Baby Sitting or Early Childhood Education

These days babysitting has evolved into a new field called early childhood education. This change involves learning a new set of behaviors by the adults as they try to interact with the child in the daycare center. It involves becoming a role model for the children to guide their behaviors. These certificates and diplomas are being taught in various vocation-based colleges and jobs are certainly guaranteed given the high turnover rate of such jobs.

This job is both rewarding and challenging. It certainly demands a lot of energy on the early childhood educator’s part but love for children keeps them going and many attachments are formed on both sides. If done right, it is a solution where everyone benefits on both sides.

Unlike babysitters who do not receive any formal education about children, early childhood educators learn from famous early childhood theorists like Piaget and Vygotsky about the four stages of development as well as cognitive development and thus learn what to expect from children when working with them. Educators learn what are age appropriate behaviors, how children learn and the ages and stages of learning. The early childhood educator learns to recognize the root causes behind the child’s challenging behaviours, (an especially important and useful theory about mistaken goals developed by the famous theorist Rudolf Dreikurs), and learns to tackle them using the right tactics.

· Thus, if the child’s goal is undue attention to get special service the educator knows that the reason behind this behavior is the child’s mistaken belief is that he or she counts only when being noticed or catered to all the time by an adult. What the child really needs is to be redirected in a useful task. (From: https://www.positivediscipline.com/) ·

Or if the child is being bossy and not listening to others the educator knows that this behavior is the child’s way of finding a sense of belonging but what the child really needs is to be given choices and be allowed to help, in other words, to be redirected to positive power.(From: https://www.positivediscipline.com/).

If the child’s goal is to seek revenge to get even, the educator knows that this means the child thinks that he or she can’t be liked or loved and is hurting. The educator then shares the child’s feelings and helps the child. (From: https://www.positivediscipline.com/)

If the child feels inadequate and wants to be left alone the educator knows that the reason behind this behaviour is that the child feels helpless and unable to do something right. But what the child really needs is for the adult to have faith in the child’s ability to learn, however slowly. So, the educator responds by breaking the task into small steps to make it easier until the child experiences success.(From: https://www.positivediscipline.com/)

In short, knowing the child well and what they need makes the educator’s task easier and they can satisfy the small day to day concerns as they arise or even before they arise by addressing each concern promptly and thereby achieve excellence in their field.

Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash

References:http://www.positivediscipline.com