TEACHING APPROACH
- Use times when children behave inappropriately as positive teaching opportunities
- Help children understand how their inappropriate words and behavior affect themselves and others
Only use discipline to help children increase social and emotional competence
- Compliment and encourage children when they show socially responsible behavior
- Allow children to calm down and sort through their feelings, while remaining part of the group
- Listen patiently while a child explains inappropriate behaviors, taking them aside to avoid embarrassing them
- Reaffirm the child’s connection to you and the group after discipline; tell the child they are loved, valued and accepted
- Never hit a child, even if a family authorizes you to do so
