Positive Relationships: All about ... our policy for behaviour

Nursery World, 5 March 2009

Adhering to agreed terms for how children behave at nursery, and how challenges are dealt with, is a team effort involving staff, children and parents, as head Michael Pettavel explains.

Photographs by Teri Pengilley At Randolph Beresford Children's centre, London.

Picture the scene: a child comes to you crying. They're not often upset and usually busy and content at nursery. They tell you that another child has hit them on the head with a hockey stick. It's halfway through the afternoon, it's been raining all day, and you have spent your time changing children who are wet and sorting out squabbles. The activity that you'd planned carefully and bought resources for during your valuable weekend collapses before your very eyes. After administering first aid and some much-needed tender loving care, you go in search of the accused, who has been earmarked as a child who is causing concerns. What next?

Some years ago I made this mistake, reacting without full knowledge of the facts, chastising a child and sanctioning them with 'time out'. What I found out later at evaluation was that the incident had, in fact, been a genuine accident. I went home that evening carrying with me a distinct feeling of failure and the creeping guilt that maybe I wasn't cut out for a job that demanded such high levels of patience. I realised my sanctions had more to do with me than with the child. In the long term, it made me look at my own role in supporting children's behaviour in a very different way.

Behaviour is the one area of our work with children that brings with it a great deal of associated 'baggage'. We all have our own ideas about what is acceptable or 'good' behaviour is and what it looks like. This understanding is normally based on our own experiences of being parented and our own schooldays.

The 'decline of moral values' is a favourite topic in the media, often with little thought or understanding, for those who are keen to lay the blame at the doors of schools and those working with children. I don't subscribe to the view of the 'good old days' - they certainly weren't better for many children, and paid scant attention to their rights.

This emotional response to child behaviour can prevent practitioners from taking a professional view, and it separates behaviour from other aspects of learning. When we reviewed our behaviour policy, it was in relation to young children and the principles of the EYFS (although I do feel that many of the ideas behind our thinking are relevant to older children and also to adults).

We often have very high expectations of children's social and emotional learning - often higher than those we expect of adults. We are sympathetic when colleagues, relations and friends feel let down, upset or angry, and often allow them a certain amount of slack or space. We expect them to be similarly understanding of us. We employ a wide and sophisticated range of strategies to support others, especially when we have an understanding of the stresses and strains in their lives.

In turn, we need to appreciate that a great deal can happen before a child starts their day with us (arguments over breakfast, getting dressed, watching TV and so on) and that these events may be undetectable by the time that they walk though our doors.

The main reason for reviewing our behaviour policy was that the current one wasn't serving children or staff well and that it didn't take account of the role that children themselves play in determining their behaviour. The previous policy wasn't being followed consistently, nor did it put behaviour at the heart of the curriculum.

The Behaviour Policy is an 'ethos' policy (along with policies such as Learning and Teaching, Inclusion and Race Equality), and by being clear about what we believe, we can change the 'culture' of our setting.

Our new policy is split into three main areas:

- what we 'believe and want' (the rationale)

- what want to 'achieve' (purposes and objectives)

- what we 'do' (actions and outcomes).

All three contain a specific heading for Children, Adults and the Environment.

If we accept that behaviour is not isolated but has a clear connection to learning, then we need to explore related areas. We considered the following:

- communication

- emotional intelligence

- attachment

- the environment

- observation

- working with parents.

COMMUNICATION, EMOTIONAL LITERACY AND ATTACHMENT

Behaviour is a form of communication. It almost always needs more than one person to be involved. For that communication to be meaningful, our own responses have as large a part to play as the child's (more if you believe that our job is about guidance and support).

In accepting this, we must try to avoid a purely emotional response - our reactions have an enormous impact on how a situation develops. Almost always, the emotions and feelings behind challenging behaviour are acceptable. Children have the right to feel angry, threatened, confused and worried, and we need to let children know this.

We also need to let children know that they are valued and cared for, even when they are in the throes of powerful emotions, which they don't always feel in control of themselves (which is a frightening feeling for children or adults).

We need to support children in managing these overwhelming emotions while helping them communicate them in an acceptable way. In other words, we need to name emotions - as in 'I can see you are feeling very angry... How can I help you?' If as professionals we become upset, intolerant or impatient, then we are not supporting children's learning, but simply reinforcing reactive strategies.

Emotional literacy

Of course, to achieve this, we must help children become emotionally literate. In thinking about this we found Gardner's model of 'multiple intelligences' helpful (see p26).

Gardner divides 'personal' intelligence into 'interpersonal' and 'intra-personal' intelligence. Generally, this can be taken to mean managing emotions in relation to yourself, and managing them in relation to others. Children who are unable to manage their own feelings internally, will find it hard to manage themselves externally.

Daniel Goleman's research into emotional literacy has brought into the public domain the importance of emotional intelligence to a person's quality of life - both personally and for those around us! His work shows that by reflecting on our own responses to children's behaviour, we can exert a hugely positive impact on it. This really is about life-long learning, so no pressure then!

As educators it is our duty to support and empower children. If we believe that understanding and managing our emotions are directly connected to motivation and learning, and that emotional and mental well-being are inherent a fulfilled life, then we need to pay particular attention to these aspects of a child's development and incorporate them into our teaching. It also helps us be reflective about our practice.

Taking this as a starting point underpinned our policy.

Attachment

Bowlby's and Dunn's work on attachment is also helpful in understanding children's behaviour and how to respond to it.

Behaviour must be seen as part of the complicated social dynamic in which it is played out. Our appreciation of how others think, based on our own thought ('theory of mind') shows how important it is to build relationships intentionally.

What Judy Dunn was able to show in her research was that children begin to detect the emotions of people that they are close to and base their own responses on these very emotions. According to her, these emotional responses are seen at an earlier age than more intellectual responses.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Having reflected upon children's emotional needs, and our responses to them, we next need to ask ourselves whether our environment does support the behaviour that we value.

By environment, I mean primarily the practitioners, the resources and the routines within our setting. We all know what happens when we start a popular activity without enough resources - there are problems around sharing and turn-taking. By ensuring that we take this into account, we can pre-empt disputes, especially when children are learning to take turns and share.

In the review of our policy we included a section on what we did to promote positive behaviour, rather than react to problems that we have a part in creating. In many behaviour policies, this is set out as 'rules', or what we call our Code of Behaviour. Ours comprises the following:

- Be kind and friendly

- Be helpful and thoughtful

- Keep yourself and others safe.

What we had come to realise was that we would need to spend time and effort on labelling and naming children's actions to help them understand what these rules meant. For example, being 'thoughtful' is a complicated concept.

The code of behaviour applies to everybody at the centre. We created displays and talked to children to show the behaviour that we valued: 'You were kind helping Abdi to put on his coat', 'You are being so helpful sweeping up the sand', 'Are you keeping other people safe if you wave that stick around?' The reward that we wanted the children to enjoy from such behaviour was the benefits of belonging to a community, and the active support and joy that brings - in other words, inclusion.

Rewards and sanctions

Adult responses, as we have already seen, are so important to children, and so next we looked at rewards and sanctions. By rewards, I mean extrinsic, physical rewards, as opposed to specific praise, attention and encouragement (praise that makes you feel good).

There is more and more research into rewards (Kohn 1993, Deci and Ryan 2000), and it has shown that participants offered a reward for completing a task successfully do not perform as well as others who expect no reward.

This is especially true with young children, who often don't understand why they have been given a reward, such as a sticker (try asking them!). Meanwhile, the children who do need positive encouragement are often the ones who often fail to receive a reward (or do so in 'relative circumstances').

What we want children to learn is that there are 'inherent' or 'intrinsic' benefits to behaving well. Put simply, it's nice to be nice. We have a better and more fulfilled life by acting and behaving well towards each other (and knowing how to cope when other people don't behave well towards us).

To help achieve this, we decided that:

- We will use portfolios to celebrate children's achievement alone and with others

- We will use gym sessions, parachute activities, circle times and focused activities to help teach positive behaviour

- There will be opportunities throughout the day for children to listen and be listened to in groups of varying sizes - and alone

- There will be opportunities throughout the day for sustained independent play and clearly planned adult-directed activities. Children will have the opportunity to become deeply engrossed in activities that interest and motivate them.

- Adults will be able to ask for help from colleagues - all staff are responsible for all the children (not just key workers).

- Staff need to:

- watch incidents clearly before they intervene

- use specific praise as a matter of course (seven positives for every negative)

- use a range of interactions including extension, encouragement and distraction

- support the victim to express their feelings to the antagonist.

CHALLENGING BEHAVIOUR

Such an approach is fine when children are behaving beautifully and the sun's shining, but what do we do when faced with really challenging behaviour? If we take it as a given that behaviour is a form of communication, what we need to do is understand what we are being told.

In our policy, we outlined clear strategies for intervening in everyday situations such as conflicts between children. This involves the adult being a facilitator rather than a police officer - supporting a resolution, while remaining clear and supportive.

We aimed to resolve situations by being clear and non-judgemental, asking a child who has been hurt what they wanted done to make things right (such as, fetch a tissue or give back a toy), and not back ourselves into corners, for example, by demanding that a child say sorry. Actions speak louder than words, and saying 'sorry' can become a knee-jerk reaction, a convenient way to get the adult off your back more than displaying any real intention for resolving a situation and making amends.

We agreed that we would always refer to our code of behaviour, and that if behaviour became dangerous or unmanageable, we would ask a colleague for support.

We also accepted that when emotions are running high, a resolution is sometimes only possible when the children involved have calmed down. (Remember the saying: 'When a person is drowning is not the time to give swimming lessons!')

At such occasions, we decided we would have 'thinking time'. This is different to 'time out'. It means a short spell away from other children and activities in the company of one adult who can provide space and calm to enable the child to come to terms with the situation. Here, the child needs to know:

- that such behaviour will always be stopped

- why it is unacceptable to behave in such a way

- that the child is still wanted and valued

- that adult help will be available to help the child avoid such behaviour in the future

- that if the unacceptable behaviour arose from strong feelings of anger or frustration, there is nothing wrong with the feelings themselves, only the way in which they were expressed.