Open Discussion Forum

  • 1.  SOCIAL SKILLS

    Posted 04-03-2019 03:38 PM

    One way to emphasize that all behavior is learned is to consider behaviors as social skills. Asking what abilities a child has regarding behaviors that are disruptive to classrooms helps us both not become aggravated about the child and assess what help the child needs from the educator. How do we help children develop social skills? New information from neurobiology can help us with this. We may have been teaching splinter skills: social skills that work for specific situations but aren't dynamic and don't work for other situations.

    Children start to learn dynamic social skills after they have regulated their emotions. For example, without the ability to delay gratification many behaviors may be learned that are disruptive. With effective caregiving the regulation of emotions can be achieved by the age of three, but it often isn't developed by then. Too often it's poorly developed even into adulthood.

    That brings us to the need for calming a child who has disrupted with a negative behavior. To regulate emotions, educators need to help the child think clearly. That is thinking not distracted by fear. Fear thinking is quick, and needs to be, when there really is a danger, but this quick thinking is fight or flight thinking and not effective when there is no danger.

    I'm suggesting that dealing with negative behaviors in children is the task of calming aggressive children so they can think about their behavior with more of the information they have already learned and less of the impulsive behavior that is based in fear responses. The development of social skills is based on clear thinking about what works over time. Well-developed social skills are the source of effective behaviors and successful lives.



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    Jack Wright
    Child Development Consultant
    Success With Children
    St Ignatius MT
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