Tips for Working with the Oppositional ChildWritten by Sheree S. Marty, BSE, MA
"I WON'T DO IT!" "YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!" Whether parent or teacher, we have all "been there" and "done that" with a child exhibiting refusal behaviors. Before "losing your cool" and your power as well, interventions and strategies are provided for use to help deescalate this classic power struggle. -Avoid placing yourself in a stand-off situation with child. -Don’t “mark a line in sand” unless prepared to follow through with consequences on your own. Creating a demand situation….“You will sit in your seat or I will call someone to seat you”….will cause authority figure to lose his/her power. This is a main goal of oppositional children…personal control over their environment. -Under a demand situation, especially with authority figures, an oppositional child will be more likely to escalate to extreme opposition. Stop talking. Give child a chance to detach from situation with some power. Problem-solving situation when both parties are calm will prove more productive.
| | Dice - The Ultimate Educational, Portable Entertainment For Kids!Written by Lindsay Small
How do you keep kids amused for long summer holidays? What do you do when inevitable rainy day blues strike and everyone gets fractious and argumentative? And how do you cope when you are forced to play waiting game … in doctors' surgeries, airports, or even long car journeys?Get dice out! Dice games are ultimate in quick and easy entertainment, with added advantages of being cheap, portable and educational too! You can start playing dice with children as young as 2 ½, as long as you are sure that they are past stage of putting things into their mouths. And you will find that all ages up to grandparents are happy to join in. I offer below three particularly quick and easy games, all of which can be played with children from about age of 4 up. All you need are pencil and paper and dice - a maximum of 7, which you can probably find in existing game boxes around house. Beat That! You will need between two to seven dice, depending on age of players. Roll dice and put them in order to make highest number possible. If you roll a 4 and a 6, for example, your best answer would be 64. Using three dice, a roll of 3, 5 and 2 should give you 532, and so on. Write down your answer, pass dice, and challenge next player to "Beat That!" Play in rounds and assign a winner to each round. For a change, try making smallest number possible! This is a great game for reinforcing concept of place value.
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