Inappropriate Touching

Every teacher knows that when children want to tell you something, they will get your attention any way possible, without regard to where they touch you. This interactive method method teaches the child how to get you attention by your example.

Children will forever want to get the attention of adults by touching them. Touching is the most positive and sure way to get an adult to direct their attention to the child. The problem is that the children have no concept of where it is appropriate to touch the adult, and we can't teach them why there are off-limits places. Perhaps we can eliminate the problem by encouraging the child to touch, but to target a specific location. Many children are excited about new things that are similar to those that an adult has. We can use this to our advantage.

If we wear a watch, and keep a few toy watches around, we can ensure that everyone in the classroom is wearing a target. We would place the toy watch on the child's wrist and explain that we will use it to get their attention. We can even re-enforce this method by returning the touch to their watch when they touch ours. Once we start using this technique, most children will actually want more attention in order to "play" with their new toy. After a while the wrist can become the focus by occasionally "forgetting" to wear the watch. Once the habit is developed, and the child gets overly excited and forgets the target, we would give them the wrist to touch when they make a mistake, and before we respond to the touch.

I hope that you have found my idea interesting. I am always looking for additional methods, information and resources that are useful in education, so if you know of any that I don't have links to, let me know about them. If you have a helpful tip that you would like to share, but don't have a web site, send it to me, and if I publish it, I'll include your e-mail address with it so you can get feedback. Have a great day!

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