For Early Childhood Educator's, what works best in terms of discipline in a daycare setting?

Question

What are you finding works with the children best? And how are you coping with very difficult challenges/behaviors?

Answer 1

The word "discipline" means to teach, not to punish.  The best thing for children is to teach and model the behavior you expect.  Our center also incorporates social emotional curriculum that addresses many of these issues by focusing on empathy.  We teach as the behavior arises also.  We give children the skills to negotiate and voice their opinions.

Another important part of managing young  children's behavior is to provide a good clean and nurturing environment that is predictable.

Answer 2

I work in a preschool and i find the redirecting the children attention does not  hold a high success rate.

I'm a firm believer in "time out" / "thinking time"

This would be best seen in action in the supernanny programme. if a child mishaves, they are explained to that what they did was not nice and why it was not nice, but that if they reoffend , so to speak that they will go on the thinking chair, whereby they think about what they did and why it is not allowed. the child will stay on the chair for one minute for each year of age they are, e.g a 3 year stays on it for 3 minutes, a 4 year old on it for 4 minutes. They then are encourgaged to apologise for what they did.

from my experience it is highly successful and i have tried many other actions, this one has been the best solution.

Answer 3

redirecting, focus the kids attention on another activity

Answer 4

Re-direction works in most cases, however, when this doesn't work any more, we tell the child that if he/she doesn't listen, he/she will have to hold the teacher's hand for 2 minutes. That way, the child is excluded from playing and is in close proximity to the teacher, and the teacher controls the behavior. This works very well at our centre and the children absolutely hate it when they have to hold the teacher's hand.

While we are doing this, we do not talk to the child until the 2 minutes are up, then we discuss why they had to remain beside the teacher. We have not had to to do this for some time now.

Time outs do not work.