Triggers

Recently I had a child care provider call me regarding a 4 year-old who was crying. The little girl cried nearly every day and would literally cry for hours. At the time of the call, the crying behavior had been going on for more than a week and the provider was feeling exasperated and near to the end of her "rope". She had tried comforting the child, ignoring the behavior. . . nothing seemed to work. To address this little girl's crying, it was important to examine what factors may be triggering or contributing to her unhappy state of affairs.

Triggers are actions or events that initiate a behavioral response. We can usually identify these triggers through careful observation, recognizing the relationship between an event and children's corresponding behavior. Once identified, we can work to eliminate or orchestrate the triggering event to bring about a different behavioral outcome. For example, transitions from one activity to another are often difficult for young children. Recognizing that transitions often trigger oppositional behavior, we can try to orchestrate the transition in such a way to minimize potential problems, such as; singing a transition song, dimming the lights in the room or something as simple as providing extra time for the transition to occur. However, some behaviors may appear spontaneously and without an apparent triggering event. For the little girl with the crying behavior, there didn't appear to be a trigger the provider could identify from within the childcare environment. We carefully considered possible factors that might contribute to the child's behavior, such as; peer relations, provider-child relations, schedules, routines and activities, among others. Having eliminated every possibility, it was time to consider whether events taking place outside of the child care environment may be contributing to the crying behavior.

First, let me elaborate a bit more about triggers and behavior. Children's behavior may represent an unconscious response to an event or it may result from a process that is conscious and premeditated. In either circumstance, feelings play an important role in children's behavior, as will be demonstrated with the little girl who cries.