getting out of control

Why do children persist when we want them to stop?

When I was still a fairly new teacher, I was sharing a first/second grade class with a colleague. Each morning we had a “circle time” with children, singing songs and getting ourselves ready for what the day would hold. It takes a certain skill to talk to a group of children that age and hold their attention.

On that day this group of children’s attention was particularly hard to hold. Many of them started rolling with each other on the floor and just generally acting silly. My response was to tell them we were going to walk back out of the room and try entering again in the right way. We did that twice, but the misbehavior just became worse. We left the room a third time, and then my colleague arrived.

I was curious to see what would happen now with this much more experienced teacher. In fact, they did exactly the same thing. She was astonished, because they had never acted that way with her before. She solved the situation by simply taking them on a walk and then beginning to read them a story. In the middle of the story, she put the book down and reflected with them on how unkind and out of control that behavior was. Now that they were listening, they got the message.

If I had known what I now know, I would have explained the whole situation to my colleague to prepare her. I realized that it made no difference who was there; the children had quickly formed a habit of walking in and then rolling on the floor. Children do this all the time, inventing routines and then repeating them many times. I think it is a way of experiencing memory and time. They repeat actions to keep the actions present to their minds.

My strategy of repeating our entry, therefore, because it was only mechanical, was only reinforcing their behavior, not stopping it. To change a child’s pattern requires energy, creativity, timing, and an awareness of what really engages the child’s attention.

: : : Change the routine to change the behavior.