Most parents and teachers ask me for help managing children’s challenging behavior. It makes sense. Out of control behavior disrupts both the classroom and home environment compromising both learning and overall well-being. We spend a lot of time trying to manage the classroom and/or manage the child, when what we need to do instead is to teach the child. But what to teach?
In this training, I invite participants to consider the crucial relationship between emotions and behavior. When a child has challenging behavior, there is always (not sometimes) one or more strong emotions behind the behavior. And yet adults tend to only address the form of the behavior, not the emotion(s). In this training, I will show you how to consistently and effectively teach children how to identify, understand, and express their emotions so they might be better able to then manage them and decrease challenging behavior.
This training will show adults how to teach the skills related to emotional intelligence from a brain perspective. By exploring the brain reasons for strong emotions, participants will update their understanding of how to embed a steady “diet” of emotional intelligence training into their daily routines. When children are taught how to identify, understand, and express their emotions, they carry a sense of emotional safety and are likely to have less challenging behavior.
Instead of just jumping to intervention by forming on the form of behavior, i.e., “What do I do when a child hits other children and adults?” participants will learn how to consider the emotions behind the behavior as a first step toward engaging with the child. Without this observation and assessment phase, teachers miss an opportunity to fine tune their prevention, promotion, and intervention teaching methods to include ongoing efforts to promote emotional literacy and emotion regulation skills.
This training is an opportunity for educators to update their understanding about the brain reasons for behavior; namely, how emotions drive behavior and ways to teach children the emotional intelligence skills they will need throughout their lives.