Challenging Behavior in Young Children: Understanding, Preventing and Responding Effectively (3e)

From award-winning writers Barbara Kaiser and Judy Sklar Rasminsky comes the Third Edition of their best-selling text, Challenging Behavior in Young Children: Understanding, Preventing, and Responding Effectively, an up-to-date survival guide for teachers struggling to find answers to challenging behavior in the classroom.

Highlighting the importance of relationships, the revised book provides new background information and additional research-based strategies to enable pre-service and in-service teachers to understand, prevent, and respond effectively to challenging behavior. The authors have widened the book’s scope to make this edition as useful to primary school teachers as it is to preschool and child care educators, furnishing numerous practical, indispensable tips for responding to children’s needs and helping them know what’s expected. The text stresses that every child has some kind of special need, especially children with challenging behavior, and prevention is the best intervention.

The authors have also added material on inclusion, autism, culture, and dual-language learning, as children with disabilities, children from diverse families, and children who speak languages other than English join the classroom mix in greater numbers. The book retains its personal touch and real-life examples, drawing on Barbara’s three decades in the field, and is replete with in-depth background information, strategies, and evidence-based techniques necessary to help pre-service and practicing teachers understand, prevent, and address the behavior problems found so often in today’s primary schools and child care centers, to work with the most difficult behaviors, and to benefit every child in the classroom. Challenging Behavior in Young Children, Third Edition emphasizes the teacher’s role in the behavior of children, encouraging students and educators to reflect on their own values, feelings, and actions. The result is an invaluable resource for everyone involved in the education of young children.

Foreword by Sue Bredekamp

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER 1:  What Is Challenging Behavior?

CHAPTER 2:  Risk Factors

CHAPTER 3:  Protective Factors

CHAPTER 4:  Behavior and the Brain

CHAPTER 5:  Relationship, Relationship, Relationship

CHAPTER 6:  Opening the Culture Door

CHAPTER 7:  Preventing Challenging Behavior: The Social Context

CHAPTER 8:  Preventing Challenging Behavior: Physical Space, Routines and Transitions, and Teaching Strategies

CHAPTER 9:  Guidance

CHAPTER 10:  Functional Assessment and Positive Behavior Support

CHAPTER 11:  The Inclusive Classroom

CHAPTER 12:  Working with Families and Other Experts

CHAPTER 13:  Bullying

APPENDIX A:  Reflective Checklists for Chapters 7 and 8

• NEW!  More content, increased relevance, and additional practical information regarding working with children in the primary school setting, grades K to 3, has been added in this edition without losing focus on the preschool years. This expanded information can now be found throughout Chapters 1-13, with special emphasis given in Chapters 7 and 8.

• NEW! An expanded Chapter 9 on Guidance offers a new section on what makes a strategy work and describes several additional research-based strategies, including Developmental Discipline, Teacher Effectiveness Training, and Collaborative Problem Solving. There is also a section on what to do when a child loses control. This integral content will help pre-service teachers learn to personally respond effectively to challenging behavior and command a range of strategies suitable for use with different children in different situations.

• NEW! Culture chapter has been revised and expanded chapter to feature new material on the differences between children’s home cultures and the culture of school and child care; a new section about culturally responsive teaching; and a largely expanded section about dual-language learning. This newly added content will better equip pre- and in-service teachers to deal with the increasingly diverse number of children in schools and child care centers who speak languages other than English. Chapter 6 highlights the importance of culture in challenging behavior and additional content can be found throughout Chapters 1-13.

• NEW! Now features two sections on Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD): 1) ASD related to inclusion and the updated IDEA requirements and 2) the risk factors for challenging behavior related to ASD. This newly added content will prepare pre- and in-service teachers with the information and strategies to understand the reality of inclusion, and to work effectively with the growing presence of children with ASD, as well as other disabilities.

• NEW! Several additional diagrams and charts have been added and provide a visual interpretation of content, make observation, teaching, and understanding clearer, and encourage students and practicing teachers to reflect on their own practice. These valuable tools can be found in Chapters 5, 6, 7, 10, and Appendices.

• User-friendly and conversational in tone, this book is well-organized, logical, and fun to read without sacrificing academic rigor. Numerous text boxes and real-life anecdotes drawn from Barbara’s 30 years in the field add spice and illuminate specific points. Students will enjoy reading the text and easily understand the material presented. Featured throughout, Chapters 1-13.

• Research-based and eclectic, the authors have weaved together information from a variety of different disciplines, synthesizing it all into a single comprehensive and coherent package, making for a cross-over text useful for both students of education and practicing teachers. This wider perspective format and greater choice of approaches will appeal to a wide-range of readers. Featured in Chapters 1-13.

• Revised and current information in the brain chapter gives great explanation about what’s going on in the brain when challenging behavior occurs and the process involved for children in achieving self-regulation. This chapter provides important insight into understanding and preventing children’s challenging behavior and into teachers’ own reactions when they’re confronted with it. Refer to Chapter 4.

• Positive Behavior Support and Functional Assessment are clearly explained with the aid of planning and observation charts. The clear prose and practical, hands-on tools make these important techniques more accessible and applicable to pre- and in-service teachers alike. Found in Chapter 10 and Appendices.

• The importance of partnerships with families is emphasized throughout the book, and there is new material about building relationships, families’ home cultures, and home visits. Pre- and in-service teachers will learn that strengthening relationships with families is crucial in dealing with challenging behavior. Content found in Chapters 5, 6, 11, 12, and 13.

• A full chapter on bullying contains new information about how perceptions influence teachers’ attitudes and responses, as well as specific strategies for preventing bullying, responding to it, and working with the children and families involved. Understanding this difficult problem and how perceptions influence teachers’ behavior will facilitate a better outcome in the classroom. See Chapter 13.

• A What Do You Think? section, located at the end of every chapter, poses questions to help readers reflect on what they’ve just read, to process the material, and make it their own, encouraging critical thinking and personal reflection. Found in Chapters 1-13.

Barbara Kaiser is the former director of a child care center who has spent 30 years working with young children, their teachers, and their families. Now a consultant in early care and education, she frequently gives keynote addresses and workshops on challenging behavior throughout the United States and Canada. She has taught at Acadia University in Nova Scotia and Concordia University in Montreal.

Judy Sklar Rasminsky is a professional writer with special expertise in child care and family issues. She has won several awards for her work, which has appeared in American and Canadian magazines as well as college and high school textbooks.