The Importance of Wording Effects

I've been in early childhood education for a very long time. This August will be 31 years to be exact. When enrolling new parents and giving tours of the preschool, the one thing I always get asked about is "how do you handle discipline" or "what is your discipline policy?" Well, to be honest this question always trips me up. Every time. Back in the day when I first started, I would try to explain this through a theoretic concept or an educated guess. But the sticky and sweet about a discipline philosophy is actually pretty simple. It's called "wording effects". Let me explain.

Wording effects carry a lot of weight in language, cognitive development and emotional regulation, especially when working with children who are learning language at a young age. The word "language" is also a word that can trip people up. So let me explain that as well. Language in early childhood is building words, expressions, and ideas. It's asking questions and answering questions. It's having conversations with teachers, friends and parents. It's wording effects. People ask what are "wording effects?

Wording effects are a process of how we use words to shape behavior. Children don't just hear what we say and respond, they feel what we say and absorb those words through an emotional response. That emotion develops self-esteem, regulation and identity. These wording effects work into our discipline philosophy.

Let's circle back to the question of how I handle discipline in the classroom. Discipline is handled by listening to a situation, talking about what happened, why it happened and how we can fix it. Yep! It's that simple. Right? Well it's not so simple but it takes patience, understanding, empathy and reasoning. Skills that children are learning at a very young age. Because each situation is not that easy, we have a starting point of observation, listening and language.

To be honest, behaviors have escalated the past few years in early childhood. Teacher's have many observational reasons for why they have escalated because we can see it in the classroom daily, but we can never truly take our thoughts and put it into the situation. We have to get information first so we don't place our own bias or label to a child. We have to get to know the child, their back ground, the family background and who they are as a person. Every family has a story and none of them are the same, so in the beginning of the school year we start getting to know new families when we tour. This is where I explain our discipline policy because I get asked every time. And I tell them everything starts with wording effects.

Wording effects are a way of speaking to children that is thought-provoking and reflective. The expectations we have as early childhood educators is to explain to a child what they have done, has consequences. But first, we need to understand what happened. Behaviors just don't happen. It's cause and effect. Children just don't wake up one morning and say "I think I'll throw a can of paint and cause chaos in my classroom today!"

For example, let's pretend during circle time the teacher reads a book to the whole class. After reading the book, they discuss the story line with questions and answers so she can get an observation if the children understood the language and context of the story. Then the teacher breaks the children into small groups to paint their memory of the book that was read. While the class is painting and chattering, little Johnny, a 4 year old boy, is painting his picture but then he picks up the jar of paint and throws it across the room, screaming. Paint splatters every where and other children in the classroom notice the mess and Johnny's rage. However, Johnny is now confronted with a mess, and the other children looking at him, so he proceeds to crumple his paper, scream at the other children again, and run to a different area away from the others with arms folded and head down. This is where the discipline philosophy comes in, except it's not discipline. It's guidance.

Most people would assume that the teacher would get frustrated, yell at the child, put the child in time out, blame him for the mess, clean up the mess and then tell the child to mind their business. Right? Wrong. This is where accountability comes into the situation. As educators we are held accountable to figure out what happened, why it happened and explain the consequences of the situation.

• First, we observed that Johnny was upset because of his actions. He reacted strongly to something that happened at the table. But we are not sure of what happened, so it's our job to find out.

• So, while Johnny is regulating himself in another area of the classroom, we talk with the other children at his table. We ask questions like "can someone tell me what happened?" and one girl speaks up and says "Johnny screamed cuz his sun is brown". Another boy says "no she said it was ugly". We ask the girl "can you tell me what you said?" and she says "I said his sun was brown and ugly" so now the girl has admitted to what she said and we have reason.

• Please note, when opening questions with out blame, children are honest with their comments. Most of the time, they throw themselves under the bus because they are concrete thinkers and the abstract thought of hiding the truth is not there yet.

• After we find out what happened according to the table of children and the honest girl, we need to be able to explain to those children sitting at the table their words hurt Johnny's feelings and it caused a reaction.

• This has probably given Johnny time to calm down so we can go to him and ask questions. We need to hear Johnny's thoughts on what happened. We start with asking "can you tell me what happened?" Johnny proceeds to tell us "her said my picture was ugly" pointing at the girl. Then we ask "is that why your screamed?" and he nods his head still with tears. Then we ask "why did you throw the paint?" and he states "cuz I'm mad!"

• Now we can explain that it's ok to be mad so he knows that his feelings are safe, but we must explain it's not ok to throw the paint jar to express those feelings. Then we take steps to figure out what we can do instead of throwing paint across the room or reacting negatively when we get mad.

Words have power. Power elicits emotion. Emotion needs to be expressed. We teach how to express properly. That's discipline. We are teaching them to think and process in a very complicated world. They need to have emotional intelligence and executive functioning if they are going to be in this world effectively and responsibly. The sooner we start the better. Using harsh words, blaming or projecting just adds more emotion. Our goal is to teach children to self-discipline without shutting them down, and allowing them time to be aware and adjust. Because they are only little for 5-6 years. We want our words to have a positive and effective impact on them so we can see them flourish in the future. Kids turn our words into thoughts of themselves. Let's listen and build self-esteem while we guide and nurture.

I always tell them "take a big, deep breath in...and blow it to the sky" ~ Ms. Kelli