Help Your Students Become More Independent THIS Way!



Let’s face it, educating younger kids to be extra impartial isn’t straightforward.

The truth is, it’s a type of duties that takes a number of endurance, exhausting work, and intention planning.

However as we speak’s your fortunate day, as a result of the good Dan St. Romain is right here to assist break all of it down for you.

In last week’s episode of our Behavior Bites series, Dan and I mentioned learn how to lower interruptions throughout small group time.

And one thing Dan and I actually targeted on throughout that dialog was the significance of educating preschool-aged kids to be extra impartial within the classroom.

As we speak, we’re taking a deep dive into the pitfalls to keep away from when engaged on creating extra independence expertise.

Hear in as Dan and I talk about the most effective methods to show your preschool college students to grow to be impartial and learn how to ​​keep away from the pitfalls many academics make in terms of fostering independence within the early childhood classroom.

All proper, let’s dive in!

How one can Encourage Your College students to Develop into Extra Unbiased

As academics and as dad and mom, there are a number of traps round us that we inadvertently fall into after we attempt to train our youngsters to be impartial. With out actually that means to, we find yourself encouraging youngsters to grow to be extra depending on us as a substitute of the alternative.

And so, top-of-the-line methods to show younger kids to be extra impartial is to have a look at these practices and traps we fall into, and alter them. 

What traps are we speaking about precisely? Nicely, that’s coming subsequent, so preserve studying!

The Traps You Have to Keep away from

The “Do For” Entice

Here’s a fast instance for you. If a baby walks as much as you and places their shoe in your face with out saying something, what would you do? 

Many academics would assist the child put their sneakers on with out pondering twice about it. However that’s a mistake, as a result of that teaches the child to be depending on the adults round them.

Once we academics do issues like that, we rob kids of the chance to work via their very own points and purchase drawback fixing expertise. Once we do issues for youths, we encourage them to come back again to us each time they’ve a problem. 

That is the principle lure early childhood training academics fall into. We don’t all the time have the time (or endurance, let’s be trustworthy) to show a baby learn how to do one thing. So we’d quite simply do it for them since we’ll be fast. Nonetheless, by appearing like that, we’re doing our college students a disservice. 

Not doing every thing in your college students is a small step, however it’s one which results in independence, and it’s value taking!

The “Do To” Entice

The larger, tougher lure is what Dan likes to name the “Do To” lure. That is harder to get out of as a result of it’s in-built our total college system. 

What will we imply precisely by the “Do To” lure? Merely, utilizing punishments like timeouts or grounding to be in management and pull the strings. 

Once we get heavy handed with our punishments and our rewards, we take management away from the kids. 

As early childhood professionals, we have to be very cautious to not fall into this lure. As a result of after we dole out punishments and rewards an excessive amount of, we inform the youngsters round us that we are in management, not them. 

So, what are you able to do about this precisely? 

Nicely, quite than punishing and rewarding, speak to the kids! Sure, it’s so simple as that (properly, probably not, however with time it turns into simpler). Discussing the issue and dealing collectively to discover a answer with a baby will do them extra good than punishing them ever will.

Doing so strikes you and the youngsters away from the “I’m going to unravel the issue by doing one thing to them” mentality and places the entire thing right into a impartial place the place you’re going to speak to them and provide you with the reply collectively.

If we wish to obtain self-regulation, that means youngsters with the ability to remedy issues on their very own, then we’ve got to have conversations with them and contain them within the course of.

Right here’s a fast and straightforward method to keep in mind this lesson: Do extra issues with kids and fewer issues to kids.

Dan and I talk about this topic in additional depth and share just a few extra useful ideas within the episode above. So, for those who’d wish to know extra about educating youngsters to grow to be extra impartial, be certain that to tune in now!

Hyperlinks Talked about on this Episode:

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