Every parent struggles when sending their child off to school. When you go from playing with them every day to not seeing them for several hours, it can be emotionally overwhelming. Now things are more difficult than ever before. With rising rates of violence and school shootings throughout the country, it’s hard to keep your mind at ease when your child is at school.

When choosing a preschool for your child, you should always ask about classroom violence. What is their policy? Do they allow violent play or toys? Do they understand how violent toys or games can affect young children? Do they make every effort to keep your child safe and secure throughout the day?

Home Away From Home Academy takes on a strict no violence policy in our classrooms. Our philosophies are founded in The Visone Method:

“For the children growing up in this new world, the reality is that violent language and behavior surrounds them. The ideal would be to change society so that our precious young children do not face the stresses of violence. However, this is not an easy task to accomplish. So where do we begin? We must let children know this is not how the world should be or needs to be. We must teach children how to resolve conflict and show them that there are alternative to violence, fighting and war.”

As early education professionals, we believe in three key techniques for creating a violent-free preschool environment.

Killing is Never a Game

With so much violence in the world, it’s hard to keep children from it. But at Home Away From Home Academy, we strive to make our classrooms a peaceful place. We use toys in many of our lessons to teach children and help them grow. However, through use of The Visone Method, Home Away From Home Academy has adopted a strategy to avoid all violent toys and games in our classrooms. We don’t view any type of violence as a game.

We believe that allowing children to play violent games will not help them learn and grow. If given the opportunity, they will start to normalize violence. Something as simple as pretend gun play could skew a child’s view on violence. Pretend play and role-playing is used to help our students grow and understand new skills. Before allowing violent play in your classroom, ask yourself this question: What kind of adults will children become if they think guns are a toy?

Creating Planet Peace

It’s not enough to just avoid violent play in the classroom. You must create an environment where children feel safe and secure. If children do not feel safe, they will become stressed and nervous in the classroom. Being under this pressure will damage their ability to learn. In order to create the optimal learning space, children need to be happy, feel safe and be taken care of. A secure environment will encourage positivity, respect and learning.

Managing Conflict

Teaching children to resolve conflict will help them in all aspects of their life. They will learn to use their words and state their feelings to discuss a conflict instead of using violence or harmful language. They will learn that conflict can and should be resolved in a peaceful manner. A Visone Method teacher will talk to children respectful and make them feel safe. This will put children’s fear at ease so they are able to communicate their feelings. Through this process, children will learn to become peacemakers, be respectful to others and resolve conflict without violence.

Keeping children from violence is difficult to do. However, teaching them how to live in a world with violence is something we have control over. Classroom violence should be avoided at all cost to keep children safe. Use these tactics and other strategies from The Visone Method to help your child grow and learn to their fullest potential. Home Away From Home Academy is a private preschool located in Aberdeen, New Jersey. We teach children from 3 months to 7 years old in a violent-free environment. To learn more or to schedule a tour, give us a call.