Building a Strong Foundation to Support Positive Behavior

So back at the beginning when I did my very first podcast, I talked to you guys about a boy in my classroom who had really challenging behavior (he was stabbing kids with pencils), and everything we were trying just wasn't working. And so we implemented an individualized Behavior Support plan. What I didn't tell you in the episode is everything that led up to that.

I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the teaching pyramid model and why it's so important for us to understand not only as teachers but also as parents. There are foundational pieces that we need to have present in our homes to help us create an environment that supports the kind of behaviors that we want our children to have before we get into the consequences and the discipline.

The Teaching Pyramid

The teaching pyramid is a comprehensive multi-tiered framework that's evidence-based and promotes social, emotional, and behavioral development in young children off. It promotes positive behavior and also addresses challenging behavior. 

The foundational level is an effective workforce.

In the Classroom:

This would be having teachers who are engaged and present teachers who show up teachers who aren't on their phone while the kids are playing the playground teachers who get on their level effective Workforce is kind of obvious when you're talking about Preschool teachers in the classroom, right? 

In the Home:

How can this translate to our home life? What does an effective workforce look like at home? Do you make time for you? Do you share responsibilities with your partner? If your co-parenting with step-parents or with ex's is it set up in a way that's effective? Do you have time to do your own personal errands? Do you have time to take showers self-care all of those things going to having an effective workforce? It's not just, do you show up? Are you on your phone? Are you engaged and present? There's a lot that goes into making sure that you can be the best parent you can be.

It's like the airplane analogy; you put the mask on you first before you help your child. Are you making sure that you make time for yourself so that you are the most productive and helpful and kind parent that you can be? If your needs aren't being met, it's going to be really hard to meet the needs of your small, very needy children? 

nurturing and responsive relationships

The first tier of this pyramid- after the effective workforce, is nurturing and responsive relationships. This is an essential component to promote healthy social and emotional development.

In the Classroom:

When my kids were really starting to struggle and I was kind of torn because I had thirty children and there were a lot of challenges that were happening. I first made sure my workforce was effective, but then I looked at how I can create strong relationships with the children in my classroom. I started writing notes home, every day I would choose three kids to write in at home to home. I did the ninety-ten rule-- 90% positive attention for every 10% correction. Most of my interactions were positive which helped with the relationship so many other ways. 

In the Home:

So now thinking in terms of your relationship with your children, what are some ways to strengthen that relationship at your home? So maybe it's calling them by name in the mornings me like "Charlie. Good morning. How did you sleep?" Something so simple like that sets the whole mood for your morning. Also, you can write notes. You can do family nights. You can do family dates. You can make sure that you're taking them out to different places within the community. All of these things build that trust and builds that relationship. Or you can just sit with them spend time soon twenty minutes a day reading with them, sitting with them, playing with them making eye contact, have them help you cook, have them help you clean. All of these things are relationship builders. And the biggest thing is to give them lots of hugs every single day. Everybody needs a hug and your kids need I guarantee more than you're giving them including myself. I need to be better about this.

Environment

The next level of the pyramid is the environment. 

In the Classroom:

I was the main teacher and I was trying to teach to the group while the rest of the teachers kind of herded the group around me. The environment was not set up to support them in their classroom. I split the group in half. It made a world of difference. Finally, they were actually engaged in large group and small groups. 

We used picture schedules in the classroom. The other thing we did was break it down two very simple classroom rules. 

In the Home:

Is it over-crowded, over-cluttered? Is there too much out at the same time? Do they know what happens each day. Do you have clear rules and boundaries or do they change all of the time? Having five simple house rules is going to go so far in helping your home environment. Also. Do you have a spot where they do homework? Do you have a spot where they take off their shoes? Do you have a spot where may hang up their backpacks all of these different things to just like organize your house can help with a lot of the challenges that you might face if you have a draw a knife drawer something that they always get into how can you create a child lock or a safety thing so that your child isn't getting into the knife drawer? If you have a child who dumps everything in the pantry, get a child lock for the pantry door. If you have a child who escaped out the front door, get one of those really high locks that go on the top of the front door. Create a safe environment to encourage the behavior that you want is going to go a long way in preventing some of those challenges. 

Social and Emotional Supports

The next level of the pyramid is targeted social and emotional support. 

In the Classroom:

So in my classroom, I had this Turtle his name was Tucker. He was a puppet and I said, oh Tucker Turtles feeling shy today. What can we tell Tucker turtle? I used the puppets to kind of teach some social and emotional supports. We also used social stories. So I used something called the dragon brain and the dragon brain was a social story about a boy who is feeling really frustrated and somebody does something. He starts to get mad and his brain starts to turn into a dragon. Then he remembers he can smell the flower and blow out the candle and you just put your finger in front of your mouth and you smell a flower and you blow out the candle and it can calm down your breath and then you're dragon brain goes away and you can make a safe choice. 

Having all of these things targeted to teach them social-emotional skills went so far in helping the kids in the classroom respect each other and work out their own problems and start to develop these skills on their own at home. 

In the Home:

I use this all of the time! Currently, the one that I'm trying to help Charlie with is being ASSERTIVE. When another friend or cousin or sibling takes something from him, hits him, pull his hair anything like that -- he just freezes fight-flight mode hundred percent. He just stands there and cries. He's very sensitive. He's also very tough at the same time. But when something doesn't go his way, he just shuts down and so I'm trying to help him in the green arrow moments to learn the skill of saying "Stop. I don't like that" and if they don't stop you can walk away. That's what we say. We went camping the other day and I knew that he was going to be with his cousin and he and his cousin play really well together. Sometimes his cousin who's a year younger does things that Charlie doesn't like and Charlie usually cries.

And it causes a huge scene, so instead of just being like to stop crying or whatever. I knew he needed the social and emotional supports to get through this. On the way to Camping, I talked to them over and over again and I said hey if someone does something you don't like you can say what? 

Another thing you can do is read stories to talk about the topics that your kids need help with. Talk about sharing.  Use a problem-solving chart. 

Individualized Intervention

The final part of this pyramid is individualized intervention. If you've done all of these things all these foundational pieces and you really been like okay, I've tried all these things my child still having trouble then yes, maybe you need individualized support. 

Maybe you need to talk to your pediatrician. 

If your child is still having really challenging behavior, maybe you need a behavior coach, maybe you need an ADHD evaluation, maybe you need an Autism Spectrum screening, maybe you need a speech consultant. 

There are so many things you can do once you get to that tippy-top of the pyramid off and there're so many resources and support out there to help you. 

But if we don't do some of those foundational pieces, we can't expect that good behavior to stick around. 

Day-by-Day Journey to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children

I'm going to tell you about an opportunity that I am launching this week. I am so excited about it. 

I don't know if you're like me at all, but I listen to a podcast or read an audiobook, you know, listen to an online course and all of this information is so great and I get gung-ho and I'm like, yes, I'm going to implement this and this and this and this and then I'll scroll back through some of my notes for some of these podcasts and some of these courses I took and like, oh, I'm not implementing that and I haven't implemented that and I haven't implemented that. All of the information comes inside my head, but sometimes I don't put it to work and if you don't put what you learn into work, if you don't experience it, then you don't get that true motivation to continue and implement it in your life. 

Introducing the Day-by-Day Journey to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children: A 30-day Journaling Guide to Proactively Teach Emotional Skills, Set Appropriate Boundaries, and Develop Stronger Parent-Child Relationships. 

This is a 46-page workbook journal that is combined with a course. You'll order the workbook, It'll come to your door, and inside you'll find a website/QR code that will take you to some videos and support supplemental materials that are also on my website to go along with this workbook. 

It's a day-by-day journaling guide, you'll go through each of these steps of the pyramid in that order that builds upon each other. So we'll start with the effective workforce and go through some prompts that help you create an effective workforce in your home. Then we'll focus on relationships, the environment, social and emotional supports, and very lastly individualized intervention.

It's 30 days - 30 different prompts and you'll go through each day. First, set a parenting intention. Next, write three things that you're grateful for. After that, you'll get the daily prompt and reflection questions. 

One of the prompts in the relationship-building section is to choose five ways to fill your child's emotional tank. Every child has a need to feel loved. We have to find ways to fill their emotional tank. Here are some simple ideas: read a book, sing a song, say I love you, play together, enjoy a video game, play outside, involve them in cooking, cleaning, or meal planning. Then it gives you five different blank openings to write the five things. Then you're going to reflect. How did it go? How did it feel?

That's it. Thirty Days. Thirty prompts journaling gratitude coaching before and after section for scribbling and doodling. Complete with a mood tracker, this workbook is worth three times more than what I'm selling it for. 

You can do this workbook one time or you can continue to do it over and over and over and over again. If you want to continue to develop these habits in your life the benefit of having the mood tracker and kind of this reflection piece is some of those things aren't going to work in your home, but you'll know after doing once that these are the things that I absolutely want to implement go to the show notes right now read about it more in my website or go straight to the Amazon link and add it to cart as soon as you purchase these amazing workbook. 

It's going to first be printed and shipped and then you're going to get access to the website which has supplemental videos some of the printables that are mentioned in the book. Finally, you're going to get special access to a group where I'm going to be doing this challenge with you day-by-day where we can all put our insights into what's happening each day. 

I really hope that this is going to help you as much as it has helped me establish my family culture and really develop the foundational pieces that we need to encourage that positive behavior in our home. 

So, what are you waiting for?

Go get the day-by-day guide to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children with Lauren Pace.