School Psychologist's Newsletter
Behaviors
What are behaviors?
An action or response to a stimulus. Or just information about how a person is feeling.
Dysregulation of behavior is any behaviors that is consider undesirable in a particular situation.
Often behaviors are considered manipulative – which they are! Behaviors are used to manipulate or change the environment and others.
A meltdown or task avoidance looks differently if you can view it as information. When your child is having a meltdown, they are trying to tell you that something is not right and they are trying to change the environment.
For example. If you are at restaurant having dinner and you realize that you will be late to your movie, you will alter your behavior to speed up the server. You might start looking around, try to grab the attention of other servers, leave the table to search for the server, raise your hand, or call out loudly to the server’s attention. When the server comes over you may start speaking quicker, express your desire to leave quickly, drop polite conversational tone, and start demonstrating impatient behaviors (i.e. finger tapping, shaking your leg, and checking your watch repeatedly.) These are direct signals to the server to speed up – and manipulation at work! Hopefully, your server gets your message and you can regulate your behavior back to a state of calmness by the start of the movie.
The participants in the classroom are different but the use of behavior to get a desired responses is similar. Let's explore some of the reasons for behavioral dysregulation.
Hunger, fatigue, illness, boredom, task difficulty, desirability of a task, loss of control, and interruption of a task are some reasons for dysregulation of behavior.
There are lots of reasons that children have difficulty regulating their behaviors these are just a few.
Schedules. How to make them work for kids.
I find that most people love them or hate them. During this season of virtual schooling, with multiple family members working from home - it is well worth the investment!
Schedules are similar to task lists, but they focus on the when of the particular task. Imagine that it is an itinerary of the day or week. It helps children know what they are doing, when it starts and when it ends.
5 Reasons kids need schedules
There are lots of reasons for creating a daily or weekly schedule, but here are 5 reasons why it help kids...
Manage time more efficiently.
Goals become achievable when presented in chunks!
Clear expectations about what they are doing.
Easier to roll with the unexpected glitches and hiccups of the day. Its a lot easier to shift to another activity on a schedule than scramble to find another. (Kids need less convincing too!)
Easier to track progress. Clue kids into the satisfied feeling that comes from working through a schedule.
Here are examples of schedules from the internet....
Scheduling the day...
Prioritize your schedule...
Live meets
Due dates
Office hours
Which is a more manageable task schedule...?
Hard assignments first?
Easy/simple ones first?
Most of us have a strategy for tackling work whether its easy tasks first or hard long tasks with full energy first thing. When working with children think about which strategy might work best for your child and yourself.
When creating a schedule consider the age of your child and managing multiple schedules.
Finding ways to juggle multiple users can be difficult when everyone has deadlines that involve digital work submission. Creative scheduling can help lessen tension over computer-time in families with multiple children.
Use computer time as a rotation in your schedule to keep the computer traffic moving. Children are used to limited screen time at school, and they can adapt to a computer time rotation at home. A computer rotation is also a good way to limit screen-time and reduce eye fatigue.
In school, younger children will attend a center rotation or work on tasks for about 20 minutes. Older elementary students can work on tasks up to 40 minutes.
Some children finish quickly , but others take longer. Children will linger on tasks because its novel, enjoyable or difficult. Don't be alarmed if some tasks take longer than others. And still other children will struggle with focus in general - we will talk about that later.
Reach out to school and request technology supports for your children - we can help ease this tension!
How to Chunk Tasks!
What is the assignment?
10 math problems
10 spelling words
writing - essay/short paragraph
reading - 20 minutes
What is best way to break it down into smaller parts?
math - sections of math problems
spelling - 5 words at a time
writing - brain storming, graphic organizer, outline, two sentences
reading - 10 minutes in the morning/10 minutes at night
Is there place where a break can be inserted?
math - after 3 word problems = brain break/stretch
spelling - after 5 words = take a short play break
writing - take a walk
reading - play break
Sometimes setting a timer for 5 minutes can challenge children to focus their energy to complete a task. This might not work for all children and it may cause anxiety for some. Use your best judgement for your child.
Long Assignment? Multiple parts? Later due date?
If a task is very long (i.e. multiple math problems or long essay) break the task down in smaller parts over the course of the school week. This work best for writing assignments.
Day 1 - brainstorming, ideas/facts or compare/contrast
Day 2 - re-read brainstorming ideas, develop topic sentence
Day 3 - outline ideas/facts into supporting sentences
Day 4 - edit draft
Day 5 - completed writing product
Break time!
Break up tasks into those smaller manageable chunks with plenty of opportunity for movement. Movement in between tasks has been proven to increase focus and improve behavior!
60 minutes of movement during the school day is recommended for school age children. A 10-15 minute break in between tasks - especially difficult ones will really boost a child's attention and morale.
Click on the link to the right for resources...
Selfcare.pdf