This this this. How many years and tears at IEP meetings trying to help our son. Even with our amazing professional team by our side, advocating for our son, the notion that our son had no control over his behaviors. He was living in fight for flight, trying desperately to survive. He didn't feel safe. Period. It isnt up to us to decide what us safe and unsafe. This is his autonomic response. Bottom up or body up behavior for survival, not an intentional choice to "mis behave, to have an outburst, a meltdown, fight". No amount of reward offered could change this. It only made the stress response worse. If only people from the schools understood this. Listened to the true experts which we were fortunate to have on our sons team of support. But instead it was met with continual resistance, with frustration, with misunderstanding that perpetuated the problems and continued to create more chaos for our son. We must as a society, community, and local educators do better to understand the paradigm of behaviors. Our kids lives depend on it. Our kids can be successful. They are like all kids who want to do good. They do good when they can. When they cant, it is up to us the adults all around them to figure out why? What is causing this stress response in the child? Why is the child not feeling safe? Our kids and our schools all win when we propeyly support the social emotional development of each child and recognize that this is a developmental process. And especially kids with known developmental delays, we must step back and help provide safety and connection first. When we were continually met with so much resistance from our school, we knew our sons future was at stake. We had to do everything in our power to help him. To support him. To help him grow, develop and be a little boy. He had suffered so much already in his short life. We were not going to let others who were choosing to ignore what our expert team said was critical for our sons development, have anymore negative impact and continue to cause more unnecessary stress that has such a negative impact on our son. It was clear to save our son, it was time to pull him out of school. Ideal, no. Necessary, yes. And it was the best decision we could have ever made for him and our family. And 9 years later, we have the luxury now to look back and see what s good decision we made. Despite all the judgement and criticism. We knew what our son needed, and it was not more stress, an overwhelmed nervous system, more chaos, more discipline, more anything; except more moments of feeling safe and connected by those of us who loved him and know him. And it helped get him to where he is today. And as hard as it was, we do not have any regrets or have ever second guessed our decision.
......."t was my job to help the adults in Colwyn’s life embrace a more developmental understanding of his social-emotional development and its impact on his lack of behavioral control. I explained that instead of seeing a little boy exhibiting “bad behaviors,” I saw a child exhibiting “stress behaviors,” adaptations of his ANS working valiantly to help him feel safe. Colwyn’s disruptive behaviors were his body’s way of managing his neuroception of threat and trying to feel safe. The sticker chart was ineffective because every time he got another red dot, his stress increased, causing the emotional outbursts. In other words, these were bottom-up behaviors, not the result of his poor choices......."
https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/2427/in-consultation/cfa5fb2c-1b19-405f-aa14-f745b4dd6979?utm_campaign=PN_R_WIR
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