy I had in my class a couple of years ago and his referring school was the most negative I’ve ever encountered – but hey, they thought they were great! At review meetings I had to tell both the school and parents (unbelievably) that they really had to find something positive to say about the child. All he was getting was negatives – words, body language and attitude. He could do nothing right! His life, in and out of school, was a misery. What did they say? They actually told me that there was nothing positive they could say about the child! It’s not often that I’m speechless, but I was appalled that a little boy could be spoken of in such a way. He ended up tranferring to another school where he was very successful.

This school told me they’d worked so hard to manage this child, but whatever they did had no impact and nothing improved. I told them that I was sure that they’d worked hard, but, and here’s a very important message… if you’re not doing it right then all the hard work in the world isn’t going to make it right. It’s like digging a hole… you dig like mad, a really big hole – finished. You’ve worked so hard and been digging for ages. Then you discover you’ve dug the hole in the wrong place… Oops – all that hard work – totally wasted. A very inefficient use of energy…

To harness the right sort of energy when working in a classroom generally and when dealing with potentially challenging behaviour (and most children have the potential to become challenging if not managed effectively) you must have confidence in what you’re doing. You have to have a repertoire of appropriate behaviour management techniques to call upon that you know will work. This isn’t difficult to do… it’s something you can easily learn.

To become confident at managing behaviour, read the techniques (they’re easy to follow). You may ask if you can learn what you need this way and the answer is, ‘Yes you can’. I give advice by email every day. It’s important that you practise the techniques until you’re totally confident and use them all the time – consistency is essential.

So, stop digging in the wrong place!!

Liz Marsden, an expert practitioner in managing children’s challenging behaviour in the classroom, uses her expertise to train teachers, trainee teachers, classroom assistants and parents. Visit Liz’s website where you can read about her techniques and her widely recommended book, Behaviour Bible offers invaluable advice. Read about her daily work in her own classes and mainstream schools.