When a young person has challenging behavior then the child will need a great deal of support from a wide range of different professionals. These could be professionals such as a behavior therapist and SEN (special educational needs) support staff. This would link into my key issues as all the professionals would help promote positive behavior and they will also help the child to develop within the setting and outside of it.
However practitioners should be aware that the child may use this to their advantage, for example: if an older child has challenging behavior and they are aware of this and they do not want to go into a lesson then they could start misbehaving or just not turn up to lessons and go and see the support staff instead, as this will help them to get out of the lesson they do not want to attend.
So this could mean that the child could become to independent on their support staff. A theorist that would link into this and would agree with this is Albert Bandura and his social learning theory. He believes that children imitate and follow behaviors from their peers and others around them. , For example if a child see an adult always being kind and always using kind words then the child will be more than likely to follow this behavior and be kind towards other people.
So this would link into the support staff as if the children or young people can see that they are being kind to them and helpful then there is a higher chance that the child or young person will pick up on this and start acting in the same way. In my opinion i believe that Banduras approach to the social learning theory is beneficial to children and young people who have challenging behavior.
I think it is a really important part of the children development to imitate behaviors they see around them as this will also give them the idea of what is wrong and what is right. Also a child who has challenging behaviors are more than likely to fall behind academically, so having a support staff such as SEN to help these children and young people will also help them to improve academically. It will also help the children to form a close bond with someone that they can trust and someone who is going to help and support them.
The support staff can help the child or young person in a positive way by showing them what is the correct way to behave or if they have behavioral issues such as ADHAD they can go through exercises that will help them to calm down when they feel as if they are going to loose control. Even though there are many positives to the child having constant support there are many weakness to this such as the child can become to reliant on them and this will then make it difficult for the child to be able to deal with situations on their own as they will always turn to the support staff for guidance.
However there can be many reasons that support staff may not work with a child who has challenging behavior as they may feel that what they are doing is perfectly ok and they can not see the harm in what they are doing, or they just feel that they do not want the support as no one will understand them, their needs or what they are going through. The benefit of Banduras theory would be that the child will feel that their needs are understood so this will help them to feel safe and secure within the environment of the setting.
It will also help the child to understand that what they are feeling and experiencing in a certain situation is important to the support staff and they would want to help them to improve this. As well as working with the child themselves the support staff could also work with the parents as this will help them to get a better understanding of what their child is going through and it could also be a way of them getting the support they need on how to control the challenging behavior at home and hoe to promote positive behavior.
It will also give them a good understanding of why is important for positive reinforcement and to keep praising the child if they do something good, even if its something little such as using the toilet or eating all their dinner. Bandura also argues that it is not just role models and how they behave that effects a child’s behavior but also how the world around them effects their behavior.
From that quote it would also suggest a way that a child has been bought up could effect their behavior, so linking into banduras theory, if a child sees a parent always in trouble with the law then they would think this is acceptable behavior because their parents are doing so they will then follow in their footsteps. However skinner did not agree with bandura as he believes that people can be reinforced by positive and negative experiences within their environment. However there are new models that have alternative views on how to control challenging behavior, for example one of these would be Lee Canter (1992).
He believed that there are five steps to assertive discipline, these are: 1. Adults have an impact on their children’s behavior 2. Adults must shoe that they have assertive responses 3. It should be clear to everyone the discipline plans with rules and consequences 4. Children should be aware of the discipline plan and have it explained to them 5. Adults should show and tell children what is the right way to behave Canter also believed that as parents and practitioners we should make a child aware that we have seen the good behavior and constantly let them know that we pare proud of them and the behavior that they are displaying.
Canter believed that if children know and feel that they are being praised for good behavior then they are more likely to repeat this behavior. This would link into banduras theory as he believes in role modeling and that children will copy what they see. Canter believed that his model will also help children to feel safe and secure within the setting and because of this it will also help them to behave in the appropriate manner, however it is only effective when used constantly and persistently and when parents also use this method at home it will become even more effective.
I have come to the conclusion that I support bandura and Canter theory and model as I have previously experienced a child with challenging behavior and I found that the way I acted around them and the extra support they received really helped them to gain confidence and believe in themselves again. I have researched his theory and I have seen how it can help children and young people and what the negatives side of this theory. A positive impact of Banduras theory is that children will learn the correct way on how to behave and control their behavior when they feel as if they are going to loose control.
Within the setting I am in we work very closely with multi agency workers such as behavioral therapist as we believe it helps to get more then one view and opinion and we then work closely together to work towards the child’s needs and what we can put in place to help them. As previously stated there are also negative to effects of this as the children may become to independent on the behavior therapist and this will not help them when they are older when it comes to making decisions for themselves.