It’s the third wet Thursday in a row, outdoor play has been rained off again, and by half past ten the toddler room has already logged a bite, two snatched diggers and a hurled bowl of cereal hoops. Nobody is having their best February, and that includes the staff.
Here’s the reframe that helps most on days like this: very young children don’t behave badly at us. They behave the way two- and three-year-olds behave when something is going on that they can’t say. Tired, hungry, teething, a new baby at home, a room that’s too loud, a routine that changed without warning. Behaviour is the message. Our job is to read it, not just to stop it.
Development first, discipline second
A two-year-old who snatches isn’t unkind. Sharing depends on skills that simply haven’t arrived yet: impulse control, perspective-taking, a sense of time (“you’ll get it back in a minute” means nothing if a minute doesn’t exist for you yet). A surprising amount of what gets labelled challenging behaviour is really a mismatch between what we’re asking and what the child can currently do. Adjust the ask, and the behaviour often adjusts itself.
The other half of the picture is co-regulation. Young children borrow calm from adults long before they can produce their own. The practitioner who kneels down, steadies her voice and names what’s happening is lending the child exactly the thing that’s missing. It follows, awkwardly but truly, that you can’t teach calm while being cross. Every experienced practitioner has learned this the hard way, usually on a wet Thursday.
Prevention does most of the work
Good behaviour management is mostly invisible. It looks like predictable routines, a warning before every transition, enough duplicate diggers to blunt the arguments, and an adult who spots the child sliding towards overwhelm and gets in early with a snack, a cuddle or a job to do. When the weather traps everyone indoors for a week, it also means finding big movement inside: an obstacle course out of cushions, dancing before lunch, den building. A body that has climbed and rolled is a body that finds sitting easier.
Boundaries still matter, obviously. The trick is to have realistic, age-appropriate ones and to hold them consistently. Few and firm beats many and wobbly every time. Children relax when the walls of the room stay in the same place from one day to the next, and from one adult to the next.
This is the ground our course Positive Behaviour Management in the Early Years covers: why children behave as they do, self-regulation and co-regulation, setting expectations that match development, strategies that prevent and de-escalate, and how to work with parents on behaviour rather than around them.
When behaviour is telling you something bigger
Sometimes the message in the behaviour is bigger than a rained-off week. A persistent pattern that doesn’t shift with good, consistent strategies can point towards SEND, and a sudden change in a child’s behaviour can be a safeguarding flag. Part of the skill is knowing when to stop tweaking the strategy and start a conversation with your SENCO or your designated safeguarding lead. Neither conversation means you’ve failed; both mean you were paying attention.
And then there are parents. The pick-up conversation about biting is one of the hardest in the job, and it goes better when it’s a plan being shared rather than a verdict being delivered. When the same calm approach happens on both sides of the front door, children change faster. We hear that from managers again and again.
Calmer days start with a plan the whole room shares
Positive Behaviour Management in the Early Years gives your team practical, positive strategies, with an NFAQ-accredited certificate for your compliance file.
The rain will stop eventually. In the meantime, the toddler who bit this morning doesn’t need a firmer telling off. He needs an adult who wonders what he was trying to say.