 When we see behaviour, the distresses or challenges us from a child, what does it mean and why should we be cautious when assigning negative labels? That's what we're going to explore in this week's episode of Pukipondas, so let's dive straight in. We're thinking about children's behaviour and the ways in which we might interpret it and why we need to be a little bit careful about that because it's really easy to get wrong. So first of all, just to understand that there are a few different ways that our children might respond if they're distressed, our kind of trauma responses. Sometimes we're going to see fight, we're going to have the child who's going to stand up to the danger, they're going to fight it. Sometimes we see flight, the child who's going to get away from the danger, they're going to abscond, run away. Sometimes we see freeze, the child who's going to try and trick the danger into thinking that they're not there, like the rabbit in the headlights. Now we respond quite differently to these very natural responses to danger, to stress, to distress. Fight and flight tend to demand our attention whereas the child who goes into more of a freeze type mode tends to fly by under the radar a little bit more. The fight and flight children might attract negative attention from the adults around them, they're likely to result in punishment. The freeze child might be kind of almost quietly ignored, they become part of the furniture and just aren't engaging in what's going on around them a lot of the time. But what's true for all of these children, even though it looks really differently and our response might be quite different from one of getting very involved, perhaps quite vociferously so, to perhaps not really even kind of clocking what's going on because this child is not troubled to us as one of 30. The thing to bear in mind is these children are facing the same challenges, they're responding to feeling unsafe to a kind of trauma trigger in different ways, but similar stuff is going on underneath and so they need actually a similar response from us as the adults. All of these children, whether they are fighting, fleeing or freezing, need a safe, supportive, consistent adult in their lives right now in order to get them to the point where they feel safe and so the trauma response recedes. That calm, controlled, considered, caring response is not necessarily the natural response we give to any of our kind of fight, flight, freeze type responses from our children, but it is exactly what they need. I find it really helpful when faced with a distressed child, whether that's a small distressed child or a big, massily, ogreish, older distressed child, to think of them, imagine that they're like a three-year-old who's sobbing their heart out because they're scared, because when we're faced with a three-year-old who's sobbing their heart out because they're scared, we know just what to do. We know how to comfort, we know how to make them feel safe, we know how to soothe them. And actually that's what all of these children of different types and sizes and different presentations generally need. They need that calm, they need that care, they need that kindness from a consistent adult. So look beyond the facade, the angry, the fist, the aggression and remember that what you're really seeing is a child who is deep within a small, scared child. Something we need to remember when we're thinking about behaviour and the behaviours that we might see from a child is that their behaviour is not about you. It's almost always about what's going on for them rather than something that's aimed specifically at you, but it might not feel that way. And it can be really easy, particularly when we've invested a lot of time, effort and energy into a child to see it as like a personal sight or like they're manipulating us in some way through their behaviour. But nine times out of ten this behaviour is all about what's going on for them rather than it being something that's directly aimed at you or hurting you. Their behavioural responses are often completely beyond their control and they're part of a deep instinct just to keep themselves safe. And sure, those responses are fight, flight, freeze and not very helpful in a modern environment and especially not within a school context where there are rules to be followed. But that primitive part of a child's brain, which is the bit that takes over in times of high stress, doesn't know this. That part of that brain doesn't know that they're in school and that there's rules and code of conduct to follow. It just knows, I'm in danger, gotta run. It's worked for thousands of years keeping humans safe, so why not now? If there was a bear coming, this child would be doing well. If there was a sabertooth tiger that needed to be battled off, they're in a good space. When it's the maths that causing the anxiety and the worry and the fear here, not such a great response. But we haven't quite caught up with where we are evolutionarily. So this isn't a child who's trying to hurt you, who's trying to manipulate you, whose behaviour is designed to bring you down. This is just a child who is responding in a perfectly natural instinctive way much of the time. So remember here, the child's behaviour is not about you. We're going to look through an egocentric lens because we're human and that's how we do it. We interpret the world around us in the way in which it relates to us. But we try to try hard not to reinterpret all the behaviour of others about how it relates to us. It's not about you. This is about them and what they're feeling, what they're experiencing right now. Nine times out of ten. They are not meaning to be rude, they're not meaning to be disrespectful or difficult or dismissive or any of the other things that you might think they're just relying on that primitive instinct to keep them safe because right now they're that small scared child and they're not managing. So why do we need to be careful when we're like labelling at this behaviour? So we kind of recognise here that this is a natural instinctive response from many of our children that perhaps they're being very fearful, we're triggering a bit of a trauma response sometimes and this can result in some pretty gnarly behaviour that we might see. But why do we need to be careful about labelling that behaviour? I think it's important because it can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So when we apply negative labels to a child's behaviour, this becomes the story that's told about the child. They're the naughty kid today. We call them the naughty kid. They start telling that story about themselves as well, then they start living up or down to that label. It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. When somebody expects you always to behave in a certain way, you're not giving them the space and permission to behave in a different way, you're just going to behave that way. For what it's worth, this is also something that I found to be really true in eating disorders. So I found this personally for myself and I've observed it many times in others. When you're the anorexic, then you just do that behaviour. When people aren't expecting you to eat, they're expecting you to make a fuss about food, they're expecting you to get really upset and angry every time they ask you to eat something. Get to the point, I got to this point in treatment where you're just like, that's what they expect of me and you just go with it. It's easier. It's the natural kind of instinct at that point was for me, certainly, but you're not fighting it anymore because they don't expect anything different anyway. I'm not suggesting that that's a calculated thing, but it's just easy. You fall into that groove. That groove has been placed there for you much easier to follow that groove than it is to step outside of it and create a new track. So if we tell our children again and again and again, or we label them and talk about them, they're bad, they're naughty, they're lazy, disrespectful, disorganised, rude, whatever, over time they're going to hear this again and again and again and we're going to find they're going to live down to that label more and more and more. It's what's expected of them and it's increasingly going to be what they expect of themselves. When we stop giving children the benefit of the doubt, then our mental filters mean that we're going to tune into any behaviour that confirms that bias about the child and it's just going to get more and more and more. This label will become the child. So be really careful, be really cautious when applying any kind of negative label to a child. We can flip that and reverse it and use the absolute opposite to our benefit by labelling a child in a positive way and watch them live up to that label. I had a lovely example of this personally recently. So some of you will know that I like to paraglide. So when I'm not here recording podcasts, I'm jumping off hills with a little bit of fabric in the air to keep me aloft. And I went on a paragliding trip a few months ago, which was incredibly good fun. Now this trip came just as I'd qualified from flying school. I just got my licence. I was allowed to go fly outside of school sites. And so I went on this trip, which was fabulous. Now the thing was, because I'd only just learnt and I was the most novice pilot on the trip that I went on, I found a lot of things very hard. And one of the things I found particularly hard is someone who's autistic and dyslexic. So processing and proprioception of things, not necessarily my strong suit, I can be quite malcoordinated at times. And this means that take off for me with my paraglider, which is quite a challenging thing to do. It's something I wasn't very good at. So I want to run off the hill and gracefully end up in the air. That's not generally what would happen for me. It would take a few attempts. Some of them might be quite hilarious and it just wasn't a very elegant affair. However, when I was on this trip with a bunch of people who'd not seen me fly before, other than the instructors who've always been very, very supportive and kind in my learning journey, but my peers had not seen me fly before. And somehow by some fluke on day one, I happened to manage to take off really quite gracefully a couple of times. I was also the only girl in the group and so I kind of flew a bit differently and had a bit of a different manner about me than the other people too, I suppose. But for whatever reason, these first couple of flights and the way I generally presented myself meant that by the end of day one on this trip, I'd somehow been labelled within the group as Pookie who's great at launch, really great at takeoff, really elegant on launch field. And this surprised me and I found myself almost wanting to say, no, no, no, I'm not like that at all. This is how I am because that's everything I felt internally. But instead, I just did a little bit of an experiment and I thought, well, what if I accept that? What if I am good at launch now? And I tried to embrace that instead and kind of relabel myself based on what I was hearing from the people around me and it kind of really worked. So I found that really powerful because this is something I teach about all the time but it was really cool to kind of see it in action. And with those group of people who I've continued to go on and fly with ever since, they still think I'm someone who can fly well and when I'm with them, I do launch brilliantly because I live up to their expectations. Not always, I hasten to add, but much more of the time than I previously have been able to. So think about those labels that we apply. Think about how the negative ones might be taken on board and kept, but think also about how we can instead use some positive labels about our children's behaviors to encourage and inspire them to live up more to those behaviors that we might have seen some promise of. So we need to tell a different story. This means looking beyond the behavior that's in front of us right now and trying to see beyond that sort of big, scary, aggressive type of stuff we might be seeing and instead see a small, scared kid and trying to figure out what's actually going on with that small, scared child within. This might involve patience, it might involve observation and it's likely to involve a whole heap of listening. The child might not know the answers as a lot of these issues can run really deep so they might not know what's causing their behavior, why are we getting these responses, what's actually going on. But if we lose our judgment and we try and move away the blame and the shame and we get really curious and we're patient and we're open to beginning to explore that story with the child then sometimes we can start to see a different way of understanding what's actually going on. We can as well, as we've said before about the labeling, consciously look for the positives about the child and use these as a headline story. So maybe there are times that challenge them and us but what happens in between? What are their hobbies? What are their interests? What are their passions? What are the things that they're really good at? What do you like about this child? What do they like about themselves? Hunt for the good bits and help those good bits to shine. Lots of behaviors that we see in children can be misunderstood and we need to look beyond the behavior that's presenting and trying to understand what's going on underneath. So when we're faced with any kind of repeated behavior that we don't understand maybe they're lying or they won't eat in certain situations or they're hurting themselves or whatever the behavior. I find the most helpful way to try and understand what's actually going on is just to get curious and wonder what need is this behavior meeting? So if this behavior is being repeated what is it that's reinforcing that cycle of behavior? It's going to be meeting a need of some kind. Now this is going to be different for every child but when the behavior is repeated often there's going to be a reinforcing factor and because I'm pooky and I love to obliterate I think about this as a series of sees that are often the need that's being met so it might be a need for communication. Maybe their behavior is communicating something. I'm scared. I'm angry. I need you to hear me in some way and I am not being heard. The child who doesn't eat in certain situations maybe that situation does not feel safe for them and they don't yet have the words or nobody's heard them when they've tried to speak but by not eating they know that adults stop and they listen. Calm. Maybe this child has a need for calm and maybe when they throw things around the classroom they get removed and they get sent to isolation and that is an oasis of calm and maybe that is what they needed because they were overwhelmed in the classroom perhaps. Maybe they need connection. Maybe this is a child who does not have good strong attachments with healthy adult figures in their life right now and the attention and the connection that they get when they misbehave or perhaps the kindness and the care that they get when they hurt themselves forms a connection that they do not always get in other bits of their life that they're desperately seeking perhaps they are attachment needing seeking connection. Maybe it's a need for care. Maybe this is a child who's emotional or physical needs are neglected in other parts of their life and they find that when they behave in this way that they get the care that they need. Again, thinking a lot here about children who do things like harming themselves or might not allow injuries to heal perhaps there's that kind doubt who exercises care when that happens and this might not be something this child has been used to and that they might crave or finally they might be in need of control or final see and I'm sure you can think of more maybe this is a behaviour that when I do this then this will happen and that helps me to make sense of this situation and take control of it. So those five C's and there's lots of different ways of applying them and I'm sure you could have more but communication, calm, connection, care and control are the five C's I see very often as the need that a behaviour may be seen to be being met when we get a bit curious about what's going on there. If you're seeing a child whose behaviour that you just don't understand you're seeing a behaviour repeatedly and you're completely puzzled about what on earth is going on before you label the child as bad, disrespectful or naughty just wonder what do they need what need is this behaviour meeting that isn't otherwise being met consider whether the answer to what's going on might lie in a need for communication, calm, connection, care or control and wonder how else might this need be met what would be a healthier, happier, more constructive way of meeting this need. This is a really, really big topic and I'm super happy to dive more deeply into any particular areas that you might like to in the future but the key thing that I was hoping to take away with you today was the need to be really cautious when labelling children negatively as a result of the behaviour that challenges us in these moments our children need unconditional care not another enemy. If you can be the compassionate adult here and join the child's team then you have the potential to have a deep and long-lasting impact on their behaviour and to instantly make their world feel just a little bit safer, brighter and better. I hope that there were some helpful ideas in here for you If you liked what you heard today please like, subscribe and share it I love it when people share my work it is the thing that brings me most joy because if you shared it then it probably means that you liked it and found it helpful You can support my work further if you wish to by joining me over on Patreon for £1 a month where you get early access to everything I create and the ability to influence what I create next or you can support me even further should you wish by inviting me to speak at your next event or in your setting or to deliver a webinar for your network or team Thank you so much for listening and for everything that you are doing for our children and young people every day it really matters This husband Pookey ponders with me Pookey Nightsmith Until next time stay curious stay compassionate and keep pondering Pookey Nightsmith