I believe that challenging behaviours occur when a student finds themselves in a situation where they do not have the necessary navigation skills.
This lack of developed skills creates a feeling of anxiety in those students which in turn sends them into “fight or flight” mode.
As educators we need to build our understanding of why challenging behaviours take place and how we can avoid them in the future. Understanding the factors behind the behaviour, and the value of that behaviour to the student will create a mutual respect for the need for change.
Early intervention is well established as key to successful outcomes and as such early childhood is a critical window for facilitating the learning of necessary life skills which Dr. Mona Delahooke describes as ”a huge window of opportunity”. Showing respect for our students and their needs from an early age will ensure that we can build positive relationships. These relationships will promote the opportunity to support students as they develop their “sense of self” and their understanding of the world that they live in.
My passion for understanding behaviour has led to me advocating for all adults working with children to view challenging behaviour from a different perspective. I strongly believe that if we strive to celebrate individual differences within our environments we can promote empathy and understanding of challenging behaviour. However, if we always judge challenging behaviour as “Bad” then we deny ourselves and our students the opportunity to affect change. My perspective can be illustrated through the words of Dr. Wayne Dyer from his book on the power of intention “Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”
Research based on the relationship between the brain and social development was published as “From neurons to neighbourhoods: The science of early childhood development” where the findings highlight that “the growth of self-regulation is a cornerstone of early childhood development that cuts across all domains of behaviour”. This supports the understanding that implementing behaviour plans which focus on changing the behaviour from challenging to acceptable do not acknowledge the impact on the child’s emotional regulation. The research also confirmed that ”the traditional “nature versus nurture” debate is simplistic and scientifically obsolete” illustrating our need to look at challenging behaviour from a different perspective.
According to Dr. Mona Delhooke “most interventions today focus on increased socialisation, communication and school behaviour” This doesn’t address the impact of stress. Mona goes on to claim that if educators do not address stress then it will be impossible to achieve the student goals of increased socialisation, communication or behaviour. Highlighting the need to promote the implementation of developmental and relationship approaches to behaviour which reinforces my opinion that “it’s all about the relationship”.
Hope this makes you stop and think.
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