This document discusses individualized and developmentally appropriate guidance for children's social and emotional development. It emphasizes understanding each child's unique strengths, weaknesses, temperament, and experiences. When addressing challenging behaviors, we must consider whether the child lacks knowledge, skills, or motivation before intervening. Functional analyses of behaviors can identify triggers and consequences to guide interventions that teach skills rather than punishments. The goal is supporting each child's social-emotional growth through observation, screening, and developmentally appropriate guidance.

1. Individualized and
Developmentally Appropriate
Guidance
Chapter 4 from Guiding children’s Social and Emotional Development: A
Reflective Approach. Katz. 2014

2. How Do We Know?
• When a child has difficult behaviors. . .
•Does he/she not know any better?
•Is he/she lacking solid skills?
•Is he/she just being difficult and not
wanting to cooperate?

3. Individualizing for Social and Emotional
Skills
• Remember! How are children unique?
• As compared to other children
• Having individual strengths and weaknesses within himself/herself
• What makes them that way?
• Nature – sensory preferences; temperament
• Nurture – unique experiences; family

4. Sensory Preferences
• “the pattern of sensations that make him feel comfortable or
uncomfortable” (Katz, 2014)
• Sensory integration – how a person is able to process sensory
experiences for use – the interrelationship between the person and
the environmental stimuli
• Vestibular processing – “a person’s sense of balance and perception of his/her
body in space. . . That is processed in the inner ear.” (Katz, 2014)
• Impacts coordination, attention, etc.
• Proprioception – awareness of the position of one’s body
• Impacts a person’s movements

5. Case Study
• Read about “Kiki” on pp. 56 – 57
• Describe the strategies that her teachers implemented to help Kiki
reduce her incidences of biting?
• Think about Kiki’s behaviors. What do you think some of the
antecedents to her biting behaviors were? What do you think were
some of the maintaining consequences? How would you categorize
her biting behavior in terms of P-A-I-R?
• Think about the teachers’ behaviors. Describe an indirect strategy you
would use to teach Kiki her communication tools. Describe a direct
strategy you would use to teach Kiki her communication tools.

6. Temperament
• Look at the temperament chart on p. 43. For each temperament
characteristic, describe when that characteristic might be beneficial
for a child to have. Describe a scenario in which the characteristic
would not be a good fit. For online students, fill in the Wiki. Add a
2nd example if each section is full.
• How well does the child adapt to various environmental situations?
• Goodness-of-fit
• Between child and adult
• Between child and environmental demands

7. Health and Developmental History
• Are there any factors or complications that may have placed a child at risk
for developmental delays?
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Prematurity?
Low birth weight?
Low APGAR score?
Complications at birth?
Chronic illness or allergies?
Developmental disabilities such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD)?
• ** Never “diagnose” or use the terms ADHD, ASD, or similar terms prior to
official diagnosis. It is only after the medical diagnosis (and none of us are
physicians) that these terms are appropriate to use.

8. Environmental History
• This refers to a child’s experiences, both past and current
• Chronic trauma and stress (toxic stress) is known to impact healthy
brain development negatively, including increased risk of PTSD like
symptoms (brain changes NPR report)
• We are required by law to report any suspicion of child abuse or
neglect to child protective services.
• Fight or flight response – a child who experiences toxic stress will
primarily respond from the brain stem (survival state) rather than the
limbic system (emotional state) or the prefrontal lobes (executive
state)

9. Resiliency
• Children with multiple resiliency factors are more likely to survive toxic
stress and trauma better than children with fewer resilience factors. Some
resiliency factors are:
• High intelligence
• Positive mood and temperament
• Secure attachment – usually a stable adult who has a close, positive influence (think
strong mother or grandmother, favorite teacher, etc.)
• Caring community
• Support network
• There are many others. These additional protective factors show up in
healthy family units.

10. Normal Stressors
• Normal stressors can impact a child’s behaviors negatively, even if it’s
a relatively benign stressor. Some examples are:
• New baby
• New house
• Changes in family routines like shift changes or new jobs
• An interruption in attachments may cause behavior problems, such
as:
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Hospital stays of parent
Traveling or deployed parent
Turnover in caregivers
Other separations

11. Families
• Family dynamics – “the quality and nature of relationships within the
family – that is, how people relate to one another” (Katz, 2014)
• Work with families non-judgmentally and diplomacy
• Family expectations – what do they expect from your program?
• Are you able to articulate your philosophy of education? Why do you
do the things you do in your classroom?

12. Developmentally Appropriate Guidance
• Are the expectations and activities in the classroom developmentally
appropriate for all developmental domains?
• Play is necessary for holistic development of the child.
Developmentally appropriate play opportunities support the natural
social and emotional development of young children
• Appropriate guidelines for children in general may be found on
developmental milestone charts.
• Individual guidelines for children are found through appropriate
observations and screening that helps identify children’s strengths
and areas of need.

13. Developmental Screening and
Assessment
• Developmental screening – “a procedure used to determine if a
behavior pattern is aberrant enough to warrant further evaluation
and intervention” (Katz, 2014)
• If a child’s screening indicates a need for further evaluation, s/he is
referred for further testing.
• Evaluations are performed by specially trained professionals. These
specialists make individualized recommendations for treatment.
• Screenings also identify uneven development and provide a
framework for individualized planning purposes.

14. Challenging Behavior
• Challenging behaviors is a term that represents serious behaviors that
are “disruptive, offensive, dangerous, or destructive” (Katz, 2014)
• They are not behaviors we don’t like or that are annoying
• Most all behaviors can be categorized by
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P - power
A - attention
I - inadequacy
R - revenge

15. Knowledge, Skill, or Will?
• They may also be classified as:
• Knowledge – “the child does not know and might not be expected to know
how to behave appropriately in a given situation” (Katz, 2014)
• Skill – a child may know what he/she is expected to do, but may not yet have
the skills to do what they are expected to do across similar situations. They
may not have generalized the skill or developed cognitive flexibility to use the
skills in less obvious situations.
• Look at the list of “Essential Life Skills” on pp. 66-67 in your text. How many of those do
you fail to demonstrate with mastery? I know I fail on many of those on regular
occasions!

16. Knowledge, Skill or Will (cont.)
• Skill (cont.) – social and emotional skills develop progressively, just as physical
and cognitive development progresses.
• As adults, we must recognize
• Is the behavior developmentally typical for a child of that age?
• If so, how can we foster the necessary skills the child needs?
• How can we avoid getting frustrated, especially if it’s a skill we should be helping the
child learn and practice? Do you get frustrated if a child can’t climb the steps one foot at
a time? If the child can’t write her name the first time you introduce it?
• Children often do not have the language or the ability to explain why they did or did not
do something. We cannot assume they are being willfully disobedient.

17. Knowledge, Skill, or Will (cont.)
• Will – a child willfully or intentionally deciding to behave in a certain manner,
having demonstrated the knowledge and the skill of an expected behavior across
situations
• Problem of will – the active choice to “defy expectations or authority”.
• If problem of will is suspected, a Functional behavior assessment (FBA) is in
order. The purpose of the FBA is to determine the purpose of the difficult
behavior and to determine the best way to approach the behavior, all in a
systematic fashion.
• A functional analysis (FA) is a direct observation of the child in a variety of
situations, settings, and times to identify the ABCs of the child’s behaviors

18. Observations for a Functional Analysis**
• Antecedents – What are the triggers that lead up to or that occur
prior to the behavior?
• Behavior – What is the behavior? How long does it last? What is the
intensity of the behavior?
• Consequence – What is the maintaining consequence of the
behavior? In other words, what follows the behavior that may
increase the likelihood of the behavior occurring again?
• All of the information must be written as objectively as possible.
Describe the event so that a reader can visualize what you saw. Use
direct quotes if applicable. Do not use subjective terms or judgmental
terms
**this information is very helpful for your targeted assessment!

19. Observations for a Functional Analysis
(cont.)
• Through careful observations and identification of the ABCs of behavior,
patterns in the behaviors can be discerned
• Clear descriptions of the behavior assist our analysis of the behavior and
aid us in implementing the most appropriate interventions
• Identifying the maintaining consequences keeps us from repeating
behaviors that will cause the child to repeat the inappropriate behaviors.
• Look at Figures 4.4 – 4.6 on pp. 70 – 71 in your text for helpful guiding
questions. These will be very helpful as you complete your observations!

20. What We Know!
• We must consider the social and emotional development of children
as seriously as we consider their cognitive, language, and physical
development
• When behaviors occur that we want to address, we must consider
• Does the child just need more information?
• Does the child need additional support and help learning specific skills across
situations?
• Do we need to address a child’s motivation for behaving in certain ways?
• Do we have the skills to complete a functional analysis if needed?
• Do we recognize that young children have limited coping skills? It is
up to us to help them develop appropriate coping skills!