Certain Behaviors May be ‘Normal’ but Not Productive for Young Children

The explanation given in the recent ExchangeEveryday article (1/24/2012) around swearing in preschoolers was informative and it is indeed important for early childhood educators to understand the ‘why’. However, as natural and normal as this may be for some children, the fact is that it is not appropriate for this to occur with any frequency in the classroom. Swearing is not a productive course of action for young children for several reasons. Swearing is often an expression of anger and frustration but swearing is not going to help a child release these emotions in a way that is satisfying to them personally. As the researchers pointed out, the child does not even understand fully what these words mean. Most importantly, swearing is not going to move the child toward interacting with other children in a way that strengthens relationships. Finally, teachers and other parents are not going to find this behavior acceptable. This is similar to a normal behavior for young children often being hitting but this is not acceptable either, even though it is explainable.  The core features of emotional development include the ability to identify and understand one’s own feelings, to accurately read and comprehend emotional states in others, to manage strong emotions and their expression in a constructive manner, to regulate one’s own behavior, to develop empathy for others, and to establish and sustain relationships (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2005). Learning to regulate emotions is one of the main tasks in early childhood and is critical because it is connected to so many other areas of social-emotional functioning, such as self-control, self-confidence, feelings of well being, and social competence. Preschool teachers are faced with a considerable number of young children (between 16 and 32 percent) who exhibit emotional and behavioral problems that compromise early school success (A Good Beginning: Sending America’s Children to School with the Social and emotional Competence they Need to Succeed, 2000; Ready to Enter: What Research Tells Policymakers about Strategies to Promote Social and Emotional School Readiness among Three- and Four-Year-Old Children, 2002).

It is also known that teachers of young children need a great deal of guidance and support in increasing positive social skills and behaviors while reducing those behaviors that keep children from learning and blossoming (Ready to Enter, 2002). As a former special education teacher, I can attest to this as well. It is for these reasons that we here at Hatch have developed a learning system, called WePlaySmart, which is specifically designed to build and support the social-emotional functioning of young children in the classroom setting. Delivered through an interactive, multi-touch table, the system has research- and theory-based games that small groups of children play in support of positive social-emotional development. Children’s verbal interactions are captured by audio and connected to a progress monitoring tool aligned with valid and reliable social-emotional measures (See Compendium of Preschool Through Elementary School Social‐Emotional Learning and Associated Assessment Measures by Denham, Ji, & Hamre 2010) which allows teachers to rate children’s progress over the school year on ten key areas of critical social-emotional functioning.

If as Professor Diana Van Lancker Sidtis in the Exchange article says “These are expressions such as ‘You bet!’ that frequently appear in conversation, and kids learn them as they’re learning how to piece together sentences.”; then it would appear to me that we have a very strong chance that children can indeed learn to just say ‘You Bet’ rather than using a swear word. If you would like to read our Research Whitepaper ‘Foundation for WePlaySmart™ by Hatch®: Supporting Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood Education’, please click here.