 How can we learn from the moment when things go really badly wrong? When we are caring for or working with children with a diverse range of needs there are always going to be moments when it all goes to pot and you feel that you haven't done the right things and yeah things have escalated or whatever and we can do two things there we can beat ourselves up about it or thanks buddy or we can consider what can we learn from that and I know that's really easy for me to say in my calm colour coordinated shed and perhaps you're dealing with the day to day of this and it's really really tough but I'm going to give you a really simple strategy for trying to maybe get to the crux of what's gone wrong in those moments to help you understand a bit more and what you'll find is if you begin to become quite inquisitive about these moments when things go wrong and that sometimes they're the moments that you learn the most from actually the the days when the kids are sort of plain sailing a little bit and kind of coasting we don't necessarily learn a huge amount about how to support them on those days but if we're willing to stop and learn from the moments when this happens we can often learn quite a lot and quite quickly but it's really you know it's hard we have to take a step back and be our best selves in order to do that now the approach that I like to use is called the five wise approach it's called the Toyota approach but I like to call it the toddler approach because it's like a toddler you know when you're working with a little kid or supporting a little kid then all they ever want to know is why why why why why why why why it's just like that it really is that simple now it's based on the idea that Toyota discovered some years ago that any manufacturing problem if you just kept asking the question why you would get to the nub of the issue and often there would be a really simple answer that you wouldn't have thought to have got to if you hadn't have just kept asking the question why so I just run through an example here I'll pop it up on the screen by some magic so we start off with in the Toyota factory or manufacturing cars the robot has stopped so why why did the robot stop the circuits overloaded causing a fuse to blow why is the circuit overloaded there was insufficient lubrication on the bearings so they locked up why was there insufficient lubrication on the bearings the oil pump on the robot is not circulating sufficient oil why is the pump not circulating sufficient oil the pump intake is clogged with metal shavings why is the intake clogged with metal shavings because there is no filter on the pump so you go through all these why's and in the case of the Toyota factory we get to this really really simple answer that the filter needs to be placed on the pump but we've started off with a broken robot and there's no way that you would have guessed that you know from that that the problem was with a small filter but because we keep asking the question why we get to this really quite simple and relatively fixable answer and this kind of can happen when we're working with kids too when we keep asking the question why what we'll often find is that we get different answers than the ones we might have assumed so that big angry outburst that you've seen from this child at the end of the day and you find yourself automatically saying what was happening in the environment at that time who were they with what triggered this actually when we keep asking the question why sometimes we'll find out this wasn't about anything that was happening right now this was a this child was ready to boil over because at break time they got really overwhelmed at lunchtime they had an argument after lunch they didn't understand what was happening in class and you know that there were lots and lots of things that led up to this the other thing is that we can be quite as humans we're kind of programmed to try and figure out what's going on all the time and we are quite good at jumping to assumptions but we're not always good at jumping to the right assumptions so again be asking these questions why be flexible in your learning and where you can do this at a time of calm with the child themselves and actually instead of being punitive about whatever you saw whatever this kind of maybe it was an outburst or aggression or something like that instead be genuinely inquisitive I really want to understand more about it because actually we'd like to be able to support you to try and prevent this happening which would be better for you too really wouldn't it and then by asking those questions why at a time of calm genuinely inquisitively without judgment without anger can sometimes help us to understand a bit more now you'll find over time you get better at doing it and that if you do it with the same kids again and again they get better at responding to this too so give it a go see how it goes and if you find yourself at a loss you find that something's happened something's gone wrong and you don't know what the reason was remember just keep asking why however quick caveat don't do this at the moment it's just happened at that moment we're not in a good position to be asking the question why probably the child is in a heightened state of anxiety or anger and perhaps so are we instead wait until a time of calm and look back reflect on it and see what you can learn from that moment it's really important to remember it's difficult it's really difficult working with some kinds of children but actually we can learn a lot from them but only if we're willing to do so and we keep on asking questions and we're inquisitive in our approach good luck i hope this was helpful please subscribe and do leave comments if you have any other ideas on this or experience of doing it and also let me know if there were any other kind of videos you would really like me to record and tune back in on tuesdays and fridays for new videos see you soon bye and bye from buddy say bye bye