Dealing with Anger: Providing Order
One of the problems that I faced as a dad I also see from time to time in the classroom – young children who are angry and have problems expressing their anger. My younger son went through what we thought was a “phase” of hitting – we tried many different ways to stop the behavior but what we needed to do was find out the cause of the behavior and address that. Of course, his reasons were mixed but they generally fell into the category of frustration or perceived violations.
Scream and Shout by Mindaugas Danys
The biggest thing that I learned is that when anger rears its head I need to find out what caused it…and typically that won’t happen until the anger has dissipated. In the classroom this can be difficult so the debrief my have to be done by a helper – just don’t wait to long or the child may forget. Knowing the cause of the anger can help you avoid the classroom disruptions in the future so a debrief is key.
Over the next few weeks I want to cover some thoughts on what causes anger and ways you can minimize it for your classroom. One of the biggest issues has to do with scheduling. Children are routine oriented – some of them extremely so. This orientation helps them process the world and their place in it so when there is a disruption in that schedule they can become confused and try to right the perceived wrong by becoming angry. Generally, these conflicts have to do with unmet expectations.
Unmet expectations: If a child believes that there will be a time to play and it doesn’t occur or if they think there will be a snack and it doesn’t happen anger over these unmet expectations can occur. Children are routine oriented; keep your classroom routine oriented. Follow a schedule and if you’re going to change something, let the children know in advance – minimize schedule surprises.
As adults, we like (or think we like variety) and project that onto children…but think about Blue’s Clues or any other popular children’s shows: they are all the same. Have variety within the spaces, but keep the spaces the same every week.
For instance, our children’s church almost always follows this schedule: play, clean-up, worship through song, large group teaching, small groups, play until pickup. If there’s a change for the day we try to announce it ahead of time. We can play different things, sing different songs, and teach different stories but the order is the same. We also give our children some additional anchors: In play time we have four stations: at least two (usually 3) are the same as they were the week before. In song time, our first song is almost always the same. In our teaching time there’s a place where we ask a question that they can talk about together and then we chat as a group followed by prayer. Even within your variety you can have order.
How do you provide stability in your enviornments?
