Management in a Childcare Setting

Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality early learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.

The childcare Act 2006 was introduced as a key piece of legislation concerned with children falling into the Early Years age bracket (which spans from birth to the 31st August that falls after the child’s 5th birthday) this means that pre-school childcare providers, along with reception classes in primary schools, are governed by the contents of this act.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that all early year’s providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life. “Maslow's (1968) hierarchy of needs theory has made a major contribution to teaching and classroom management in schools. Rather than reducing behaviour to a response in the environment, Maslow (1970) adopts a holistic approach to education and learning. Maslow looks at the entire physical, emotional, social, and intellectual qualities of an individual and how they impact on learning”.

There are 6 learning goals that need to be applied to every child, as set out in the Early Year’s Framework.

1. Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Gaining self-awareness is extremely important in a child. These activities explore their emotional boundaries, and help your child to feel safe and secure, and helping them to recognise their own personal characteristics and preferences. This activity Right and wrong, teaches your child about right and wrong, and what the consequences of certain actions might be, this can be achieved by simple activities such as, reading a story in which some characters break the rules. E.g. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, or The rabbit that belongs to Emily Brown by Cressida Cowell. Discuss what happens to them because of their actions. Make a list of things that are right and things that are wrong. For example, stealing something that is not yours, giving something back that doesn’t belong to you.

2. Understanding the world

This activity will help your child develop their knowledge of the world around them. Cat and mouse helps your child to explore the space around them, whilst moving their whole body to show excitement, interest and amusement. You can create an activity to help the child understand. Tell the toddler that she/he is a cat and she is going to chase you, as you are a little mouse. Crawl quickly around furniture and in other rooms encouraging the child to chase you. When he/she understands the game then you can swap roles.

3. Physical Development

Physical development helps fine tune both your child’s gross, and fine motor skills. It is also very important in strengthening muscles, controlling the body and co-ordination. This activity Catching and throwing, helps your child increase their control over an object, and allows them to practice these skills by playing games. Provide your child with a large soft ball or beach ball. Get them to throw the ball to you. Catch it and throw it back. Get them to catch the ball. Talk about throwing and catching. Start to introduce a movement vocabulary such as stretch, copy, high, low. As they get more confident move further away when you throw.

4. Mathematics

This EYFS Mathematics activity focuses on teaching your child to use mathematical language in every day vocabulary. During a cooking activity or when working with your child in the kitchen compare the weight of some of the ingredients and try to use words such as lighter, heavier etc. Put some stones or weights into two bags. Ask your child which is heavier. Make two piles of sand the same size. Ask your child to make one smaller or bigger. You could also try this out with some water in a plastic see through container. Encourage your child to use comparison words during their role play. This would be particularly useful during pretend cooking or when they are playing in a pretend shop or café.

5. Literacy

This is a good activity and can incorporate mathematics aswell, this will help the child to gage with you and express their own views and opinion. Get a variety of fruit, choose different shapes, sizes and colours such as an apple, pear, banana, pineapple, avocado, strawberries. Let your child feel each fruit. Talk about how they feel, what colour they are and how they are different. Then cut up each fruit into pieces. Encourage your child to count how many pieces there are for each fruit. Then encourage them to try each fruit, talking about how each one tastes and how they are different. Write a label for each fruit and encourage them to read the labels. You could also ask them to draw a picture of the fruits.

6. Expressive Arts and Design

Encourage your child to create an autumn collage. Encourage them to explore the materials, talk about how they feel and what colours they are. Depending on their age, encourage them to cut the papers and use paintbrushes and crayons. This will help them to learn how to handle small tools. Try writing the names of colours down on the collage. Talk about what you see in autumn and encourage them to create this on their collage.

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It is important to value individuality because it is an important aspect of teaching a person dignity and respect. It is crucial to see someone as an individual with his or her own unique qualities, character, skill and personality. Respect is a key step in building strong relationships. When it is absent or lacking, conflict or relationship breakdown often occurs. Absence or lack of respect can lead to problems for a child. Parents and care givers play an important role in assisting children and young people to build self-respect, and then through the child's personal understanding of that experience they develop the values and skills needed to express respect to others. This interactional process becomes a continuous cycle, as children with strong self-respect engage in constructive positive behaviours towards themselves and others, attracting praise and reinforcement, and build further self-respect and further facilitating the capacity to demonstrate respect for others.

I have devised two charts which I feel would ensure a child is shown all aspects of respect and valuing individuality, it also integrates rewards, and punishment if necessary.

Watson believed that all individual differences in behaviour were due to different experiences of learning. He famously said:

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race of his ancestors” (Watson, 1924, p. 104).

This is why it is so important to install respect and individuality, as it is learnt behaviour from a young age that becomes part of us later on in life, we all as children learn in different ways but it is the foundations that are taught to us that stay, encouraging respect and individuality, learning different cultures, religions as a child makes us respect different ways of living early on.

Consistency is vital to managing positive and negative behaviour in children, and this is learnt from a very early age. Children need strict boundaries in order to establish right and wrong and without these, things become confusing for the child. For example: A child hit another child at school and was asked to sit on the mat on their own and reflect on what they had done until he/she was ready to apologise for hurting another child. They then do this at home however this time it’s allowed, they then become confused as to what is right and what is not. It may be beneficial to access a copy of the care givers ‘behaviour policy’ this will then give parents an insight into what types of behaviour models are being followed which then can easily be replicated at home to ensure the consistency the child needs. If the child displays challenging behaviour then speak to the care giver to ask for strategies they use on their child if displayed at nursery/school.

If your child is displaying challenging behaviour, then at times it can be difficult to remain focussed, especially if the behaviour is causing you upset/anxiety. Positive feedback is the best and most effective way to promote positive behaviour and minimise challenging behaviour and/or situations. Positive feedback and praise encourages the development of self-confidence and self-esteem. Children need to know they are getting it right by their parents using:

• positive and warm body language
• tone of voice
• physical touch
• praise and compliments
• encouragement
• attention
• Treats, rewards and privileges.

When children are praised and rewarded for positive behaviour they are more likely to repeat the appropriate behaviour again and eventually it will become habitual. Sometimes it’s easy to focus on the negative behaviour rather than the positive. Although negative behaviour cannot just be ignored especially if they put themselves in danger. If they are regularly reprimanded for his/her behaviour, a child begins to feel they can never do anything right, and as a consequence can have a greater negative impact on their behaviour, as they know regardless of what they do they are told off. Trying not to use ‘NO’ when they are presenting negative behaviour, explain why you have said no, this helps the child to understand why you say no.

Parents face many challenges in raising their children to be safe, happy, well-adjusted and able to deal with conflict and frustrations in non-violent and effective ways. Many parents are concerned about the amount of violence children are exposed to – at school, on the television, in video games, and in their communities. There is a risk that certain types and amounts of aggression have come to be accepted and expected as the solution to a problem. A common concern for parents is how to help their children deal with violence, and how to prevent their children from resorting to aggression or being involved in violence themselves. There are many causes of conflict in children, Needs that are not being met, children display a craving for attention due to unmet social, emotional, physical or intellectual need, and this can result in the form of conflict. This can simply be met by attending to all needs of this child.

Selfish Behaviour at a young age, is quite common especially for families of only one child, to overcome this attending groups for mum and children, and express the importance of sharing. This will stop conflict later on in life.

Other common conflicts are:

• Lack of Social Skills
• Lack of suitable role models
• Tiredness/Hunger

Im Now going to explain the importance of teaching your child how to deal with certain conflicts, this does fall on the shoulders of parents and care givers/providers to teach and make our children understand the above common conflicts. Sigmund Freud believed that if we are in constant conflict at a young age (due to the above) this can then result in us being fixated at this stage, and unable to move on to the next stage.

The Role of Conflict

Each of the psychosexual stages is associated with a particular conflict that must be resolved before the individual can successfully advance to the next stage. The resolution of each of these conflicts requires the expenditure of sexual energy and the more energy that is expended at a particular stage the more the important characteristics of that stage remain with the individual as he/she matures psychologically. To explain this Freud suggested the analogy of military troops on the march. As the troops advance they are met by opposition or conflict. If they are highly successful in winning the battle (resolving the conflict) then most of the troops (libido) will be able to move on to the next battle (stage). But the greater the difficulty encountered at any particular point the greater the need for troops to remain behind to fight and then the fewer that will be able to go on to the next confrontation. Freud's theory of psychosexual development is one of the best known, but also one of the most controversial. Freud believed that personality develops through a series of childhood stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain erogenous areas. This psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behaviour. If these psychosexual stages are completed successfully, the result is a healthy personality. If certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. A fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain "stuck" in this stage. For example, a person who is fixated at the oral stage may be over-dependent on others and may seek oral stimulation through smoking, drinking, or eating.

Now there were other theories that criticised this theory of conflict, but the foundations of his findings are quite accurate, and has helped many children and parents to overcome common conflicts in children, as a result has helped them move on to next psychosexual stages.

References

http://www.simplypsychology.org/psychosexual.html#fix. 2008. Simply Psychology. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/psychosexual.html#fix. [Accessed 27 August 14].

http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html. 2007. Nurture v Nature. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html. [Accessed 27 August 14].

http://eqi.org/respect.htm. 2010. Respect. [ONLINE] Available at: http://eqi.org/respect.htm. [Accessed 29 August 14].

http://www.kidshelp.com.au/grownups/news-research/hot-topics/respectful-relationships.php. 2011. KidsHelpline. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.kidshelp.com.au/grownups/news-research/hot-topics/respectful-relationships.php. [Accessed 29 August 14].

http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/eyfs-statutory-framework/. 2008. FoundationYears. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/eyfs-statutory-framework/. [Accessed 28 August 14].