Fostering Independence

Kindergarten is a time for fostering independence. For a lot of students, it is the first time they are learning and growing outside of their home environment. Learning independence is not an easy task for most 4 and 5 year olds and is a daily skill to be worked on in the classroom. 

I once had a 4 year old student that really struggled with indepence. Sometimes that struggle showed itself in loudly crying for a long time when her parents dropped her off. At other times it showed in her resistance to participate in activities independently like coloring a letter page without a teacher helping her color, even though she is developmentally capable of coloring it by herself. Almost every day it was a struggle to get her to feed herself at lunch time. 

This student is an only child with the blessing of living with both parents as well as both grandmas. At home, she was used to having little independence. 

This behavior affects this student by hindering developmental milestones in several areas. 

Image taken from the CDC.gov website 

For example, we can not accurately assess if the student is reaching important milestones for her age such as holding a pencil or crayon correctly, or drawing a person with three or more body parts if she refuses to try on her own. She will also be stunted in her communication and Social/emotional development if she is in a state of distress when asked to do something independently. 

This challenging behavior also affects the other students in the classroom when she is disrupting the class with loud crying, or is demanding extra attention to do simple tasks, which takes away attention from the teacher for other students in the class. 

So, how can we address these behaviors? Through the lens of the Behaviorism Theory of John Watson, we can create the environment of the classroom to help improve these behavioral challenges. 

Before the challenges even begin, we can set up our classrooms to foster independence by setting the supplies the children will need to learn in reachable areas, as well as giving them comfortable seating and work spaces. Even when it’s time to eat lunch we can make sure they have the proper seating arrangements and utensils to serve and feed themselves in a fun way! 

Image taken from Inspiremontessori.ca

We can create a calm down corner where students who are worked up from being dropped off at school can take some time to self-regulate. Having stuffed animals and calming toys could be an incentive for students to use this space to calm down. 

A consequence would be to not get the privilege of calming down in the calm down corner, but instead being removed from the activities in the classroom so the rest of the class is not affected by the crying. 

Check out some calm down corner tips at littlelifelonglearners.com

As far as helping this particular student grow, it's important to set goals for the student and communicate these goals with the family and get them on board with it too. The goals should have an action plan to work up to the desired independent behavior. For example, students will color independently for 5 minutes each day for the first week, then work it up to 10 minutes the next week. The student will work on retrieving her own shoes to put them on the first week, and by the second week they are putting their own shoes on. The student will spend 10 minutes in the calm down corner during drop-off time and work down to 5 minutes the following week.  The student will feed themselves 5 bites of their lunch each day for a week and then work up to ten bites the following week. 

At the beginning of this behavior intervention, a meeting should be held with all of the family members in this particular instance where the girl is in the care of both grandmas a lot of the time. This goal and plan will need to not only be agreed upon and communicated with the family but the family will also need to be trained in how to foster independence at home as well. Sending an article link via email or printing off a list of helpful tips can be a helpful thing for family members to reference. There needs to be consistency at home as well as at school in order for positive behavior changes to be made. 

With time, goals, and consistency the crucial skill of independence can be successfully fostered.