All of Dan’s Guidance Matters columns are available on NAEYC’s website at www.naeyc.org/yc/columns/guidance.

Instructions for creating an individual guidance plan and a template for a plan are included in “Handout 1: The Individual Guidance Plan" from the February/March 2011 issue of "NEXT for TYC: An NAEYC Professional Development Resource." This handout is available on NAEYC’s website at www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/201107/IndividualGuidancePlan.pdf.

First, it sounds like you really care about this guy, and in that sense you are doing well by him. A foundation of being cared about by important adults is key in the life of a child. Avoiding rejection and push-out (expulsion) with a child you find challenging is to your credit. Almost five times as many boys as girls are made to leave preschool programs; preschool expulsion rates are actually much higher nationally than in high schools. (See Gilliam, 2005 & 06.) Many of these children are going to have negative self-messages about being in school before they even start kindergarten!

Sometimes "veteran" children in programs just don't find enough to engage themselves and fall into mistaken patterns of behavior especially during some daily activities. During large group some children become expert at acting out; they know teacher-reactions in front of the whole group are going to be dramatic.

As mentioned in earlier comments, I think sit-down, set-activity large groups often aren't engaging for many preschool children. Let's say a teacher has won a trip to Hawaii and brings back a hula skirt, hula CD, a coconut, and several sea shells. What a teacher should NOT do in large group is pass around the coconut and shells. Individual investigation activities should happen in small groups or at learning centers. For large group, the teacher should get an opposite gender adult in the room, one of them should put on the hula skirt, and the whole class should dance hula--boys more likely to if they see a guy dance. (Men as well as women dance hula in Hawaii.)

In one area of the room, a smaller group should open the coconut. At the sand table, children should look for seashells in the sand, and find shell photos at a nearby science center, or do other shell related activities. Other parts of the room might have other tropical beach activities. With active, inter-active, muscial large groups, children expert at getting attention are more likely to become engaged. These kids are more likely to take interest in the coconut and shells if they can have a more upclose and personal experience with the items.

In very active programs, children are less likely to focus on negative teacher-attention and more likely to focus on the interesting things that are going on. While the children are engaged, teachers can provide the individual attention in a more positive fashion.

When a child is asking for attention, even inappropriately, they are really asking for adult affirmation--just not real effectively. Taking the time to build a connection, such as when a child first arrives in the morning, may be enough to decrease acting out behavior during the day. This bold move takes teamwork, but might pay off.

Again, your caring shows in your thoughts about next year's teacher. Building that relationship early might be a good move. You know the child well.

Seems to me that five-year-olds are still trying to figure out what is real for themselves. Jockeying around what is real and what is artificial but socially acceptable during quick, ever-changing interactions is, as I see it, too much to ask. Seems like we should be working to help young children generate communication that is both real and prosocial in the interactions of life.

One way to make this teaching clear to young children is to use guidelines instead of rules. Rules focus on the negative, “No…hitting” “Don’t…run in the classroom” If you have rules, you continually have to decide when and how to enforce them. Seems like you should be a teacher, not an “enforcer.” Besides, even young children can get pretty cagey about breaking rules to see what will happen. This is not the educational program teachers want for their classrooms.

Not many guidelines, just a few that you decide on and reinforce mutually, work well. Four non-magical, non-exclusive examples are:
•“Friendly touches only.”
•“Friendly words only.”
•”We work and play together.”
•“We walk in the classroom except at special times.”

The guidelines empower guidance, by directing the teacher to what and how to teach in relation to children’s behavior. The guidelines are used both with the group—as in reinforcing limits for rough and tumble play—and (sometimes on a repeated basis) with the individual child who needs extra help. They define what is real and important in classroom life, and teach children how to interact without needing to fake it for the sake of social acceptability.

A five-year-old only has 60 plus months of experience in learning communication skills that we adults still work on. Children are going to make intentional and unintentional communication mistakes. Better to work on teaching them how to communicate authentically, even if, as beginners, they don’t always succeed in this task.

Piaget wrote about a characteristic of (roughly) preschool - first grade children that has come to be known as "magical thinking," confusion in telling fantasy from reality. Teachers see this characteristic when kids get spooked by the arrival in a classroom of a Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or a fully uniformed fire fighter. (An astounded four-year-old once saw the Easter Bunny pass her on the sidewalk and drive off in a car. She said, "I didn't know the Easter Bunny could drive a car!")

Persona dolls are one of many props teachers use with young children to teach about diversity, the expression of emotions, and conflict management. Person dolls are commercially available, but also can be home-made. Curriculum ideas for using the dolls include stories and role-play situations that work well into class meetings about various social-emotional topics.

Before persona dolls, I once saw two teachers do a puppet play to teach the importance of including all. Two bears would not let a frog play with them. The teachers stopped the play and asked questions about how the frog must feel. The kids knew, and they also knew what the bears could do to make Frog feel better. The play resumed with the happy ending and the class then discussed the meaning of the play. At the end of the conversation, one kid provided a reality check. "But teacher, bears eat frogs." Even preschoolers are working on those fantasy-reality issues.

Other props that work well for conflict mediation are "peace puppets" (also known as "power socks"--these puppets are often sock-puppets). Two kindergarten girls were fighting over who got to wash a doll. The older girl told the younger girl to get the power puppet. The older girl put it on. When the younger one asked "what does sock say," the older girl said in her power puppet voice, "Both wash doll." And they did.

Talking sticks and talking rocks are two other props. With orientation and ceremonial use (holding the stick with one hand on each end; the rock cradled in both hands), children (and sometimes adults) learn to pass the objects and thus take turns speaking and listening. Talking and listening chairs, and "peace tables" are other objects that can help children and adults to calm strong emotions and solve conflicts.

Personal dolls provide an organized approach to inter-personal education and prove of good assistance to many teachers in this most important task.

We believe the publication you are referring to is the Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children (MnAEYC) booklet “Developmentally Appropriate Guidance of Young Children.” It is in its 5th edition. To order a copy, please contact MnAEYC directly. Visit the web at www.mnaeyc-mnsaca.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=5 or call 651-646-8689.

One advantage of being a gnarly old, ornery, semi-retired dude, is that I call them as I see them. Two teachers with twenty preschool children is too few adults. Whatever program realities are, a third adult, or a group size of 16, is going to make your program more developmentally appropriate, individually responsive, and less frustrating for teachers and children alike.

Please understand, I am talking to administrators here even more than most teachers. Whether the "third person" is a collective of foster grandparents, trained and scheduled family volunteers, college intern students, or teens in special programs, having that third adult is important, at least for key hours during the day. If that third adult is oriented to do more than menial tasks, he or she can really help to personalize the program.

This being said, running a program that is developmentally appropriate for all really helps. Start with the understanding that young children and large groups are not a natural match. Unless large groups are brief, active, interactive, and usually musical, they probably will work better as small groups.

This is where the teaching team comes in. If a program strictly defines one adult as the teacher and the other as the "aide," opportunities to break down the "mass-class" are limited. Sure, one adult is paid more and should be in charge. But it doesn't take a degree to lead a small group (6 preferable to 10) or to relate to a child that a lead teacher finds challenging. The adults in the classroom need to work as a close team both with individual children needing additional support and with the group.

Whether you call them work times, center times, play times, or "self-selected, self-directed autonomous learning periods," child-choice activities should be a fundamental part of the day. When children are "plan, do, and reviewing" smoothly, teachers are freed up to work more with individual children. When choice time is not going smoothly, the conflict mediation that teachers do is learned from by all the children in the class (as onlookers) as well as the children involved. (For the few minutes the other adult keeps the choice time flowing.)

Finally programs that are developmentally appropriate for all (not just the easy ones) tend to be "less like Sunday school and more like summer camp." Physical activity, including BIG BODY PLAY (Carlson, NAEYC, 2011) are integral to the day. If teachers see the day as their way to stay in shape, the program is probably active enough for the children.

My observation is that preschoolers who are active, interactive, and creative make successful grade school students. Teachers of young children who think they have to rehearse preschoolers in large group, sit-down, teacher-directed activities have missed the airplane in terms of what their jobs are about. These teachers, for sure, won't have or make the time to work with children who have unmet basic needs.

The rest of early childhood teachers will find the time to help individual children. Building relationships with these children may well change their entire lives for the better. And other children, seeing their teachers be empathetic, will gain in empathy. Even if there are two teachers and 20 kids it is important to make the time to help individual kids. Sorry if I came on strong with this one. Time for my nap?

My field is ECE, not special education. But I do know that few easy answers are out there concerning autism. My own very semi-“expert” thought about autism is that genes that define some brain operations have somehow gone awry. These brains take in stimuli and in the information processing, reverberate the information and hyper-react to it. Kids having autism become both easily overloaded by information and obsessed with the overloading process. Idea expression, especially through speech, becomes difficult. I want to respond to this question by talking about resources and one particular action with the group.

Resources, your own. When a child diagnosed with autism seems to be making progress in your group, smile and after work drink a beverage or your choice. You are using your resources effectively. Building with the child a simple, direct, and predictable environment tends to provide a routine that the child and others in the group can live with.

Resources, with others. To help a child with any behavior pattern that is atypical, ongoing, and extreme, the teacher should be working with other adults. Starting with fellow staff (family childcare phone buddies) and families, the teacher builds working relationships with early childhood special education teachers and other specialists for outside support and assistance. From my perspective, an important job of program administrators is to be proactive in securing this assistance for their staff when working with kids who have special needs. “Collaboration” is getting done with others what one cannot do on one’s own, and is important especially when children have conditions like autism.

For behavior that is impacting many children, I recommend class meetings to dialog with them about the matter. (Even toddlers.) We always want to protect the privacy of individual children, but we have to balance this concern with the wellbeing of the group. Chapter 7 of the POWER OF GUIDANCE book is on class meetings. Vance and Weaver also have a helpful NAEYC book on this topic. The November 2006 “Guidance Matters” column in YOUNG CHILDREN is entitled “The Beauty of Class Meetings.”

Meetings to discuss how the behavior of an individual child is affecting the group are difficult to hold and run. Respect for all is paramount. But in my view these meetings help individual children feel less victimized and help all members of the group to heighten their empathy for the child. On the topic of public conflicts obvious to all (whether the conflicts are caused intentionally or unintentionally, as through autism), I believe the likely gains through class make meetings make them a challenge worth taking.

Tantrums are a sign that a person has more stress than they can deal with. In younger preschoolers tantrums are a form of reactive aggression—done as a mistaken “fight o flight” reaction that is triggered by the brain's reaction to perceived threat. As preschoolers “age,” the tantrum becomes a form of instrumental aggression. In this case the fight or flight reaction has been unintentionally reinforced in the child's brain and has become a strategy of defense—“best defense is offense”—and so is particularly challenging for teachers to deal with.

In the face of a tantrum, the adult needs to determine the danger of harm, to others and/or the child. If the danger is low, the adult may want to step back from the tantrum and not get pulled into it. In a low key way, get yourself and the child calm—even if this takes a while—then help the child use words to talk about the problem. Within your flat-out limits, work with the child’s perspective and not just your own to fix the situation. (Sometimes we do well to examine our “flat-out” limits.)

If harm looks likely, in my view the teacher has to intervene. Harm to anyone in the classroom is not allowed. Programs should probably have policies worked out, on paper and in people’s minds, for the use of the “passive bear hug,” arms around arms, legs around legs, going into a sitting position with the child facing away from you, holding the child’s body so the head is on one side of you or the other (to prevent head-butts). The child will fight at first, but gradually realize the adult is helping to restore lost limits, stop fighting, an even “melt into” the teacher. Many teachers have acknowledged the “melt into” phenomena.

This matter is serious and the passive bear hug may not be allowed in some programs. Reports have to be written up and families spoken with. And it is hard, physically and emotionally, on the teacher. When the passive bear hug becomes necessary, staff need and deserve our support.

The end of the tantrum is not the end of the problem. The teacher needs to build a relationship with the child outside of the tantrums to lower the child’s stress levels, build trust, and get the child to use words instead of reactive or instrumental aggression, even if it is “I can find any!”

If tantrums continue, the adult needs to take a more comprehensive approach. Many folks know I write the “Guidance Matters” column for YOUNG CHILDREN. Four columns that readers might consult are from January 2008 (Comprehensive Guidance), January 2011 (Reactive Aggression), May 2011 (Instrumental Aggression), and the future November 2011 issue (Aggression: The Prequel).

Some people do not naturally grow out of using tantrums. I had a boss once ... While children are young, we can help them learn alternative ways of dealing with conflicts (expressed disagreements). This is what makes ECE teaching the most important, and third most difficult, job in the world—after middle-school substitute teaching and parenting. (If you can find it, friendly humor helps.)

A timeout is a punishment. It is temporary expulsion from the group. Think of young children as being months old rather than years old. Because of limited experience and brain development, the message to a child receiving a timeout is not "I will be a better child as a result of this experience." The message, emotionally, is "I am unworthy of being in this group. People here do not like me." For children to learn to solve their problems peaceably and get along in the group, we need to lower their stress levels and build a relationship with them so they will listen to us. Timeouts make these two objectives difficult. When children are involved in a conflict, first we triage for blood, then we calm everyone down, ourselves too. If a child is too upset to talk about what happened and solve the problem, then he or she may need a cooling down time away from the conflict. This may be removal, but it is for the purpose of helping the child calm down so the teacher and child can talk and resolve the problem. The removal is not a consequence for something the child has done. Teachers need to ask themselves which motive they are working from when they physically move a child away from a conflict. If necessary, calm all down now and solve the problem later. If we have the physical and emotional time required for a time out, then we have the physical and emotional time to work with the child to solve the problem. Remember, when there is a conflict, there IS a consequence, but both for the child And the adult. For the child, it is to learn a better way to handle the conflict. For the adult it is to teach that better way. This is what guidance is about, as opposed to traditional discipline. Not time-outs in order to "discipline a child" (punish), but cooling down times when necessary in order to teach.