Child care providers have many responsibilities, but the ultimate goal is to help children learn, grow, and develop to their full potential.
Caregivers must understand developmental stages of growth in order to appropriately guide children and their behavior. Caregivers should not expect children to do things that they are not developmentally ready to do. Nor should children be scolded for behaviors that are normal for their age. Doing so forces children to fail, to feel badly about themselves, and/or to feel anger toward the caregiver. Inappropriate expectations also make managing a group of children considerably more difficult.
What Can You Do?
- Learn about development to become familiar with what children of a particular age should be able to do and help them gain age-appropriate skills.
- Be responsive to these stages. As children grow, offer them different, more challenging opportunities to learn.
- Be sensitive to how a child’s nature can affect your own response. Don’t withdraw from an aggressive or hard-to-reach child.
- Get to know children personally so you can spot signs of stress that could potentially signal problems (in lots of homes, stress starts at an early age).
- Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a child is born with a predetermined potential that limits what she can do – you can affect the child’s potential positively.
- When interacting with children, refer to familiar people, places, and things.
- Be sensitive to individual characteristics like temperament, learning style, and physical ability.
- Create activities that are interesting and challenging but achievable.
- Keep an eye out for potential developmental problems, but remember that children develop differently.
- Include children of all skill levels and abilities in activities.
- Learn about children’s cultural backgrounds, and let your teaching and care-giving activities reflect your knowledge.
- Try to adjust your teaching technique or strategy to fit individual needs.
- Never judge a child’s potential by his or her current skills.
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