Behaviour Management Policy

Statement of intent

Our setting believes that children flourish best when their personal, social and emotional needs are met and where there are clear and developmentally appropriate expectations for their behaviour.

Aim

We aim to teach children to behave in socially acceptable ways and to understand the needs and rights of others. The principles guiding management of behaviour exist within the programme for supporting personal, social and emotional development.

Method

We will meet this aim through the following procedures:

• The play leader has overall responsibility for behaviour management issues and is required to:

• Keep up to date with legislation, research and thinking on promoting positive behaviour and on handling children’s behaviour where it may require additional support.

• Access relevant sources of expertise on promoting positive behaviour within the programme for supporting personal, social and emotional development.

• Check that all staff have relevant in-service training on promoting positive behaviour.

• We recognise that codes for interacting with other people vary between cultures and require staff to be aware of and respect those used by members of the setting.

• We require all staff, volunteers and students to provide a positive model of behaviour by treating children, parents and one another with friendliness, care and courtesy.

• We familiarise new staff and volunteers with our behaviour management policy.

• We work in partnership with children’s parents. Parents are regularly informed about their children’s behaviour by their key person. We work with parents to address recurring inconsiderate behaviour, using our observation records to help us to understand the cause and to decide jointly how to respond appropriately.

We aim to use positive pro-active strategies to promote positive behaviour in children, and set these strategies within our programme for personal, social and emotional development. These include:

• having a ‘Rules’ poster with pictures that cover situations that could occur at pre-school. It is referred to regularly as part of the curriculum and when an incident has occurred. The issues are discussed with the children, emphasising the reasons why some behaviour is not acceptable and the type of positive behaviour that we want to encourage.

• supporting each child in developing self esteem, confidence and feelings of competence

• supporting each child in developing a sense of belonging in our group, so that they feel valued and welcome.

• acknowledging considerate behaviour such as kindness and willingness to share

• acknowledging children’s considerate behaviour towards another who is hurt or upset

• providing activities and games that encourage co-operation and working together

• ensuring that there are enough popular toys and resources and sufficient activities available so that children are meaningfully occupied without the need for unnecessary conflict over sharing and waiting for turns

• avoiding creating situations in which children receive adult attention only in return for inconsiderate behaviour.

We do not:

• send children out of the room by themselves or promote ‘Time Out’ techniques for children under five.

• use or threaten to use physical or corporal punishment, such as smacking or shaking and, so far as it is reasonably practicable, shall ensure that corporal punishment is not given to any child by any person who cares for, or who is in regular contact with children. A person shall not be taken to have given corporal punishment if the action was taken for reasons that include averting an immediate danger or personal injury to, or an immediate danger of death of, any person (including the child). threaten corporal punishment, nor use or threaten any form of punishment which could have an adverse impact on the child’s well-being.

• use techniques intended to single out and humiliate individual children, such as ridicule or sarcasm.

• use or threaten any form of punishment which could have an adverse impact on the child’s well-being.

• remove toys or activities that are the focus of a conflict as a ‘punishment’ or means of ‘teaching children to share’.

• use physical intervention to manage a child’s behaviour unless it is necessary to prevent personal injury to the child, other children or an adult, to prevent serious damage to property or in what would reasonably be regarded as exceptional circumstances. Any occasion where physical intervention is used to manage a child’s should be recorded and parents should be informed about it on the same day.

• shout or raise our voices in a threatening way to children.

Kinds of behaviours that require positive intervention

We make a distinction between three kinds of behaviours that require support or intervention in order to achieve the considerate and socially acceptable behaviour that we expect of children according to their age and developmental maturity or whether they have any special educational need. These behaviours are:

• Inconsiderate behaviour – This includes behaviours such as taking toys from another child, not waiting for a turn, pushing, being unco-operative, disrupting a game, hitting out against another. They are characterised by developmental immaturity whereby children are not at the stage where they can manage frustration or anger themselves, they may not have the language to express themselves, or may not understand and be able to keep to social rules. These behaviours are seen as mistakes that the child is making on the way to developing socially acceptable ways, particularly of dealing with conflict. We regard the child to be a learner of what is acceptable and in need of support, explanation, encouragement, positive modelling and guidance – just as in learning any other skill.

• Hurtful behaviour – We take hurtful behaviour very seriously. Most children under the age of five will at some stage hurt or say something hurtful to another child, especially if their emotions are high at the time, but it is not helpful to label this behaviour as ‘bullying’ even if the behaviour is worryingly aggressive. For most children under five, hurtful behaviour is momentary, spontaneous and often without cognisance of the feelings of the person whom they have hurt. Some children may engage in hurtful behaviour because they are deeply unhappy and they require support and care. However, hurtful behaviour has an impact for the child at the receiving end which is significant and this is also taken into consideration when responding to incidents of hurtful behaviour.

• Bullying - We take bullying very seriously. Bullying involves the persistent physical or verbal abuse of another child or children. It is characterised by intent to hurt, often planned, and accompanied by an awareness of the impact of the bullying behaviour. A child who is bullying has reached a stage of cognitive development where he or she is able to plan to carry out a premeditated intent to cause distress to another. This is rarely the case for children under five.

This policy was adopted at a meeting of Larksmead Pre-school

Held on: 3^rd July 2008

This policy was reviewed on 23^rd January 2009