Young children's behaviour - Louise Porter

I had written a superb review of Young Children's Behaviour: Practical Approaches for Caregivers and Teachers by Louise Porter, but it was all in my head while taking a shower a few weeks back. So I will have to be content with the bits and pieces that I can remember, which I will write about here.

Overall I really liked this book. Essentially it's all about a guidance approach to behavioural management - a Kohnesque approach which contrasts with the dominant behaviourist rewards/punishments/consequences ideas which are usually talked about in parenting books. I liked one Kohn quote so much that I'm going to reproduce it here:

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us.

It refreshing and interesting to have access to a complete body of work that forms a comprehensive alternative to behavioural management - especially if the star charts and times out are not working.

Porter has what I found a slightly unusual way of making her points. She tends to write: "This is the way it is (insert twelve references)". That makes for quite an accessible writing style and an impressively long reference list at the book's end. However, this means that she does not lead you into her argument. This is fine if you sense some kind of truth with what she is saying ("Yes! I had always thought that"). But it is disatisfying if you remain unconvinced, or know of other references not included on the list that seem to take the opposite position.

For example, mixed age early childhood education is dispensed with in two paragraphs as essentially suboptimal. However, another book that I have read recently confirmed my hunch (see my Vygotsky post a week or so back) that from a Vygotskyan sociocultural perspective, there are gains to be made with mixed age groupings - gains also backed by research. And I kept thinking "Well yes, that may be the case in the creche-like environment you are describing, but in a Playcentre we have a different adult-child ratio. And the littlest ones are accompanied by their parents. So that means that the objections raised are far less of an issue"). It made me want to go and investigate some of the source material further.

This book is - as the title suggests - primarily for early childhood professionals rather than parents. As such, it seems slightly pro-childcare over parental care - or maybe that was just the lens I read it through. Certainly her comments about attachment theory seemed to bear this out. And yet some of what she was saying is not borne out by other authors I have read (and I know she has read Steve Biddulph because one of his books is on the reference list!). I may be misinterpreting things here though. I'm interested in getting hold of Children are People too, which is a similar book that she has written specifically for parents. This may inform me more of her thinking here.

However one statement in particular led me to search the internet to have a closer look at her cv.

"In 25 years of practice, I have never yet seen a well child from a well-resourced, well-functioning family displaying repeated aggression".

Goodness me I thought! Perhaps I just have a different definition of repeated aggression.... I wondered if she had always been a psychologist, or if she had been an early childhood teacher who had subsequently trained in psychology. Off to the internet to check things out.... Turns out that the 25 years of practice is in the psychological field. So I imagine that she has seen 25 years worth of cases that involved severe, repeated aggression sufficient to send people off for psychological referral, rather than 25 years of diffusing what I consider normal playground conflict (which may involve physical or emotional aggression due to the immaturity of the children involved). So that makes her statement a little less confronting for me.

I was also a bit disappointed that, while the section on aggressive behaviour was generally very useful, it did tend to fall into the old labelling of "aggressor" and "victim" thing. If only parents and educators were so omniscient that we could easily use these labels! How many times has the aggressive hit that has brought on tears been preceded by provocation, nasty comments or a sly whack unseen by adults? While aggression cannot be tolerated and intervention must occur, I have never found it useful to treat those involved according to those labels. Ironically enough, one of Porter's own hints I have found far more useful: "look for a solution, not a culprit".

However - the book is still a stimulating, interesting and valuable read. There were quite a few concepts that were comfortingly familiar from some of the coursework I have done over the past couple of years. And it is good to know that there is an alternative out there that practitioners are applying right now. The book is in its third edition, which says something about how successful it has been.

Will read further on this topic....