Understanding children's anger. An article by behavioral biologist Gabriele Haug-Schnabel.
When toddlers scratch, bruise and hit, it usually happens so suddenly that it is not possible to stop the attacking child beforehand. Parents, children and educators are sometimes shocked at how violently some children attack others. Behavioral biologist Gabriele Haug-Schnabel explains what is behind it when children are suddenly aggressive.
A scratched face or bite wounds hurt, are visible for a long time and often cause parents and educators to feel angry at the aggressor and worried about their (own) child. Parents whose children behave aggressively often feel helpless or blame themselves for their own child's misbehavior.
The developmental causes and motives for aggressive behavior in children under the age of 3 are challenging.
If a very young child starts to cry, peers close to him or her are reassured by the presence and affection of their caregivers and often start to cry too. The reason for this is the innate emotional contagion that is triggered by irritation and fear in unsettling situations. It is also a kind of empathy, but without the child recognizing that the subjective feelings of another person are the cause of their insecurity. It's better to cry with them when something unexpected happens near me, because then I get help too.
It is only between 15 and 24 months that a child becomes increasingly aware of itself and its actions. Only now can they differentiate between their own plans and feelings and the feelings and intentions of another child in a situation and separate them from each other.
"Rarely does a child want to harm others on purpose."
This is a quantum leap in development: self-awareness begins. The child becomes aware of their feelings and actions and can relate a shared feeling to the person actually affected. This means that they can now think about the feelings and intentions of others separately from their own.
Only now does the question arise as to whether the aggression directed at another child was deliberate, i.e. intended to cause harm, which is rarely the case. Most of the time, it is just about ending your own unhappiness! The other girl, the other boy should just go away, stop stumbling!
It is now planned in the course of development that children will acquire more and more orientation, knowledge, skills and freedom - even in the face of resistance - thanks to their emerging ego-consciousness.
"Failure or interference will cause a collapse."
At this age, failure, a stop or interference will cause a breakdown for a few transitional weeks, as the child initially has to follow a rigid pattern when implementing their ideas: It cannot yet adapt to situational circumstances or respond to the wishes of others that interfere with its plan. In addition, they are so cognitively, emotionally and motivationally engaged in their play that they are too late to abandon or slightly change their plans. Their imaginative capacity is not yet sufficient for an alternative course of action.
The more understanding these situations are accompanied at home and in the nursery, the faster the children can overcome this cognitive-social hurdle.
Dr. habil. Gabriele Haug-Schnabel is head and co-owner of the Human Behavioral Biology Research Group (FVM, GdbR) as well as author and speaker on the topic of �Child Behavior�
The pedagogy of pme Lernwelten is not about preventing aggression and conflict. They are part of everyday interaction. Without conflicts, children cannot develop strategies to deal with them. This is why we want to support children in learning appropriate responses to conflicts and aggression.
Aggressive behavior often occurs in children between the ages of one and five for developmental reasons and then disappears again. Sometimes they are an expression of feelings that the child is not yet able to express verbally, or they are an attempt to test out a social behavior. Teething is sometimes a side effect of teething.
It is important for us to always see both children. Both children � the injured child and the child who has been scratched, bitten, pushed or hit - have to deal with challenges. We help them to overcome these.
In all of these aggressive forms of behavior, it is important for us to act quickly and in a targeted manner. We have therefore developed standards for the pedagogical actions of our specialists in an emergency. Comfort and wound care for the affected child are always our top priority, but we also support children who behave aggressively. We do not reward such behavior, but we never exclude a child because of it.
We keep a very close eye on children who bite, scratch or hit:
We also pay attention to what is good for the child in our childcare center :
We then reflect on our everyday life: Where are there potential stress situations and spatial bottlenecks? How can we take preventive action here, for example by changing the room design or taking measures to relax the situation in our daily routine?