Dealing with Aggression in Children
Some children are or at least appear to be, much more aggressive than others.
These behaviours can be seen at times in the typical Early Learning Centre in Nollamara but there are gentle and established ways of dealing with such challenges and helping the children concerned.
Early Learning Centres – squabbling and aggression
Almost all children have an innate tendency to become involved in petty squabbles at times. That shouldn’t be too surprising, given that as adults the vast majority of us are prone to the same thing!
It isn’t common in the typical Early Learning Centre in Nollamara but equally, it’s not rare. Children will sometimes have verbal exchanges that quickly degenerate into shouting and sometimes tears. At other times, if not nipped in the bud quickly enough, that might move into a bit of pushing and shoving too.
Most professional care providers will spot the signs well in advance and move in to diffuse and de-escalate the problem. In almost all cases, the children concerned will have seemingly forgotten all about the squabble within 10 minutes and the group/class will be back to peaceful norms. The children themselves might at that stage be back to being the best of friends again.
The reasons for this inclination are unknown but they’re presumed to be related to the ‘pecking order’ syndrome, where children are starting to try and experiment with establishing hierarchies etc. Very often they originate in things such as one child taking another’s toy. Much is also essentially about children learning how to deal with other people around them in society plus what is or is not acceptable behaviour.
These trivial incidents are not the same as genuine aggression, which is fortunately MUCH more rarely seen in children.
What is aggression?
Aggression can be distinguished from a typical squabble by certain characteristics:
an immediate or much faster resort to physical violence (pushing, punching, kicking, hair-pulling) when a dispute arises. The shouting and accusation plus escalation stages are often bypassed entirely;
- a given child is much more frequently involved in such incidents than one might normally expect;
- extreme shouting and physically-threatening or intimidatory behaviours towards other children;
- uncontrollable rage episodes;
- throwing objects around either randomly trying to break them or at other children with the intention of causing them harm;
- the regular aggressive use of foul language directed at others;
- using violent behaviour towards others when there is no immediately obvious cause.
Where this is seen by the personnel in an Early Learning Centre, their first step will be to remove the child from the provocation and take them somewhere quiet to calm down. Time will be spent trying to understand why they behaved the way they did and to help them understand why such behaviours are wrong, dangerous and unfair to others.
Many children respond quickly and positively to such guidance and their tendency towards aggression can be significantly improved or even stopped in class.
What causes aggression?
There is no single answer. Most experts agree that it may arise due to:
- genetic factors (once called “the hot temper syndrome”);
- a home environment where there are several siblings all relatively close by age, where fighting may be seen as normal;
- the portrayal of violence as being acceptable and even glamorous, on much TV and other media;
- under or late-developed social interaction and empathy skills;
- some very rare medical conditions.
The long-established assumption that this is largely a problem for boys, is now being questioned. Some argue that girls may also demonstrate aggressive behaviours but these are less rarely noticed, as people tend to assume girls are much less likely to be involved in such and therefore do not ‘see’ these incidents when they arise.
The Role of the Early Learning Centre in Nollamara
A professional childcare establishment will deal with rare instances of aggressive behaviours very much by way of business-as-usual.
Where a given child is demonstrating such regularly and is seemingly not responding to corrective steps in class, the matter will be brought to the attention of the parents concerned.
