When Behaviour Is Communication: A Trauma Informed Perspective

Most of us were trained to ask why a student is behaving a particular way. The more useful question is what the behaviour is telling us.

It sounds like a small change. It opens up a different way of seeing the young people in front of us, and a different set of responses.

Every behaviour is communicating something

An outburst. A shutdown. A refusal. A student who walks out of the room without a word.

Each of these is a young person's best available attempt to communicate an unmet need. That doesn't make the behaviour acceptable. It makes it meaningful, which is a different claim.

When you start there, the question stops being how do I stop this and becomes what is this student trying to tell me. That shift, from management to curiosity, is where trauma informed and restorative practice begin to overlap.

Ross Greene's Collaborative Problem Solving model rests on the premise that kids do well if they can (Greene, 2014). When a student isn't doing well, it's more likely to be a lagging skill or reduced capacity in that moment rather than motivation or will. The behaviour is the signal. Reading it is the work.

How trauma can impact behaviour

For students who have experienced trauma, adversity or chronic stress, what looks like defiance is often survival.

A brain that has learned to stay alert for threat does not move easily into the regulated, receptive state that learning requires. Bruce Perry's neurosequential model describes this well. A traumatised brain spends significant energy in states of threat response, and has limited capacity left for the cortical functioning that allows reflection, empathy, and following instructions (Perry & Szalavitz, 2006).

This doesn't excuse harmful behaviour. It changes what an effective response looks like.

A dysregulated student is not choosing to be difficult. They arern't feeling safe and are struggling to regulate. What they need first is co-regulation. A calm, connected, predictable adult who signals safety.

Everything else comes after that. Attempting a restorative conversation with a student who is still flooded will not work, and usually creates something you have to repair later.

The restorative response

Restorative practice gives you a way to respond that holds accountability and connection together.

The punitive version asks what you did and what the consequence is. The restorative version asks four questions.

What happened?

What was happening for you at the time?

Who has been affected, and how?

What needs to happen to set things right?

These questions do something sanctions on their own do not. They bring the student into the process of repair. They treat them as someone capable of taking responsibility, while acknowledging that the behaviour happened in a context that matters.

High expectations and high support, held at the same time.

Three questions to ask yourself first

If you're working with a student whose behaviour is persistently difficult, try these before you plan a response.

What might this behaviour be communicating?

What has this student's experience of school, and of adults generally, taught them about trust and safety?

What does this student need from me right now, before I address the behaviour at all?

None of these have easy answers. They will lead you somewhere more useful than the responses that come from frustration, or from a focus on compliance.

Where it gets hard

Reading behaviour as communication is straightforward when you have time and capacity. It is much harder at 2:40 on a Thursday with a class waiting and a student refusing to move.

That's why this has to be practised rather than understood. And leading with compassion - for you and the student - helps us get there. Importantly, this needs to be part of the normal, everyday system at your school so you feel supported to invest the time where it belongs - in connection.

If you'd like something to work with

Our free Restorative Conversation Guide provides you with some good questions, and a process to follow in tricky moments and beyond.

And if you've completed Introduction to Restorative Practices with us, Advanced Restorative Practices goes considerably deeper into trauma informed practice and the continuum of responses. Two days in Geelong, 17 and 18 November.

References

Greene, R. W. (2014). The Explosive Child (5th ed.). HarperCollins.

Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Basic Books.

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.