Managing Challenging Behaviors in Children: A Comprehensive Overview

This report delves into the complexities of challenging behaviors exhibited by children, offering a comprehensive overview of their identification, causes, and management strategies. It begins by defining challenging behaviors and outlines key indicators, such as refusal of requests, frequent frustration, prolonged tantrums, aggression, and non-responsiveness to typical behavioral interventions. The report then explores various factors that can contribute to these behaviors, including the child's temperament, age, environmental arrangements, and the presence of specific medical conditions or disabilities like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. It highlights the importance of early intervention and the role of clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, occupational therapists, and other professionals in supporting children and families. The report emphasizes the need for positive handling, teaching strategies, consistency, emotional regulation support, and the creation of a supportive environment. Furthermore, it discusses the development and implementation of behavior management plans, including understanding the function of the behavior, teaching alternative behaviors, and involving family members and relevant staff. The report also examines the components of early childhood environments, including physical, social, and temporal aspects, and provides strategies for creating supportive learning experiences. In conclusion, the report stresses the importance of understanding the child, providing moral support, and employing effective strategies to redirect and manage challenging behaviors, ultimately aiming to improve outcomes for children and their families.

Challenges
behaviour

Introduction
Children with challenging behaviors present signs and
symptoms which are not easy to detect.
Challenging behaviours are a characteristic that all humans
have as a result of being uncomfortable with something.
Children display such behaviours by crying or showing
tantrums (Matson & Timina, 2008). .
However, the behaviour becomes questionable if it risks the
life of other people around or makes it difficult to manage the
child, this calls for a thorough examination to understand the
causes.
Therefore, behavior becomes challenging when it is difficult
to understand and manage the situation that the child is
facing.

How to tell challenging behaviour in
children
Some of the challenging behaviour exhibited by the
children are as follows :.
• Refusal and rejection of orders and requests from their
parents and adults.
• Showing signs of frustrations easily.
• They tend to show longer tantrums , which are different
from other children.
• Shows signs of aggression and belligerence that are
hard to handle and control.
• They exhibit no response to all the behaviour strategies,
that are applied on other children (Lapointe, 2017)

How to tell
behaviour
problem in
children?
The child finds difficulty in subsisting
with the environment like learning and
playing with other children, thus it can
be said that, they exhibit characteristics
which are beyond the children who
belongs to similar age group (Hunter &
Hemmeter, (2009).
Exhibition of ill-suited response or
reactions to the situations . For example
the child may tend to be hostile to other
children.
Unpredicted behaviors like dearth of contrition
Uncontrolled crying and throwing of
tantrums for unforeseen reasons
On the contrary they display violent
behaviour like discarding toys, kicking
objects and sometimes even abusing
others .

Causes of
behaviour
s,
frustration:
fear: they are frightened of
something
strong feelings:
anxiety:
Hyperactivity
Cultural norms
Temperament of child
Age of child
Environmental
arrangements
Reactions to behaviour
(Lapointe, 2017)

SOME BEHAVIOUR THAT CHALLENGES IS MORE
LIKELY IN CHILDREN WITH PARTICULAR MEDICAL
CONDITIONS OR DISABILITIES. FOR EXAMPLE:
ADH children can report challenges in longer periods of
concentration as compared to normal kids.
Autistic children with ASX can be unsettled making them
anxious and upset with situations. Such children sometimes
react strongly to some environmental situations like crowds
(JinaJang, Tarbox & Granpeesheh, 2011).
Sensory impairment children can be stimulated by other
environmental situations like sound which can make them display
challenging behaviours.
Children with other disabilities like speaking challenges
require special attention to make them not look like they are
ignoring communication.

SOME BEHAVIOUR THAT CHALLENGES IS MORE LIKELY IN
CHILDREN WITH PARTICULAR MEDICAL CONDITIONS OR
DISABILITIES. FOR EXAMPLE:
• Children sometimes display some behaviours , which are
due to genetic characteristics and these behaviours are
not deemed challenging .
• Certain behaviours like crying, phobia, difficulties in
making friends, low self-esteem and getting angry easily
are deemed as emotional or behaviour difficulties instead
of challenging behaviours (JinaJang, Tarbox &
Granpeesheh, 2011).
• Children , those who have difficulties in reading, learning
and speaking finds it difficult to adapt , this requires
support from the school systems , which can prevent the
tendency of this behaviour from becoming challenging ..

Early
intervention
(JinaJang,Ta
rbox, &
Granpeeshe
h, 2011)
Clinical psychologist support:
Educational school psychologist
to increase cognitive
development:Occupational therapists:
School counselling:
use of Special educational needs
coordinator:
use of Speech pathologist:.
Social workers for specific
problem solving:

Improve child
behaviours
Hunter & Hemmeter (2009) suggests the following
approaches
• It is important to talk with the family members in
order to understand the child .
• In order to satisfy the needs of the child it is
necessary to review the support programs .
• Planning, implementation and Reviewing of the
intervention strategies is essential
• It is important to maintain ongoing communications
and check-up with the family members of the child.
• In order to enhance the intervention strategies , it is
essential to communicate with the relevant staff.

Teaching
strategies
(Park &
Scott,
2009).
Be positive when handling the
child:
Be consistent with the
intervention to achieve the
intended results :
Help child regulate their
emotions:
Redirect:
Working ion the Sensory needs:
Assisting the child on better
choices for communication
Choices:

Teaching strategies
Use of role playing to develop social skills
Assisting family to form positive
relationships with the child to control
challenging behaviours
Creating a supportive environment that
limits occurrence of challenging behaviours
Maintaining eye contact during
communication to assist the child learn :
Use of Simple language to make the child
understand instructions:
Keeping a low and normal Tone for the child
to understand communication
Set boundaries to be used in guiding
behaviours through reinforcement: (Presser,
2004)

WHAT IS Behaviour Management
Plans
Presser (2004) suggests that a behaviour
management plans seeks to control the behaviour
through:
Understanding the function of the behaviour that the
child is using
Teaching alternative behaviours through redirecting.
Providing other alternatives for the child to use in
response