Coping with behaviour
Blog summary
In my blog, each week this year I seem to focus on a new element of educational approach or timetable that I’ve more recently been reading about, and inspired to implement into our homeschool timetable. 2025 so far has been about our schedule, our approach and our mindset.
Previously I’ve spoken about how, rather than leaning on analytical learning and fact memorisation, my priorities for education lean far more towards emotional and social support for my children, moral and religious understanding as a backbone to our ethos, and creativity and discovery as the best teacher for our curious kids. More recently I’ve considered the Montessori Method, and how I can introduce some of her ideas into my ‘first years’ curriculum, right through to my high school curriculum. https://thereisnoshouldbe.com/the-montessori-method-and-individual-learning/
Coping with behaviour – mindset
This week I am considering the topic of behaviour, coping with behaviour and how to guide it. How I respond to behaviour, and how I set up our functioning parameters in the first place, mainly through content and our schedule for the week is the difference between a day outside in wind and rain without a jumper on, and the a day of sun and a refreshing breeze. The first main hurdle that I have found starts with laying armour down, and adopting the cliche, ‘behaviour is communication’.
Attention seeking
Actually, I like this adage, as I generally find it to be true – children produce attention seeking behaviour when they are attention deficient, or at least when they crave connection. I think we forget what disconnected society we expect our children to function in. They crave connection for a reason. Of course we can’t just indulge in negative behaviour, but we can see the need, and facilitate a sidestep, being attentive on a more positive area.
Was it the chicken or egg?
I think it’s important to get past seeing behaviour as something to resist, an ‘us versus them’ philosophy, where we mostly aim try not to cave to the push and pull of their whims, and instead expect them to obey unswervingly to our own whims. And let’s face it, we are plentiful in our whims! At least, I am.
It’s the dinosaur
Am I coping with behaviour or igniting it? Forever running late, I am often in this primitive reptilian mindset. How I act out in this, that’s my behaviour. I set the tone.
I require them to put on their shoes at the drop of a hat.. no, don’t drop the hat, put it on! Really?! You really want help putting your shoes on? What? Your socks? Aren’t they already on? Why did you take them off? For goodness sake, and why are you going upstairs now? Not with your shoes on! Couldn’t you have got that ready before? No, we just had lunch, you don’t need to be hungry yet!
This is a very common soundtrack to our house, only to be replicated sitting down to a meal, running the bath, brushing teeth, settling into bed. I think it’s clear that there’s plenty of behaviour that we parents can probably brush up on, before we place all onus on our developing little ones.
Identifying the behaviour
It can be so easy to become offended by our children’s outbursts of behaviour. Being emotionally involved can make coping with behaviour a downwards spiral. Hitting, kicking, ruling us out… all the thing… but seeing the behaviour for what it is I think can be really helpful in not taking it to heart.
The site https://consciousdiscipline.com/methodology/brain-state-model/ outlines three distinct brain-body states as our primary consideration, the root, and then takes behaviour as secondary, as the product.
Brain states
Survival, emotional and executive brain states are identified, and from each grows a branch of distinct behaviour. Behaviours from the survival brain state present as freeze, fight or flight related behaviour, and look can look like aggression or withdrawal, like hitting and punching. Behaviours from the emotional brain state are often verbal aggression, seeking or provoking connection. And finally, behaviours that stem from the executive brain state are the absolute dream. The executive brain state is the fully functioning CEO of brain states. These behaviours are clear communication, measured, resilient responses, self regulation, goal setting, attentiveness and decision making.
Aiming to promote and support executive thinking
I think sometimes, periods of executive brain state can be overlooked and taken for granted. These behaviours often don’t present as requiring attention, or sometimes even clear communication could appear impertinent. Good negotiating skills don’t require intervention, and the calm of a goal set and aspired towards can seem like the very temporary eye of the storm.
Setting the tone
Teenagers
But whatever the brain state, it always comes back to the same response – we have to be the behaviour we want them to be. I’ve heard people say, especially for relating ‘coping with behaviour’ with teenagers, ‘just be a wall’. But I prefer to think of being a tree. Elders of the forest, we need a strong moral spine, that can withstand the turbulence of the teenage years by remaining upright and steady. But we also have branches that they can rest in. We can adapt to their needs and situations. We can withstand the seasons. Well, this is the image that I enter this new era with – we shall see how we fair…
Younger children
With much younger children, if we rise to the hitting behaviour with anger, we are exacerbating the root of their struggle. And if we become offended by their emotional outbursts, we are at risk of showing the same behaviour that we hoped to quell in them. We’re on a journey, and they are too, of carving out time for gentle and relaxed attention for our children, to help them (and us) to regulate and support reassurance.
Really just breathe?
I keep hearing experts tell us parents, for coping with behaviour, just to slow down and encourage our children to breathe with us in a time of meltdown and frustration. I must say, that seems like hammering a nail with fruit cake. But us taking time, having less to say, and creating space does buy our children time, for them settle down and eventually work out their next move. I don’t think they want to feel like this, and I’ve found turning sideways on, rather than tackling any accusations head on, almost gives them time to reconsider.
We need to replicate the kind of person that we want to be around, so that they can copy that.
Walking alongside
Well there we have it. Brain states. How helpful. That’ll solve all our problems now.
No, but knowing where the behaviour comes from does help for me to take it all a little less personally. I can use this knowledge to see it for what it is, and not worry so much about it. As if my kids are the only ones with behaviour. We’re humans – we all behave one way or another. Our kids are learning it, and relearning it every time they go through (yet) another developmental leap.
The emotional whirlpool
When coping with behaviour, it’s easy to become swept up in the emotion, and really care about all the details. But I believe we can ‘really care’ in a much more sophisticated way, if we can be there with them, without getting sucked into their struggles. Our children come out the other side stronger if we’ve walked with them through it, rather than carried them to where they pointed. If our children can experience that we remain in control of ourselves, as we walk with them, in the end we could be a support they can balance on, rather than use as a crutch. At some point, we need to walk without the crutch.
How many of us still walk with a crutch, reacting rather than responding to situations. I know I do. I still hobble around behaviourally, wishing our children would ‘behave’. But they do behave, and so do I. It’s just learning how to.
Facilitating a balanced schedule, for a balanced mind – executive brain function.
Burnout
One of the main reasons we so often evade ‘executive’ in our house is burnout. We have so much creativity going on in our house. Projects, animals, interests, hobbies – and burnout happens. I think one of the most important lessons we could learn would be to find balance alongside our ideas.
We have improved slightly, due to our ever evolving homeschool schedule, which puts into place designated time for tasks and free time for creativity. At the moment though there is a lot of survival and emotional behaviour, which I find happens on days when we just have too much on. When it is directed at me, we can often work through it. But when the children target one another, I find it all much more fraught. Rather than make changes with constant mediation between them, I feel it’s my duty to facilitate a lifestyle for my children that isn’t always on the edge of burnout.
Activities for a balanced mind – executive brain
There are plenty of activities that can help with self regulation and to promote an executive brain state. Playing games and taking turns can help with this. It may take time, and the aim is not to present more of a challenge than they can cope with, but as a staged process these activities help. Problem solving tasks also help, and supporting children to keep a calendar is another activity that can help children practise these skills and take ownership for their schedule.
Downtime or survival withdrawal?
What is interesting is that less is not always more in this case. Downtime for my three boys is often best spent running in the forest, playing in the hay barn, or lego and a book. Where the balance is tricky is when some of these activities can overlap between downtime and withdrawal from the survival state.
The playground
Of course this blog wouldn’t be complete without considering the support children receive in the playground to exercise ‘executive’ thinking. Often children are not given the opportunity to talk, think, respond and act as they build relationships with those around them.
Children in a survival or emotional state are ‘released’, unsupported, and often not properly supervised into the playground, where they are often left to ‘let rip’, and run their socks off. However, this is when the long awaited behaviour comes out, the freedom of speech if you will, whether verbal or physical. When we finally let them hit the ground running we bring them down for their behaviour, after having required them to sit and listen all day long, when we haven’t supported them to communicate, participate and regulate.
An educational obligation and priority
A primary part of education needs to be supporting our children to respect and care for one another, encouraging and facilitating them to feel secure in their thought processes, and allowed to communicate using respectful, appropriate language. This can’t just be left to break and lunch time slots with as much foresight as merely troubleshooting.
Who our children are
We have to remember who our children are. Coping with behaviour – their act is far more than a charade. Survivors throughout all of history, our children, beings of vibrance and vitality, who lived closely within their family and community, have so much to give, and so much live for. They are pilgrims, explorers and crafters.
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