Incredible Years Coaching Children During Play€¦ · ©The Incredible Years® Prompting and Labeling The adult prompts a child to use a skill and then label the skill when the child

©The Incredible Years®

Incredible Years®

Coaching Children During Play


Coaching: One Adult and One Child

Individual coaching with one child

Strengthens the adult-child relationship

Supports emerging social and emotion-regulation skills

Adult can control the response to the child’s behavior

Adult can model appropriate responses

Adult can prompt child to try a behavior

Adult can ignore or redirect inappropriate child responses

Adult can give more attention to positive behaviors

Adult can patiently support many new

learning trials


Adult coaching one child


Coaching: More Than One Child

IY Programs promote social interactions with more than one child:

Child Programs: therapists coach groups of students

Parent Programs: parents are taught to coach siblings

Teacher Programs: teachers are taught to coach peers

Coaching with peers and siblings helps to:

Generalize new skills to real-life situations

Provide children with a scaffolded setting to practice new skills

Support children to regulate emotions

and problem solve when conflict arises

Develop friendships and positive

relationships


Modeling and Labeling

The adult models and labels a skill for the children

Adult shares a block with a child and labels: “I’ll share with you.”

Adult asks child to help and labels: “I’m going to ask for help—

will you help me put this on top?”

Adult waits for a turn and labels: “I’d like to help build, but I’m

going to wait till you have each had a turn.”

Most adults model cooperative skills when they play with

children. Adding the descriptive label highlights

for the children which skill is being used.


Adult models and labels skill


Prompting and Labeling

The adult prompts a child to use a skill and then label the skill

when the child uses it

Adult prompts: “You can say: ’Can I have a turn?’”

Child repeats: “Can I have a turn?”

Adult labels: “That was a friendly way to ask.”

Depending on the child’s developmental level, the prompt may

be general or specific:

General: “You can ask for a turn.”

Specific: “You can say: ’Can I have a turn when you are

done?’"


Adult prompts and labels skill


Positive Forecasting

The adult watches children interact, describes positive behaviors,

and predicts that children will be able to try a more difficult skill:

Descriptive commenting: "You just asked really nicely for a turn with

that dinosaur.”

Positive Forecasting/Predicting: “She’s still playing with it. I think

you’re going to be able to wait for her to give you a turn.”

Positive Forecasting/Predicting: “I bet that Maria will share it with

you in a few minutes. I see you are still waiting!”


Using positive forecasting


The Attention Principle

If one child is having more difficulty, the adult may strategically give

attention to the child who is more cooperative:

One child won’t share, adult says to the other child: “you are being

so patient, waiting for a turn!”

One child takes toy from other child, adult says to other child: “I

can see you didn’t like that, but you are staying so calm.”

One child teases another child, adult says to victim: “I’m sorry. I

think that hurt your feelings. You can tell her that you didn’t like that.”

This strategy gives more attention to the

“victim” to help build coping skills.


The attention principle


Coaching in the Midst of Conflict

If conflict arises, adult may label emotions, provide coping statements,

use differential attention, prompt, problem-solve, or redirect:

Label Emotion: “I see that you are really frustrated. Can you take a deep

breath to calm down?”

State the problem: “I see that you both want this toy.”

Prompt: “Can you tell her that she can have it when you are done?”

Positive Forecasting: “She will share it when she’s done. I wonder if you

can play with a different toy while you wait?”

Label and Praise: “Oh wow! That was a great solution. You wanted that,

but you found a different toy.”

If either child is too upset to be able to respond to coaching, then adults

should stop coaching and help the children calm down

in separate spaces. Adults need to stay calm too!


Problem solving

in the midst of conflict


Coaching Skills

Describe—descriptive commenting

Model

Label Social Behaviors or Feelings

Prompt

Positive Forecasting

Ignore

Redirect

Documents

Incredible Years Coaching Children During Play€¦ · ©The Incredible Years® Prompting and Labeling The adult prompts a child to use a skill and then label the skill when the child