Guiding children’s behavior is an important part of your role as a preschool teacher. Positive child guidance helps promote the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children across ages. This lesson will define positive guidance, describe why it is important for preschoolers, and detail what you can do to promote it in your program.
ObjectivesReflect on your childhood and think about the adults who helped make a difference in your life. Was it a parent, family member, family friend, or teacher? How did they influence your childhood? How did they help guide you to learn or make decisions? How did they encourage and support you? What words did this person use to tell you when you made a mistake? How did you develop ideas about yourself or other individuals as a result of your interactions with this person?
As a preschool teacher, you play an important role in guiding the behavior of young children. You recognize the opportunity to consider young children’s strengths, temperaments, skills, development, and family culture as you determine your approaches and strategies to supporting and influencing their behavior. In essence, you help maintain a relationship-based approach to guiding young children’s behavior while meeting their needs.
Guidance is how you help children learn the expectations for behavior in a variety of settings. It is how you help children know what it means to be a member of your community, learn social rules, manage conflict, and regulate their emotions. It means helping children learn from their mistakes and make positive choices. As you read this information, it is also important to think about what guidance is not. Guidance is not punishment. It is not about control or making children fear adults. It is about knowing children and creating the best physical and social environment in which they can learn.
Your approach to guidance for preschoolers is likely influenced by different life experiences, such as your own childhood, and your personal beliefs about the role of a preschool teacher in helping children guide their behavior. Some preschool teachers may believe that it is their responsibility to maintain and manage the behaviors of young children, while others may believe that preschoolers will learn to control their own behaviors through teaching and experiences. It is important to consider how your beliefs shape the guidance that you are providing preschoolers in your program. When guidance is viewed as a process of understanding and supporting the development of skills, in other words, as teaching, the needs of families and children can be understood, respected, and met.
Family priorities affect children’s behaviors. For example, some families might place a high value on talking about emotions and expressing them as they occur, whereas other families may value keeping emotions quiet and private. As a preschool teacher, you need to be sensitive and respectful of individual differences in social and emotional development when engaging with children and their families.
Being able to listen, follow directions, manage emotions and actions, and peacefully coexist with other individuals are essential skills for meaningful and successful participation in life experiences, both in our professional and personal lives. Difficulty managing behaviors and emotions can cause frustration and disappointment and can strongly influence our relationships with others and our overall quality of life.
Positive guidance helps promote the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children in preschool. When you intentionally support young children’s development through positive guidance, you help them learn one of the most important skills for school and lifelong success: self-regulation, or the ability to manage one’s own feelings and behaviors. It is important that the children in your classroom understand how to function civilly in a modern, diverse, and complex democratic society. Dan Gartrell, author of Education for a Civic Society, suggests the following five essential skills, which he calls democratic life skills:
Applying these democratic life skills can help ensure that all the decisions we make are helping us move in the right direction. These can be challenging to remember in the midst of a stressful situation involving a child. It is important to both remember and teach children to evaluate what we can and cannot control. We have no control over how others choose to treat us. However, we do have control over how we react to the actions of others.
A proactive approach to challenging behavior relies on guidance to teach a child the skills they may be missing. Guidance can be defined as (Hearron & Hildebrand, 2013):
Additionally, Gartrell (2004), in The Power of Guidance, describes six practices of teachers who are committed to positive guidance:
Children are learning socially acceptable behavior, and it takes time and practice to develop social skills. Families and teachers guide children to learn social skills.
The teacher uses developmentally appropriate practices in order to have an appropriate match between the program’s expectations and the child’s skills.
The teacher builds relationships with each individual child and models cooperation and empathy.
The teacher models how to resolve conflicts peaceably and encourages children to negotiate for themselves. The teacher works at managing and monitoring his or her own feelings and growth as a developing professional.
From the time the child enters the program, the teacher builds positive relationships with family members through notes, phone calls, meetings, and conferences.
The teacher understands that she or he cannot do everything alone and creates a team with other adults (including family members and volunteers). Positive guidance involves teamwork with other skilled adults, especially if a child has consistent, intensive challenging behavior.
There are multiple factors that can influence how we, as adults, respond to a child’s behavior, including how we were raised, our personal values and beliefs, and our understanding of child development. Through careful consideration of these factors, we can better understand and improve our interactions with children and their families. This will positively influence the overall development of the children we serve. Consider a few examples of culturally determined adult expectations of children:
A mismatch between our own expectations and a child’s behavior (or family’s priorities) may cause tension. It is important to understand the variability in behaviors that might be culturally determined. Consider your own childhood, if you grew up in a strict home, you may view guidance very differently from a colleague who grew up in a home with few rules. You will learn more about the importance of understanding culture-based behaviors in Lesson Two.
Your own upbringing may influence the kinds of behaviors you tolerate. For example, think about how you would respond if a child left circle time without permission in your classroom. While some teachers may have considered this child’s behavior challenging or problematic, and therefore may have expected the child to return to circle, others may think that this behavior demonstrates the child’s sense of independence and choice-making. This belief could cause the teacher to ignore the behavior. Neither of these responses are right or wrong; they are simply representations of how culture and experiences shape individuals’ approaches to guidance.
As caregiver working with young children, it is important to recognize that all behavior is a form of communication. Your job is to observe the behavior and determine what the child is trying to communicate. In your daily work as a preschool teacher, you should think about approaching behaviors that may be challenging as opportunities to problem-solve and teach new skills. You should encourage children to assume responsibility for their behaviors, to care about and get along with others, and to contribute to the group. By doing so, you help create and sustain a positive climate that focuses on teamwork, acceptance, cooperation, and patience even when mistakes are made. When you focus on the positive traits of others, it is likely that you will see an increase in the occurrence of those positive behaviors. You can encourage other colleagues to do the same with children.
As a preschool teacher, it is your responsibility to provide developmentally appropriate experiences and activities that are sensitive to children’s individual needs. As you plan and implement your program, you must remember you are setting the foundation for children’s growth and success. When thinking about guidance in your preschool classroom, consider the following:
For more information on what to expect in this course, the Positive Guidance Competency Reflection, and a list of the accompanying Learn, Explore and Apply resources and activities offered throughout the lessons, visit the Preschool Course Guide.
Please note the References & Resources section at the end of each lesson outlines reference sources and resources to find additional information on the topics covered. As you complete lessons, you are not expected to review all the online references available. However, you are welcome to explore the resources further if you have interest, or at the request of your trainer, coach, or administrator.
What does guidance mean to you? What experiences have shaped your thinking about child guidance? Respond to the questions in the Defining Guidance activity. Then, share and discuss your responses with a trainer, coach, or administrator.
What are some of your own experiences and beliefs associated with child guidance? Take a few moments to respond to the questions in the Thinking about Guidance and Culture Tool. Then, share and discuss your responses with a trainer, coach, or administrator.
Berk, L. E. (2012). Child development (9th ed.). Pearson.
Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning. www.vanderbilt.edu/csefel
Denham, S. A., & Brown, C. (2010). Plays nice with others: Social-emotional learning and academic success. Early Education and Development, 21, 652-680.
Gartrell, D. (2004). The power of guidance. Delmar Learning.
Gartrell, D. (2012). Education for a civil society: How guidance teaches young children democratic life skills. National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Hearron, P. F., & Hildebrand, V. (2012). Guiding young children. Pearson.
Marion, M. (2018). Guidance of young children (10th ed.). Pearson.
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (2012). Early childhood generalist standards for teachers of ages 3-8 (3rd ed.).
Sandall, S., Hemmeter, M. L., Smith, B. S., & McLean, M. (2005). DEC recommended practices: A comprehensive guide. Sopris West.
Trawick-Smith, J. W. (2014). Early childhood development: A multicultural perspective (6th ed.). Pearson.
Whittaker, J. E. V., & Harden, B. J. (2010). Beyond ABC’s and 123’s: Enhancing teacher-child relationship quality to promote children’s behavioral development. NHSA Dialog, 13(3), 185-191.
