STEPHEN FRY

That's excellent. You'e achieved control and you should be proud of yourself. Don't let children get away with anything they shouldn't be doing or controlling them later on can be an impossible nightmare. I couldn't do it at all when I was younger. When I was 17 I was left in charge of a group of children at a school and they ended up running riot. I felt like breaking down into tears because of how bad it got. Now I'm older and more confident I can control larger groups of children fine.

A small step for me is dancing. When I first started going clubbing with my friends I wouldn't dance. They'd go on the dancefloor leaving me behind to look after drinks. I hated it. I always felt so miserable but I didn't dare dance. I had zero self-confidence. One day I just got so fed-up of being left on my own I followed them and joined in. I'm glad I did. I found that I love dancing. Now I'll even dance on my own and I mean when there's no one else on the dancefloor so I have the floor to myself. I don't care if people are watching. I'm having so much fun. It's such a big difference to what I was like several years ago. Another small step for me is talking in front of people. When I was at school the thought terrified me, especially if I was having to read out something I'd wrote for something like English. Now I don't have any trouble with that and I'm much more relaxed and able to talk with ease instead of having to rush through reading off a script.

I knew that the kid was just a kid and I knew that his only problem was that his mom let him be a wild child. So I tried to make sure from the beginning that I don't put up with it. I only have him for about 1-2 hrs a day so I take every opportunity I get to prove this to him. For example, yesterday I gave him a choice of snack, and he asked for peanut butter crackers so I put 6 out on a plate and gave him a drink. After the first bite he said he wanted Apple Jacks instead and turned his snotty little nose up as he held out the plate for me. Knowing that he doesn't eat much to begin with I told him that he himself chose the crackers and that would be his snack, but if he would eat 3 of them and not sneak any to the dog I would let him save the other 3 for another day and have some apple jacks. 15mins later he took the last bite and got his prize. When I told his mom about it that afternoon she was shocked and went on and on about how she could never do that because he's such a picky eater and oh no what if he went hungry?! If only she grew up in my parents house! Anyway, it was a lesson to him that he has to stick to his choices and also taught him that I keep my word.


That's very good that. It's important to teach children about making decisions and dealing with the consequences. Children need to learn not to be greedy and to think of others. In the nurseries I've been to the children are allowed to get seconds for meals and desserts but if after poking the food around decide they don't want it anymore they're told that next time they need to think about whether they really want seconds or not as it could have been given to a friend (you can't give anything to a child to eat or drink that another child has touched so as to help prevent cross infections from happening in case a child has an undectected bug). Children need to know the boundaries and to learn them they need consistency from the adults. If the mother is having major issues with the boy's behaviour and wants help maybe you could tell her what you do to manage his behaviour so then she can try it herself. Consistency and continuity can help a great deal with managing behaviour in young children. One bit of advice I can give that has been given to me by Foundation teachers and Nursery Nurses is to try and avoid negative words as much as possible when asking them to do something. So instead of saying don't or stop reverse the sentence round to sound more positive while having the same meaning. Children respond better to that. It can be difficult and more of a mouthful than saying "Don't do that" but it get's easier with practice.

Amy1- When I worked in Daycare years ago they enforced that we speak in positive words instead of Don't and stop, but there is a fine line with this technique. It does work better to keep away from the negatives but at the same time my coworker will explain everything in run on sentences. By the time she's done the kid is bored or confused and nothing sticks.

Be concise!

Though you're right there is a fine line. Sometimes if a situation is serious and requires immediate action my mind is more set on stopping someone from getting hurt than wordplay. I also like to go for the firm approach, looking the child in the eye and kneeling on their level when talking to them if they've done something wrong. I don't like things like naughty steps/chairs/corners etc. I prefer to explain things to a child and sit them quietly at the side somewhere or next to me for a few minutes (depending on age) and then let them carry on playing. Unless their behaviour keeps escalating then taking them to another room to talk to them and give them time to calm down.

I've been working with her for 6yrs, since her eldest boy was a year old and thought the years she's always come to me for advice on how to deal with them. I always thought it odd because I don't have kids myself but that never stopped her. Most of the advice I've given her is based on experience at the day care, what I've learned from mom and dad, or just common sense but she has never taken it. She'll explain a situation, sometimes in tears and I'll give her ideas of how to deal with it next time it happens and she'll rattle off excuses for why she can't. It's frustrating and there have been times in the past that I've told her, if you don't want to take the advice or even try it out then don't bother telling me about it. She loves her kids to death but that's where her parenting skills end.

It's like those Nanny 911 shows(which I can't watch cause they piss me off) where the nanny goes in and hears the sob story from the parents about how their kids are spawns of satan and then the nanny tells them that it's their fault and after the parents chance, the children fall in line. They need life to be uniform. They need to know that if they break one of mom or dad's rules that they will have a punishment.

At Holt's school they give the kids bracelets(similar to the one you get at hospital) and for good deeds they get circles and for bad deeds they get x's. The day before yesterday he was behaving well with me and as soon as I dropped him off his mom cut off his bracelet. Not long after he was acting up and not only ignoring her when she told him settle down but laughed at her(she tells me it's common for her kids to laugh at her) and I could tell she was getting really upset. So I suggested to her that she leave his bracelets on till bedtime and continue the good deed/bad deed regime at home. Thus making his reward and punishment uniform. She liked the idea but continued to cut them off.

It's almost as if she doesn't want things to change, or perhaps she's too lazy or afraid to change it? Either way I wish she would just shut up about it already.

You can't help anyone that isn't willing to help themselves.

No you can't. If she keeps complaining about it then she should either take people's advice and accept help or put up and shut up which isn' t the ideal but if someone's going to keep complaining about their situation then they should do something about it.

Her way of dealing with the bracelts seems daft. If it's working for her son and his behiour turns sour when she cuts it off then surely she'd've twigged that it's better to keep the bracelets on?

Though you're right there is a fine line. Sometimes if a situation is serious and requires immediate action my mind is more set on stopping someone from getting hurt than wordplay. I also like to go for the firm approach, looking the child in the eye and kneeling on their level when talking to them if they've done something wrong. I don't like things like naughty steps/chairs/corners etc. I prefer to explain things to a child and sit them quietly at the side somewhere or next to me for a few minutes (depending on age) and then let them carry on playing. Unless their behaviour keeps escalating then taking them to another room to talk to them and give them time to calm down.

In my experience time out and the corner never worked. I usually did the same as you when I knew it would work for the kid. Much like us each kid is different and takes punishments differently. My parents were spankers and my mom has often told me that spanking never worked on me. For my brothers it was fine, they took it and learned by it but for me they had to sit me down and talk me through it. My younger sister on the other hand never got in trouble because she was the baby so screw her. You just never know from kid to kid, you have to keep trying until you find something that works.

Exactly. Children are all unique. Different methods work with different children. I once had a job where I had to support a child one-on-one with SEN and the teacher (who had zero experience with children with SEN) didn't like me trying different methods to encourage her to work and believed it should be one way only like all the other children. All the staff kept saying to me it's tough she'll have to adapt to what we want her to do and I thought that was totally wrong. I could see where things were going wrong and that a different approach was needed but they were so rigid and inflexible. In direct contrast, at another school where I had to support a child with SEN I was given free reign over everything. I could choose what activities to do and when, in what order and I was given a lot of freedom over behaviour management. It worked very well and the girl and I worked well together.

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I remember first feeling suicidal when I was 7. I'd been feeling depressed since I was 6 and was getting worse by that point. Never actually attempted suicide. Just thought about it a lot and once contemplated it aloud in school and was told off by my teacher.