All My Children

The majority of children settle happily into the early years setting — some take a bit longer than others and may go through a shy or tearful phase while others bounce into the room with confidence from day one. A lot depends on their experiences prior to joining your nursery or playschool. If they have already experienced playing with other children, have visited other people’s houses, been to the park and discovered the excitement and pitfalls of

Swings and slides and have learnt how to cope with sharing toys and games with brothers and sisters they will probably cope with most early years situations.

However, from time to time a child enrols with your nursery/playgroup and just does not seem to be able to pick up the rules and routines in the usual way. Sometimes children become withdrawn or tearful and need a lot of cajoling and persuading to join in. They can be reluctant to even enter the room or venture out into the outdoor area. These children need sensitive handling and to be allowed time just to sit and watch what is going on. More often than not these shy children are able to overcome their reservations if given the opportunity.

Other individuals can behave in an overly boisterous or even aggressive manner, snatching toys and throwing sand, shouting and pushing others away from ‘their’ space and refusing all efforts to distract them from causing upset all round. This can be a major problem in the outdoor area where it is often more difficult for the adults to monitor closely all that is going on. Children may find the outdoors difficult for a variety of reasons including lack of experience, finding the range of activities on offer overwhelming, having problems understanding what is expected of them or perhaps having difficulties associated with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Whatever the cause, if this sort of behaviour continues, and particularly if the time for moving on to mainstream school is imminent, then it may well be useful to have a planned programme of intervention to address the problem. A detailed, time-limited programme of activities, targeting specific skills and carried out on a daily or weekly basis for a set number of weeks, can help the child develop the necessary skills to have a successful and enjoyable time. Such a programme will also provide valuable information of the child’s needs which can be passed on to the school. Positive Play is our own tried and tested programme.

Setting up the play programme

When working with very young children who are experiencing difficulties a `little and often’ approach is usually the best. It is also essential that all those involved with the child are fully included in the programme and this starts with meeting with the parents/carers to get them on board with the programme. A friendly but businesslike meeting should be set up to explain to the family your concerns about the child’s needs and to discuss the intervention you are proposing. They should be invited to offer ideas for supporting the programme at home. These interviews can be difficult as many parents will be just hoping that their child will grow out of the snatching and pushing phase. It is therefore important that the parents/carers have been kept fully aware of their child’s progress right from the start of their attendance in your setting so that it does not come as too much of a surprise to them that their child needs extra support. If it is felt appropriate the parents can be provided with a simple star chart to stick on the fridge at home to encourage good, co-operative behaviour at home too. At this initial meeting it is important to set a date to review the child’s progress at the end of the six-week programme. Hopefully the child will have made considerable improvement during half a term but this review meeting can be used to discuss any further input which may be necessary.

It will help when setting up the programme if a formal observation of the child has been carried out using an observation chart. These observations, taken for about ten or 15 minutes at a time during different parts of the session, can really help to show up when the problems are occurring. It will also help to identify any other children who could benefit from being included in the programme or those who could be included as good role models.

An experienced member of staff needs to be identified as the main deliverer, or key adult, of the programme. This person will need to be released for at least 45 minutes each week for the whole six weeks of the programme to be responsible for running the programme and providing continuity and daily follow-up. Very often a child will behave very well in the structured 45-minute session but find it difficult to sustain turn taking or speaking kindly at other times of the week. It is important that all the staff know what is being implemented so that they can also be in a position to reinforce the programme at other times of the day. It will seriously undermine the success of the programme if, for instance, the week’s target is focusing on sharing toys but inadvertently a member of staff totally ignores some snatching and pushing without using a rule reminder that ‘we share toys‘.

Typical targets for addressing behaviours during the programme may well include:

• allowing another child to play alongside (without pushing)
• playing safely in the outside area
• taking turns with e.g. a spade (with an adult)
• taking turns with equipment (with another child)
• returning indoors when asked
• using indoor/outdoor voice appropriately
• sitting quietly during snack time
• allowing others to listen to a story (without calling out)

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