One of the things I have ran into at my job is that it´s alarmingly obvious that I need to raise my tolerance of disruptive behaviour from special needs children. I have been working with children for many years and one mentored a young child diagnosed with multiple behavioral disorders. I have studied developmental psychology, had an autistic friend and I naively thought I was quite experienced and ready to handle disruptive behaviour due to special needs because after all I was not a complete novice. But after I started working in a preschool setting, my attitude completely changed.
I realized that while I have certain experience (which has served me well) I still have very much to learn. So many times when dealing with special needs children and their behaviour, I tend to get very frustrated and that leads to me not dealing with the situation adequately. Instead of keeping my calm and using alternative methods to deal with the children (so often, the standard discplinging methods do not work) I end up using the typical methods and expecting that particular SN child to respond to them like a non-special needs child would. And of course they don´t.
So my job has made me start seeking out alternative methods to dealing with SN children and their behaviour and finally admit to myself how much I still have left to learn. Now I try to concentrate when things get tough on not losing my head and try using alternative methods. It´s a work in constant progress but I am getting better at it day by day.
My favourite methods to use with SN children are the distrace method (after redirecting the behavior (and that doesn´t work) the child is removed from the situation and given something else to do) and the storytelling method (get the child to do something by telling it an interesting story). I am still working on the distracting method but the storytelling method is a gem because it´s really easy for me to make up stories.
There are many things for me to learn and I am thankful to be in a job where I can learn so much practical knowledge.
