Humans are not a thing to fix.
Children have no buttons, knobs, or adjustment sliders.
Troubling behaviors in confusing conditions challenge our very soul.

People want to find a way forward, at times, when confronted with troubling behavior. Often they seek expertise. The words for the search are labeled behavior management or  positive discipline. In the workplace we see it as handling difficult situations. The next 27 pages deal with this kind of search for assistance.

It seems everyone needs help at one time or another, so it’s easy to find loads information in books or sites. When I return to that search, I see advice and suggestions writers often say are ‘essential’ to do. I used to have 6 feet of books on one office shelf I bought over the years, but I have not yet found the key lessons I learned from difficult children and others experiences.

Nothing I have found ever has given me a solution to follow. I learned anew every time I tried. Everything was unique: unique actions, by unique individuals, with unique histories, in unique circumstances.

Discovering Your Unique Way

I assume you have seen the information overload and disconnect from your unique circumstance, so you might like quick peek ahead.

A couple of paragraphs below list the nine topics, but first, a brief list of what is different about all of them:

• This content includes original candid videos of children (without talking heads telling you anything). You experience situations directly and make sense of them yourself.
• No advice here. I make no recommendations. I only show the choices we have.
• This stuff works. It has been deeply researched based in real life, not academics. More than a thousand people have been through this set of experiences, in this order. Along the way they have shared their stories with others trying the same things. Once they have talked with others, they build their own set of conclusions. (The numbers: an average of 20 people per class (sometimes 90), offered once or twice a year, for 34 years at North Seattle, computes an estimate of at least 1,000 people.)
• The content has been built from what these people discovered in their relationships with children, who are really the teachers of us.
• This site constructs understanding incrementally, concept upon concept.
• You apply your values in your own situation.
• It has a different name, based on your role and our aim.

Leadership & Care

I call it Leadership, because that is what the adult provides a class, community, a person, or a family, and Care, because that leader applies their life experience, brings a desire to do well for others, relies upon inner wisdom, and offers kindness and compassion in every moment.

I invite you to take on the whole experience. I mean ‘invite‘ like I am inviting you to a party. If you decide to go to any party, you show up, hoping to enjoy it and benefit from it. No one can predict a result; whatever simply happens. That’s living.

We can have the best intentions and loving hearts. We can think positive things for children and families. We can think of ourselves as basically good people. Yet, when something disruptive cuts in unexpectedly, we can lose our footing, feel personally attacked, and become angry.

I know that confusion and anger. Like many of us, I rationalized my responding with anger or disapproval because I didn’t know what else to do. They had to stop doing that, right now!

All of us can look at awful behavior and think it’s the child’s fault. We don’t usually see ourselves as the problem. I know, for me, it was a long struggle to finally recognize our reciprocal relationship—reciprocal in that learning goes both ways at the same time—and begin to expect the necessity for me to change, too. Eventually, I could remember in a time of trouble that the troublemaker and I were both acting out of habit.

The Possibility Ahead

If you would like to know what can happen at this ‘party,’ you can skip to the bottom of this page and find one student’s description of the work. She wrote in part:

Why is working with and disciplining little children not even half the fun of playing with them without any responsibilities? Do I really like children?

Nine Topics in Leadership and Care

The sections covered here build upon each other in a sequence that unfolds by following the big blue links at the bottom of each page. I recommend that path if you are working through this with others in a study group or completing an independent study for college credit. I also expect readers to click around; I would.

Each of these sub-headings offers a click, too, if you wish to peek into what is ahead.

What We Want — We begin by clarifying our purpose when we endeavor to provide leadership and care in facing troubling behavior. That’s worth thinking about, for one of the great difficulties in helping is to shift from what we don’t want to what we do want. I invite you to do the exercises along the way, not just skip over them.Your participation builds what you know and understand—well enough to apply it.

You might want to see where this work is headed right away, so I offer a summary of the final understanding on the next page.

On the What We Want page you will find The Optimal Way to Manage Behavior. If you are satisfied you can do these things now, you may not need to read any further.

Clarifying Responsibilities  — Where does responsibility lie when we have a problem? Which party has to deal with it? Me or you? You can watch a video and make those decisions for yourself.

Opening Dialogue — We always face the challenge of direct, honest communication. The logical first step is to clarify our shared expectations and where that fits in our current opportunities.

Acting Assertively — When we have a problem we know that is our responsibility to fix, what do we do? Where do we start? What course do we set? Competent leaders don’t get pushed around.

Offering Information — When we have a problem that is mostly the other’s responsibility to address, we have to communicate, in a clear and trusting way, the necessity for them to take it on.

Listening — Often in these situations emotions are high, which means it’s difficult to think for both adults and children. How do we maximize our ability to listen and convey trust?

Negotiation — How do we offer spaces for children to practice dealing constructively with each other?

Management Protocol — OK, nothing is working. What do we do then? When all of our sophisticated leadership fails to make an evolving improvement, we have to have a strategy to follow. Here is how to employ a collaborative, systematic methodology to discover and implement an arrangement that works.

Using Rewards Effectively — Behind everything is conveying our genuine, authentic, and constant positive regard. We all can communicate positivity, but we can encounter children who have a remarkable expertise in manipulating adults and a strong distrust of those who attempt to reward them socially. Usually these children are very, very clever, so we have to know how to use other kinds of rewards without being trapped in games.

Action Research

I began my journey volunteering in a classroom community in graduate school dedicated to helping troublesome children. That investigation continued in the Early Childhood Education Program at North Seattle College. I led the Laboratory Preschool, where I had time and resources, with Federal funding, to build a program for special needs preschool children referred to us by our community. I spent 17 years in that role, educated by this constant stream children, who enrolled because care-givers found they needed help.

Our team of college students and I came to know the same children. We each tried to establish personal relationships with each of them. We watched video recordings and spent time in a chair watching what happened and kept written records. We met after class and devoted 3 hours on Friday to study ourselves and the children. We lived in uncertainty—none of us really knew what to do. We expected that documentation and discussions, often filled with laughter, would benefit both ourselves and the children.

Co-construction of Understanding

Just as the children were my teachers, these waves of adult college students taught me, too. As I mentioned at the top, I taught a course called Behavior Management. It was constructivist, that is, participants cooperatively built their understandings from their experience by doing things with children, writing about them, and sharing them with others doing the same thing. Their insights and experiences evolved our collective understanding and improved the course over time.

With all this input and multi-cultural diversity, I evolved ways for people to use their life experiences to successfully change themselves and the children, so things were better. People moved from the feeling of being trapped and confused toward a noticeable expertise that earned the respect of families and co-workers.