Episode 26: Stress vs. behaviors
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of the Teaching and Raising Problem Solvers podcast.
Today is “quote for reflection” Monday. Today’s quote is from one of my favorite books I have–if not my very favorite book– in the work I do and the research I’ve done on self-regulation, and that is the book, Beyond Behaviors, by Dr. Mona Delahooke. I’ll link to it in the show notes.
If you have not read it, this book and Dr. Delahook’s other book, Brain Body Parenting, are truthfully must-reads. They are must-reads because they help to develop insight and awareness, because they’re loaded with research and information, and they’re must-reads because they invite you into reflection in a way that’s supportive and non-judgmental. I think Dr. Delahooke does a phenomenal job of inviting us into reflection and providing us information to show that there is a way that we can move forward to address what’s known as “behavioral challenges” that is really developmentally-centered and regulation-centered. So, five thumbs up from me–I was going to say two, but that seems to not quite reflect just how strongly I feel about this book.
The quote is:
When we fail to recognize that many behaviors represent the body’s response to stress, not intentional misbehavior, we expend effort on techniques designed to help children logically connect their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors– when they simply can’t yet.
The key word for me there is “yet.”
This is so important to me because, for really well-intentioned reasons, I see a lot of top-down programs and dialogue happening in school around behavior. I see a lot of “Why would you do that?,” kind of reactive talk and a lot of, “What would you do if…” talk, and really top-down control type of work.
A lot of the behaviors we see in school are a response to stress. And remember, stress is just when the demand in a situation outweighs your capacity. A little bit of stress is good–it’s how we learn. When we learn something new, our system is stressed. And that is good. That is how we grow.
When we make a new goal – like I want to run a faster race this year – I’m making a goal that’s going to be a little bit stressful because the demand is going to outweigh my current capacity. But that is how we evolve and change, and we have brains that are literally made to evolve and change.
I think sometimes we send the message that stress is bad. Stress is harmful when it’s toxic and unrelenting. When there’s no buffering of the stress, or no presence of a caregiver to help us buffer the stress, that’s the stress we’re talking about here. We are talking about stress that is exceeding the child’s capacity but that we’re not reading as the adults.
What I mean by that is that oftentimes in a school when we look at a behavior, we’ll look at the ABCs of the behavior, we’ll look at the outward manifestations of the behavior. But really diving in deep to what could be a stressor for the child is really important. Helping children identify their energy and emotional states is key. We’ll talk about this in future episodes. Having kids start to become aware of their energy and emotional states, is paramount. As I mentioned in the last episode, it is necessary for adults, and it is also helpful for kids.
The way we do this is we teach, coach, and model self-regulation skills. Remember, that’s a key pinnacle of co-regulation–providing warm and attuned relationships that are responsive, structuring the environments, providing limits, and creating routines and rhythms that allow the child to develop independence and interdependence. And we teach, coach and model self-regulation skills. Teaching children how to connect the dots between their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors is really important.
But the expectation that they are able to do this immediately, or when they’re anywhere below 18, is unreasonable. Up to 18 and even the mid-20’s, remember, that frontal lobe, the prefrontal cortex, the areas that are heavily involved in those hot and cool executive function skills, are still developing. So the effort really needs to be placed on co-constructed relationships with the adults in these environments. These relationships are based on co-regulation, and they support the child to develop self-regulation skills.
I’ll never forget a couple of years ago, when I was diving in deep to the self-regulation world and I was starting to talk about co-regulation. I was consulting for a kindergartener. We talked about a co-constructed goal for regulation, to help develop self-regulation skills. And a question to me was, “So how long will this take? Will it take a few weeks? Or a month?” My reply was, “This will likely take years.” The development of self-regulation does not happen overnight.
It also does not mean that we should coddle, go soft, or remove limits. We continue to provide limits. We provide natural consequences when things happen, we provide teaching, which is discipline, right? Discipline means to teach, when appropriate. But we are providing those ongoing warm, responsive relationships when these things happen, so that kids can develop the skills to know that they can make mistakes, they can have big feelings, they can mess up, and there will be outcomes but the relationships around them are still stable. That’s one of the ways that kids foster healthy self-regulation skills.
This also connects to Dr. Stuart Shenker’s work in Self-Reg, which is really based on understanding stress. It’s based on understanding stress load, understanding what is stressful, and understanding how the brain responds to excessive stress. So it gets us thinking about behaviors. It gets us re-thinking about how we are supporting kids who struggle in schools–moving away from this “Let’s talk about it” dialogue to, “How can we provide co-constructed relationships and regulation, to help you develop the skills you need?”
All right, everybody. I’ll talk to you next time.