 Mi yw Dr Nicola Canale. I'm an educational psychologist. I work as part of a parenting team supporting parents of children in the early years as part of Cardiff Early Help. I'm also a mum of two young, lively, spirited boys, so everything I talk about today is being tried and tested at home as well. Today I'm going to be talking about children's behaviour in the early years, how we can perhaps understand those behaviours in a bit more detail and how we can respond to those behaviours. In the early years it's really common for children to get overwhelmed by big emotions. Their brains are still developing, their nervous systems are still developing, so we see lots of behaviours that we as parents can find tricky to manage sometimes such as hitting, throwing, biting, shouting, refusing to follow instructions, so if we give a child a blue plate when they were expecting a yellow plate you can see some of these big emotions spilling over and some of these behaviours. I think parenting children in the early years is a difficult job and it can be quite tricky and quite stressful at times. Children's behaviour is very linked to their stage of development. We know that the brain is developing very rapidly in the early years and that some of the behaviours particularly young children display is outside of their control so these big emotions can really take over and I think one of the traps we can fall into as parents is thinking that some of these behaviours are manipulative or they're acting out in a way to get their own way before they're actually capable of doing that and I think one of our jobs as parents, as adults is to actually help children to develop these skills so they can have a little bit more control over these behaviours but that takes a long time and that's still really developing in the early years. Like any other skill that we help children develop in the early years like reading or riding a bike we're also trying to help them develop what we call self-regulation skills so this is that skill to be able to perhaps control and manage some of those big emotions and some of those behaviours but that takes time and it's dependent on quite a few factors really you have the child's temperament so some children are more easy going and laid back and other children can be a bit more sensitive or spirited so that plays a big role but one of the biggest environmental factors that plays a role in developing children's self-regulation skills is their interactions with their parents or their caregivers or other adults really we need to think about ways when we're faced with these big behaviours these big emotions we need to think of ways to respond into those in ways that not only help us with those behaviours but also help the children to develop these self-regulation skills and of course the other way the children learn self-regulation skills is by watching and observing the adults around them and we call this modelling so Dr Dan Siegel has come up with a very visual way of helping us understand what's happening in a child's brain and when we see these big feelings and big emotions overwhelm them so he calls this the hand model of the brain and he talks about how the brain can be looked at with regards to this hand model so if we think of the palm here as the oldest, most primitive part of the brain which is responsible for things we don't think about heart rate, temperature our fight or flight response and then you've got the thumb as this limbic area of the brain we call this the emotional part of the brain this is the part of the brain responsible for big feelings like fear, sadness, anger and then finally as humans we've evolved this thinking part of the brain which is this prefrontal cortex which is responsible for things like planning, organising being able to think before we react now when these big feelings overwhelm us we do what Dan Siegel calls flipping the lid where the thinking part of the brain becomes really disconnected from this emotional part of the brain he also calls this the upstairs and the downstairs brain so the upstairs brain becomes disconnected from the downstairs brain now as adults if we flip our lids we've developed skills to be able to bring that thinking part of the brain back in line with the emotional part of the brain however for young children if they flip their lids they need adult help to bring this part of the brain the thinking part of the brain back with the emotional part of the brain and for it to work together again and when children have developed these skills over time with adult support that's when they are able to self-regulate we can explain the difference between a tantrum and a meltdown thinking about Dr Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain so if we think about a tantrum where a child is perhaps demanding something or whining or repeating something over and over again we know that for older children they can be throwing what's known as an upstairs brain tantrum and this is where the thinking part of the brain is still integrated with the emotional part of the brain and they are just acting out in a way to have maybe what they want we know this is usually an upstairs brain tantrum because if we give them what they want that behaviour stops quite quickly now for younger children particularly very young children they are not really capable of throwing these types of tantrums or upstairs brain tantrums because we know their brain isn't well developed enough to be able to do that with younger children what they are usually having is what we call a downstairs brain tantrum or a meltdown where the thinking part of the brain has disconnected from the emotional brain so they have flipped their lids and they are very overwhelmed by these big feelings so they're in something that we sometimes call as emotional flood and I think again part of our role is to help calm them bring them back to a state of calm before we can actually respond to that behaviour How we respond to children's behaviours can really illuminate this difference between punishment and discipline If we are using punishment to try and change behaviours we might be able to achieve that through fear or shame and it would give us perhaps a quick fix with regards to changing children's behaviours but they might not lead to any longer lasting changes they wouldn't really help support children's social emotional behaviour development and they could actually impact really on children's self-esteem If we are using discipline and we think about the word discipline comes from the Latin to teach it can be a longer process it can take lots of practice to help children develop these positive behaviours but it will lead to those longer lasting changes and also at the same time it will help develop children's social emotional and behavioural development and it will also increase their self-esteem which is a win-win situation for parents and children Kim Goldin has developed an approach to parenting that she calls the two hands of parenting so she talks about the two hands of parenting and what she talks about is this one hand provides the connection so this is the warmth the interaction the loving interactions between children and their caregivers and the other hand correction this is the hand that provides the boundaries the routines, the structure that young children also need Kim Goldin has devised seven steps to connection with correction and in my work with parents we've adapted this to call it the seven C's of responding to behaviours so the first step is just to clock it just to notice what's happening do you need to step in to make the environment safe is it just some low level behaviour that you can just distract or ignore so step two is really important is to calm yourself to check whether your lids flipped or whether you were feeling regulated and able to respond to what's happening in front of you you might need to take five deep breaths if there is someone else in the house you might need to call on them for support but it's about calming yourself first so that you're able to respond to the situation instead of react so the third C is to calm your child is your child drowning in an emotional flood have they flipped their lids and do they need your help to calm every child is different every child is unique so you will know as a parent what helps them calm some children like a touch or a hug other children need a little bit of space and you sit nearby to help them calm the fourth C I think is one of the most important things we can do as parents or adults when we're trying to help children with their behaviours the fourth C is curiosity if we can be curious about some of the underlying reasons as to why our child is behaving in this way it gives us lots of clues as to how to prevent those things happening again in the future but also how to manage and respond to that behaviour given time so one of the things we think about is as parents being like deep sea divers so if we've got an iceberg with some of those challenging behaviours on the tip of the iceberg like shouting or screaming or hitting out we need to go under the water there and have a look at some of those emotions and needs that are driving those behaviours so a really helpful acronym to think about with children in the early years is HALT so HALT stands for hungry angry lonely or tired is there any of those needs that need to be met or is that contributing to some of those behaviours it can be really helpful in ways to respond to those behaviours but the fifth C is connect so even if we are very good at being curious about the underlying causes to those behaviours that have been met needs we sometimes forget to actually tell the child that or say that out loud so if we think a child is tired we can say I can see you're tired now therefore maybe we should put these away and go and have a rest or I can see you're really sad because I've said no more biscuits we'll have another one tomorrow so it's really saying out loud connecting that emotion behaviour and this really helps children to develop their social emotional development also helps them to self-regulate in the future so the sixth C is correction so this is where that second hand of parenting comes in do we need to provide at this point when we've calmed our child do we need to provide an age appropriate consequence so for example if you've hurt your brother with the toy, the toy is going away or you put your wellies on or no park, the choice is yours so children still need those boundaries and those age appropriate consequences at times the seventh C is to connect again so you bring back that other hand of parenting the connection once you've put that consequence in and you've stuck to that you then reconnect with your child maybe through a cuddle or reading a story together but you don't keep going back to that behaviour and what happened you'll be like Elsa and let it go