 Hello and welcome to Pukipondas, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, how can we engage learners who lack confidence and motivation? And I'm in conversation with Rachel Thin. Hello, my name is Rachel Thin. I currently work in a special provision for SEMH needs and I'm an outreach teacher, so my role is to go into mainstream schools and support staff when children are presenting with different SEMH needs. So-called challenging behaviour, distressed behaviour, things like that, so I go into schools and try and support staff to help these children to cope and to thrive in their schools. I've taught in mainstream for about 18 years and then I moved to specialist setting and then I've been doing outreach for six years. And I'm currently writing a book called Behaviour Barriers and Beyond and yeah, that's kind of me in a nutshell. I'm also mum to two lovely girls. So you are working on the topic that everybody needs to hear about right now. So thank you so much for coming along and talking today for the podcast and I hope there'll be some practical ideas we can share and also some perceptions we can challenge. I think that there's a bit of that to be done. So our episode question, our kind of jumping off point if you like is, how can we engage learners who lack confidence and motivation? So do you want to maybe just speak to that for a little bit and get us going and see where this takes us? I think the first thing to do is kind of be curious and to wonder why they're lacking motivation and confidence. And I think the main way to do that is through adult child relationship and to form those relationships. I think that's the biggest resource in schools and it's what sometimes kind of gets missed in the day to day running of everything. Yeah, why are they not motivated? Why are they finding things difficult? And the more we can find out about what's actually challenging them the better. So is it, are they lacking a skill? Are they lacking some understanding? Is there something else going on at home? There's so many reasons aren't there, but it's that why? And once we know why then we can obviously put in steps to support them and to help motivate them more. But yeah, I think that was what struck me when you asked the question originally is like why are they lacking motivation? And then once we know why then obviously we can talk about kind of steps for each. So we're almost jumping at one point. We're trying to tackle the behavior that we're seeing whereas actually we should be working out what's the cause for the behavior in the first place. Yeah, the behavior is communicating something, isn't it? Is it communicating distress? Is it communicating anxiety? Are they lacking a skills and they need a bit more help? Do they need tasks broken down? That I think. And then once you know why then obviously the steps can be put in to help and it might be scaffolding the task, chunking it down, giving them little steps to help. If it's anxiety, putting in those little steps to get them there, easing those anxieties, things like that. So how do we find out why we're seeing this behavior? What are the mechanisms that you use for working out the answer to that question? I mean quite a lucky position I guess when I go into schools because I can just observe that one child and I can focus on that one people which in a class of 30 you don't always have the luxury of doing that I can often pick up on, you know, are they looking around the room? Are they seeking help? Are they distracted about something environmental going on? Is it something sensory? So I think if you have that luxury observing the child and talking to the child, talking to the once you've got that relationship as a teacher or an adult in school, I wonder what that was like for you. You found that so difficult and just being curious about what is going on for the child and then to help. So then if they need help with the task, we can break it down into chunks. We can put those supports in, we can give them the knowledge and the visual supports that they need. If it's something else going on, we can give them the outlet to express their feelings and to talk. And it's all those, I wonder, as Louise Bomber would say, all those I wonder scripts and wondering about the child and being tentatively curious about what's going on for them. And do you find that children are quite happy to engage with you on these kinds of questions when you ask them? You know, if you do become curious and you begin to wonder why these things are happening and why you're seeing the behavior that you're seeing, are they up for chatting about that or can this be difficult? In my role, I tend to work with the staff and give them the skills because I obviously have got no relationship with the child and I think the relationship is so, so important. So I would talk to the staff and give them the tools to do that rather than me doing it. Because I think me going in and, yeah, like you say, why would they talk to some stranger coming into school? So, yeah, I would give the staff those tools to have those conversations and then they can take it on a longer term rather than me kind of dipping in and dipping out again. So, yeah, that's my role to give the staff the tools to then carry that on. So who is the best at having these conversations with the child? Is it the teacher or a support member of staff, the parents and carers get involved? Who has these conversations and gets curious and helps to find the why? I think anyone who's got a really good relationship with the child really, ideally someone in school, yeah, support staff, the teacher, if they've got time, it's so, so important. And I say if they've got time, everyone needs to make time to build relationships and be curious about the child's needs. And I think that's the foundation that we can then build on for the learning. So, yeah, anyone who can build a relationship with the child, but mainly that kind of small team of key adults within the school would be ideal. And talk to you about some of the things that you see. So it seems like understanding why we're seeing the behavior is really important. And you've mentioned a couple of times things around skills or confidence or anxiety that might underpin why we're seeing what we're seeing. Are those the things that you're most commonly seeing and what should we be maybe looking out for? Because I think it's important that we learn to ask the question. But having some idea of what might be the motivations and the drivers here is presumably quite helpful for those adults. I think for children I support or for staff I support, it's those big behaviors that it's coming out as generally. So the so-called challenging behavior, which I would like to reframe as distressed behavior. Or overwhelmed behavior or dysregulated behavior, just something a bit more positive than challenging. But yeah, by the time I get involved, it's generally coming out in those big behaviors where things are being thrown, the people are leaving the room, the inappropriate behaviors that we see in school and more and more. That's by the time I get there. But I think we need to get in earlier, don't we? And give the teachers those skills to manage those behaviors a bit earlier and to know that the behavior is communicating something and to find out what that is. So there's a couple of things there. One I think is around really unpicking that idea around challenging behavior and what the issues are with that term and why we need to look at reframing it. And then that question of behavior is communication. So maybe if we start with the idea of challenging behavior, and that's a commonly used term and one that I'm picking up on the subtle cues that you maybe don't really like it. I think if we change the way we view the behavior and see it as communication, see it as communicating distress, it's more easy to be compassionate. It's easier to kind of have that empathy that we need when helping the children and supporting them and putting measures into, I think if you've got the relationship and you've got that empathy and the behavior automatically improves. So yeah, I think renaming and reframing how we talk about it is kind of a step in the right direction and being more positive in how we support, maybe. Yeah, so you think that we should be talking about seeing distress rather than challenging behavior. Is that right? Or are there other terms that you find helpful? Distress, sometimes it's overwhelm, sensory overwhelm, some form of emotional dysregulation, I would say. And is a compassionate and kind of kind and caring response. I completely hear what you're saying that if we see this behavior as a child who is distressed or overwhelmed that perhaps it's more obvious to us how we should respond kindly with care, with compassion, with empathy. Is that always the right response? You're talking about kids who are throwing chairs across the room and saying we need to be kind. Is that what you're saying? Is that the right response? I think we always have to be kind and empathic, don't we? Obviously in the moment it needs to stop. So I'm not saying there doesn't need to be consequences or boundaries. Obviously children need structure and boundaries, but maybe after the incident how we react, that reacting within relationship, time in rather than time out. Giving them, for an example, there was a pupil who was throwing chairs on a daily basis, the class were getting evacuated. And he was obviously taking up an awful lot of adult time. He was getting a lot of SLT time and it was taking about an hour to calm down outside on scooters, bikes, things like that. So we were looking at the need of the child and obviously he got an awful lot. He got a lot of task avoidance and he got an awful lot of adult time. We were just talking about giving what he needs but without him having to escalate the behaviors. So in the mornings we gave him some adult time with his favorite SLT member, playing games, building relationship, doing fun things, going out on the scooters with a timer. Then he went into class and the behaviors reduced because he wasn't having to escalate his behaviors to get those needs met. I don't know if that's kind of answering your question or not, but it's kind of how can we get those needs met proactively without him having to escalate or without them having to escalate to get them. Does that make any sense? It does make sense, preventing the behavior rather than simply managing it, I suppose. Understanding what's the cause and consequence here, what's in it for the child, behavior anyway and therefore how can we meet that need without the behavior kind of being a necessary part of that cycle. I think that's what I understand. Yeah, that's what, yeah. Trying to see what they're communicating by their behavior and putting that in a more appropriate way. That tends to work, but obviously in the heat of the moment, they need to be bound. I can see you're angry, but chairs are not for throwing. Yes, and when does the need of the individual child kind of stop? I guess I have a question here around, a member of staff who might have 30 children who they have a duty of care towards and you're working with one of them. When do they need to trump the needs of the other 29 and at what point do we have to say, well, we maybe need to do what's not optimal for one in order to keep the others safe or calm or engaged or what have you. How do we make those kinds of decisions? Well, we always have to keep the others safe, don't we, and engaged. And I think by looking at those behaviors and putting in a plan proactively, we were kind of the other children were at the heart of that as well, because he was taken out in the morning, he was having his needs met with the child so the class were all settled. He was out of the picture, having all his needs met with the relationship and I guess it was a sensory need, the scooting and being, you know, getting energy out. And then he was more able to come back in class more settled rather than escalating. So obviously the needs of the masses must be taken into account and all those children need to be safe, don't they? So definitely. And how much of this is the responsibility of the adults around the child? So I'm a big Paul Dix fan and when the adults change, everything changes. Absolutely. That kind of thing. But then how much of this is also about a child's understanding of self and their responsibility for themselves and you know, whether that's about self-regulation or asking for help or whatever else it might be. And then also how much of it is about the understanding and support of their peers as well. Because presumably like in this example, if the other children were able to, I don't know, recognise early warning signs or understand a bit about what was going on for this particular child, that might have a big impact for everybody involved. Yeah. And a lot of what we do is helping the child to begin to spot. So starting with co-regulation, but helping the people begin to spot those early warnings that, oh, I can see your fist of clenched and your head's gone down. I wonder if you need to go for a walk. I wonder if we can go and do some drumming in the hall or things like that. So yeah, getting them to begin to spot those early warning signs. And yeah, that's interesting. What you said about getting other children to spot them too. Yeah. I think the more we can do about emotional regulation, the better, because we don't always understand. And I think I'm still learning, even now, what, you know, take, when I've been doing this work, think, oh yeah, I've just taken a deep breath. And I didn't, I don't know if I really knew I was doing it. So the more we can kind of voice and model what we're doing to regulate and help children understand what they're doing, given those skills. Yeah. I can see your foot tapping. I wonder if you're getting a little bit frustrated. Let's go and do this and come back to it. Or let's break this task down into smaller steps for you. And spot those signs and help. It can be a whole class discussion, can't it? Ask or we do like the zones of regulation, but it's a whole class discussion of what you do with the different zones and how you can use those strategies to regulate yourself. Or allow yourself, if necessary, to get back into that zone where you're able and willing to learn. Absolutely. And do you find that with the children who, you know, from whom we are seeing sort of more, I don't want to say, challenging behavior, just, responses or whatever is our appropriate way, where we're, you know, it's more difficult to work with them. And they are finding things more difficult. Are there kind of, one of the things I'm hearing quite a bit at the moment is about children who've got perhaps undiagnosed needs in terms of special or additional need. Or where there might be some underlying trauma, for example, that's gone either unknown about or unsupported. Is that, so firstly, does that speak to your experience? Are you seeing that too? And secondly, how important is it for us to actually do that kind of job therefore of identifying, identifying, diagnosing, or do we just need to treat each child individually? We definitely need to treat each child individually. Yeah, it's not, I don't go in and label or diagnose. Obviously there's, forgetting needs met, that people have found that useful. But I think, we need to kind of, teach all children those skills and, yeah, look at where the child's coming from, look at, because they might have some, you know, something that's going on that we don't know about and we'll never find out about something that's triggering them, that they might not even know what it is that's triggering something. So I think, yeah, definitely treat all children individually. Give them those skills they need to regulate, to calm, and do this all through, it's through good relationships, good modelling. Absolutely. You're writing a book at the moment. I am. Tell me about your book. So Behaviour Barriers and Beyond, which I already love, because it is alliterative and anyone who's ever been to any of my training will know that I do this even without meaning too often. So I love the title. Tell me about the book. So the book is, it came about because, I basically thought, I'm telling people this all the time, let's write it all down. So it's basically what I do in my jobs. There's a general chapter about behaviour and reframing the behaviour, talking about general kind of behaviour management strategies, and positive behaviour management that teachers will need to implement. So yeah, strategies and at the end of each chapter, there's a strategy checklist as a quick reminder that the aim was is to get a bit for everything to all be in one place, that people that teachers and education staff can pick up really practically and run with ideas that I've found to be working in mainstream schools and specialist settings, but supporting those children very, very quickly. It doesn't take an awful lot of time to implement things like that. So Behaviour, and then the following chapters are chapters that I'm having, I deal with quite a lot. So when you talk about labelling, there is a chapter on autism, there's a chapter on PDA, ADHD, fetal alcohol, spectrum disorder, sensory processing. So the aim is for it all to be in one place for teachers to pick up very quickly and then signposting them on once they've read a particular chapter if they want to go further research. So I've kind of signposted them on as well. So yeah. How are you feeling? Is it going well? Oh, I'm absolutely loving writing it. Yeah, it's brilliant. I love it. I keep going through moments of absolute panic and what have I done? And why am I doing this? And you have very kindly agreed to write the four word for me. It's one of my greatest pressures in life when people ask me to write four words for their books. It's a thing that people do ask me more now than they used to. And I feel like it's such a privilege because this is your baby that you've poured everything into. I get the joy of being, A, one of the first people to read it, which is always my advice. I hope you like it. I'm sure I will. And B, I get to kind of help it land if that makes sense. I think that, I don't know. I don't know how much people always read four words and I find they're sometimes a bit boring, but when I write them I try to do them from the heart and to think about what is the ding that this book could have in the universe. And that's kind of my starting point. So thank you for asking me to do that. I was so excited. I did a little dance when you said you. Well, I'm excited too. You said when we were like in the the pre-podcast sort of chat, you sent me some info. You said that the writing the book caused quite a lot of self-reflection and looking back at your own kind of travels through life and stuff. I wonder if that's something that you're happy to kind of touch on and talk about. I think your own journey, if it's one that you're happy to talk about a little bit is interesting and yeah, I think probably that's what you do. Yeah, it has made me very self-reflective writing this and I think as I've learned different things I've kind of reflected on myself. I guess the biggest thing is that I was situational should we call it mute when I was at university and before. So I spent my university years absolutely terrified of talking to anyone but definitely in a seminar or in a lecture I don't think I spoke at all and I think once I got made to speak by a lecturer who asked me a question how dare he but I remember that absolute terror and my heart was pounding and my face went red and I could almost feel and I didn't know it at the time but I could always feel that my brain kind of shutting down and I could not think what to say and I was panicking then about an hour later I thought oh I should have said that but yeah, I remember just being absolutely paralyzed and unable to speak so it kind of amazes me now that I go into it still terrifies me and I'm pretty terrified even just chatting to you here so I do still have those feelings but I go and give conferences to loads of people and I give training to groups of adults but I think that's the biggest thing for me is overcoming that kind of absolute anxiety and terror of talking and it's taken an awful lot of time to be able to do it I remember my first job when I was moved to a nursery coordinator and I was asked to speak to a group of parents and the horror when my head teacher asked me to speak to a group of parents I know and it was awful. I stood there hiding behind a piece of paper that was shaking and yeah it was terrifying and I think that anxiety helped me to kind of break things down for pupils to think about what would help and how we can kind of help pupils to get through that and relating it to it doesn't have to be about anxiety but breaking tasks down breaking things down into really simple steps because what helped me was tackling things very very gently taking a step by step approach so I would if I knew I had to present then I would talk to myself, talk to the mirror I would over prepare make sure that I knew everything there was about the subject and more and then I would talk to the mirror and then I talked to my husband and then I talked to a small group and then I talked to a bigger group and then I then I would be able to do it in the setting that it had to be in but it was definitely breaking it down yeah and the other thing that worked for me somewhere else so not talking but I was terrified of putting my face in the water and I learnt to scuba dive so taking it out of out of my comfort zone elsewhere I think gave me the confidence then to be out of my comfort zone in this terrifying sorry so you were putting your face in the water so you decided to learn to scuba dive it was a very complex decision it was a personal challenge I was terrified of it in my face was it a conscious decision? No it was probably nagging from my husband who was desperate to scuba dive so we learnt to dive in Spain and then on honeymoon we did like two but then we moved to Malaysia for five years and each time I got a bit more confident and then we did the rescue diver so yeah it was it probably wasn't a conscious decision going oh I need to get rid of my fears let's do that it was oh I succeeded in that I maybe I can succeed elsewhere so it's almost like you could learn those skills in one setting and apply them to another and I think that maybe there's something very practical there for yeah staff or parents who are working with a child who's very anxious about school so it's actually picking maybe another bit of their life that feels a little bit less low stakes and tackling perhaps a fear there might be a way in from what you're saying you know yeah I thought well if I can do this I can do anything if I can scuba dive and not drown then surely I can talk in front of a group of people Do you find that having had that history is that something that you talk to students about are they aware of this in you or do you just does it just inform your practice quietly I think it just quietly informs my practice I talk to staff about it when I've talked to staff in staff training about it yeah when I bring it up it definitely spikes my anxiety levels because I'm talking about about it but yeah I have linked it to like the 5 point scale and things like that I've linked it to stress levels within my training and talked about it then but I haven't talked about it with students I've talked about the diving with students and overcoming fear but yeah not because I wouldn't but just because it hasn't arisen I think I'm hugely interested by mutism I've done a couple of podcasts on it already and explored it a bit with people and I've found it very interesting learning more about it and how it's been recategorized as an anxiety disorder and actually it's really informed a lot of my work and understanding of self so I have and I've mentioned it in other podcasts where it's only really through learning about mutism that I've suddenly had like penny drop moments of like oh yeah all those weeks when I was forced to do group therapy when I was an inpatient and I didn't speak that yeah that's an anxiety response and like it feels quite obvious now looking back but at the time I don't think I even knew it was happening I just was in complete start or freeze I can't do this like mode I don't think I knew what it was I think I thought I was shy it's only looking back I thought oh yeah that was my brain shutting down I was absolutely in flight and I think the other interesting thing there is you saying and I don't want to make you feel more anxious than we need to so we can move on but that thing of that when you start talking about it that it provokes those feelings and I've I've got myself into this real muddle when I'm public speaking that I talk I teach a lot about communication and I it's going to happen now I have this really awful cycle that started happening a couple of years ago and it perpetuates that when I start talking about communication I lose the ability to communicate completely and I'll find I'm on a stage and suddenly I have nothing and those fears that you know I don't have any fear of public speaking that doesn't worry me at all but those fears that many people have about public speaking about you know there's 200 people in the room and you go completely but it actually happens to me pretty much any time I start talking about communication these days inconvenient say the least yeah I have a great strategy for it now though and that thing we learn all the time don't mean I think when we practice the things that we we preach I basically now have like a little toolbox of different strategies that I find helpful to teach people sort of regulation type strategies or breathing strategies and I find that if ever I'm beginning to feel panic rising or I've lost my words I just have scripts that I go to and I just teach people these things and it calms me down and it calms them down and then we move on but yeah I guess my I just find it interesting that you're saying that talking to people about it makes you yeah about that anxiety makes you anxious yeah it sparks all those all those feelings that I had before and I do I kind of massage my palms a lot and I didn't realise that it's a sensory thing but it's only me and I get that rushing feeling of anxiety and that's what that is but it's only since kind of reflecting and doing this that I've realised so we need to teach the children those do you teach them early don't we because I didn't know and I used to feel sick before school every day and I didn't know why and you know that was anxiety what do you think would it help so it sounds like for you maybe things got steadily sort of more challenging to the point where at university you were finding it very difficult to engage what do you think you know if you're able to plant yourself now to support the staff that perhaps helped you at school or university what would you have told them what could have made a difference I think if they could have recognised it for what it was not just being shy or being defiant because I wasn't being defiant I was desperate to see and all my assignments you know all my written assignments were fine I engaged and I engaged in everything that I was asked to do unless it involved speaking so I think if someone had recognised it or I had recognised it which I didn't and that there was something that could be I thought it was just me I didn't realise there was something that could be done to overcome that I thought this is me and this is how I'm going to be for the rest of my life I think maybe if someone had said all right okay so what can we do to make it better and do those little steps so okay so tomorrow I'm going to ask you this question we can prepare what sort of things could you answer I think I was terrified of getting it wrong and making a fool of myself so that kind of escalated so if someone had been beside me and said okay well you know this is the right you know this is an answer you could give you know this is this and broken it down tomorrow I'm going to ask you and then you can and I was prepared for it and maybe I could have spoken if I'd rather than it out the blue and just shocking me I think that yeah small steps to prepare for it chunking it down maybe I could have just spoken to the lecturer first then to appear then to a smaller group then to the whole group maybe if it had been broken down in that way I might have I might have just disappeared from it well maybe but I think what you're saying is that's exactly the approach we would hope to take isn't it is that you know building I always talk about ICANN cycles so building up cycles of things that we can do no matter how tiny those steps are and yeah and building on those successes what did happen in the end I know you said that obviously the scuba diving and the realisation that you can do that you can do other things but was there a kind of moment when things changed was this a gradual thing um I think it was a gradual thing there's the speaking in front of people do you mean I think that it was a gradual thing because it just kind of I had to do it for interviews you had to present and I would have not got any jobs so I had to do it it came out of a need but the way I did do it was very very slowly talking you know over preparing and presenting to a small group or one person first and a small group first then and is there a day that girls like you because you know the kinds of kids that maybe people have come to listen or what's the podcast today about are more the kinds that we've referred to earlier who are you know kind of throwing chairs or where they're essentially they they're more difficult for us to manage in a classroom situation for whatever reason children who are kind of maybe quietly disengaged for whatever reason but that are producing the work and not causing any trouble I fear that sometimes they just pass by under the radar and that they don't really get much connection with people and I'm really deeply worried about those children right now and I think there's going to be more of them following the pandemic where they've had very quiet life for a long time and just wonder what your kind of thoughts are on that whether yeah whether your thoughts match mine and it's fine if they don't and what do we do about it absolutely I think there's a real danger of those very very quiet pupils being missed and I definitely was missed because the work was produced I would never seek help so yeah and I think the more we can be aware that even though they're not doing these big behaviors that those pupils need need support those children need support and for adults to engage with them I was talking to someone the other day actually and she was talking about reading with some really really quiet children and we were talking about little steps that she could do to put in to just kind of give them that voice and building up that relationship they have got a means of expressing those feelings and but yeah they're definitely in a danger of being missed because who are you going to go to? You're going to go to the one who's throwing the chairs or you're going to go to the one who's sitting in the corner doing their work yeah and that's the thing I quite often myself thinking back to when I did my first day training and I remember the learning as a six year old for the first time about first aid I used to go to Badgers with St John's and for some reason it just really stuck in my mind that you know if you found yourself at a scene of a big accident that would be people who were screaming out for your help but you had to ignore them because actually they were okay and it was the ones that were quiet that you had to go to and I kind of feel like maybe it's the same in a classroom but maybe I'm over extrapolating that's a good analogy we did yeah how do we miss how do we go to those ones who might get missed and we need to form relationships with them don't we and I think building self-esteem as well telling people what they're doing well especially those quiet ones that they're doing really really well because that's helped me as well I work in a really supportive setting and my outreach lead before me was just amazing at telling me what I was doing well and building on that and I think if we can do that for our pupils build on what they already do but just build that self-esteem and help them know what they're doing well we need to be told I think and how do we do that not obvious I mean some children there might not be anything that when we kind of look in there might not be any obviously good things we might hear all the bad things particularly for someone that you who's being brought in because you know this child is causing us a problem we need help how do we find the good and I always start with tell me what he's good at tell me what she's tell me what her strengths are tell me what she likes tell me what you get there there's always something good and I think it gets missed in this negative spiral sometimes and for those quiet children let's not maybe go oh you're sitting really nicely and quietly maybe that's not what they need praising they need praising for other things that they're doing well but yeah definitely fine even if it's the smallest thing oh you've picked up your pencil I can see you're ready to write now catch them those little steps of success we've got to catch them being good and do they say 10 positive interactions for every negative so we have to find those positives and turn it around and I think just turning the language around sometimes just gets out of that negative spiral and gets us more positive even if it's just the way we view a child I did say to a teacher once and it seemed to have got into this negative spiral but before the lesson I want you to think of 10 things that you really really like about this people things that she's good at things that she that you like about her things that she said that made you laugh just and before you go into the lesson I want you to think of those 10 positive things and I want you to praise her for every single one of them doing the lesson she was like oh okay but it just turned that negative spiral around and it more positive that's a really nice exercise actually both in terms of stop and focus on a child who might not have the kindest thoughts towards always but also in terms of literally building that relationship and that self esteem might have felt a little bit odd to the child do you think in that first instance if they weren't used to receiving that praise um yes maybe and praise is always sometimes difficult isn't it to take if you're not used to it um so yeah I think it was successful but yeah I get where you're coming from and sometimes we say put the praise a little bit less direct so just to post it on the desk and walk away sort of thing but if they do have trouble with praise but yeah I was trying to change the teacher's view of the pupil I love it I love it but actually particularly if there's become that negative relationship going on I think that's really important and you know I have occasionally found myself um because I'm not very good at not just saying what's in my head quite bluntly um but occasionally talking to a member of staff and going I don't think you like this child very much and actually being able to just tackle that and go we need to think about what what do you like about them because it's obviously quite a toxic relationship and if you don't like them it's going to be really really hard to to be the adult they need to enable them to thrive isn't it and they'll know won't they they'll pick up on this teacher doesn't like me and we do need to um sometimes bring out our Oscar winning performances of like but sometimes just turning our own perspective actually I've got this wrong I just it's easy isn't it to get into a negative spiral and just think all negative things about someone especially on a Friday afternoon when you've had it and you think that those behaviors are out to get you but you need to think underneath them and what's going on for that pupil and I think again kind of coming full circle to that idea of that what you're seeing is um sort of distress behavior child who is is experiencing for whatever reason some kind of trauma response in this moment can help us just to think about what is the response that they need from me as an adult right now even if it doesn't feel like they're the most natural place to go wow we've covered a lot Rachel in a short what um what kind of thought would you like to wrap up and close with what thought would you like to leave people with as we come to an end um I think uh I think let's should we go back to what we started with be curious wonder why the behaviors are happening or wonder why the children aren't motivated to go back to that question that we started with um I think if we if we kind of be curious we wonder why we build relationship then we can offer the supports that are needed but I think I think we need to to kind of understand the people and what's behind those those behaviors a bit more and then we can put in all the strategies to help