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Jo Maloney

Unlocking Insights: Exploring ‘Mistaken’ Behaviour in Children



There are other words you have possibly used for ‘mistaken’ behaviour and the children demonstrating these behaviours, and those words aren’t always flattering, or overly appropriate in mixed company! ‘Mistaken’ behaviour refers to the actions or behaviours that we consider to be inappropriate, undesirable or socially unacceptable. We might misinterpret these behaviours that challenge us, impacting our ability to effectively support children in learning and developing skills that reduce the likelihood of recurring ‘mistaken’ behaviour. This mistaken behaviour is usually identified in social and emotional skills. We tend to be more accepting of mistaken behaviour in language and cognitive skills, for example, we accept when children say “sheeps”, we don’t say to a child “remember we spoke about that this morning” or become frustrated with them that they have made this grammatical error, we accept that they are still learning and are going to make mistakes.  

It can be frustrating when working with children when we feel we have already spoken about and taught particular social skills, such as turn taking, waiting, using language to express needs, cooperating with others, but we know that developmental maturation for each individual will be very different and most of us need lots of repetition and learning in a variety of ways, and still won’t get it right every time. We also know that all children experience the world differently and the environmental factors for some children are less than ideal due to family dynamics, family financial pressures, health issues and existing skill level of the adults around them.  


Potential ways to perceive behaviour and facilitate a helpful reframing may include:

  • Angry outbursts could be seen as fear and lack of certainty and predictability

  • Attention seeking as connection seeking

  • Mistaken behaviour as an opportunity to learn


To begin to minimise ‘mistaken’ behaviour we then need to consider how to ensure that children:

  • Feel safe and secure

  • Feel connected to adults and peers

  • Learn the missing skill

 

Ways we can ensure children feel safe and secure and increase certainty in early learning settings (and at home) include:

  • Having consistent, predictable routines and rituals (display these for visual reminders)

  • Stay calm and compassionate when dealing with mistaken behaviour

  • Actively engage in calming strategies such as breathing with the child regularly over the day, not just when mistaken behaviour occurs


Ways we can build connection include:

  • Being fully present with the child when engaging with them (this can be tricky in early learning settings when we have so many other things to be watching at the same time) but short meaningful exchanges build connection

  • Be playful, use eye contact and incorporate this into daily experiences. Role modelling this with the children supports them to transfer this into their relationships with their peers also, some children may need explicit directions as to how to transfer this into peer engagement. This can be as simple as facilitating ‘Row your boat’ or ‘Ring-a-Rosie’

  • Be curious about behaviour rather than judgmental (this is useful for all connections in early learning with children, our colleagues and families)


Teach the missing skill

By changing the way we view behaviour we can identify that children are missing skills, and we need to be intentional in our teaching of these social and emotional skills with the understanding that children under five do not yet have the brain maturation to be able to get these right every time (nor do we when it comes to eating chocolate, binge watching tv, exercising regularly – my list of ‘mistaken’ behaviours is consistently longer than it should be). When we encounter mistaken behaviour, remembering we all make mistakes and mistakes are a great opportunity to learn, we can support a child to identify the skill that they are missing and explicitly teach that skill. This can include giving them language and gestures to ask a peer for a turn, to move or to stop doing what they are doing, support them to practice and acknowledge success when we see them applying their learning.


Offering ourselves compassion with our own ‘mistaken’ behaviour, knowing we won’t get it right every time either and extending this compassion to others allows us to create safety and connection to set children up to learn, practice and learn some more, practice some more, make more mistakes and continually repeat.

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