Behaviour is communication — especially for neurodivergent children. This category explores inclusive, compassionate strategies for supporting pupils who express their needs through behaviours that challenge.
You’ll find trauma-informed approaches, low-demand parenting ideas, classroom de-escalation techniques, and sensory-aware behaviour support plans. Whether you’re a teaching assistant, SENCO, or parent, these resources help you respond to behaviour with curiosity, not control.
School Anxiety, Signs, Causes, Support and Resources. The subject of school anxiety is often a source of frustration and conflict between schools and parents. This is unnecessary and unhelpful and does nothing to provide support to the child. Children are often labelled as being school refusers. Pressure from local authorities may be put on parents … Read more
Monitoring wellbeing using a food and mood chart We developed this food and mood chart when working with a non-verbal young man who had multiple but unclear food intolerances. This led to a highly limited diet that felt unethical. It was also felt this led to behaviours i.e the child will take food from others, … Read more
This post on sensory processing was inspired by a talk I attended by Olga Bogdishana. You can find the slides from her presentation on “Making sense of Sensory Needs and Challenging Behaviour” here. She has also written this book which gives a deeper insight into sensory perceptual issues. Sensory processing is a key part of … Read more
Over 30 suggested strategies for effective behaviour management. #Education #Teaching.
My second sensory story is about the human body. This was written for the “Body, burps and bile” topic and delivered to a group of 12-14 year old students with a range of needs including Autism and PMLD.
There were so many important developments in the world of special education during the first part of 2019. Many seem to be focussing (and about time) on humanising the stories behind the labels and pushing for accountability of those in positions of power.
Recognising your own emotions and identifying effective strategies for managing these is a key skill for any child.
You can call it challenging behaviour but these events really demonstrate is a highly anxious,frustrated or traumatic reaction to stress, Autistic children are not any more prone to behavioural incidents than other children so we need to look deeper if our interactions or environment is leading to issues.
this post is specifically focused on strategies that may be effective for autistic children. This post draws heavily on the work of Damian Milton from who’s writing I have learnt so much from over the last year or two. This booklet has particularly shaped my approach to teaching. Most of these strategies are really just aimed at reducing stressors throughout the day. I would like to stress these are interpreted through by teaching experience and context is very important.
In this post I am classing reluctant learners as those who often do not finish tasks, they may do the minimum to get by or even flat out refuse to take part. As inclusive teachers we constantly have to be mindful of the drivers of the child’s behaviour. The key to creating engaged learners is to know the child and the barriers they face. Some issues may go deeper and require additional specialist support. A class teacher dedicated to engaging their students can have a huge impact on the students experience of education and their outcome in life. Engaging learners is as much about emotional confidence as intellectual propensity so make that bond and enable all to achieve
The importance of adapting inclusive school learning environments Every student, whether in special schools, an alternative provision or general education classrooms has a dream inclusive classroom. This utopian learning environment will be different for every learner. Some learners may need wide-ranging environmental adaptations requiring specialist input. There are some common environmental adaptations we can all … Read more
The interactions, bonds and relationships of a family unit are so diverse that what may help one family will insult another.
This is blog post is primarily school-based and SEND focused, but can any education or care setting that strives to be truly inclusive should be able to use this as an environmental and relational approach based checklist or simple inclusion audit tool. Before you start looking at strategies or labeling a child’s actions as challenging … Read more
There are many many children out there who are crying out for help. There are many dedicated, enthusiastic, creative and compassionate people who are desperate to help. These people need help, we are increasingly facing highly complex issues that very few educational professionals are equipped to deal with. I am writing this as a teacher but I know there are CAMHS workers, social workers and support staff throughout the country who are feeling like this.
I needed something quick and simple to support a young student through a difficult time. She was very reliant on staff to support her with very little idea ways she could help herself without getting overwhelmed. Her actions suggested she needed some prompts to think of ways to ask for help.
These books are only those I have read and can recommend. They all follow an inclusive and positive support ethos. They all also focus on the only part of behaviour support we can control – ourselves. If your school has a zero tolerance behaviour policy read these and make it your mission to get that rewritten.I will get around to doing a second post but I need to get reading first!
This post will outline the role relationships play in behaviour support, I will also outline some of the research led practices I have used. Before I start I do want to say that I have read studies I do not agree with. I also know that a huge number of studies conducted ON Autistic children/adults focus on strategies intended to normalise social behaviours which is a huge ethical issue. Fortunately I have had the opportunity to listen to and discuss elements of my practice with actually Autistic academics and practitioners. This has greatly shaped my approach and ethos towards behaviour support, I will also admit this has slanted my view of a lot of studies that remove the human element from behaviour and reduce the children to purely objects to study. To this end I fully expect some of the approaches in the post and the presentation to be a bit controversial and I am 100% sure that at least some of them will contravene your school (or center’s) behaviour policy.
A Guide to supporting transitions and changes with Autistic students within school.
Transition is a challenge that our students face on a daily basis. These transitions take place on a range of scales. From the micro transition of switching thoughts between tasks to major physical transitions between environments. The number of individual transitions an individual will undertake throughout the day is huge. Each one may well be a source of stress and anxiety for each student. The level of this anxiety and how it is communicated to us will vary dramatically. As with all the actions of our students this stress may not be easy for us to interpret. The quotes are from Autistic people I asked but are anonymised. I know I do not include enough Autistic voice, I will strive to expand this in future posts (I would welcome your comments.)
A Case Study on Autism and Heat Sensitivity How would hot weather influence behaviour? This seemed apt to post now as the country simmers slowly beneath the summer sun. This post is based on observations and frequency data over a shorter period of hot weather. Whilst analysing the behavioural incident data records a spike in … Read more
Internal Antecedents: Does Behaviour Really Come “Out of the Blue?” Often overlooked, internal antecedents are an important element in behaviour support. This article is based on my experiences working with Autistic children who also communicate in ways we find challenging. We do our best to find patterns, clues and reasons for episodes of challenging behaviour. … Read more
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