What’s this title about? Yes, I know, I’m exaggerating a bit (again) but honestly there’s a lot of truth in that statement, dither and you’re dead. How did I decide on this theme? Well, once again it was a chance comment from someone that set me thinking.

During a recent chat at work, a colleague told me about an incident when she took her deer hound to a dog show. The dog is quite young but has won quite a few prizes, some of them at big shows. At this particular show, she was all ready to be inspected by the judge, something she’s quite used to now. This time though the judge showed nervousness (dithered) as she did the ‘personal bits’ – well, it is a bit intrusive! The dog didn’t like this nervous approach at all and reacted by growling at the judge – something she never does normally. The judge became even more dithery, backing away saying, ‘Oh dear, she doesn’t seem to like that.’ And probably thought the dog was in the wrong…

So what’s that got to do with managing children’s behaviour? Same applies as with the dog… dither and you’re dead. Ok, not completely dead, but you get the drift – you’ll certainly be on shaky ground. The dog story reminded me of an important lesson I learned about dithering not long after I started working with children displaying potentially extreme behaviour problems.

That long ago I had so much to learn to become effective and confident in managing problem children – now the incident wouldn’t get to that stage! Anyway, one boy was having major problems and was so unhappy. He’d got into trouble for something in class and had gone outside, and once there picked up a discarded skipping rope which he promptly put around his neck and went to pull it tighter. How did I react? Lack of confidence and skill caused me to dither – I simply didn’t know what to do! Another teacher, far more experienced at that time, walked purposefully to the boy, chatting to him, ‘Dear me, let me take that from you so that you don’t hurt yourself.’ I can’t remember her exact words, but you get the idea.

What happened then? Well, he simply allowed the adult to take control – he sensed her confidence and this made him feel safe. He didn’t think to question what she’d asked. She kept on talking to him all the time, ‘I couldn’t imagine how the others would feel if any harm should come to you. We’d all miss you so much I you weren’t here – we all think so much of you. Come on now, and let’s make sure you keep safe.’ And that was it – incident over and sorted out!

That isn’t to say that this is the right way to act in all situations if you have self harm threatened. How incidents are dealt with depends on you relationship with the child, what’s preceded the incident and at what point you intervene, plus other considerations.

But, what I am saying is that children (and dogs) need you to be decisive, in control, and be someone they can trust to keep them safe and secure. You have to know how to manage children’s behaviour in a way that ensures they can feel this way. This takes knowledge of behaviour management techniques that give you confidence to be able to manage (and even better, prevent) challenging behaviour. It’s not difficult – learn the strategies, practise them until they’re instinctive and use them with total consistency

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.