Early years: Difficulty in making and maintaining healthy relationships

• Use small group/nurture group activities to support Personal Social and Emotional development.
• Model appropriate emotional responses to disagreements or difficulties with e.g. sharing/turn taking.
• Think about who the children can maintain a relationship with (adults only, younger children). Try and understand the reasons for this and use this information to build the children’s capacity to maintain relationships.
• Use and model the Conflict Resolution approach to help manage upsets and disagreements
• Try differentiated opportunities for social and emotional development e.g. buddy system/paired learning activities/scaffolding group work.
• Use restorative approaches when relationships break down.
• Use a key person to rehearse and replay more appropriate social communication methods, provide opportunities to practice the social communication skill being learned in class

Links

Early Years in Mind – Aggression

Early Years In Mind – Sharing

Early Years In Mind – Play

Family Assist – dealing with childhood fights and squabbles

Last updated 30 November 2020