Peer Response 2

· Offer your peers at least one additional strategy for each behavior to help minimize the challenging behaviors shared. In addition, explain why you included the additional method.

PEERS POST:

Howdy, Fellow Students!

Jose is the subject of my first discussion in this class.  The behaviors I have chosen to concentrate on are his low language skills, his physical aggression, and his anti-social behaviors.  From my perspective, these are often not only somewhat related, but directly related for some children.  For example, a young child who has low language skills does not have the proper words to ask another child for a turn with a toy.  More than likely, his desire to play with the toy may end up looking like (and feeling like) physical aggression. Our class text states it this way: “Physical aggression is direct (hitting, pushing, pinching, biting, grabbing, spitting, hair-pulling), and initially at least, is a form of communication with no intent to harm” (page 8).  The desire to play with the toy is made known by the child pushing the one with the toy or simply taking the toy away from him.  When a child reacts this way often, other children do not want to play with this child, leaving him out of games and play and leaving him to play by himself, thus causing the anti-social behaviors: “I do not want to share so I am not going to play with them!”

When thinking about strategies to deal with this behavior, I agree that “What we know and believe about our students—individually, culturally, developmentally—informs our expectations, reactions, and attitudes about those students” (Vincent, Hunter, and Ross, 2022).  When we know that Jose has low communication skills and is headed toward the dinosaur tub where another child has the dinosaur that is Joes' favorite, we can predict the conflict and prevent it or even better, facilitate it.  By this, I mean strategies including giving the child the words to use (“Johnny, Can Jose play with you?  Jose, would you like to ask Johnny to play with the dinosaur?  Ask Johnny ‘Please may I have the purple dinosaur’?”), intentionally planning safe, parallel play (with multiples of the toys desired) in a smaller space that can encourage cooperative play, and finally using words the child will understand if/when physical aggression takes place (“Ouch!  That hurts!  Johnny does not like that!  No thank you, Jose.”).

Kaiser, B., & Sklar Rasminsky, J. (2017).  Challenging behavior in young children: Understanding, preventing, and responding effectively  (4th ed.). Retrieved from https://content.uagc.edu

Kristen Vincent, Earl Hunter II, and Deanna Ross (2022) Welcoming All Voices in the Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/welcoming-all-voices-in-the-classroom/