Young children, like other people, experience a range of emotions. However, they may have problems expressing them, creating a need for parents, guardians, and kindergarten teachers to support them in learning and managing emotional responses and behaviour that arise from emotions. Generally, children at this age have challenging behaviours that may be expressed through fussiness, tantrums, excessive anger, defiance, and physical violence. A warm and healthy connection between the child and the parent allows the child to learn from their experience and demonstrate positive behaviour.
Monitoring behaviour is essential in detecting and correcting inappropriate responses to emotions and the outside environment while allowing children to properly equip themselves to recognize and practice appropriate behaviour in school and at home. The general goal is to replace inappropriate behaviour with acceptable alternatives. As a result, the child’s self-monitoring capabilities are enhanced in the process too.
A crucial step in behaviour monitoring is identifying change and achieving a positive behavioural effect. For a parent of a kindergarten student, among the effective tools that can be used to achieve a positive effect is the Check-in/Check-out program. Though employed in older age groups, the tool may be customized to fit the goals of a child’s behavioural response. In this case, the parent increases antecedent prompts and contingent feedback throughout the day. Consequently, the child’s behaviour is reviewed, and data is acted upon. Similarly, a parent may opt to introduce the behaviour contracts, in which a behavioural response is selected – either a pro-social, pro-learning, or a positive one – and the reinforcement is done by both the educators and parents alike. This approach is widely used since both parties determine the results prior to engagement and collectively progress in an approach similar to a contract.
On the other hand, behaviour modification is recognizing a child’s habits and actions and taking measures to correct the misbehaviours. Generally, parents take action to modify the child’s behaviour, but they often lack consistency in the application or a defined structure, tending to fail. Among the tested methods for behaviour modification is positive reinforcement. Here, the parent provides the child an opportunity to behave in a desired manner, the parent boosting their confidence and creating a sense of achievement through a reward. Commonly recommended rewards may include participating in something a child enjoys, such as a game or a trip.
Besides, a parent may combine positive reinforcement with negative reinforcement, the latter being used to teach a child to avoid certain behaviours through punishments. Here, actions such as withholding freedom when a child throws a tantrum or yells may be useful in rectifying their behaviour quickly. However, it is recommended that the parent work out situations that may lead to negative behaviours to prevent frustrations for the child.
Similarly, a child may be introduced to self-monitoring interventions so that they can be made aware of their own behavioural difficulties and improve abilities such as in social interactions with other children. Through this approach, the child is assisted in identifying the target behaviour through a simple action such as appropriate hand raising when making a request and an accompanying self-monitoring system. Reinforcement is then established, e.g., access to a perk. However, this approach best works when there is frequent reinforcement given that a child’s attention may be short span.
In conclusion, a parent should be able to guide the child in understanding their behaviour and equip them to understand and acknowledge appropriate, positive behaviour. Positive reinforcement boosts the child’s confidence to act appropriately, that is by being rewarded for making a good choice. However, a parent may use negative reinforcement, teaching a child not to make a specific choice due to a punishment that follows.