This narrow view (and many times ill informed) of behaviors just isn’t helpful, makes things worse and leaves families and kids very frustrated and can even have long term consequences, trauma because the child didn’t get what the child needed in times of distress during developmental years.
Safety, connectedness and comfort is shown to be crucial to actually helping our kids. We must educate teachers, caregivers, and the numerous professionals in the fields that work with children and stop pointing fingers, judging, and blaming parents or worse, blaming and shaming the kids.
Here is my comment and the. The article will be posted below
I highly recommend reading this article.
Love this!!! I know it can be hard (first hand experience with our complicated son). But it is so important to see our kids behaviors as not intentional and realize our kids are struggling in those moments. My son frequently went to blue state shutdown. We saw this as a very scary experience for us all. But none of our professional team for so many years ever saw this as the serious event it is. We were told over and over it was a delay tactic and a way for our son to avoid a task, etc. NO!!!! Thank you for writing this book and giving parents the tools to recognize and better understand their own children and the brain science behind what many of us parents experience all the time with behaviors from our kids. I just wish schools and other professionals would get up to speed on all the brain science because as you know, behaviors are seen as an event to judge and assign a consequence. And for so many of us, who can now recognize our kids behaviors most of the time, as a stress response (esp sensory in my sons case) we are better equipped to properly support our son and help him through connections and co regulating!! We experienced his high need to co regulate from very early on (he has medical trauma since infancy) as well as autism, but advise from professionals and doctors, be more strict, have consequences, he’s manipulating you. I’m glad we always walked away from those professionals. But with so few understanding our son, and blaming us the parents, it was incredibly stressful and made things much more difficult and took our energy away from really helping our son. Ultimately we knew our son best. We needed to focus on helping him, and it was a 24/7 parenting marathon, unlike any other typical parenting. But it’s what he needed. Especially since he constituted to be in and out of the hospital several times a year, which caused regression every time. And one step forward, then 2 steps backwards was difficult for him and our family. We took joy in the littlest of experiences. To see our son experience a moment of joy was the greatest gift as parents. Laughter and togetherness is what has gotten us to this point. He will be 16 in June. I share your book and the ideas of brain science with our local parent support group, many who are parents with invisible disabilities and behavioral issues. If I could go back 14 years with the knowledge I have now, well, hind sight is 20/20! But I want to help support other parents who are struggling, getting advice that they instinctively don’t agree with (reward, consequences, charts, points, etc....without being able to really understand is the behavior intentional? Or is it a stress response? Especially right now during a global pandemic.
Thank you for all you do for our families, professionals and our kids!!! Our kids can be successful!!!!! 💜💜
https://unyte.com/blogs/news/why-a-child-s-behavior-is-not-what-you-think-it-is
