Taking the time

We’ve all had those situations where it’s hard to stay patient, but we know it’s for the best. I used to work in a daycare with a variety of different children. Some were well behaved while others weren’t, but a lot of the teachers there never put in the effort with them. There was one child who had many behavioral issues, and instead of teachers helping they hurt. They would punish him instead of listening and hearing him out. No one ever put forth the effort to help him, so I made it my main goal to help him in anyway possible. I won’t lie, sometimes it was difficult but it was definitely worth it in the long run.

One of the biggest issues this child had was acting out on his anger. He would hurt other children physically and mentally. If he got angry he would hit, bite, kick, push, attack the other children, leaving marks most of the time. Which most teachers would scold him and then send him to the naughty chair. Which is fair, but no way to help and try to permanently stop the issue. When I stepped in I would ask him why he did it, what made him do it? When he would reply it would usually be because they hurt his feelings or offended him. Instead of just punishing him I would ask the other children why they were being mean to him. They obviously said because he was always mean to them and hurt their feelings. So these children were stuck at a crossroad, it was a continuous loop that never would’ve ended. One recess I decided it would be best if I sat the children in this situation down and talked to them. I helped them see how the student wasn’t really mean he just wanted to be included. But at the same time I made sure the student knew it wasn’t okay for him to be acting out in aggression. Now obviously this isn’t an overnight change, I mean these kids were only 4-6 years old. But the aggression slowly stopped; while he still had other problems to work out at least the children weren’t being injured anymore.

One extremely inappropriate thing this child would do is act out in anger on the parents that would visit for attention. Whenever a parent would come in and visit the child would get mad that he didn’t have their attention, proceeding to go after the parent. He would do things such as hit, kick, spit at, and bite the parents. It was obvious it was because he wanted the attention from the parent that the other child was getting. Now this was a harder problem to solve due to it impacting the parents. We couldn’t just tell the parents they weren’t allowed in because of one child, so I had to work my way around that. I figured out that whenever a parent came in it was best to bring him into another room and have one on one time. We would play games or read books, really anything to keep him distracted. That way he was still getting the attention he needed while behaving. I obviously talked to him about the way he treated the parents and he slowly began to realize that acting out isn’t anyway to get attention. After a couple months of talking and one on one time he was able to be in the same room as parents, while doing his own thing. He realized he didn’t need their attention and if he wanted it there were better ways to go about getting it. He had truly turned a corner and I’ve never been more astonished and proud of someone.

There were some other smaller kinks that had to be worked out, and eventually we got there. But he was finally able to confide in me and look at me as someone he could trust. He was able to hangout with all of the other children and parents without acting out. He was able to be respectful to the teachers and use his words instead of his body. I had stayed patent throughout this entire process unlike any other teacher had. He had never had someone put time into him and be patient and I’ll forever be glad that I did. Some people just need patience and time, and I will always remember that.

“Angry finger” by John Mutford is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0