tips for working with children with challenging behaviour.

<p><a href="/jobs/s-social-care/e-children-services/">Working with children with challenging behaviour </a>is one of the toughest jobs out there, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. Successful interventions in childhood can turn lives around and set the course for a happy, successful future.</p>
<h2>How to manage children with challenging behaviour.</h2>
<p>Many health and social care professions involve work such as this at one time or another, so it is worth taking the time to find out how to handle it.</p>
<h5>What is challenging behaviour?</h5>
<p>There are many forms of challenging behaviour and they are not all obvious. They include aggression and disruptiveness but also self-harm and retreating from the world. Children who exhibit behaviour such as this may have experienced trauma or may have learning disorders that make it difficult for them to communicate. It is important for the people that work with them to understand that the problem is the behaviour itself, not the child, and to adapt their approach to take account of any known underlying cause.</p>
<h5>Listening.</h5>
<p>The first step in addressing challenging behaviour is successfully engaging with the child. This cannot be done by immediately trying to impose an agenda; it has to begin with listening. This requires being calm and sympathetic, refusing to let oneself be provoked and, most importantly, behaving in a consistent manner so that the child knows what to expect. This helps to build trust, at which point the child can be gently coaxed into beginning to communicate. Such communication will not always be verbal: it could take the form of playing with toys together or drawing pictures. The important thing is that, once established, it can be built upon.</p>
<h5>Taking breaks.</h5>
<p>Working through situations like this can be tiring for both parties. Support workers need to make sure that they get breaks when they need them to avoid emotional exhaustion. Children and young people with severe behavioural difficulties may have difficulty saying when they have had enough, so they should be given break cards. These can be raised whenever they really need a session to stop. By giving them a degree of control, this can help them to feel more positive about the process.</p>
<h5>Get physical.</h5>
<p>Many children exhibit challenging behaviour because they do not know how to manage stress or because, in the case of conditions such as ADHD, they have trouble managing their energy levels to remain focused. Providing a physical release can help a lot with this. Actions such as dancing, stomping or jumping can be used to deal with immediate stress, with the support worker joining in. To deal with a slower build-up of stress, children can be encouraged to take up a sport or a physical activity such as digging in the garden.</p>
<h5>No prizes for misbehaviour.</h5>
<p>In addition to engaging using positive techniques, it is important to be ready to disengage in negative situations. Aggressive, destructive or disruptive behaviour is generally aimed at getting a reaction, so simply withdrawing and refusing to show emotion is the simplest way to discourage it. When children know they can only get attention by being ready to communicate civilly, they have much more motivation for improving their behaviour.</p>