Understanding preschool behaviour

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Praise and approval
Your most powerful motivator for good behaviour is approval. Instead of catching your child doing something wrong, catch her doing something right. Let her know you approve of something she did. It will increase her self-esteem. If, the day after Amy has drawn on the wall with crayons, she gets out a sheet of paper to draw another picture, be unstinting with your praise: "That's really wonderful, Amy. I really like that you drew your picture on paper. It's really grown-up of you to know that you should use your crayons on paper. Where should we hang this picture so everyone can see it?"

Time-outs
The practice of taking time out is one way of removing your child from the scene of inappropriate behaviour. It lets her calm down and think about what has just happened. The Canadian Paediatric Society suggests that the best way to make time-outs effective includes:

• Picking the right place. There should be no built-in rewards, like toys or a television, in the time-out place.

• Keeping the time-out short. It should be three minutes for a three-year-old, four minutes for a four-year-old and five-minutes for a five-year-old. Time-outs should last no more than five minutes. Use your kitchen timer.

• Explaining the connection between the behaviour and the time-out.

• Not using the time-out to preach or lecture.

Here's how it works. Your four-year-old slaps his just-crawling baby brother for grabbing at his truck. First you comfort the baby (the victim should always get your positive attention first). Then you tell your four-year-old that, in your family, hitting is wrong and, if you do hit someone, you need to calm down in a time-out and think of other things to do in the situation. Then you set the kitchen timer and you send him off to sit in a chair (or wherever you've chosen as the time-out place). When the timer rings, he's free. Don't demand that he give you a list of other things he should have done. Let the situation go, and move on.

Concordia University developmental psychologist Nina Howe suggests a different way, so that the adult is the one who takes the time-out. "Sometimes when they are just driving me nuts and I think I'm going to lose it, I've said to my kids, 'I'm taking a time-out. It's a time for me to go and quieten down and back off a little bit.' That usually puts them into shock. They think, 'Oh, oh. This must be serious.' I go away, and then I can come back and talk about what's happened with them."

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