BEHAVIOR DISORDERS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
More suggestions on preventing behavior problems before they occur
4. Teach children problem-solving as part of your daily instruction. This shouldn't occur just when there is a behavior problem, but every day as you read stories, role play and sing songs. Native Americans have a rich oral tradition, and many stories can be used to teach children about both their culture and good behavior.
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Old Indian Legends by Zitkala Sa is one of the free e-text books in our Virtual Library. These are just plain text but we recommend reading the stories to the children and having them draw illustrations. Then, you can make your own books from each story. The teacher can print the words to describe each illustration the children did. These stories also give an opportunity to teach about culture and consequences of behavior. |
After reading the first story, of Inktomi and the ducks, for example, you could ask why no one would help Inktomi when he was stuck in the tree and hurting. It is one way to teach about consequences. If you are always tricking and hurting other people, when you are hurt yourself, no one will want to help you.
Project Gutenberg has free books in e-text. It is one of our favorite resources on the Internet. Everyone has different tastes, so we did not reproduce a lot of the books here, but we recommend you go to the site and find what you might be able to use with your students.
It seems as if we are going off topic here, but we're not!
Project Gutenberg, is just one of many resources on the Internet Public Library. You could spend the rest of your life at IPL. The reason we mention it is that children with behavior disorders or other special needs are first of all children. For all children, it is important for them to learn ways to express themselves. Often, children with behavior disorders do not know how to express their frustrations, desires and fears. The more means you can open for them, the better. Here is just one of the tens of thousands of examples you can find at KidSpace, the Internet Public Library children's section, it is a classroom activity to make a buffalo hide painting.
