"Teacher, Puppy’s not listening. He’s jumping on his friend!” The children in Karen Estella’s Los Angeles preschool program giggle at Impulsive Puppy’s misbehavior. Along with fellow puppets Slow-down Snail and Calm-down Bunny, Puppy is part of the Second Step anti-violence curriculum that Estrella uses to teach emotional skills such as calming down and getting along with other children. Estella asks the children: “What does puppy have to do now?” Through discussion, fellow teacher Sandra Espino points out, “the children themselves are solving their own problems.”

“Positive behavior needs to come from the inside, to be (the child’s) choice,” says Laurie Prusso of Modesto Junior College. But how can teachers and caregivers work with children to motivate them to choose positive behavior?

Explain the behavior that’s needed

Misbehavior, says Prusso, is our label for the inappropriate ways that kids try to get their needs met. Adults can point to more effective strategies. Then children’s experiences will teach them that behaving better works better.

Michelle Krehl, director of The Nurtury Preschool near L.A, describes a situation in which “a child is knocking over other children’s blocks and they ask him to stop but he doesn’t.” Krehl goes to the child and explains that in order to stay there with the other children, he needs to listen to their requests. “I ask the other children what they would like him to do if he comes back (to the block area). He can go back if he listens and meets the conditions.”

Help children learn to manage their emotions

When Estella sees children looking upset, she asks, “Do you need to check in?” The Second Step curriculum teaches a process for calming down. First, the child puts a hand on his tummy: How do I feel? Do I need to calm down? Then the child chooses a strategy: count, take a deep breath, or just tell himself to calm down.

Espino finds this process especially helpful when children speak different languages. A child can show others that “he needs to calm down by using the nonverbal cues of holding his tummy and extending a hand to say ‘stop’.”

One child in Eamon Sharkey’s Monte Rio afterschool program would “blow up if anybody teased him.” Sharkey suggested that when he got upset he “stop and listen to the wind.” After a week, he noticed a real difference. “Sometimes he makes his own sounds, “woooooo”—he does it when he starts to feel angry.”

Coach children on how to enter play

Some kids grab or hit because they don’t know how to join in play. “Children need us to teach them,” says Prusso. In Catherine Scott’s Long Beach family child care program, when one child wants to join another at the Lego table, she prompts her to ask if she can join in. And she provides support if the other child says no. “I say, ‘Sometimes people want to play alone. It’s OK. Why don’t we come over here?’”

Teach—and model—empathy

“(Children) watch how we interact with them and they copy,” says Scott. Recently, when a new child was crying after her mother left, Scott was pleased to see another four-year old touch the crying child gently on her shoulder, saying, “Mommy’s coming back.”

At Santa Rosa Junior College child development center, reports faculty member Jeanne Harmon, “we encourage peer support and the development of empathy.” Children can get ice-filled “boo-boo bears” out of the freezer to take care of friends who have boo-boos.

Use puppets to discuss problems

“With fours and fives,” says Kathryn Ingrum, director of the Grossmont College child development center, “dolls are very effective as a vicarious learning experience.” Recently she noticed that two four-year-old boys were excluding the three-year-old brother of one because “he couldn’t quite do what they were doing. I never reprimanded them,” she says, but used dolls to show “what it felt like not to be able to do what others could.” After that, “they started including him more, saying, ‘Come on, you can do that, put your foot there.’”

L.A. preschool teacher Elizabeth Benitez uses puppets to help her students think through situations ahead of time: “Snail is afraid to spin too fast on the merry-go-round. What can we do to help?” One child responded, “maybe Snail can get on Puppy’s lap so it won’t be so scary.”

Help children talk through conflicts

Ingrum’s center has a “peace tree” in the corner with pillows underneath. When children have conflicts they can go to the peace tree with a teacher. Each child has an opportunity to tell his side of the story and suggest solutions (for more conflict resolution tips, see Peaceful problem-solving). Then the teacher writes down the solution and hangs it on the tree.

“Last year,” Ingrum says, “Kevin’s name was on every paper hanging there. The teacher would say, ‘remember what we said last time? Let’s go read it.’ After a while she could just point to the tree when she saw something coming up.”

Awards and praise: pros and cons

Cindy Stephens of College of the Canyons, uses rewards sparingly. They’re “short-term,” she says. “Children can become addicted to rewards. Think about how materialistic youth are! We set them up with candy and stickers.”

Teacher Carole Anania of San Lorenzo agrees that the goal for children should be internal: “I like the way I felt when I did that.” But rewards—such as stickers, books or toys—and praise, she says, are sometimes needed “if it’s the only way we can reach them.”

Anania often works with children with special needs. With one autistic child who had extremely limited language ability, Anania used immediate rewards to establish communication. When the child brought her a picture of what he wanted, she would give him the toy and praise him. Over time, Anania’s goal was to wean him from the rewards.

We can help kids focus on their own reasons for doing things, says Stevens.

Rather than judgments—“good job!” or “that’s not nice!”—Stephens suggests empathetic responses like “you look excited about your work,” or “bummer

To Learn More

• Love and Logic, www.loveandlogic.com
• Second Step, www.cfchildren.org
• Starting Small: Teaching children tolerance in preschool and the early grades, training tools available free at http://www.tolerance.org/kit/starting-small