section 6
How does my baby behave?
1 year
35 meeting
Let’s review:
Once the meeting starts, welcome everyone and ask the participants: • Who can help us remember what we talked about in our last meeting? • Who was able to do the activity at home that we asked you to do at the end of the meeting? How did it go? • Does anyone have questions or concerns after doing the activity?
What are we going to learn? We are going to learn the behavior characteristics of a one-year-old baby and the right way to react to them.
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT! We are going to look at some pictures, so we can talk about what we all know about this topic. How do you think you should respond when a young child gets angry?
Why do you think a one-year old child gets angry? What do you do when a child gets really angry?
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Activity:
“Drawing caresses” We are going to learn the behavior characteristics of a one-year-old baby and the right way to react to them.
What we’ll need: • Flipchart paper • Markers • Boxes of crayons
WHAT WE’LL DO: • Before the meeting draw an outline of a oneyear-old baby on a flipchart and tape it to the wall. • Divide the group into 3 smaller groups and give each participant a piece of paper from the flipchart, and ask each person to draw an outline of a baby and to give the baby a name. Ask each person to think of something that they can share with the group about how a one-year-old baby behaves, what things they do. • Then ask the participants to color their pictures with pleasing colors (pass out boxes of crayons among the groups). Then have the participants take the time to color the drawing of the baby, using both hands and saying caring, loving things. When participants are doing this put some nice, soothing music on and give the group five minutes for this part of the activity. • Now ask participants to choose harsh, disagreeable colors (pass the crayons out among the group) and start to treat the drawing of the baby badly drawing on them with these colors and saying mean words. • After a few minutes reunite the group and ask everyone to breath deeply and sit calmly for a moment, because the last part of the exercise is emotionally intense and hard. Then reflect on these questions together: • How do you think babies feels when we treat them kindly and are caring? • How do you think babies feels when we treat them badly? • How do you think we should respond to things our children do that make us mad? • Finish up by asking participants to share a few ways to calm down that have worked for them (breathing slowly, singing softly, thinking of a happy moment, etc.)
OTHER SUGGESTIONS: This exercise can bring up some hard emotions for some participants about bad experiences they had in childhood or feelings of guilt. Be prepared to respond to these emotions calmly, and it might be wise to bring some one else to help give support as you conduct the meeting. It is important that parents are aware that their attitudes, words and treatment around the baby’s behavior have a big impact on the child’s development.
Facilitator’s Manual
39 You can mention a few characteristics of a one-year-old child that might not have come up in the discussion and that you should have in mind: • They are in constant motion and don’t see danger so they need the supervision of an adult. • They are very curious – they want to touch everything. • They love to imitate gestures, sounds and will start to say their first words. • They like to touch the different parts of their body, to get to know it. • They are very imaginative, making a box into a car or a broom into a horse. • Adults can take time to forgive their parents if they where mistreated or forgive themselves for mistreating their children.
Summing up:
What did we learn today? Now, we’ll review what we discussed today. • How do you feel after this meeting? Why? • What are the two most important things you’ve learned today? • What will you do differently based on what you learned during the meeting? • What did you like the most? Are there things you didn’t like? • Do you have any remaining concerns or questions about what we talked about? To finish: what would you recommend to improve today’s meeting when we do it again with another group. (Explain that replying this question will help the meeting be even better in the future for parents with small children.)
To do at home:
Tell mothers to visit a neighbor that also has a one-year and share about your experiences.
Basic information for the facilitator: Learning more about the behavior of a one-year old baby: 1- One-year-olds are largely exploring their environments during their awake time. They spend a lot of time experimenting with objects they pick up. This experimenting includes throwing objects/toys indiscriminately which can sometimes be dangerous and be interpreted as misbehavior. Caregivers need to remember that one-year-olds are very curious about their environment and this is natural - to want to explore and experiment. It’s also a way for the child to get attention from their parents or caregivers.
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2- One-year olds can also take a liking to biting other children or people and this can be distressing for everyone. This behavior happens because one-year-olds are in an oral stage of development. Other unsociable behavior includes crying, not listening, and having tantrums.
3- Handling behavior: • Throwing objects: when throwing objects caregivers can calmly tell the baby “No, gentle” and touch their arm or hand softly then show them what to do with the object in hand - move the truck back and forth, or stack the blocks. In order for this to work, it has to be done the same way each time. This technique usually takes about 2 weeks of practicing before you see any results. Just remember to be patient each and every time, and remember that he doesn’t know that he is doing something “wrong”, but is just testing out “action and reaction”….to him it’s just play. At this age it is difficult to enforce “time out”, where the child is taken away from the toys and forced to sit alone. This method of controlling behavior does not mean anything to the baby. Another method of handling dangerous throwing of objects is to pack away all the small hard objects (cars, blocks) and leave the baby with the soft objects for a few months until he learns to throw less. When the baby plays with objects without throwing, reinforce the positive behavior by praising him. • Biting during the oral stage of development is another form of experimentation to see what reactions they get. They do not understand they are causing pain and should not be punished. Again they should be told calmly “No, that hurts” and given something more appropriate to chew or play with. Caregivers should not bite the baby in return to “teach him a lesson” as this will simply reinforce the idea of biting people and causes unnecessary pain for the baby and stress for the parent. If you are holding him tell him “No” and put him on the floor and give him something else to play with. If he bites a sibling remove him from the situation and give him something else to play with. • Not listening: babies under 2 years old have limited understanding of the language used around them so should not be expected to listen to instructions very often. Telling a baby to stop doing something and expecting him to obey is unreasonable most of the time. It is up to the caregiver to protect the baby from dangerous situations such as hot stoves, poisons, and sharp knives, and not expect him to understand the danger. • Crying is normal for babies as they cannot express their feelings or desires well. Crying is a way babies express themselves and caregivers need to learn to respond to the different cries which usually indicate some need such as sleep, food, diaper change, pain, boredom or wanting to play with some different objects. Tantrums are also normal at this age as the baby can get very frustrated and has not learned to express himself any other way. Some babies are more prone to tantrums than others and are usually not easily consoled for some time. The caregiver needs to allow the baby to cry for a while, and then help comfort him until the tantrum is over, however the baby should be supervised at all times and comforted to help the process of settling down. Shouting and getting angry with babies is pointless as babies generally do not know they are misbehaving.
Parents or caregivers need to obtain knowledge about how a child’s understanding of the world develops and find positive ways to deal with baby’s behavior.
Facilitator’s Manual