I have been leading behaviour in schools for nearly 10 years now. My approach and ethos has evolved over that time. One area that I haven’t changed is the idea that relationships are the key element in effective behaviour support. I know this is sometimes not enough, but if a strong trusting relationship (not friendship!) … Read more
Why Developing Communication is a Safeguarding Priority it is essential you ensure developing child voice for non-verbal pupils is a top safeguarding priority. You cannot overstate the importance of providing children with opportunities to demonstrate choices throughout their education. In early years education, this is acknowledged through EYFS documents (Early Years Foundation Stage). If you … Read more
All children tend to display oppositional behaviour at times. After 13 years working with children with Autism, ADHD, ODD and other needs I have seen a range of reasons for opposition. With my own children I can identify factors that can lead to oppositional behaviour. This doesn’t make it easier to deal with, and often … Read more
Trauma-Informed Behaviour Management in Schools To give you context as to my potential bias in choosing and responding to these questions I am a special education teacher. This means I have a huge amount of flexibility and support when supporting children with a range of additional needs. I do not generally support reward or sanction … 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.
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
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.
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
These are 10 simple ways to prevent challenging behaviour escalation by making small changes to your interactions. In our PBS training, these are called active interventions. In reality, there are thousands of these, the better you know the child the more adept you will become at identifying the most effective strategies in your teacher’s toolkit … Read more
Every day teachers, parents and carers are faced with potentially challenging situations. Many of these are defused through skillful behaviour support. These successful resolutions will have certain common characteristics. There are some essential conditions that must exist to deescalate an incident of challenging behaviour.
Social stories are a tried and tested way of teaching social skills but for some learners they are too much. I needed a way to remind a student of the rules but in a way that didn’t single them out as being the focus of the story. Some people will say this won’t work as autistic children can’t generalise…. but anyone who has worked with autism knows a lot of what people say is actually a myth or just does not apply to an individual.
The more you get to know the children in your class the better you will become at picking up the signs that something isn’t right. That sentence was easy to write but hard to put into practice because…
I have discussed on many occasions the importance of positive relationships when working with young people. I work with vulnerable student groups, mainly autistic young people, and those who communicate and see the world differently. This relationship dynamic can shape their view of adult to adult and adult to child interactions for their entire lives.
Overwhelmed and Stressed The terminology used for an intense episode of challenging behaviour that may be displayed by Autistic children and young people with learning difficulties can vary wildly according to the ethos and values of those witnessing it. An accepted term seems to be Meltdown (but please correct me if I’m wrong). At school we … Read more
Is there anything more distressing and potentially damaging than the moment an adult places hands on a child?
This is a reality faced by many teachers daily. Many are put in difficult situations having to support vulnerable children through crises with limited support from leadership, external agencies or maybe even parents.
Improved Communication Through Alternative Behaviours Many young people I have taught have found efficient and effective ways of communicating a need or a want at some point in the past. That then becomes their primary way of communicating. Unfortunately, as they grow and develop into young adults, this communicative behavior becomes a barrier to so … Read more
I was honoured to be asked to host #behaviourchat on the 23rd May 2016 discussing ways to manage our emotions at work with a particular focus on behaviour.
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