Children would do well if they COULD do well

Okay. It is come time and at the Xo Parenting podcast that we really reframed behavior, I've done a couple of episodes and all of my teachings really support the idea that all behavior is communication but I really want to focus this episode on that principle a little bit more today. So the first thing we're going to do is reframe behavior.

So reframe behavior means that we're going to look at behavior differently than we normally traditionally would look at behavior. So a lot of us right now are looking at misbehavior as disrespect, as something that we need to get rid of the bad or whatever. Instead, when we look at misbehavior, we need to see all the underlying things that it's trying to communicate. 

So misbehavior is communicating all of these stress behaviors, cognitive development, biology, social development, emotional development, their fears, their temperament, their past experiences, the challenging behavior that we're seeing is not just disrespect, it's not just misbehavior, it's not behavior we need to get rid of, it's behavior that's communicating these stress behaviors. Our behavior is a symptom of how our body is feeling inside. So for example, as an adult, my behavior is also communication. So when I'm stomping around and I'm frustrated, I'm not just disrespecting life and the people around me, there's probably a need that's not being met inside of me that I'm communicating inappropriately with my behavior. So if you ever have the grandma who throws guilt trips or the grandpa who says some things that make you feel really uncomfortable, all misbehavior is communicating a missing skill or a need or something inside of ourselves. 

I want you to think of three challenging behaviors that you deal with in your family.

Write down three behaviors that you deal with in your family and then look at each behavior and think about why does my child engage in these challenging behaviors?

Why does my child whine when it's time to go to preschool? Why does my child back talk to me when I tell them to take out the garbage? Why does my child hit their sister every time they're trying to play together nicely? There are all of these things that happen each day, why? Why does your child engage in these behaviors? Every single thing we do when we deal with behavior and when people message me and when I'm working with parents, I don't just say, oh, they hit, okay, do this. I say, they hit, why did they hit? Why do you think they hit? What are they trying to communicate by hitting? 

So the answer or whatever that it's going to come down to is they're communicating something and you need to figure out what they're communicating based on each of the patterns, what happens when this happens? What happens when this happens? Oh, they're probably communicating this.

In my XO Parenting Academy I talk about how to really look at the patterns and understand the function, that's what we call it, the function of the behavior is this, the thing they're trying to communicate is this and so if you're really interested in trying to figure out your child's complicated behavior, that might seem out of the blue, that might seem for no reason, there's always a reason and I can help you break it down in the XO Parenting Academy; so check that out. But before we even get into that, we have to set the groundwork for our beliefs about behavior.

Our beliefs about behavior matter.

All behavior is communication. How many times am I going to say that? Start tallying me. We need to figure out what they're communicating. So I studied this in college, it's called positive behavior support. The thing that I studied in my research is based on that, I used it in four different families’ homes. I saw very positive results on once we figured out what they're trying to communicate, teaching missing skills and kind of just like tracking behavior and it reduced behavior. We kind of saw some changes in parents' stress, stuff like that but then after I studied all this, I read a book by Ross Green and it's called The Explosive Child and he talks about very similar things and a lot of my favorite parenting books and favorite parenting gurus that aren't so mainstream, they talk about all behavior is communication. So if you're reading books that you feel like, oh, this book never works, ask me for my book list because I'm telling you what. I know the best of the best books and one of them is The Explosive Child by Ross Green. 

He uses the same principles that all behavior is communication. We have to figure out what their missing skills are, what their missing needs are, and if we don't figure out what their missing skills are and help them learn these new skills, then their behavior is just going to morph into something different. We can stop the behavior, we can extinct the behavior, absolutely. We can say, oh, just ignore the junk and it will go away. Yeah, it'll go away but then it will move into something else, either an internal or external problem. So anyways, back to Ross Green, something that he says is "if they could do well, they would do well" and I love that quote. I have adopted it and put it into all of my teachings on behavior is communication, "if they could do well, they would do well". 

So it's not that they would behave differently if they wanted to, rather, if they could do it, then they would do it. So we need to look at behavior as not like, oh, they're choosing to be like this so I just need to ignore it so that the grumpiness goes away dah, dah, dah, dah; there's something inside of them that's preventing them from doing well. What stress, what behavior, what internal thing is going on inside of them that is preventing them from being able to do well, and what do they need to be able to do? What supports do they need from you? So sometimes kids are just straight grumpy; my child experienced this morning, he woke up grumpy, he didn't want to go to preschool, dah, dah, dah, it's like the same tune I sing all the time but he was stressed about something. So the first thing we did relive positive experiences through pictures so that whatever his anxiety is worrying about being apart from me at preschool, we could kind of address it and see, okay, in my head, I was like, okay, his behavior is communicating something is probably that he's anxious about this so let's address some of that worry, some of the anxiety, do some of those worry managing strategies and then he made some choices, what would you like to eat? What would you like to do before we go to preschool? We read a book, that kind of thing. 

Anyways, if I just said, okay, it's time to go to preschool and just left him in there to do it himself, he would not have been able to and it's not because he was disrespecting me, his body was at a point of not being able to function because his worry was so profound inside of him even though it's for us as trivial, silly thing, like he wanted me to take him not his teacher or whatever. So every time we look at behavior, we have to kind of have this mindset, okay, they're communicating something, so what inside of them or what inside of me can I help them to develop in order to get through this situation? So we're going to look at the won't versus the can't a little bit differently; so I'm going to break it down. So our mindset right now is when we're looking at behavior and we think that they just won't do it well, they won't clean up their room, our mindset is judgmental if we think won't. If we think can't, they can't clean up this room, what about this mess is so overwhelming to them? If we have this can't mindset, then we are curious, we're not judgmental, we're curious, we start asking questions, why is it so difficult for them? We put ourselves in their shoes, we see, oh, they don't even know where to start. So maybe they need my support starting here. 

If we really change our mindset, from the “won't” to the “can't,” we can stay curious. So then moving on, if we have this won't mindset and we view our child as willful and defiant and sassy, I always use sassy and I'm going to keep using sassy, but it doesn't mean I don't believe her behavior is communication, she just is a little sass. Anyways, if we view our child as willful and defiant, then we have this won't mindset. But on the “can't” mindset side, we're viewing our child as missing skills or overwhelmed, they need our support. Okay, so then our thoughts, if we're in the won't mindset and we think, oh, they're defiant, we're judging, they won't clean up, then our thoughts are wow, they're lazy or they want attention and then our response to that is a reward and punishment system. We say, okay, clean up five things and then you can have a cookie or something. It's like almost to the point of like, we have to bribe everything out of them and then our child's experience is they're frustrated, there's guilt, there's shame, and they’re kind of coerced through the whole cleaning process, whatever.

On the can't mindset, when we have this view of our child, that they're missing skills or they're overwhelmed, our thoughts then go to what can I do to help? And then you teach new skills. So then you say, hey, it seems like you're really overwhelmed because there's so much to clean up. How about I pick up all the green blocks, you pick up all the red blocks and then you can choose what I pick up next and what you pick up next or something like that and you break it down for them and you show them the process of breaking up the work and that kind of thing. Maybe you don't have the time to sit there and clean up with them, so you just say, okay, do you want to listen to Elsa today? Or do you want to listen to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and try to beat the song and clean up all of the blocks before the songs over. You make games out of it, you try to help them develop their own cleaning habits, their own way of dealing with something that's so overwhelming to them.

Then you're teaching these missing skills, that's your response. You're teaching these missing skills and your child's experiences are then supported and strengthened. They feel supported, they feel strengthened and they don't feel so defeated after just a simple task of cleaning up that ended up so wrong because you you've changed your mindset from a won't mindset, a judgmental mindset to a curious mindset. What about this is so hard and what can I do to help? So one other quote that I love it's from Alex Den Hijer and that's easily from a different country, so I'm sure I just messed that name up real bad, but it says "when a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower". Let me read that one more time, "when a flower doesn't bloom, when your plants upstairs aren't blooming, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower". 

You're not going to go in there and like, oh, what the heck? I'm going to do surgery on this flower to fix this flower. No, you change the soil, I put a very fragile plant in front of my window the other day and then it got really cold, like 12 degrees and I noticed the next day that my plant that I love started wilting. And I was like, oh, it needed sunlight but now I see that by that window, it's too cold. So I moved up plant and I put a cactus there and I switched it up. I did not change the plant, I changed the environment in which it grows. So sometimes that sunlight, sometimes that's more water, sometimes that's less water, sometimes that's different soil. There are so many things that we do to change the environment to help these plants grow and that's how we needed to look at our children too. We don't fix our children, we don't say, oh, there's something wrong with them, why can't they be more like this? We fix the environment, we help give them support, we help teach them new skills, we give them support around them to be successful in whatever situation that they need support with. It's not that anything's wrong with our child, it's that there are skills, there are needs that aren't being met that they need support with. 

So, one other quote that I like to really use when I'm talking about this is "the children who need the most love will ask for it in the most unloving ways". This is like a mantra that I had in preschool, because I actually, it might surprise you, but like my favorite kids and sorry old preschool people that had perfect children, my favorite kids were the ones who needed my support the most and the reason why is because I spent so much time and concern trying to get their needs met, trying to figure out what they needed, teaching them missing skills, making charts, having meetings, all of this effort to really help them be successful in the classroom and when they started to be successful and grow, it was like the most sweet present to me. It was like a gift to me to see this happen, to be like, wow, they're feeling successful in this finally, like, look what happened when I spent the time to really help this flower bloom or whatever. So I think part of that is instead of looking at kids as like, oh, I'm going to just ignore this kid because they are risk we actually pour more love into them instead of get offended and pull away. 

So I hope that these are really good things to keep in mind but bottom line is all behavior is communication and every single behavior is communicating a need or a missing skill inside of them. So if you're interested in learning more about the patterns of behavior and understanding your child’s behavior check out my Xo Parenting Academy (discount for 30% off is LISTENINGCONF) or Text Message Coaching below.

So what supports they need from you to do well? What is happening inside their body that's making them so overwhelmed that this is their behavior?