While young children are perceived to be cute, adorable angels full of energy and enthusiasm, childcare professionals also deal with unruly, difficult, sometimes aggressive children. These young children may be either physically or relationally aggressive towards their peers, teachers, or even themselves.
While most early childhood educators have the right skills and knowledge, it can still sometimes be overwhelming especially when these particularly aggressive children target them specifically.

Two Types of Aggressive Behavior

Research has found out that most preschool teachers describe aggressive behavior of young children as damaging. It may involve physical aggression like kicking, biting, punching, or throwing objects. Meanwhile, relational aggression or social bullying is performed through using hurtful words, and social pressure against their peers.

Physical aggression

While young children may be small, the brute force they have can be surprisingly strong enough to cause bruises, scratches, and particularly painful bite marks. While some of these may be the result of overzealous display of affection, some can also be the result of unprovoked aggressive behavior.
When this happens, it is important for the childcare worker to document the incident and indicate the strategies to alleviate the situation. This gives the aggrieved party sufficient evidence if and when the behavior continues, or escalates to more aggressive behavior despite strategies done to deal with the behavior.

Relational aggression

This form of aggressive behavior is usually done more by girls trying to exert control over their peers. Instead of throwing punches, they use their well-developed language skills to achieve their aim.
For example, they threaten not to be their peer’s friend or playmate anymore if a certain action is or isn’t done.
Sometimes, relational aggression can also be used by a child to enforce the rules everyone is following.

4 Ways to Prevent or Redirect Aggressions from a Child

Whether it is a childcare worker, teacher, staff or other adults or a child’s peer who is the target of aggressive behavior, there are strategies you can do to prevent, redirect or address the aggression that will help the child learn how to behave instead of resorting to aggression.

Talk about how it affects you or the subject of their aggressive behavior.

Children are not inherently malicious when they do these aggressive behaviors. Most of the time, they simply are yet to learn that the behavior is displeasing or damaging to others. While you are not to allow them to continue doing the aggressive behavior, you can tell them how it makes you feel or how the subject may feel. Young children may seem selfish at first but it is simply their instinct of self-preservation which leads them into aggressive behavior. Since they are still developing mentally, they would need more reminders in order to reinforce how they should act.

Understand their triggers.

Unless they lash out of the blue, most of the time they resorted to committing an aggressive behavior because of a trigger. Maybe they wanted to play with a toy another child is playing with or maybe they simply want to be noticed more by the teacher so they push a peer away.
Whatever the reason, you as the adult in the situation must be able to track children’s triggers, and put the aggressive behavior into context. This way, you can limit or prevent certain situations from happening that act as a trigger for young children to resort to aggressive behavior.

Help them be more cooperative through pro-social games.

Pro-social games teach young children to get along with their peers. Studies show that children are more likely to play and share even with peers who they did not play with after playing a pro-social game rather than after playing a competitive game.
So to foster more cooperation and encourage children to get along with their peers, prioritize doing pro-social games such as turn-taking games, name games, “Simon Says” and “Red light, green light”.

Make sure the child is not hungry, tired or sleepy.

We all become a little bit more grumpier when our energies are low but are still expected to perform. Same with young children who seem to have boundless energy, and more so since their emotional regulation is not yet fine-tuned. Check whether the child needs a quick rest, a short nap, or maybe a quick snack. A well-rested child will be in a better mood and temperament, and less likely to act out in an aggressive manner to get what he/she wants quickly.

If the strategies above still fail to help you redirect or lessen aggressive behavior, make sure to do this.

Document instances of aggressive behavior, the context in which it happened and strategies you did to address the aggression.

While it is rare to have a young child act out aggressively and unprovoked, it will help you to document these rare instances of aggression and have an account of how it happened. It will help everyone involved–from parents, to your director, and other authorities who are more well-trained to assess and treat these behavioral problems.
While it might not be in your capacity to fix the child’s aggressive behavior, documentation certainly helps in providing experts necessary information about the child’s history of aggression.

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