I work in early childcare and am looking for advise when dealing with a child's behaviour.
The child is almost 4yrs and has attended full-time since an infant. They have previously been a dream child. Affectionate, polite, helpful, always happy and kind to every one of the other children with many close friends.
In recent months. This child has had a total reversal in their behaviour and general personality.
They are becoming violent with their peers at the slightest inconvenience and are actively seeking to hurt and upset other children. Eg: approaching another child and ripping away their artwork, throwing toys at other children, punching or kicking others spontaneously, tipping other children's water bottles out and then showing them and teasing them. It's gotten to the point now where certain children are now scared or at least wary of this child.
They have NEVER shown this behaviour before and have always displayed quite advanced social and emotional development. As well as meeting and exceeding other developmental areas.
Along with this the child has become almost obsessively attached to a certain educator. The child becomes panicked and violent if that educator needs to attend to cleaning tasks, take their lunch break or tend to another child privately in the nappy change etc. They will scream bloody murder, bash on the door, hit, spit at, kick and scratch any other educayor who attempts to console or comfort them.
The child has displayed other behaviour like intentionally wetting their pants and making a bit of a show about it to the preferred educator as well.
The things is the child isn't like this 100% of the time. Often after they spend a good 15 minutes screaming, hitting etc they return to being completely calm. Until something else irritates them.
It seems mostly attention seeking(?) and various methods have been attempted to help support the child. Unfortunately it's just not possible to let 1 educator stay with the child the ENTIRE day just to hopefully avoid any meltdowns or physical outbursts. Especially when they're often aimed at that educator as well.
The family welcomed a new baby this year, home schooled older siblings due to COVID, all while the child attended full time at the centre. Do you think that is relevant or causing the issues? Is it worth asking the parents to reduce care hours or days?
Is it worth referring to an outside support like a paediatrician?
3 Replies
I was going to say, as a teacher, this all indicates this child is going through something. You got to it in the very last paragraph. That might be it, it might be much more stressful at home than you see, it might be something else you don't know.
This kid needs to have his needs met, and he needs to see some kind of psychologist or paed (if the parents truly don't know the root, but also sometimes they do but they can't see the way to solving it and that's what seeing professionals for kids this young can help with).
This attention seeking is attachment seeking.
My first question was going to be, have the parents mentioned any changes at home, but you’ve answered that. A new baby alone could be behind these attention seeking behaviours, but knowing their older siblings are at home could also contribute to the change in behaviour. What do the parents say about the behaviours when it’s brought up with them? Are the behaviours also happening at home? What are the parents doing about it at home? Start a written record of the behaviours, what happens before, during and after the meltdowns. See if you can find a common denominator that is happening before each meltdown. Plus having that written documentation will be of assistance if the parents do decide to seek the opinion of a paediatrician or behavioural therapist.
Sounds like my son. he's ASD but wasn't diagnosed early because he has no behavioral issues until about 5. Didn't throw a single tantrum [over anything] until 3.5 ...
These changes in behaviour can be normal, can be an indicator of something concerning in his life, or can be a reflection of permanent issues that were previously masked until demands increased [which naturally happens with age] because they were smart enough to hide it when younger. You have 2 jobs. 1... Mention the change to the parents. 2... Report it if you see reason to believe there is abuse causing the behaviour. Otherwise, just be the carer. Give warnings of activities changing or that teacher cleaning, include him in things, distract him of needed... There are lots of ways to manage it, but what works will be trial and error.