Recently the Queensland Government, Department of Education Early Childhood Education and Care shared both a Regulatory Bulletin and website post around supporting positive interactions with children. This Show, not tell: guiding behaviour piece unpacked strategies for educators and families to consider when guiding children through challenging behaviours.

On invitation, our very own Mother Duck Eaton’s Hill service contributed to this piece, sharing their positive approach to creating safe learning environments for all children that support social and emotional development and encourage good behaviour.

Check out Mother Duck Eaton’s Hill Positive Interactions with Children YouTube piece

What do positive interactions with your children look like at Mother Duck?

For your child –

• We create warm, genuine connections with each family that result in open communication and vital information sharing
  • Each service team member interacts in friendly, inviting and purposeful ways that promote two-way information sharing, a feeling of belonging for each family and ensure that our services are the best place for each individual child
• We respect families’ key parenting roles and expertise, and engage in in-depth conversations with families to unpack each child’s individual development and support needs
  • Educators spend time building quality relationships and getting to know each child’s likes, dislikes, strengths and challenges
  • To compliment this, our service team members also share our environments and make consented connections with child health professionals including speech therapists and occupational therapists to develop collaborative strategies that ensure the highest level of inclusion occurs for all children

• We role model the behaviours we aspire to see
  • Educators can be regularly observed sitting with children during games and activities to role model the process of including others, turn taking and sharing.
• We provide simple and clear alternative options for ways to work through children’s feelings and big emotions
  • Conversations may sound like – ‘I can see you’re really frustrated, maybe we can go and read a book and we can feel our body calm down and do some breathing’.
• We create ‘pause points’ throughout our services
  • ‘Pause points’ are places where children can reset their emotions, for example our fish tanks
• We teach children that it’s okay to have emotions and work with your child to develop their social responsibility
  • Educators focus on providing your child with strategies they can use in the future that support kindness, collaboration, decision making and compassion with others
• We build positive relationships with each child that demonstrates a feeling of safety and respect whilst supporting the understanding that each child is viewed as capable and deserving 
  • Educators follow the UN Rights of the Child and Child Safe Code of Conduct

Additional concepts for encouraging positive behaviour in children include –

• Say what you mean
• Praise positive behaviour
• Ignore minor misbehaviour
• Distract and divert
• Offer cool-down time

Please Note –

At Mother Duck, our educators adhere to the positive behaviour guidance strategies that are contained within our Supporting and Guiding Children’s Behaviour Policy. This policy is currently under review and we are seeking all families, children and community contributions to ensure that the updates we include are cohesive with the beliefs, preferences and understandings of each of our Mother Duck service communities.

Link to the Department of Education, Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Bulletin Supporting Positive Interactions with Children 

Link to the Department of Education, Early Childhood Education and Care and website post Show, not tell: guiding behaviour piece