Presenting Behavior:
Please describe the behavior:
Bragging with peers
How old is the student?
Early Elementary
Possible Interventions:
It's hard to reason with younger students about abstract social concepts like bragging. This is could very likely be a modeled/learned behavior. With young student's I've dealt with that brag, I've used various strategies. Some work some do not, depending on the child. Here are some ideas:
Frequently praise the student when the student says something nice about another student rather than about them self. This could be done informally or you could make this a structured reward system, where you reward the student with stickers or stars or something. These stickers add up and eventually earn the student some kind of reward. You would need to determine what the student likes so you have a good reward they will want to work toward. And always be sure to thoroughly explain and practice the system with the student before implementing it.
Another idea is to teach the student to say one nice thing to others for every one comment they say about them self. Again, this could be done more informally or put into a structured reward system/behavior plan. Be sure to explain and practice it with the student before going forward with it.
If you do not want to implement a structured reward system and behavior plan, you could teach a brief lesson to all the kids about saying nice things to others and then really praising and giving a lot of attention to any child for doing this while ignoring those that brag. Come up with a one sentence script the staff will use when the child brags, and teach this one sentence statement to the other kids to use with one another. Hopefully, they will use it with the particular student who frequently brags.
You could incorporate the mini lesson above about saying nice things and not bragging into the class rules. Because the student brags, it may be possible the student is competitive. If the student is indeed competitive, you could take this idea, about making it a class rule, and set up a whole class competitive reward system where all students compete on a chart to be the one with the most stars for saying nice things to others without bragging. At the end of each day, or each week, or whatever span of time you decide, the winner on the chart gets a reward and some kind of praise and attention from the whole class. For example, the winner gets a couple cookies and the class says "hip, hip, hooray for Johnny!" several times.
