Early years: Difficulty in making and maintaining healthy relationships
Suggested strategies and links.
Strategies and approaches:
- 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 child can maintain a relationship with (adults only, younger children). Try and understand the reasons for this and use this information to build the child’s capacity to maintain relationships.
- Use and model a conflict resolution approach to help manage upsets and disagreements. Use restorative approaches when relationships break down.
- Try differentiated opportunities for social and emotional development e.g. buddy system/paired learning activities/scaffolding group work.
- Use a key person to rehearse and replay more appropriate social communication methods, provide opportunities to practice the social communication skills.
Links