Category: Challenging behavior
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An Avoidable Crisis: The Focus on Compliance (Part 1)
We hear from so many parents, caregivers, and teachers how “out of control” so many kids they work with are. They describe them as rude, disrespectful, disruptive, always touching things, and one of my favorites, can’t sit still. But what makes “these kids” so terrible?
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Don’t punish us for being autistic
Schools punishing students with autism for running (elopement) is sad. I was a runner when young. Please know that it is not to misbehave, but rather to escape the experience of autism’s confusing world. Your world is bearable, but ours is often jumpy or noisy or spinning. Running and feeling air swirling about can help…
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Alternatives to Restraint and Seclusion
A common question from school staff, administrators, and members of local school boards is “if not restraint and seclusion then what?” In this article, we will address how the current approaches to behaviors of concern are failing and leading to the use of restraint and seclusion. We will also address some of the approaches that…
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How Can We Center Equity and the Human Experience in 2021-2022?
Race and equity were key words in education long before America’s racial reckoning was re-sparked in the summer of 2020. If you work in education, you are probably well aware of the disproportionate achievement of black and brown students compared to their white counterparts, higher discipline referrals and suspensions, a higher diagnosis of students with…
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Bad Behavior or Nervous System Response
Our nervous systems and physiological states create and produce the behaviors we observe, question, discuss, punish, suspend, seclude, and attend to in all moments throughout the day! As educators who sit with 30 to 180 plus nervous systems every day, we have traditionally paid attention to observable behaviors, assessing them as appropriate, disrespectful, inappropriate, oppositional,…
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Prone Restraint is Neither Safe nor is it Therapeutic
If we want to reduce and eliminate the use of restraint and seclusion we must stand up to misinformation. Recently an opinion letter was published in the Chicago Tribune related to legislative efforts to prohibit the use of prone restraint in schools in Illinois, a topic we have discussed in the past. The letter was…
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The Low Arousal Approach to reducing restraint and seclusion
I came across the Low Arousal Approach and Professor Andrew McDonnell’s work three years after our son had been repeatedly restrained and secluded in his Central Massachusetts Elementary School. Ten years old at the time, we quickly saw the signs of trauma take hold. Four years later our son has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress…
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Brain Aligned Restorative Circles: Addressing the Core of Discipline Challenges
Restorative Circles and Practices have been implemented for a significant amount of time inside schools. There are hundreds of articles and resources sharing this framework and its purposes for building community and for responding to challenging behavior through authentic dialogue. As we navigate our way through this pandemic with chronic unpredictable toxic stress, we are…
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Questioning the Evidence Behind Evidence-Based Approaches
Some of the most ineffective and harmful treatments are considered “evidence-based.” The phrase in isolation is meaningless without understanding the quality of the evidence AND whether the evidence supports the purpose for which the treatment is being used. Additionally, practices that were at one time considered evidence-based can be found through additional research and time…
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Connections Over Compliance: Book Review
Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline, by Dr. Lori Desautels is a gift for teachers, principals, university professors, state and federal departments of education and for parents. Even more importantly, it is a blessing for all the students whose teachers, support staff and administrators and parents read, understand, and apply the wealth of…