challenging-behaviors

Supporting Children with Challenging Behaviors

There are key factors and practices, called universal supports, that benefit all children, however some children with challenging behavior also benefit from individualized supports. Caregivers who intervene early to address challenging behaviors are fostering positive outcomes for children, their families, and society. This course builds upon your foundational knowledge of developmentally appropriate behaviors, prevention strategies and providing individualized care. The final two lessons address practices for coaches and program administrators.

Supporting Children with Challenging Behaviors: An Introduction for Program Staff

As a professional caregiver, you will encounter challenging behavior in your work, and it is important that you are prepared to respond. Developmentally appropriate behavior, like challenging behavior, is defined by adults and unique to each child. In this course you will have an opportunity to reflect on how your beliefs affect your responses to children’s behavior, learn a systematic way to ensure all children receive social-emotional support, and acquire strategies to ensure that children with behavior that is unresponsive to universal and targeted support get the help they need for optimal learning and development.

Using the Pyramid Model to Promote Social & Emotional Learning

While nearly all child care professionals will encounter challenging behavior in children at some point, using preventive strategies is best. The Pyramid Model gives you an organized way to promote social-emotional development and prevent challenging behavior.

Preventing Challenging Behaviors

In addition to the Universal Tiers of the Pyramid Model, there are universal caregiving strategies you can use to promote social-emotional learning and prevent challenging behavior in all children. In addition to these strategies, universal screening of all children helps you recognize potential challenges or concerns as early as possible.

Using Targeted Supports

Throughout this course, you have learned about the Pyramid Model and strategies to prevent challenging behavior. Even when all of the universal tiers are well-implemented, a small number of children will still need additional support. In this lesson, you will learn about targeted supports that may benefit some of the children in your care.

Intensive Interventions

Even when all preventive practices are in place, including targeted supports, a small number of children and youth will require additional intensive intervention. This lesson introduces the behavior support planning process and resources that can help children who are not responsive to universal and targeted supports.

Partnering with Families

Families are key partners in promoting child and youth development. This lesson will help you learn how to engage with families when there is a concern about behavior. You will learn how to develop trusting relationships, prepare for difficult conversations, and provide resources to support families.

Coaching and Creating Programs that Support All Children

Coaches are the first line of support when staff members are concerned about a child’s or youth’s behavior. This lesson specifically targets training curriculum specialists coaches and helps to clarify your role in supporting staff members, children, and youth. Learn how to help staff differentiate between types of behaviors, use coaching strategies, model for staff, and support the implementation of behavior support plans.

Supporting Inclusive Programs from an Administrative Perspective

Program administrators play an essential role in the support, planning, and implementation in the area of remediating challenging behavior. This lesson describes the program administrator’s role and offers resources and strategies that help promote effective teamwork around challenging behavior in child and youth programs.