Leading and Caring for Children

Behavior Management Protocol

We don’t choose to start a formal protocol unless a behavior problem is difficult, really difficult, and nothing is working.

If you reached this page in sequence, you had to pass through many other ideas first. Most of us, usually have personal work to do to become more open and authentic, know our ways to lead well, clearly communicate expectations to others, and be warm and caring, especially at those times when we are upset.

A challenging child brings all that to the fore. Being challenged shows us our ‘oops’ and points directly at the place where we have something to learn.

You have arrived at the door of the Behavior Management Protocol where we address, in cooperation with others, difficult problems that are not going away, which means we have to take a significantly different approach.

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When I first began to work with young children in 1970, I volunteered at the EEU School at the Haring Center of the University of Washington, which was dedicated to research, professional development, and services for children with disabilities. I encountered some of the toughest children most of us have ever seen, I feel blessed to have been taught by the best.

This Behavior Management Protocol is for those very hard behavior problems—the tough guys and gals. The protocol promotes group efficiency in taking action in a logical sequence. Taking one step at a time, the protocol builds a cooperative effort by all those involved with a child. They plan, document, discuss, and test in order to evolve a set of conditions that prove they work.

An Agenda, not Answers

Nineteen pages open from this portal. Each page offers a piece in a system for involving all the managers (educators, staff, families) to arrive at a community-constructed plan for dealing with a child when nothing else is working. No answers here. Rather, this protocol is an agenda that narrows the discussion to one topic at a time to eventually create a ‘menu’ from which to select a common strategy to implement with committed action.

Fair warning: this is lots of work over multiple meetings with all the people involved and continuous record keeping in between.

We impose a protocol, because educators, staff, and families simply don’t know what to try. They have found themselves unsuccessful, exhausted, and emotionally drained. The participants care about this child, who sustains destructive or counterproductive ways, despite our efforts, without any solution.

Time Passes Quickly

Most of the time, seemingly tough behaviors gradually disappear inside of positive relationships with others. I tried to address that in the first sections of Troubling Behavior, especially the What We Want page. The Protocol comes into play when we see the early childhood window closing. At this point we need everyone involved to work together by deciding upon a shared plan and consistent implementation.

While children are still young, we can make beneficial changes that impact a lifetime, but we have to act now. Opportunities narrow for troublesome children, restricting their participation  in experiences, adventures, and encounters with other people. The doors, soon and very soon, close.

It’s not easy to take on this commitment, but there isn’t anybody else; no one can do this work as well as those who live with a difficult child. Again, progress occurs inside relationships.

Efficient Collaboration

The Behavior Management Protocol efficiently guides discussions by keeping on one topic at a time. Without this hard agenda, meetings often waste time with one opinion setting off the next. Discussions and disagreements go round and round. The meeting ends, usually without a decision on what to do.

The protocol limits sidetracks. One item follows logically from the first. Talk has to focus on brainstorming specific kinds of alternatives, based on facts everyone can see, not opinions which they can’t. The protocol seeks a common understanding, guiding members toward the five components of a final agreement.

Navigation

Before we step through the protocol I’d like to address a discussion of Language and Reality. How does what we say relate to what we do and to what reality do we know? Since you are the probable person who is going to lead this discussion, it’s worth your time to be able to distinguish the reality of objective facts, the reality of socially-constructed meaning, and the personal reality of opinion.

Following that, the sequence proceeds by clicking the link in the blue box at the bottom of the page. I recommend following this blue link, so topics arise in the protocol sequence. Since there are no more menus at the top or side of the page, you could get lost.

This is your only menu for access to the pieces. Each link goes to that one page. You can always come back to this Behavior Management Protocol TOP PAGE and find this again.

When all seven numbered topics are understood, the management team makes a decision using this form.

Protocol Final Form

You can see the protocol at work in examples of three children: Sandy, Jeremy, and Charlie.

Before we start into the details, we examine the ways we talk about what’s happening: Language and Reality. We have to draw a few distinctions in order to have a common language for the work.

Next Language and Reality