Challenging Behavior is Everyone's Challenge! How to support ECE staff who work with children with challenging behaviors

A child care center director/administrator is an advocate for the children, the staff and the center. When there is a child with challenging behavior at the center, this becomes an even more difficult task. Learn strategies that will help you support your staff through what can be a very difficult time. Help your staff to understand how their own attitudes and beliefs about children’s behavior influence the way they respond to a child's challenging behavior, understand the link between risk and protective factors that influence a child's behavior and how staff can learn ways to prevent the behavior from occurring.

I had been the founder director of my center for nine years when a two-and-a-half-year-old named Andrew turned our world upside down. It was the first time we lacked the ability to help a child regulate his own behavior. Because we couldn’t keep Andrew from hurting us or his classmates, many of the children no longer felt safe, and several became anxious, copied his behavior, or were just too scared to do much of anything. Staff spent their days putting out fires, consoling children, and saying no. We knew they weren’t helping Andrew. As the year wore on, we began to feel resentful, burned out, inadequate, and full of self-doubt. Parents and teachers wanted me to ask Andrew to leave. However, I was committed to keeping him at the center and to finding ways to help him learn the skills he needed to be able to successfully interact with his peers and be ready for school.

This webinar will describe how we worked together, what we all learned about ourselves, each other, and the children, so that four years later when Justin arrived at the center and let us know within 30 minutes that his behavior was a challenge - we were ready, willing and able!

All sessions are 1.5 hours long, and include a brief announcement from our sponsor. 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM Eastern Time.

See the schedule of upcoming webinars.

https://www.earlychildhoodwebinars.org/presentations/