When Behaviour Escalates Fast: 7 Strategies for the First 60 Seconds

So we are thinking today about seven quick wins for when behavior escalates fast. This was a topic that has been requested. What do we do in those moments when we have children who are struggling? When they are approaching that point of meltdown, it feels like things are getting out of control and we want to be able to bring the situation back to a point where thinking speaking brains are online, nothing's being thrown around, no one's being bitten, and there's minimal shouting. This is our aim. Now, the key thing to recognize first of all is that we need to try and get in there as early as possible. So, what we want ideally is to be recognizing the early warning signs rather than waiting. This isn't about once the paints have been thrown across the room, what do we do? This is about trying to prevent getting to the point where the paints are being thrown across the room. So, there's about a minute here. Sometimes when behavior is escalating fast, where you've got your golden moment where things are escalating, things are beginning to feel like we're losing control. The child is is really really struggling now and we're trying to intervene just before things tip over the edge. So, of the seven strategies today, some of them are about prevention, trying to stop us get to that point and some of them are about that kind of early intervention just as things are beginning to bubble over. We're trying to kind of contain things. So that kind of that first 60 seconds before everything goes a little bit that's what we're thinking about today. Um and the reason on that last slide I'll just keep we're just going forwards in the slides now. The reason why I say this like once you get to eight or nine out of 10 in terms of dysregulation um your options are limited. This is a kind of a basic brain thing. Essentially, we are wanting to be in a scenario where we are accessing our kind of preffrontal cortex and our lovely thinking, speaking, problem solving brain, the stuff that allows us to manage day-to-day, make good decisions, regulate, all those things. But as we move into this kind of danger threat state where behavior is going a little bit w and this is when our amygdala is kicking in and we're no longer kind of using reasoning. We're no longer able to do kind of complex thinking, speaking, interacting. And so it's really really challenging to to get things back under control because we're in a very sort of basic brain state where we're essentially got a sort of trauma or fear response that fightlight freeze type response is really kicking in. So we really want to get in a little bit earlier than that if we can. So the kind of underlying principle for the whole session today is this that disregulated children need safety signals not control attempts. Why do I say this? Because when we are faced with a child who seems out of control, where their behavior is escalating, where we're seeing that volcano at risk of erupting or indeed erupting, we as the adult tend to go into the mode of taking control. Now, it's important that children who are struggling know that there are adults around them who who have control, who are calm, who've got this all together, but they need that to feel in a safe way, not like you've become the threat that you're barreling in there and you're taking charge in like a big loud way because that can add to that feeling of threat. And we'll discuss that a little bit more as we go through. But we just need to see this these these behavior challenges uh are often essentially a response to feeling unsafe, a response to threat. I'm disregulated. I don't feel safe anymore. What I need is to feel safe again. When you come in and you try and control me, whether you do that by shouting or through your movements or whatever it might be, that adds to the feeling of unsafety, which adds to the dysregulation. And suddenly we're not seven out of 10 anymore. We're 10 out of 10. the volcano has exploded. So, they need safety signals from you, not control attempts. And we'll have a look at what that looks like. Okay. So, strategy number one, we have seven today. Seven. Uh, and we will work through them. Um, so number one is the 45 degree angle. So, this is about how we actually position ourselves. Body language. Thinking about how we feel physically to the child makes a really big difference here. So what's most combative is kind of face to face like Spanish Inquisition style. You're facing the child headon and that increases that feeling of threat. Whereas if we move ourselves kind of just around a little bit um then we change that threat level. So think about the kinds of situations when you've ended up having really difficult conversations with a friend, say when you feel more able to open up. Often you might be sat side by side in a car or walking along side by side together. or you might have gone for a drink and you might sort of sit around the the corner of a table. Very rarely do we choose to kind of be facing each other directly. That can feel quite threatening. So this kind of 45 degree angle feels much less threatening. This is just a general thing, by the way, not just when behavior is escalating. This is also how you would make someone feel more comfortable if you were interviewing them. For example, we'll often do the Spanish Inquisition. We're one side of a big desk, they're the other side. But imagine how differently that interview would feel if you were walking alongside or you had chairs that were side by side without that barrier and without that that head-on. So that 45° angle makes you feel less threatening. But little children as well, it can be good if you make yourself feel smaller. So bringing yourself down um can also help if you're looming over them and directly facing them. You can see why that might feel a bit scary. And if they're already in a bit of a scared place, that can be challenging. Um so yeah we we want to remove that that threat response. We want to send the safety signal and and then this point about the exit route as well. Um if you are in the way of where the child might escape that again is going to increase their feeling of uh threat that lack of safety. If you're stood between them and the door you might just move yourself a little bit. Um, this just makes the the, you know, again, we're trying to remove that that feeling of threat and increase that feeling of safety. You're not trying to block their exit. You want them to feel safe. Of course, you know, all of these ideas that I'm sharing, there will be times when you say, I'm going to overrule that because on this instance, you know, I don't think the child is safe. Actually, I'm trying to contain them. This is what our safeguarding procedures suggest. But this is just general practice recognizing that a child will feel quite confronted if we're direct and if they can't see their way out of the situation. Um then that threat level continues to rise by moving ourselves just a little bit, angling ourselves differently, things begin to feel different for the child. Okay. Number two is offer the obvious. This one feels a little bit strange at first, but bear with me. So, in this instance, what we're actually going to do is just tell the child what they want, even if we're not actually able to give it to them yet. So, this might look like this. Um, you want to leave right now or you don't want to do this work or you want me to stop talking or you want everyone to go away. You're not telling them that you can make these things happen. You're just acknowledging what it is that you believe they want. Later on with one of the other strategies, we'll think about how we might add an and sentence to this. But for right now, we're just going to acknowledge what it is we think that the child wants. Now, this might seem like a strange thing to do because it's like, "Yeah, okay, Pooky, whatever. We're not fixing anything here. We're just telling them what they already know." But the problem is they know what they want, but they think that you don't know what they want. And until you kind of confirm that with them, they need to tell you because they're feeling threatened, scared, worried, whatever, they need to communicate with you. So their anger, their frustration needs to be heard. So if they don't think you've understood, they're just going to try harder to tell you. And right now, that telling you might be through throwing, kicking, hitting, shouting, whatever it might be. Um, as they're fighting to to help you to understand. And and this can mean that it escalates and escalates until we get to the point of meltdown. And this is really common. It's like communication breakdown. They're trying desperately to tell you what is going on for them. But they think that we've not understood. But if we do understand and we just name it, we say you want everyone to go away right now. The pressure for them to explain themselves is released. And that's not the end of it. We need to think about what happens next. But at least they feel heard. So they know that you've understood and that gives us space to move on to the next thing. So just stating what it is that we think is going on for them is tip number two. And it does seem strange. I do get that this seems like a very old thing to do and it can feel very unnatural. What I would suggest is that you try it um and you see what happens. Try to keep these sentences fairly simple particularly with younger children. So all of these strategies we can adapt a little bit for different ages, but like if it's a really young child, we'll be keeping our sentences, you know, three, four um words long. You know, you you wanted the pen or you want to leave. But with older children, we might begin to uh make it a bit more complicated. We might start introducing feeling words. For example, if we're kind of upper primary or we've got into secondary, we might be saying, "You're feeling very frustrated because Jimmer took your pencils," or whatever it might be. So, we can begin to name it um a little bit more, make it more complex as they get bigger. But simplicity is often your friend here. When we have a child who is feeling overwhelmed in any way, then their brain is not at its kind of most free to explore thinking and problem solving. And so we want to keep it simple for their brain if we can. Okay. Number three is the strategic retreat. So this is about the fact that when a child um is having their behavior beginning to escalate, quite often we want to step in and take control. We might be thinking, "Look at me. Look at me. I'm trying to communicate with you here or move in to try to take control of the situation." But remember what we've been saying before about children needing to feel safer and less threatened. And how we can make them feel less threatened is actually to take a step away. Now, we're not talking about abandoning them, completely moving away from them. It's just literally a step away. This does two things. So, one, as I already said, it's going to reduce the feeling of threat for the child. a bit like when we we uh changed uh our body language and the the angle we were facing. When we take a step away, it says, "I'm not coming in for the attack here. Essentially, it's okay. I'm going to give you space. You're safe." But also, crucially, this helps us because when a child's behavior is escalating, often we're mirroring that ourselves. We're feeling that anxiety. We're starting to feel that anger. We're beginning to feel disregulated ourselves. And when we physically take a step away, that's sending messages to our system as well, saying, "This is okay. I'm calm. I'm in control." It can help to have this as a little running kind of script in your own head as well. Like just telling yourself, "It's okay. I've got this. I'm calm. I'm in control." And even if it doesn't feel completely true right now, we tell ourselves this because this is what we're hoping to aspire to. So, we're going to take that step back. Even though our instinct might be like, "Get in there and fix this." For many many children, much of the time, a step back will be far more helpful. So, you're going to notice the tension rising. You might notice this in the child. You might notice it in yourself. You're often going to notice it in both. You're going to resist that urge to move in. You're going to take just literally one step back and think about your voice. So, we often talk about our voices here. We're going to do our slow, low, low. Remember, slow down the pace, lower the volume, and lower the pitch. So, we've got that lovely warm audible hug going on. And then we're just going to wait just for a few seconds um before we take our next move, before we say the next thing, do the next thing. Just give it a little bit of space. And so the key thing here when we crowd the child, they're going to feel threat, but when they've got just a little bit of space, that's going to say safety to them. So we just want to create that little bit of space, which enables them to feel a bit safer. They begin ever so slowly to start to regulate again. Okay. Okay, idea number four is replacing but with and. Now remember a little one moment ago we were talking about stating what we believe the child uh thinks or needs or wants. Um and this is kind of the next part of that if you like. Um so instead of saying um uh you know you you you want to leave but right now you can't. We're in the middle of maths. We're going to think about saying something different which will work better for the child. Um, we very often use the butt. Um, because usually what the child wants isn't possible right now for some reason. If what they wanted like was possible and easy, probably that would already be happening. Probably the behavior wouldn't be escalating. Um, but when we say but, then the child feels completely misunderstood. Whereas when we say and, we're trying to keep that connection open. Why? Because when when we say but, it erases everything we've said before it. So, we might have done the good work of, you know, I know you're upset, but then we say, but you need to calm down. Then the child didn't hear, I know you're upset. They they don't think that you understand them because they think that you think that they can just calm down and so they feel completely unheard and this this is not helpful. But if you say, I know you're upset and I want to help you feel safer. This is acknowledging how they feel. This is acknowledging what's happening for them and thinking about what our next steps might be together. I understand, but you can't speak to me like that. This again feels combative. Makes the child feel that they're not understood. I understand and I wonder what you need right now. So, it's just a change from a but followup to an and follow-up. It's a again, it's one that doesn't always come naturally, but comes very very naturally. And is a little bit harder and it's worth thinking through what some of your common ones here might be, but it really makes a big difference. When we say but, everything before is erased. As I said before, they think that everything after it is the real message. So, if we take that last example, um rather than um understanding that they're upset, I know you're upset, but you need to calm down. All they hear is you need to calm down. You can't speak to me like that. Everyone else is managing. That's the message that they're hearing. So, we've undone the hard work of recognizing what they're saying. Um and so, yeah, we're showing them that we don't understand. But when we use our and it means that both parts of the sentence feel equally true. So again, going back to our examples here, I know you're upset. We believe this to be true. And I want you to feel safer. Both of these parts feel true to the child now. I understand. And I wonder what you need right now. That's hard. And we can work out what's next together. So the and really changes the feel of it for the child. We haven't completely erased um what was said first. We're seeing them. We're hearing them. We're recognizing the challenge. and we're trying to support and find a way forward together. I hope that makes sense. It's a little bit of a funny one, but just literally think about replacing the word but with the word and when you find yourself in this situation and see what happens. Okay, strategy number five is the one down strategy. This is about reducing demands. So, what we're looking to do here is to see when um these issues are just beginning to escalate, when we're recognizing that a child is managing just that little bit less well, and we're going to start to reduce demands on them. So, we're going to make things one step easier. Um when a child is beginning to feel dysregulated, beginning to feel overwhelmed, then every additional demand we put on them is going to make it more likely that they are unable to cope, that we're going to see that behavior boom, uh which is not what we're looking for. So, we're going to um move things down a notch in terms of demand. So, maybe this girl here, she can normally write three paragraphs. She's a good writer today. As you can see, she is not feeling her absolute best. She's got her head down on the desk. We're seeing some of those warning signs that things are not going great for her. We might have seen clench fists. She might have been a bit irritable and snappy in her responses. Maybe she's stopped talking. There's all sorts of signs that we learn to look out for in children as we get to know them. Um, and so if we've caught this early enough, then we might just take it one step down. Instead of the three paragraphs that we normally expect from her, we're going to ask her to write two. But if she's still struggling, or if we think she's that bit more disregulated, we might take it down another level two down and just ask her to write topic sentences only. Or if we're even beyond that, maybe just tell me your ideas verbally. We're not going to expect any writing at all of her. We're going to really reduce those demands. You can apply this across any um situation. Maybe, I don't know, you're doing maths and instead of 20 problems, then uh you might go one down and say, "Oh, we'll just do the odd questions, not the even ones." Two down might be just do the first five instead of all 20. And three down might be it's okay just to observe um for now, for example. So, we can have a think about what those levels might be for us. Um the key here is to try and reduce the demands before the child hits crisis, not afterwards. partly because once they've hit crisis kind of nothing great's going to happen anyway. They're not really in a position to continue with any demands on them. We're just yeah we're we're kind of fueling failure here. But the other thing here is about thinking about what behavior we're rewarding. So if uh we are noticing early warning signs but nothing's actually kind of gone wrong yet and we're saying, "Oh, she doesn't seem quite quite like she's really really managing right now. I think we need to reduce the demands." And we do that in a kind of calm and um very considered and deliberate way. Um then then this is this is rewarding uh like recognition of early signs. They might even have let you know. You might have a little uh card that you share or something like that. Some sort of non-verbal signal that says I'm struggling a bit. Can we reduce those demands? If we wait until the point that things really escalate, then it looks like we're responding um by reducing demands once we see that behavior that is challenging for us. And that's not what we want to reward. Um not because the child will then kind of manipulate and go, "Oh, well actually I always get to do less maths if I start throwing things across the classroom." But actually because internally, subconsciously, they learn that when they're not managing, the way to get what they need is to have this kind of escalation of behavior. And we can create a bit of a a built-in kind of cycle here of positive reinforcement of challenging behavior. So, we really want to to spot this early, reduce those demands earlier on in that cycle when we're just seeing those early warning signs. Have a think if you've got particular children that you've come here today thinking about if there are signs that you notice in them. Do you see the clenched fists? Do you see their breathing change? Does you know how they're communicating with you uh begin to change? They become less interactive. There's all sorts of signs that you might see. But what are the early warning signs for this particular child? And so that you can proactively reduce those demands. Now, one of the things that people say when I suggest stuff like this is, "Well, okay, but they're not going to get their work done. You know, we've got a lot of curriculum to get through here. And I would just ask you this. Curious cat says, "Would you rather they complete one paragraph with relationships intact or zero paragraphs after a meltdown?" Sure, you wanted three. But if we don't reduce those demands, if we don't proactively manage the situation, the likelihood is the kids in the corridor or gone to the head's office or whatever happens in your school and no paragraphs are written. Um, and not only that, but actually the relationship begins to break down, too. Whereas, if you've recognized those early warning signs, then hopefully they're still able to produce something, one paragraph of three maybe, and the relationship stays intact because this showed them that you saw them, you understood them, and you responded. And so, it's actually relationship building rather than relationship breaking. Okay, number six, the preemptive pause. This just feels slightly ironic when I like barrel through, barrel through, barrel through. But the whole point of these sessions is they're meant to be like full on and lots of ideas and then we'll do Q&A at the end. So the preemptive pause. Okay. So this is about having 30 seconds regularly that stops the accumulation of stress. So throughout the day we are moving between different tasks all the time and every time we transition particularly for our neurode diverent children but kind of for everyone a little bit of stress is building up and we've all got our point where we can't manage anymore. We've all had days like this right where you've gone from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. Imagine like those days when you have parents evening and you've gone straight from school into parents evening, meeting after meeting after meeting and then in the end you get to the point where it's really hard. It's like that for our children every day. um particularly neurode divergent children because many of them um are uh monotropic. Monotropic is um have a really good capacity to focus on one thing really well but it's really difficult to do multiple things and it can be really hard to move from one thing to the next because we were really focused in on it. Um and so when we move from one activity to the next that's actually really quite stressful. So what we're suggesting here is a tiny intervention where we just take a little gap in between the activities. Instead of going straight from one activity to the next, there's just like 30 seconds where nothing really happens. And then we find that the stress is much less likely to accumulate. So we don't gradually work to that point of meltdown. If you ever have kids that you're working with where suddenly, you know, it's kind of half past 2 in the afternoon and you're just moving from one activity to the next and something really tiny sends this kid off the edge and you're like, I don't understand. All I asked them to do was to pick their pen up and suddenly they've gone and you don't understand. It's probably their stress accumulation from many many activities kind of building up. It's like um if you ever played buckaroo, you know, when you have to like balance the things on the donkey's back and it's the Yeah. the I don't know plastic bucket that made the buckaroo jump, broke the donkey's back, whatever the uh saying is. Um and so what we're looking to do instead is just to allow that moment of calm between activities. Now, the thing to remember here, these 30-cond pauses, they have to be genuine pauses. Nothing nothing happens in that pause. Like the most that I've seen happen successfully is a little bit of music piped through or something. I've I've seen it work really well where people have had like a particular bit of music or some sort of sensory thing that's kind of calming and nice that happens in those pauses. A chime I've seen work very well. Um which signals the pause, but no demands, none, no like even pick this up. Let's just tidy up while we do this. That's not a pause. That's a doing. We just want to just do. And yeah, again, this one feels a bit weird when you start doing it. just stopping feels strange and you feel like you haven't got time. But when we start building in even just 30 seconds between transitions where children can just take a breath, where we can just take a breath, we find that things are much more regulated and we're much less likely to have these escalations of behavior. It can be something you can do across a whole class, but equally it might just be space that you create for a particular child if they're really struggling right now. But I find it works really well um across whole bunch of people if you need to. Um and again it feels a bit weird at first but kids often get quite used to it quite quickly. Um and they will sometimes at the beginning particularly like your ADHDers will sometimes try and fill that space with chat or movement or whatever but they get used to it over time and they begin to really use those pauses. So these are just 30 seconds of no demands at all. So it might be like you've taken the register and just before you then go into the activity, you're just going to have 30 seconds of just quiet and calm. Just 30 seconds where no one has any expectations on each other. Okay? And then number seven can kind of build on top of number six. Um the commentary pause. So this is where we are actually just going to narrate our actions. Um so we can do this uh during pauses. we're not making any expectations on anyone or we can do it when we're um alongside many of the other um strategies. To be honest, this is about allowing a child to know what we're doing because one of the things that increases that feeling of threat and remember the whole thing today was about increasing safety, reducing threat. One of the things that reduces the feeling of threat is uh things feeling predictable. So being a child where the world feels unpredictable feels really unsafe and we wanted to feel safer. So, we can just basically do a little running narration of what we're doing. We can do it in a nice calming audible hug kind of voice. But, I'm just going to move this chair. If we're doing the one where we step back, I'm just going to step back a bit to give you some space. Going to sit down over here. It's really simple, but what it's doing is telling the child what is happening. You are removing any unpredictability when you do these things. Even just taking that step back. this if this child is kind of being hypervigilant, hyper alert, really really scared right now, you taking a step back suddenly like what's going on? What's going on? And their brain is kind of firing off and thinking that it's a threat and what's going to happen next. Whereas if you just very calmly say, I'm just going to take a step back to give you a little bit of space while we take a breath. That feels very very different for the child. They know what's going on. You have taken away the unpredictability. So we're going to do this with a low calm voice. Our slow low. We're going to do it nice and slowly. um really matter of fact and we're going to state facts, not our feelings, and use very short sentences because they're easier for the child to comprehend. What we're not going to do, we're not going to ask permission. Is it okay if I take a step back? That's more complicated for the child. They need to see that you're in control, but in a non-threatening way. We don't need to explain why. Again, that's too complicated for right now. Just keep it really, really simple. Don't make it a question. You're just stating the fact. And don't use emotional language. should just stating the facts calmly, audible hug. Keep it simple. Very, very simple. Okay. 50,000 words later in about 20 minutes, uh the seven quick wins were. And do have a think about which might work for you and how. And do pop your ideas in the chat. One thing I'd say about this is uh when you have heard ideas um it's really nice to think which one will I try tomorrow and kind of commit to that a little bit by popping in the chat what you think will work or any other ideas you got to share with people. So we have the 45 degree angle where instead of being face to face with a child, we're going to reduce that threat by moving ourselves around just a little bit so we feel less threatening. We might also lower our position so we're not looming over them. We're going to offer the obvious. We are going to say what we think it is that they are trying to communicate with us so that they feel heard. You really want to leave right now. We're going to strategically retreat. We're going to take that step back so we're not crowding them because crowding feels like threat, but space feels like safety. We're going to replace the word but with the word and because the word but erases everything that came before it. Whereas and shows I hear what's going on for you and we can work on this together. We're going to use the one down strategy. Number five, this is where we lower demands. When we begin to see that a child is starting to struggle, we reduce our demands on them first by one level and then perhaps by two or three if needed. We're going to do the preemptive pause. So, in between activities, we're going to stop stress accumulating each time there's a transition by allowing 30 seconds where there are no demands on anyone. And finally, we're going to do the commentary pause where in these spaces, we're just going to rate to the child what we are doing to take away the unpredictability so they know what we're doing. And we're going to do it in our nice calm voice.