A Guidance Guide for Early Childhood Leaders: Strengthening Relationships with Children, Families, and Colleagues - Paperback

Professional Resource for Early Childhood Leadership and Child Guidance

In this follow-up to Guidance for Every Child, author Dan Gartrell, EdD, expands on the advice broached in that book--that children need guidance rather than discipline. Guidance is teaching for healthy emotional and social development. On a day-to-day basis as conflicts occur, guidance is teaching children to learn from their mistakes, rather than punishing them for the mistakes they make; helping children learn to solve their problems, rather than punishing children for having problems they cannot solve.

Building Secure Relationships Through Guidance

In A Guidance Guide for Early Childhood Leaders, Dan explores secure relationships as the foundation for guidance and how to build them with children, families, and colleagues. He gives examples of how children's mistaken behavior (not misbehavior) can play out in the classroom and provides strategies on how early childhood professionals can help others to gain the emotional health they need to be socially responsive, and then support the social skills they need to build relationships and solve problems cooperatively.

Practical Strategies for Early Childhood Professionals

This professional resource addresses the real-world challenges faced by childcare directors, preschool administrators, and early childhood educators. The book provides actionable strategies for implementing guidance-based approaches in educational settings, focusing on teaching children to solve problems cooperatively rather than punishing mistakes. Early childhood leaders will find concrete examples of classroom situations and evidence-based responses that promote healthy emotional development.

Key Topics Covered

This guidance resource covers essential leadership skills for early childhood professionals, including strategies for building secure relationships with children and families, understanding mistaken behavior versus misbehavior, implementing guidance-based classroom management, supporting social-emotional learning, and developing cooperative problem-solving skills in young children. Directors and administrators will find practical approaches for training staff in guidance principles and creating supportive learning environments.

About Dan Gartrell, EdD - The Guidance Guy

Known as The Guidance Guy, Dan Gartrell has studied and written about the topics of child guidance and liberation teaching for the past 50 years. He received his master's degree from Bemidji State University and his EdD from the University of North Dakota. For many years, he was the director of the child development training program and a professor of early childhood and foundations education at Bemidji State University, where he is now professor emeritus. Gartrell is the author of four books, including Guidance for Every Child and was the principal author of the "Guidance Matters" column in NAEYC's Young Children for many years.