The "Why" Behind Classroom Behaviors, PreK-5. Jamie Chaves
as we discovered with the help of an occupational therapist (OT), activated a threat response in her nervous system, and it impacted many areas of her functioning. The stomping was in part because she had under-responsive sensory processing in one domain, and the forceful march she used to walk allowed her to get enough sensory input to make sense of her movements and the world. It wasn’t an act of defiance. And in other areas, she had over-responsive sensory processing, particularly to sounds and smells. Her behaviors were a result of her nervous system activating the threat alarms. Once Lila was evaluated by a skilled OT, who was then able to cultivate an experience of safety by creating playful moments, building a trusting relationship with her, and providing individualized sensory input to integrate how her brain processed sensory information, things began to improve for Lila. In partnership with Lila’s school, the OT offered guidance on how to meet her sensory needs in ways that allowed her to feel safe and to learn. Over time, Lila learned how to meet her own sensory needs and to ask for what she needed, allowing her to be an active, engaged learner who became skilled at regulating her emotions and behavior.
Notice that in both of these cases, the community of people who cared for these children chased the why, trying to get to the root of the problem. We had to get to its source. Just as it would be ridiculous to repeatedly prescribe an antihistamine for a person getting hives every day, without working to discover what the person was allergic to, it didn’t make sense to treat symptoms without examining the cause of what was going on.
This is what we aim to do at CFC—to look not only at behavior, but at what’s causing the behavior in the first place. From the beginning, our foundation has been built on the science that regulation and safe relationships go hand in hand; that we can harness neuroplasticity to change the brain by utilizing the power of regulated relationships; and that by chasing the why as an interdisciplinary team, we can provide specific, repeated experiences that will allow the brain to fire and wire in ways that build integration, allowing the child and the family to more fully thrive.
And it was through building our team at the CFC that I came to have the privilege of knowing, working with, and learning from Jamie and Ashley. First I met Jamie. Within minutes of meeting her (over breakfast burritos), I knew she was the one to build our OT program, to teach the rest of us how to think from a sensory-savvy lens. She could help us go beyond our too-differentiated points of view and introduce us to concepts and interventions that became game-changers: processing, attention, regulation, social communication, and more. Jamie had the IPNB lens and was ready to learn more to layer complexity into her own work. She talked about how mental health and occupational therapy needed each other. She used the magic words of “regulation” and “relationships” and “the use of self” to create safety in order to create the best chance for neuroplasticity. I’m grateful for all that Jamie has taught and continues to teach me and our team, and for the stellar OT program she’s built at the CFC that has changed the lives of so many families, and also so many classrooms and teachers.
With Ashley it was much the same. From the moment she joined our team, she began building our assessment division, founding everything on a quality, relationship/regulation-based approach to assessment. She also began our 0–5 program, and soon she was in high demand throughout our community. Ashley’s brilliance, deep clinical discernment, kind heart, and ability to hold complexity while joining with parents and teachers in ways that don’t overwhelm them are inspiring. Our team and I are better for having worked with her and learned from her.
As you’ll see in the coming pages, a key concept for Jamie and Ashley is the importance of understanding not only a child’s behavior, but the context as well. As they’ll explain, they often see, in homes and in mental health offices and in schools, that compliance- or obedience-based behavior modification is enforced without understanding where the breakdown is for the child. Without exploring the appropriate interventions or skills that need to be enhanced, a child often experiences not just tolerable stress, but toxic stress. Chronic states of stress can lead to more dysregulation and more behavioral problems, making things worse. Many of these children experience what I don’t think is too dramatic to call “educational trauma”—they undergo overwhelmingly terrifying or intensely stressful experiences because they have repeated experiences of getting in trouble for things they cannot help and cannot change, and this leaves them feeling helpless, afraid, and angry. No wonder their nervous systems are so reactive.
But when regulation is cultivated, created, and built, the problematic behaviors typically take care of themselves. Regulation emerges over time as development unfolds and as the prefrontal cortex develops and strengthens its ability to down-regulate, or lessen reactivity and threat signaling. As Jamie and Ashley will explain, regulation is also something that can be built through various types of therapies, medications, safe relational experiences, and more. When adults co-regulate, by being the calm, safe harbor in the storm, and by helping children calm and become regulated, they achieve feelings of safety and comfort. Repeated experiences of co-regulation become internalized both in terms of mental models, where children expect that someone will show up for them and help, but also in terms of neural wiring so that they can develop the capacity to regulate themselves.
It’s sometimes easier to go with our assumptions and decide that a child won’t behave or that she has some character flaw like being lazy, or that the student’s parents are too indulgent and don’t ask enough of him. But we want to do better than that in our interpretations of a situation. Many children are punished, criticized, or told scary things about who they are as learners and humans because a parent or a teacher assumes the child is choosing to not do well, when it often turns out that the child has a learning challenge or a trauma history, and in fact the “right” behaviors were something the child is not yet able to demonstrate.
Instead, we need to recognize that unwanted behavior is often communicating that something isn’t working for this child, and she’s likely experiencing intense stress. Instead of saying, “This kid is so rude,” or, “Why is he making bad choices?” or “Why doesn’t she try harder?” our question should be, “What’s causing that threat response?” Then we can more compassionately and effectively respond and intervene to change what’s happening in our classrooms.
This book and the ideas in it come at an important time, and I so admire its two authors. With intellect and clarity, Jamie and Ashley have taken crucial concepts from beyond their field of expertise and applied them in their own professional domains, offering a gift to educators everywhere, just when we need it. The focus on regulation and a felt sense of safety as the essential beginning for learning and accessing content, which may look and feel different for different students, is crucial if we’re going to shift to meet the needs of students today. One of the most powerful paths to cultivating regulation and safety is simply the relationship between student and teacher. You, as an educator, hold tremendous power to change students’ brains, minds, and behaviors, simply in how you build relationships with them. Connected relationships lead to connected, integrated brains.
Teachers—what you do matters. Through your relationships with students, and the kinds of repeated experiences you provide, you’re not only influencing their abilities, skills, knowledge, behaviors, and minds, you’re also changing how their brains fire and wire. You are brain architects and sculptors. With 40 percent of children not having secure attachment with their parents, you are a safety net for so many children, helping them feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure, showing up for them so that they can learn and become their best selves. We thank you for the gifts you give our children, mostly by who you are, and how you build relationships with them.
My hope is that this book is a gift to you—to fuel your own journey of curiosity and innovation; to give you a wider, richer lens that leads you to more compassion for yourself and your students; to help you understand more about the mechanisms behind what you already do that works, and why other things don’t work; to give you practical strategies you can implement to help students be more successful and regulated; and to empower you to effectively do the work you feel passion and purpose to do so that you find deep meaning in being the teacher you aspire to be.
—Tina Payne Bryson, LCSW, PhD
Preface
Over