The Behaviour Is Often the Last Thing to Arrive
A child refuses to begin an assignment they completed easily the day before. Another becomes restless and argumentative during a transition. A student who usually participates withdraws, lowers their head, and avoids everyone around them. A young person reacts intensely to what appears to be a relatively small correction. These are often the moments when adults begin paying close attention. The behaviour is visible. It interrupts learning, affects other people, and may require an immediate response. We naturally want to understand what happened and decide what should happen next. The difficulty is that the behaviour may not be the beginning of the story. It may be the moment when a much longer story finally becomes visible. Adults often describe behaviour using words such as defiant, disengaged, unmotivated, attention-seeking, or disrespectful . These words can sound explanatory, but they usually describe only what an adult observed. They tell us very little about what the child...
