Preschoolers can often resort to violence when they are having trouble regulating their emotions. What is the best way to handle a situation with a preschooler who likes to hit? This episode covers some of the Psychology behind the violence of toddlers and best practices on how to handle it.

Email me: mcollins@elementc3.com

Preschoolers are a different sort of animal here.

Anybody who's worked in a preschool classroom knows that things can quickly

get out of hand, especially when one or two or ten of them start fighting or

hitting each other or biting or kicking or pulling hair or anything like that.

It can cause a lot of problems.

So in this episode, we're going to talk about What to do when

preschoolers or toddlers in general start to hit or bite or kick or get

angry, how to handle that kind of a situation quickly and effectively.

And how to keep it from happening.

Again, my name is Michael Collins.

This is the Kids Ministry Volunteer Podcast.

This is a podcast that I make primarily for my own volunteers.

I'm a children's pastor in Forest City, North Carolina.

But if you're not one of my volunteers and you found this podcast, I hope it's just

as helpful for you as it is for my team.

So this is an issue that we've had recently in our kids ministry, where the

youngest kids are hitting and biting and pulling hair and all sorts of things.

It's really not fun to have to tell the mom why her baby

has a bruise on their arm.

So let's talk about Some of the things that we can do to prevent it First off.

I just want to go through the policies that we have about this kind of

situation The first thing that you should need to do, according to our

policy, if a child hits or shows any form of violence towards another child,

you immediately take them aside, if you can, take them out in the hall.

If I'm around, if you're one of my volunteers, or if you're not and you've

got another leader around, you can pass them off to that leader and have

them take them out in the hall, and just talk to them and say, Thank you.

Hey.

That's not allowed.

You can't hit people because they make you angry.

If you do it again, we're gonna have to call your mom and have her come pick you

up and tell her that you weren't behaving.

Something like that.

Very simple.

Just a couple seconds, take them aside, let them know what they did is wrong.

And then they can go back in.

If it happens again, that's it.

We're gonna, just like we said we would do, we're gonna contact the parents.

So you need to contact me or whoever is leading the kids ministry that day and

let them know, Hey, we need to contact a mom and have her come pick the kid up.

And this does not mean that they're not welcome back in the kids ministry again.

No, we want them back in the kids ministry as soon as possible.

We just need.

To keep all the kids safe, and that's really the issue, is that

it becomes a safety problem.

I can't look a mom in the eye and tell her, Yes, your child got beat up in kids

church today, And yes, the other child that did it is still here and playing

with a toy, And we haven't done anything to keep this from happening again.

We need to, something, some sort of change has to happen.

We never want a parent to feel like we, their child is not

allowed in the kids ministry.

That would be An extreme, extreme situation, but we will be contacting

moms to come and pick their kids up early if the kids are having problems

with hitting or violence of any kind.

Because we can't have kids getting hurt.

We need parents to trust us to take care of their children.

But hopefully, it's not going to come to that.

Hopefully, We can keep the violence from happening, keep the hair

pulling, keep the biting from ever occurring with a few simple methods.

The first thing, and this was one of my mantras when I was a camp

director, my staff would hear me say this several times every day, and

it's just Be where the action is.

A lot of times, your presence can be enough to stop a child from misbehaving.

So if there's a child that you know, it tends to struggle with this, tends

to, to hit, try to stand near them.

If, if they're in the corner, other side of the room, just go

stand on that side of the room.

If you're outside on the playground, just kind of hang out near whatever

toy they're playing with or whatever part of the playground they're on.

You'd be amazed if you just are there and paying attention, a lot of times

it'll keep them from misbehaving.

Not always, none of these are gonna work 100 percent of the time, all the

time, but it can make a big difference.

So just remember to be where the action is.

Another one.

Something else that I've noticed is that a lot of times the violence

originates over an argument about a toy.

They both want the same truck, then one of them takes the truck and hits

the other one over the head with it.

Not a good situation.

But, if you can remove the truck, that A lot of times can solve the problem

and ideally even especially I guess as the kids get older we would be have the

time and the manpower to be able to sit them down and help them to work through

their own issues and come to a resolution about the truck together because that

that's a great teaching opportunity.

But if we're just talking about the goal right now being to

keep them from getting violent.

Sometimes the best solution is just to say, Okay, you guys, this

truck is going to go into timeout.

You don't have to put either of the kids in timeout, but

you put the toy in timeout.

And then there's nothing from the fight over.

And a lot of times they will split up, and there's no more issue.

I've got one more simple solution, and then we'll go in a little bit

deeper into why the hitting occurs in the first place, kind of in on the

emotional and psychological level, and some of the words and body

language that we need to use when dealing with a situation like this.

But your one more simple solution is that.

You can oftentimes, if you have the right attitude and catch it early

enough, redirect what is going to turn into a violent situation into

fun, into a game of some sort.

If you see a kid glaring angrily at the back of another kid's head and starting to

lift their arm up you can Call their name out and say hey guys look at this I've

got this this toy dinosaur right here, and I need to think of a good name for him

What do you guys want to name it and just give them something else to direct their

attention to distract them essentially, but make it fun and Pull their

attention away quick and high energy.

We'll help with that.

Just redirecting them towards something else, something more

constructive away from what just happened that made them angry.

Again, sometimes that's all it takes, but now let's get a little bit more in depth

and talk about what, why do toddlers hit?

Why does this happen in the first place?

What is, what is it?

I guess.

Okay.

What's going on inside their head?

See, there's a lot of different reasons, but it's rare that a

toddler is Hitting because they're sitting here Consciously thinking

that they are want to hurt someone.

It's usually More of a overflow of emotions that they don't know how to

handle It's just a coping mechanism more often than not sometimes it's

for anger that they're frustrated that they can't They can't get this toy

that they want out of the hands of this other boy, and so they lash out.

It's even out of fear.

Now, not everybody reacts with violence when they get scared, but

it is a normal human response when a child, especially, children are not

good at regulating their emotions.

They're not good at calming themselves down.

They don't know how to handle all of these big emotions that they're feeling

and Hitting can be a response to that, to feelings of fear, feelings upset that

their parents just left them in this room with this stranger that they don't know.

Feeling scared of the loud noises and these other kids that are maybe

a little bit bigger than them, that they've never been around before.

And they tend to hit in a different way.

attempt to protect themselves almost and just lash out and keep things away.

Or anytime that fear becomes too much for them to handle,

they, they resort to hitting.

Also, a lot of times toddlers don't realize that hitting is bad.

They don't understand that they actually have the ability to hurt somebody.

They're used to, for most of their life, being too weak to, even if they hit or

punch somebody as hard as they can, it not really making much of a difference.

And now they're getting a little bit older, and they are actually

able to hurt their friends.

And they're not, didn't realize that the hitting is causing pain.

Or that it's, I, or that it's wrong, even.

Which is why, when we are correcting this, we never want to Be extremely

harsh or scold them very harshly.

I guess we never want to be harsh or angry ourselves at them for hitting.

We need to make sure that we're remaining calm and cool and helping them to calm

down because a lot of times they're going to be upset and also just showing

them kind of a peaceful authority.

I guess would be the way of putting it where you are just, you're not gonna

allow them to hit, but you're also not going to, you're not, you're not

yelling at them or forcing them to go sit in a corner or anything like that.

You're calmly correcting them.

A lot of times, if it's an emotional outburst, you can.

You'll pretty much always be able to see it on the child's face, whatever emotions

that they're dealing with, because they can't regulate themselves yet.

And that's exactly what we want to help them do, is regulate their emotions.

So if they're feeling frustrated or angry, sometimes having them push as

hard as they can against your hands.

You sit down in front of them and say, push on me as hard as you can.

And see if that helps them feel better.

Or if they're, they can sit down on the ground and push down with

their hands on the ground or push up against a wall that can help as well.

Just helping to exert some of that physical frustration, helping to regulate

some of that frustration physically.

By exerting their muscles

if it's out of fear if they're worried or scared or just generally

upset But not really angry angry sometimes Helping to calm them down.

Maybe it's the noise Take them out in the hall.

Let them be in a quieter room.

We do have ear muffs available for all the kids You can say hey

You know, these sometimes can help me calm down a little bit.

Do you want to try my earmuffs and see what they think?

We also have weighted blankets and weighted stuffed animals, again,

sitting in the supply closet in the hallway at our church here.

If you are at another church, I highly suggest you get something similar.

But you can have them sit down and put the weighted blanket on their lap, see,

Hey, does this make you feel better?

You know and, and try it out.

And the more you work with these kids, the more of a relationship

you build with them, the more you'll learn what works, what doesn't

work, who struggles with what.

And next time you come across an issue like this, it'll be a lot easier.

Now, just a couple more things that I want to mention before we wrap this episode up.

One, if a preschooler hits, if anybody resorts to violence in the kids ministry.

Something that we really don't want to do is allow the violence

to get them what they're wanting.

So make sure that they don't get the toy.

They don't get the spot in line.

They don't get whatever it is that they, that pushed them over the edge

to resort to this because we don't want to reward this kind of behavior at all,

but.

If, on the other side of that, if we can get them to calm down, if we can

get them to listen enough to explain to them why, that you're, you're not gonna

allow them to hit people, which is,

and then get them to apologize, to give a hug, to do something nice,

and then they can get whatever it is that they were wanting.

That's much better.

Obviously, we want to reward good behavior in addition to stopping the

bad behavior Rewarding good behavior does a lot more to stop bad behavior

than any form of discipline does

Also We want to avoid as much as we can Being scary in any way don't ever want

to be scary or harsh You sounding to these kids and I say harsh sounding to

the kids Specifically not to us because we always have to think about it from

their perspective We know that these kids are safe in this building But if

they don't feel safe around us with us Then they're gonna act out still even

though we know that they are safe that nobody's there to hurt them except for us

You know, the occasional angry two year old, but that's what we're working on.

But kids need to feel themselves that they are safe, that they're cared

for, that they're loved, that they can communicate and talk to you and

come to you with their problems.

So, Always be aware of how you're portraying yourself to these

kids, especially when you're having to correct bad behavior.

Make sure you get down on their level, speak softly, look

them in the eye if you can.

Sometimes they might not want to look in your eye, because

they're ashamed or scared.

That's okay, but look at them, and calmly talk to them and explain

why you can't let them hit.

Whenever we can, we also want to avoid just saying the word no.

And I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people, and I'm not saying

that we shouldn't tell the kids they can't do things or allow

them to do whatever they want.

Obviously, that's not what this episode is about.

But, if instead of saying, no, stop hitting, you say, hey, I can't let

you hit people because it's not safe.

Okay, we need to keep everybody safe and be nice or people

aren't going to want to be here.

You know, something like that.

That goes over a lot better with the kids than no, stop.

Don't do that.

You're wrong You know, it's so it's negative and they're already

uncomfortable insecure And I'm not worried about where their parents are.

You know, the more comforting we can be while also giving the correction,

the better it's going to go over.

So this was all very fast, covered a lot of different things, but

I hope that it was helpful.

If you have any questions, send me an email, send me a message on

Facebook, whatever you need to do.

But I'd be happy to do a follow up, a follow up episode to discuss anything,

any questions that you guys might have.

Thank you for listening.

And remember, Transcribed To love the kids, all the time, no matter what.

I'll see you in the next episode.