As you can imagine, behavior problems in children can range from the obvious of:
hitting, pushing, yelling, fighting with peers, difficulty changing from one
activity to another, sleeping problems, excessive energy levels, being unable to sit still and
focus, refusal to partake in normal childhood experiences or play, picky eaters, frequent
tantrums, extreme sensitivities and excessive fears.
When children react with
aggression towards what was seemingly a simple request the underlying principle may be one of frustration. If tasks they could accomplish yesterday can't be done today, they become angry. If the tasks become more difficult or more restrictions are applied, they may react with anger. Sometimes subtle actions like not eating their food or bedwetting may be their response. Sometimes more violent actions
become a way of controlling the situation.
*It becomes clear that even if the children can't communicate their frustration, they can act
out the frustration and achieve attention!
Words, Geometric Shapes, and
Emotions Activities
Activity #1 – Be an Occupation. Children like to mimic and asking a child to mimic individually an occupation like be a piano
player, teacher, animal trainer, ballet dancer or any other occupation created by you. It is fun to watch children create and use their imagination to fulfill the occupation.
Activity #2 – Be a Geometric Shape. Children individually are asked to use their bodies and make a circle, or square, or triangle, or
make designs like a flower by starting first to create a stem, adding leaves, and then the flowers. This one really takes thinking and imagination to
perform.
Activity #3 – Be an Emotion. Children individually show emotions like mad, happy, puzzled, worry, etc. Find pictures and
cut them out from magazines, cartoon clips from newspapers, or from clip art on the internet. Place them in a basket, mix them up, let the child pick out a picture and then show perform that
emotion to the class and let the class guess it. You can also divide the class into 2 teams and a point is earned for each correct answer.
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