Strategies and Guidelines for Child Behaviour Management

This assignment provides an overview of effective behaviour management guidelines for children, emphasizing strategies that promote self-control and understanding of appropriate behaviour. It highlights the importance of non-verbal communication, such as direct eye contact and gestures, and discusses the use of positive reinforcement techniques like rewarding desired behaviours with activities, praise, or preferred items. The assignment also outlines a step-by-step goal-setting process for children and explores different positive behaviour support models, including the Donnellan & LaVigna model and the model suggested by Allen et al. (2008), with a focus on primary, secondary, and reactive prevention strategies. It further details the questions to be asked during the development of a behaviour support plan and emphasizes the importance of continuous monitoring and understanding the unique traits of each child to effectively address challenging behaviours. The assignment concludes by advocating for primary prevention level support to help children develop alternative skills and manage behavioral problems.

The effective guidelines for behaviour management have the following characteristics—
 The guidelines focus on promoting the self-control and will-power among the children
 The behaviour management guidelines make the children understand the acceptable and
inappropriate behaviour
 The behaviour management guidelines encourage the children to make judgments in a
situation (Uchida et al., 2014)
 The behaviour management guidelines give importance on enabling the children to express
their feelings in the right manner
 The guidelines give importance on improving memory of the children
 The guidelines also focus on respecting the necessities and rights of others
Reference:
Uchida, M., Faraone, S. V., Martelon, M., Kenworthy, T., Woodworth, K. Y., Spencer, T. J., ... &
Biederman, J. (2014). Further evidence that severe scores in the
aggression/anxiety-depression/attention subscales of child behavior checklist (severe dysregulation
profile) can screen for bipolar disorder symptomatology: a conditional probability analysis. Journal of
affective disorders, 165, 81-86.
Direct eye contact and gestures are important to share the non-verbal messages (Burgoon et al., 2016).
While providing instruction to a young person, I should use gestures and direct eye-contact for non-
verbal communication.
Reference:
Burgoon, J. K., Guerrero, L. K., & Floyd, K. (2016). Nonverbal communication. Routledge.
The positive reinforcement allows the children to repeat the expected behaviour. The examples of
positive reinforcement may include—
• Allowing the children to take part in their favourite activities for good behaviour—Hi Alice, you
were great in the last physical activity class. Now, you can spend some time to finish your favourite
painting.
• Praising the children for conducting some tasks in the right way-- Hi Anthony, you organized
your books perfectly. Keep the good work.
• Providing children with an item they prefer for their good behaviour-- You were great during all
the learning sessions throughout this week. Let’s celebrate it with a scoop of your favourite ice-cream.
Reference:
Gabor, A. M., Fritz, J. N., Roath, C. T., Rothe, B. R., & Gourley, D. A. (2016). Caregiver preference for
reinforcement based interventions for problem behavior maintained by positive reinforcement. Journal‐
of applied behavior analysis, 49(2), 215-227.

When a child gets angry and shows aggressive nature such as attacking others, he/ she can be isolated
for a while so that the other children cannot get hurt.
Direct eye contact and gestures are important to share the non-verbal messages (Burgoon et al., 2016).
While providing instruction to a young person, I should use gestures and direct eye-contact for non-
verbal communication.
The goal setting process for the children can be done in the following steps—
 The first step deals with assessing the development needs of the child.
 At the second stage, the existing skills and abilities should be assessed. It needs to be ensured
that the target aligns with the existing skills and abilities of the child along with encouraging him
to acquire new skills.
 The third stage deals with evaluating the values and beliefs of the child and ensuring the goals
match with the cultural background.
 The fourth step deals with defining the targets for a child. The targets need to be specific,
measurable, realistic, attainable and time-bound.
The positive behaviour support models can be categorized as Donnellan & LaVigna model and the model
suggested by Allen et al. (2008). The Donnellan & LaVigna model focuses on using the proactive and
reactive strategies for managing the challenging behaviour. However, the model does not enable the
educators and the care givers for effective crisis management using medication and the physical
restraint. So, the model fails to manage the challenging behaviour fully.
The model suggested by Allen et al. (2008) focuses on using primary prevention strategies, secondary
prevention strategies and reactive strategies. The primary prevention strategies give importance on
avoiding the antecedents and organizing events to promote skills for coping with challenging behaviour.
The secondary prevention strategies give importance on responding to the early signs of challenging
behaviour. The reactive strategies in this case give importance on managing the crisis situations through
restraint and PRN medication. So, the model suggested by Allen et al. (2008) is more effective and more
suitable for being used as it is dealing with the behavioural issues holistically.
Eby, L. T., Allen, T. D., Evans, S. C., Ng, T., & DuBois, D. L. (2008). Does mentoring matter? A
multidisciplinary meta-analysis comparing mentored and non-mentored individuals. Journal of
vocational behavior, 72(2), 254-267.
The questions that should be asked during development of behaviour support plan are as follow—
 What kind of challenging behviour does the child show?
 What are the factors triggering the challenging behaviour
 Does the child show any warning sign?
 How frequently the child shows challenging behaviour?
 How do the signs of challenging behaviour reduce?

The children with problematic behaviour need to be monitored continuously to identify how they are
transitioning from the episodes of normal behaviour to the problematic phases. Monitoring these
children at play and other activities helps the professionals to understand the behaviour pattern and
psychological traits which is effective for better planning. Each child possesses unique traits which shape
their behaviour (Lunkenheimer et al., 2017). So, for making changes in the behaviour, it is necessary to
identify the traits and make plans accordingly.
In the current case, the information collected by the staff who monitors and record activities reveals the
overall behavioural and problem pattern including the warning signs and the duration of challenging
behaviour. Recording all the activities is effective to obtain the overall personality traits of the child. On
the contrary, recording the problem behaviours which last for more than five minutes provides
information on the challenging behaviour pattern only. It does not provide any information on the
warning signs and triggering factors.
In this case, the primary prevention level support is effective to manage the challenging
behaviour of the child. The primary prevention plan can help the support staffs to make
the child able to develop alternative skills for getting rid of the behavioral problems.