This article is for educators with questions about our work to reduce the use of restraints and eliminate seclusion. You are not alone if your first reaction to criticism of restraint and seclusion is, “You don’t understand the kids we support,” or, “What do you expect us to do when a child kicks us?” Many educators arrive at “If not seclusion and restraint, then what?” from a place of exhaustion, moral injury, and fear. This article is written for you, not to shame you or blame you, but to invite you to consider something that can result in better outcomes for you and your students. I encourage you to read this with genuine curiosity and an open mind.

How we got here

Most teachers and staff never imagined they would be asked to physically hold children down or lock them alone in rooms. Yet many work in systems where seclusion rooms and restraint techniques are framed as “necessary safety tools,” in part due to insufficient staffing, inconsistent training, punitive culture, and rising student needs. In that environment, seclusion and restraint can start to feel like the only thing standing between you, your classroom, and chaos.

Today, we know far more about trauma, the brain, and behavior than when these practices were first normalized. Federal civil rights investigations, family testimonies, and research all point to the same conclusion: seclusion and restraints are deeply harmful, disproportionately used on students with disabilities and students of color, and not effective at improving long‑term behavior or learning. In fact, the use of seclusion and restraint is likely to lead to increasing behaviors. The system put you in a terrible position, and it’s the system that needs to change.

What restraint and seclusion do to children

For many students, especially those with disabilities or trauma histories, restraint and seclusion are experienced as terrifying and confusing. Being physically overpowered or locked alone can confirm a child’s deepest fear: that adults are not safe, school is not safe, and that their distress will be met with force rather than understanding. Students subjected to repeated restraint or seclusion often show increased anxiety, school refusal, sleep problems, and signs of post‑traumatic stress. Families recount children who become more aggressive or withdrawn after these experiences, not less.

The impact is not distributed evenly. Students with disabilities, neurodivergent students, and Black and brown students are over‑represented in restraint and seclusion data. Behaviors that lead to these responses are frequently tied to a lack of skills to meet a demand, noncompliance, sensory overload, communication differences, unmet support needs, or predictable triggers, not sudden, truly unavoidable danger. That means we are often punishing disability‑related distress rather than keeping people safe from genuine imminent harm.

What these practices do to adults

You may carry stories of being hit, scratched, bitten, or threatened. Those experiences are real and can be traumatic. Over time, when the main “safety tools” available to you are coercive, it’s easy to start bracing for the worst, to see some students as inherently dangerous or violent, and to defend practices you never wanted because they feel like the only thing between you and getting hurt.

The trauma is not only about what is done to you, but also about what you are asked to do to children. Being the person who holds a child down or locks them alone in a room can stay with you long after the incident is over, showing up as guilt, intrusive memories, dread about going to work, or feeling numb as a way to cope. For many adults, restraining or secluding a child is itself a traumatic experience, and repeatedly participating in those events can contribute to post‑traumatic stress symptoms. Many educators describe a growing disconnect between their reasons for entering education and what they are required to do during crises, which can erode their sense of self as a caring professional.

On top of this moral and emotional toll, staff are more likely to be injured when hands‑on approaches such as restraint and seclusion are used. Any time multiple bodies are struggling in a tight space, and in a fight-or-flight response, the risk of harm goes up for all involved: pulled muscles, falls, head injuries, and bites or scratches are common, and serious injuries do happen. Children have even died being physically restrained and secluded in schools. In other words, the very practices meant to “keep everyone safe” often increase the likelihood that both students and adults are hurt.

Educators are also at risk of moral injury. Moral injury can also occur when you are asked to do things that conflict with your values and then are left to live with the weight of those actions. It causes stress, burnout, and a sense of isolation. When we talk about ending seclusion and reducing restraint, we are not asking you to be less safe. We are arguing for systems that make everyone safer by providing different tools and changing the conditions that make crises so frequent and intense. We are advocating for changes to the system to prevent moral injury among educators and staff.

A better question

The question is often framed as: “If we can’t use restraint and seclusion, what do you expect us to do?” That framing assumes there are only two options: overpowering a child or doing nothing. But there is a third way: change what we do before and during escalation, in line with what we now know about trauma, the brain, and human behavior. The needed change is upstream.

Instead of asking, “How do we make this child comply?” we can ask, “What is this behavior telling us, and what does this student need right now to be safe?” That shift is not soft or naïve. It is grounded in neuroscience and in the practical experiences of schools that have dramatically reduced or eliminated restraint and seclusion while improving safety.

What we now know about distress and behavior

The study of trauma and relational neuroscience offers several key insights for classrooms:

• Many “challenging” behaviors are stress responses, not deliberate defiance. Fight‑flight‑freeze is the nervous system’s survival mode. When a child is there, lectures, demands, and consequences don’t work; they usually make things worse. In fact, making demands on a child when they are dysregulated is perceived by the nervous system as a threat, leading to further dysregulation.
• Trauma and chronic stress change the brain. A child who has learned that adults or environments are unsafe may scan constantly for threats, react quickly, and struggle to regulate. These changes increase dysregulation and lead to increased behaviors.
• Neurodivergent brains process sensory input, communication, and demands differently. What looks like refusal can be an overwhelmed nervous system; what looks like “noncompliance” can be a nervous system at its limit.

If we treat these stress responses as willful misbehavior that must be controlled, we escalate the cycle: child’s stress rises → adult threat rises (and maybe their own trauma) → adult uses force → child’s belief that adults are unsafe is confirmed → future incidents become more likely.

If instead we see behavior as biology, often communicating distress, we can intervene earlier, reduce sensory and emotional overload, and respond in ways that de‑escalate rather than escalate the situation.

The five principles of a different approach

There is no single program that fixes everything. What matters most is how we think about and respond to students in distress. A safer, more effective path is grounded in what we call the five principles: trauma‑informed, neuroscience‑aligned, neurodiversity‑affirming, relationship‑driven, and collaborative.

Trauma‑informed

A trauma‑informed approach recognizes that many students have lived through adversity, including violence, loss, instability, and systemic racism, and that school experiences can either heal or re‑wound. It asks:

• Could this behavior be a survival response related to past trauma?
• How do we prioritize physical and emotional safety in this moment?
• How might our response either reduce or increase the student’s sense of threat?

In practice, trauma‑informed means avoiding practices that can further traumatize (like confinement and physical force) whenever possible, being predictable and transparent, and focusing on regulation and connection before correction.

Neuroscience‑aligned

Neuroscience‑aligned practice takes seriously what we know about the brain under stress. When a student is in fight‑flight‑freeze, their “thinking brain” is not available. Effective responses focus first on:

• Lowering the intensity of sensory input (noise, lights, crowding, demands).
• Using calm, regulated adult presence, tone, and body language to help the student’s nervous system settle.
• Waiting to talk about rules or consequences until the child is back in a regulated state, or preferably, being proactive.

Instead of asking, “How do I get this student to comply right now?” we ask, “How do I help this nervous system feel safe enough that thinking and learning are possible again?” Dr. Bruce Perry developed the Neurosequential Model, which reminds us that we have to regulate before we can relate and reason.

Neurodiversity‑affirming

A neurodiversity‑affirming lens sees disability and neurological differences as natural human variation. Instead of trying to make students “indistinguishable from their peers,” we:

• Support individual needs and differences and presume competence.
• Adapt environments and expectations to fit the student, rather than forcing the student to fit the environment.
• Respect stimming, alternative communication, and self‑advocacy as valid, not defiant.

When we stop punishing students for being who they are, many situations that currently escalate to restraint and seclusion never occur.

Relationship‑driven

Relationship‑driven practice starts from the reality that students are more likely to stay regulated in the presence of adults they trust. It means we:

• Invest time in getting to know students’ interests, fears, and triggers.
• Use connection and co-regulation as a primary de‑escalation tool.
• Repair after conflicts, so students learn that relationships can survive hard moments.

For a student who has learned that adults are dangerous, being met by a calm, consistent adult who refuses to give up on them can be life‑changing.

Collaborative

Finally, a collaborative stance means we do things with students and families, not to them or even for them. We:

• Involve students in identifying the challenges they face.
• Co‑create plans to meet their needs and provide support.
• Work with families as partners instead of blaming them for what happens at school.

Collaboration does not mean giving up boundaries. It means sharing power where we can, so that students feel some control in situations where they used to feel powerless.

There are many practical alternatives to restraint and seclusion that align with trauma‑informed, neuroscience‑aligned, neurodiversity‑affirming, relationship‑driven, and collaborative principles. Approaches like Beyond Behaviors, Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS), Ukeru, Shanker Self‑Reg, the Low Arousal approach, and Reframing Behavior all share a common foundation: they see behavior as biology and communication, prioritize regulation and safety over compliance, and focus on connection, co‑regulation, and shared problem‑solving instead of control or punishment.

But you don’t understand the kids we support…

We hear this a lot, and we take it seriously. Many of you work with students whose distress can look and feel dangerous. Some are large or strong; some have unpredictable behavior; some have already hurt you.

The fear is real.

What we are saying is not that your fear is invalid or your safety is not important, but that the tools you have been given are inadequate and, at times, harmful. There are schools and programs that serve students with intense behavioral needs who have successfully eliminated seclusion and dramatically reduced restraint by investing in:

• Robust training and coaching in trauma‑informed, neuroscience‑aligned practices.
• Environmental changes, such as sensory‑friendly spaces, predictable routines, and quiet rooms that are truly calming rather than punitive.
• Collaborative planning with students and families.

In other words, the kids you support are exactly the kids who most need a move away from coercion and toward these principles, not because their behavior is not serious, but because these approaches work better and are safer in the long run.

“What do you expect us to do when a child kicks us?”

You deserve safety. Being assaulted at work is not part of the job you signed up for. The answer is not to simply “take it” or to ignore behavior. The answer is to change how the system prepares and supports you so that:

• Fewer situations escalate to physical aggression because early signs of distress are recognized and responded to with support rather than confrontation.
• Staff are trained and coached in developmentally appropriate, non‑coercive crisis responses that prioritize your safety without punishing distress.
• After incidents, teams debrief and change what they do, not just what the student must do, so patterns shift over time.

Sometimes, in the moment, you may still need to block, move away, or use a brief, truly last‑resort physical intervention to prevent serious injury. But those moments should be rare, brief, and surrounded by a system that is constantly learning how to make them even less likely, not by one that normalizes holding children down or locking them away.

How can this change help you?

Change is hard, especially when you already feel overwhelmed and overextended. It can feel like “one more thing” piled onto an already impossible load. But moving away from seclusion and excessive restraint is not just a benefit to students; it is a path to a more sustainable, humane profession for you. It is a path to making teaching joyful again.

Schools that invest in eliminating seclusion and reducing restraint typically see:

• Fewer injuries to staff and students.
• Less burnout, because adults are no longer asked to do things that violate their values.
• Better relationships with families and communities, easing conflict and distrust.
• Improved classroom climate and academic engagement.

You did not create the policies or conditions that led to seclusion and restraint becoming “normal.” But you can be part of changing them, and you deserve systems that back you up with more than a seclusion room and restraint training.

Moving forward

If you recognize yourself in the defensiveness, “You don’t understand our kids,” “What else can we do?” know that those feelings make sense. They are a sign that you care, that you are scared of being left without support. The invitation here is not to walk away from safety, but to redefine it.

Safety is not the absence of chaos at any cost. Safety is a network of relationships, environments, and practices that keep nervous systems regulated, uphold dignity, and prevent harm. Seclusion and restraint do not fit that definition, not for students, and ultimately not for you.

You deserve better tools. Your students deserve better responses. And together, we can build systems where the answer to “If not seclusion and restraint, then what?” is clear, resourced, and deeply aligned with why you came into this work in the first place.

We can and must do better for our students and ourselves.