Dr Louise Porter

Children are people too: A parent’s guide to young children’s behaviour

(2006, 4th edition, East Street Publications, Adelaide)

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This book is suited to parents whose children are aged under 8 years, and can be a useful inclusion in a centre’s parent library. It describes ways to teach young children how to behave considerately, using both preventive and interventive means. As well as offering general principles for meeting children’s emotional needs and teaching considerate behaviour, these concepts are applied to particular difficulties – such as independence issues, social problems, atypical development, and helping children cope with family challenges.

Young children’s behaviour: Practical approaches for caregivers and teachers

(2008, 3rd edition, Elsevier, Sydney)

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This text is the equivalent title to Children are people too, written for early childhood teachers and centre-based care workers. It contains many of the ideas that are recommended for parents but also discusses issues that are specific to working with groups of children, such as managing group story and sleep times, resolving disputes between playmates, programming for children with disabilities or giftedness, collaborating with parents, and developing a centre policy on discipline.

Student behaviour:Theory and practice for teachers

(2007, 3rd edition, Allen and Unwin, Sydney)

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Written for teachers, this text details the major theories of behaviour management with the aim of expanding your repertoire beyond the typical rewards-and-punishment model. It helps you to compare the various theories and ultimately design your own personal view of discipline that reflects your values and beliefs. Practical advice is included about motivating students to learn and to act considerately, for collaborating with parents and for composing a school disciplinary policy.

Gifted young children: A guide for teachers and parents

(2005, 2nd edition, Allen and Unwin, Sydney)

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This text begins by describing the various domains in which children can display giftedness, and then examines how gifted potential is transformed into talent. Part two outlines gifted children’s social and emotional needs and how teachers and parents can meet these. Section three looks at assessment and curricular adaptations for meeting the learning needs of gifted learners, those who are disadvantaged and those with disabilities. Parenting gifted children is the subject of the final chapter.

Teacher-parent collaboration: early childhood to adolescence

(2008, ACER, Melbourne)

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This text describes how teachers can collaborate with diverse parents to solve school-based difficulties. Separate chapters address collaborating with parents whose children have disabilities or chronic illnesses, giftedness, attention difficulties leading to disruptive behaviour, and bullying or aggression. Final chapters focus on families enduring adversity and whose children have been abused.

Educating young children with additional needs

(2002, Allen and Unwin, Sydney)

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This text examines how early childhood caregivers and teachers can cater for young gifted children and those with mild learning and other disabilities. It examines how to recognise atypical development in children and individualise the early childhood program accordingly. Individual chapters on gross and fine motor skills, vision and hearing impairments and language and cognitive skill development are written by specialists in each field. Social and emotional needs and guiding children’s behaviour are accorded their own chapter, along with how to collaborate with the children’s parents.

*DVD Resource*

Guiding children’s behaviour

(2008, Small Poppies International)

This live recording presents the differences between guidance and the use of controls, offers alternatives to rewards, presents methods for guiding children when their behaviour is disruptive, and answers participants’ questions on some common behavioural issues.

*DVD Resource*

Gifted children: Meeting their needs

(2008, Small Poppies International)

This live recording describes the signs of giftedness and examines how to identify intellectual giftedness. It then examines the emotional and social needs of gifted learners and how to meet these. The third section focuses on meeting the children’s learning needs, including gifted-learning disabled students, and collaboration between parents and teachers in schools. Click here to download the supporting booklet to the DVD resource.

A guidance approach to discipline: parent workbook

(2010, Small Poppies International, 158 pages)

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This workbook provides notes, activities and reflection exercises for parents, to assist them to put into practice a guidance approach to discipline. The six sections span:

• examining our beliefs about children and their behaviour
• motivating children without using rewards
• listening to children
• meeting children’s needs
• resolving conflict
• applying solutions

It is most usefully accompanied by the book Children are people too and/or the DVD Guiding children’s behaviour.

A guidance approach to discipline: practitioner workbook

(2010, Small Poppies International, 193 pages)

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This workbook provides notes, activities and reflection exercises for those working with children, to assist them to put into practice a guidance approach to discipline. In addition to the content of the parent workbook, this version includes preventing behavioural difficulties by programming for children’s needs, collaborating with parents over children’s challenging behaviour, and writing a discipline policy. It is most usefully accompanied by the book Young children’s behaviour and/or the DVD Guiding children’s behaviour.

A guidance approach to discipline: theoretical foundations

(2011, Small Poppies International, 117 pages)

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This book gives the theoretical background to a guidance approach, describing its core principles and theories that underpin these, the research evidence in support of the approach compared to rewards-and-punishment systems, and how to work with diverse families and cultures, and with families experiencing adversity.

The book is part of the kit for parent educators, although can also be useful for researchers.

Teaching parents a guidance approach: a manual for group leaders

(2008, Small Poppies International)

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This book offers a program in six modules for parent educators teaching a guidance approach to discipline in parenting groups or to individual parents. It provides activities for teaching parents the differences between guidance and control, how to acknowledge rather than reward children for their acheivements, how to listen to children and their behaviour, be assertive as a parent and cope with anger, make requests rather than demands, resolve disciplinary incidents and develop solutions for chronic problems.

Parent Educators’ kit

(2011, Small Poppies International)

This kit contains five resources that will equip those running parenting programs and supporting parents:

• Theoretical foundations
• Manual for group leaders
• Parent workbook
• Children are people too
• DVD Guiding children’s behaviour