Play controls impulsive behavior

“46 percent of kindergarten teachers said that at least half the kids in their classes had problems following directions. In another study, Head Start teachers reported that more than a quarter of their students exhibited serious self-control-related negative behaviors, like kicking or threatening other students, at least once a week. Walter Gilliam, a professor at Yale’s child-study center, estimates that each year, across the country, more than 5,000 children are expelled from pre-K programs because teachers feel unable to control them.”

Do these statistics sounds familiar? If you have a child in elementary school or preschool, you may have to deal with your child being criticized for their impulsive behavior. They might even be given a diagnosis or put in special “resource” education programs.

I don’t blame the educational programs or even political policy on education for the problems are children are experiencing in schools. I don’t blame the mental health professionals for over diagnosing either. I think it is simply time to solve the problem and take a more balanced approach to how to children learn and develop.

One of the first steps in this process is to modify our strictly behavorial “reward/punishment” programs. They have their and I use them all the time but as you will read in the article below, this creates “other directedness regulation” or externally-based motivation. In other words, children control their impulses to get the treat or avoid the punishment/disappointments from adults vs. doing something from their own internal motivation. What happens when mom or the teacher is not around? How will the child know when and where to control an inappropriate impulse like hitting a play mate?

An even more important argument of the article is close the gap between the concepts of play and work. “Today, play is seen by most teachers and education scholars as a break from hard work or a reward for positive behaviors, not a place to work on cognitive skills.”

How can we integrate play and work together to help our children become better thinkers and not just better “doers” of our expectations and control their impulses for life? Share by clicking on the comment link!