What to share with teachers about challenging behavior?

When I consider my sweet little class of three year olds, I'd call the following my "challenging behaviors":

• grabbing toys from one another
• hoarding toys/not sharing
• playing alone, not with others
• yelling at others/me to get attention
• pushing one another to get into first place, or to get someone’s attention
• not concerned when someone gets hurt
• not helping others
• interrupting

To some extent, I take these behaviors in stride - I expect them. I know these behaviors are not atypical of this age – particularly in a group of kids this age. You have to expect these kind of challenges from a group of children who are transitioning from “all about me” two year olds into “hey, how do I play with you?” three year olds. I work all year to lessen these challenging behaviors, but I'm not surprised by them.

But then I participated in “The Power of Peers: Peer Strategies to Support Appropriate Behavior and Social Development” - an excellent workshop by Phil Strain and Ted Povey of the University of Colorado at Denver’s Positive Early Learning Experience (PELE) Center. (I knew I was onto something fun and invigorating when the workshop began with "I’m Just Waiting on A Friend,” by the Rolling Stones.) PELE is a preschool program involved in long-term intentional studies with autistic children, focusing on social-emotional learning.

Phil Strain and Ted Povey explained that having peer-related social skills (having a friend) is the most important, the most relevant, the best predictor of positive, long-term outcomes - meaning, living independently and happily, being employed, recovering from life-threatening illness and living a long life. Peer-related social skills are the foundation upon which all other crucial skills are developed.

Their data indicates: friends are the most powerful influence in an individual's life after age 2 - more important than Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and Teacher. Children learn most from each other.

Phil Strain, Ted Povey, and other colleagues at PELE analyzed the discrete behaviors that go into basic interactions between friends. For the past 20 years, PELE has intentionally taught five social skills to their students (both typical and autistic learners): 1) How to Get Your Friend's Attention, 2) How to Give a Toy, 3) How to Request a Toy, 4) How to Organize Play with Others, 5) How to Give a Compliment.

How do you teach these skills? PELE developed "cue cards" on each of these discrete friendship behaviors and then taught them at large group time, repeated them individually to children as needed, posted the cue cards at children's eye level in the classroom, and - most importantly - embedded opportunities to practice each of these behaviors throughout their daily routine. In other words, making sure that the students had plenty of repetition of these targeted skills. We watched several video clips where it was really rather extraordinary to see the children's caring interaction with each other.

Isn't this really the environment - the foundation - that we teachers are seeking to create?

I revisited my list of challenging behaviors:

• grabbing toys from one another
• hoarding toys/not sharing
• playing alone, not with others
• yelling at others/me to get attention
• pushing one another to get into first place, or to get someone’s attention
• not concerned when someone gets hurt
• not helping others
• interrupting

I realized: it is very possible that each of these behaviors is based in poor social skills. Not knowing. Not understanding. I shouldn't ignore this as "personality" or "temperament" or even "developmental stage," or assume that children will learn organically, from life itself, how to be a friend. Instead, the goal of friendship - breaking it into learnable chunks - should be the primary purpose of the early childhood classroom.