Helping Students Understand Self Control

It's a character trait that many adults don't have. Self-control is something that children often don't have and don't know what it is. Is this a trait that you can teach your students? Is it possible to increase the amount of self-control a student has? Here are a few ideas to help you.

Begin the year strong. If you want your students to have self-control you have to start the school year off strong. Develop strong relationships with students. Let them know that you care about them and also that you want them to do well. Establish your classroom procedures from the get-go. Give students examples of what is expectable behavior and what is not expectable.

Have a firm set of rules and consequences. I think every teacher should post their classroom rules early in the year. Have a firm set of rules and a firm set of consequences for those rules. Make sure student understand what these consequences are. If you want to teach self-control, students have to understand what will happen if they don't have self-control.

Remind students when they are and are not showing self-control. I've heard of teachers actually looking at students and saying "self-control" when they are doing something that shows they are not showing self-control. I really like this idea because the student knows immediately they are not behaving appropriately and that they are not showing self control. Other ideas might include giving a student a 'time-out' when their behavior is not appropriate. I like the concept of having them write during the timeout. You could create a paper that has them think about why you have but them in time out. Questions like, "What did I do to get put in time out?, or What could I have done differently to avoid this situation?, are great question that help a child to focus on self-control.

When dealing with self-control their is always the issue of ADD and ADHD. These conditions should be handled delicately. It will be hard for a student to show self-control if they have not properly dealt with this problem weather through medication or some other means. On the flip side, there are a number of students and parents for that matter, who use such conditions as an excuse to warrant bad behavior. Self-control mean you have control over your self. While a student may have one of the above mentioned conditions it is not an excuse for total disruptive behavior.

Ultimately self-control is a constant struggle. Working to teach students rules and procedures and having constant reminders when students are not showing self control will help you with this battle.