Significance of developing appropriate strategies to manage young childrens aggressive behaviour in their social interactions

Abstract
Including children with aggressive behaviours in mainstream early childhood services has drawn increasing attention to teachers, families and communities these days. The objective of this paper is to extend and enrich preschool teachers knowledge and understandings of children with aggressive behaviour and to develop appropriate strategies to manage young childrens aggressive behaviour in supporting their social interactions. In my analysis, I discovered that children with aggressive behaviours usually have low self-esteem and experience frustration frequently. According to this finding, I outlined how to develop adequate strategies to assist children with aggressive behaviour in building effective relationships with others.

Introduction
A growing body of early childhood research provides empirical evidence that preschool problem behavior negatively influences school readiness in multiple domains (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001; Denham, 2006; Raver, 2002; Thompson & Raikes, 2007, as cited in Bulotsky-Shearer, Dominguez, Fernandez, & Rouse, 2011, p. 1). The aim of this paper is to reach a sound understandings of children with aggressive behaviour and to analyse why the issue, which is developing appropriate strategies to manage young children s aggressive behaviour in their
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social interactions and development, is critical. The analysis indicates that childrens aggressive behaviour effects their social development and learning, which rushes us as educators to advance our understandings and expertise in this particular area of behaviour management. I think this is why this critical issue is important to me as well as other early childhood educators.

The content of the issue

Young childrens social skills are being developed when communicating with their peers. With an effect of age, experience and development, they become more skilled in interacting with other people in their early years (Narland & Martinsen, 2011). However, there are a few children who may experience difficulties to get along with their peer as they do not know how to interact with their peers properly instead of behaving inappropriately. Other children may be scared of playing with children with aggressive behaviour because they are afraid of getting hurt. Children with aggressive behaviour may have trouble making friends because of their inappropriate behaviour.

When is behaviour a concern? Children throw tantrums for seeking attention or gaining what they want sometimes or occasionally. How much is too much for us as an educator to concern about? In the early childhood settings, several times a day is cause for concern (Allen & Cowdery, 2012). Pushing, punching, whining, tantrums, biting, kicking, swearing, scratching, fighting and threatening behaviour can be regarded as common daily behavioural
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difficulties in children (Centre for Community Child Health, 2006).

Causes of aggressive behaviour

There are a number of reasons why children behave in an aggressive manner. Thereby, we need to identify why they do in this particular way in order to find an immediate solution to help children with aggressive behaviour in their learning and social development.

Children with communication difficulties may exhibit aggressive behaviour (Irish National Teachers Organisation [INTO], 2004). These children usually experience difficulties to use oral language to express their needs and emotions because they are lack of understanding or ability to use language. In the light of M. Hoffnung, R. J. Hoffnung, Seifert, Smith, and Hine (2010), languageusing is viewed as a way of communicating and interacting with others. They may not able to communicate with others about what they need and want and how they feel. Therefore, inappropriate behaviour will be displayed to express themselves.

The environmental factors may lead to the aggressive behaviour. In accordance with Allen, Hawkins and Cooper (2006), challenging behaviours include physical aggression, self-injury and environmental destructiveness. The researchers are still investigating the reasons why some children behave challengingly and others do not. Some research illustrated that when young children exposure to the environments

with violence, abuse and poverty, they may be more likely to emerge challenging behaviours than their peers (Jolivette & Steed, 2010).

Attention-seeking is often identified as a cause of aggressive behaviour (INTO, 2004). A few children who seek attention in this specific way will bring us a question ---- why they need to gain attention in an aggressive manner? The answer is that

this can be a learned behaviour, which has been influenced by childrens past experiences of ensuring they gain what they want (INTO, 2004).

Analysis of why this issue is critical

In recently years, an increasing number of early childhood educators and families express great concern about the number of children displaying aggressive behaviour frequently and report that it is difficult to manage childrens challenging behaviour within the early childhood settings (Jolivette & Steed, 2010). The research demonstrated that as many as forty percent of young children engage in at least one challenging behaviour every day at early childhood services (Willoughby, Kupersmidt, & Bryant, 2001, as cited in Jolivette & Steed, 2010). If there is one child or more emerge aggressive behaviour during the day, teachers have to spend more time on managing childrens challenging behaviour and discipline children instead of teaching them in a critical and instructional way, which makes childrens early years experiences negative and leads to the poor teacher-student interactional patterns. Thus, it is critical for educator to learn more knowledge and expertise of children with
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aggressive behaviour and change the way in which they used to interact with and discipline children. Rewarding system is the best way to reinforce childrens positive behaviours. Rewarding positive behaviours not only encourages a child to continue behaving well but also provides a child with desperately needed success, thereby building self-esteem (Allen & Cowdery, 2012, p.181). Moreover, finding out an immediate solution, such as developing suitable strategies to manage childrens challenging behaviour, is necessary and vital for professionals to put theories they learnt before into practices in order to support children with aggressive behaviour in a better way. As long as the number of exhibiting aggressive behaviour is decreased, educators will have more time to assist children in their learning, development, knowledge-absorbing and skills-enhancing rather than spending time on disciplining children. For children, with the number of displaying aggressive behaviour declining, they will have more time on practicing interacting with their peers to become more confident to get along with others and remain on group tasks to work cooperatively to achieve success without throwing tantrum or feeling frustrated. Therefore, their self-esteem and confidence will be rebuilt.

Developing strategies to manage childrens aggressive behaviour is not a new problem. It is an old and short term problem. Why the professionals and researchers are still trying to address the issue is because all the children are different (Agbenyega, 2013). What works for a child may not work for another. That is why educators need to develop appropriate, adequate and individualised strategies
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according to the circumstance of each individual child. If we educators do nothing about supporting children with aggressive behaviour and developing strategies to manage their challenging behaviour, the consequences would be unthinkable. A child with aggressive behaviour may hurt him or herself, his or her peers, teachers, or family members. Furthermore, if negative reinforcement is applied to stop the tantrum, inappropriate behaviour will be more likely to be displayed next time to seek attention and get what they want. Allen and Cowdery (2012) defined that negative reinforcement is the strengthening of a behaviour by the removal of an unpleasant consequence (p.313). For instance, if a child whines at you to be given her juice, you give it to her and she stops whining. So giving her juice behaviour has been negatively reinforced by cessation of the child whining and you will be more likely to give her juice the next time she whines.

Inclusive Practice - Strategies to manage aggressive behaviours

In order to keep children engaged and motivated, educators need to increase their understandings of why children do what they do. The more we understand the ways in which children behave, the better strategies of managing young children s aggressive behaviour we will be able to implement in order to assist them in building effective relationships with their peers.

Early childhood professionals can develop strategies as following to better manage preschool age childrens aggressive behaviours by changing/improving the social and
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physical environment.

Changing social environment, which means changing or improving the way in which educators interact with young children with aggressive behaviour and developing positive relationships between educators and children can facilitate children s appropriate behaviour. In the light of the strategies to guide childrens behaviour (DEECD, 2010), Children who play and learn in an environment which promotes positive social relationships are less likely to display inappropriate behaviours (p. 2).

As an early childhood educator, we develop the positive relationships with children through encouraging children to use verbal and non-verbal language and other ways of non-hurtful communication to express their feelings. It is necessary to set clear, consistent and simple limits in an understandable and positive way, state what is expected of children and help them comply with the limits. In the meantime, educators need to imitate appropriate behaviour, be supportive by understanding children s emotions and feelings, discuss rules and limits, encourage them to brainstorm and then to use their contributions in setting the limits (DEECD, 2010). Last but not the least, children need to be assisted in developing a sense of social responsibility so that they will be conscious of the influence of their action on others

Changing the physical environment refers to providing developmentally appropriate materials and equipment for children in the physical environment. As a result, children
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will not get bored or frustrated, which is less likely to lead to challenging behaviour. According to the strategies to guide childrens behaviour (DEECD, 2010), Children who are engaged and active are less likely to display challenging behaviours. (p. 2).

What educators can do to ensure children are engaged is to offer sufficient age appropriate materials and equipment and numerous opportunities for outdoor play as well as set up the environment which provides children choices relating to playing alone and being part of a small or large group on the basis of their interests and capabilities (DEECD, 2010). Furthermore, arranging sufficient space in the environment in order to let children move within and between areas easily, offering choices about being together, balancing their needs for similarity and diversity by making suitable changes to the environment and the materials and equipment in it, imitating care of materials and assisting children in learning how to care for them is significant for childrens engagement in their play (DEECD, 2010).

Conclusion
In early childhood educators daily practices, childrens aggressive behaviour can be managed by developing adequate strategies. As a future kindergarten teacher, it is a great opportunity for us to utilise the process of developing and implementing inclusive practices as above to figure out why children do and behave in a particular way, understand their emotions, and meet their needs. At the same time, we need to urge ourselves to facilitate our everyday teaching practices so that we can assist our
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preschoolers in their learning and development in a more positive, effective and professional way.

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