Victoria - Well, week 11, here we go. We're gonna get into some fun stuff in this  little segment. So hang on with me this week as we talk about becoming a  behavior detective. 

And keep thinking about that cumulative project, it's just about there. So we're  about to wrap some things up and you're gonna be able to submit that pretty  soon. But launch with me now into becoming a behavior detective and I wanna  talk a little bit about what some experts are saying can be a helpful framework  for detecting what is going on. 

And that starts with realizing that all behavior is communication. So this is really  important for us to know that nobody is coming at you with extreme behaviors  just to make your day worse. They're coming at this because they're  communicating something. 

What are they communicating? Well, let's have a look at what it can look like to  communicate without using words. Infants are experts at this. 

You look at this young person, are they communicating perhaps an unmet need, an emotion that you should be aware of? 

How about this little guy? He's communicating something that looks to me like  some pretty deep joy. And I love that he's holding a Bible as he expresses this. 

What about these two? There's some emotions being expressed here. 

Some distress, maybe overwhelm or sadness. There's an expression of  sympathy or perhaps an apology happening. These behaviors, just emotions,  and this is just a photograph. 

This isn't even noticing the sounds and the movements happening. This is just a quick snapshot of those behaviors. But we can tell a lot from a person about  what they're trying to communicate as they move their body. 

And so I wanna think about what is it that behaviors could be communicating to  us? One expert by the name of Dr. Ross Green tells us that kids do well when  they can. And he wrote a couple of books, one in particular called The Explosive Child. 

And if you have had an explosive child in your life, you probably know what that  means. But we're just talking about what can be called big behaviors. And they  can be communicating a lot, but I think quite often what they're communicating 

in Dr. Ross's words is it's communicating, I don't have the skills to deal with  this. He says that kids do well when they can because they have the skills to do  well, to meet the expectations, to cope with the pressure being put on them. And if kids aren't doing well, it's because they don't have the skills to meet the  demands. They don't have the skills to cope with the pressure that's happening. And I think that can be true for all of us. What does it look like when you can no  longer cope with what's happening in your life? That's when your emotions and  your big behaviors start to come out. 

So I wanna spend some time looking at behaviors and how we can interact with  them in helpful ways. And that's gonna lead me to something that I'm just gonna call the ABCs that experts have identified, which is this. The antecedent, that's  simply the thing that comes before. 

The behavior, which is of course the B in this. And then C is the  consequence. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean a punishment consequence  or a reward. 

It just simply means that this is what led to the behavior. This is what caused  that need for that communication to happen. This is the behavior that you're  seeing. 

And then this is the consequence of it, whether that was they were removed  from the room, they got the snack or whatever it was, or they got your attention  even. And that was the consequence. That was what they were going for. So these can be intentional consequences or unintentional consequences,  right? But it's always this pattern of antecedent, the thing that happens before,  the behavior, and the consequence. And as we think about what behaviors are  going on and what's the story here, I want us to think about the whole person,  the whole group as well. 

So thinking about the person, the child, but the group dynamics as well,  because it can be true that a behavior can be very upsetting for you as the  leader, for example, but it's not actually disrupting the whole group. And so how  you handle that might be differently. You might not actually stop what you're  doing and deal with that behavior in a big way. 

You might simply flip something over to help address that with that one  individual. Or maybe that behavior's really not even an issue for everybody else, so you don't need to deal with it right now, right? It just helps you to make some  choices.

But I also want to be thinking about the whole person, so the holistic view of do  they have what they need in terms of warmth and protection and food and their  spiritual growth and right? All of these kinds of things. So thinking about a whole 

person when we do interact with a behavior and thinking about what could be  going on? 

What could this individual be communicating to me through this behavior? And I  have a really helpful framework that I have learned from the restorative practices approach. And as Dr. Ross-Green talked about, right? 

We do well when we can, when we can meet the demands that are on us. I look  at this chart and it looks to me and is designed to show that as demand or  control increases, we need to also increase the level of support. Because if we  are not engaging at all, we're in the not quadrant. 

And that has no or low challenge or expectations or engagement at all. We're  not offering support or care. Quite honestly, we're ignoring or we're just  surviving. 

Kind of think back to those stages of attitudes, right? That ignorant piece of we  just don't even know, we're just not even engaging. And so we're not offering  any kind of demands, any kind of support, we just don't engage at all. 

But if we increase the demand, the challenge, the expectations, the  participation, without offering any support or care, that can lead to doing things  to people. Blaming and stigmatizing and kind of being a dictator in terms of our  leadership, right? We're just, we're not helpful to people, but we just demand  that they participate. 

We demand that they meet our expectations. This is the standard. What's wrong with you if you can't measure up? 

However, if we increase the support and we don't have lots of challenge or  expectations, that can lead us to being rescuers. We're excusing behaviors, we  might be reasoning with them, and we're doing things for people. That sounds a  lot like that pity and care kind of attitude that we talked about way earlier in this  course, right? 

And it's okay to do things for people sometimes. There are some things that we  need to do for someone who maybe is not able to do that. And even any of us at any given time might need someone to do something for us.

But when we continuously have no demand for their participation, no  expectations for them, we're only doing things for people, that's honestly not  very honoring either as we've already talked about. So where we want to be is in the with quadrant where we actually do have a high level of the challenge, the  expectations, the demands, and the control, but we're also matching that with a  high level of support and care. And what that leads to is a cooperative, a  collaborative environment in which we do things with one another. 

It's actually where the highest level of responsibility and accountability lives,  which may seem a little bit counterintuitive instead of that operating out of the  two mindset of you do things to people. But when we're actually cooperative,  there's a lot more co-responsibility happening along with one another. So think  about this with me for a moment and as we think about who God is, he sent  Jesus as Emmanuel to be with us. 

And I'm pretty stunned by that. And I think again, I want to follow the example of  Jesus, the good teacher, the God who is with us. I wanna be a leader who is  with people of all abilities. 

And so as we follow his example, we want to live in this withness. That means  that we think about the needs for support and the gifts that a person brings, and  we match our level of engagement using their gifts and the demands that we  have for their participation with the level of support that we offer to meet their  needs for support, those pink areas, right? So I think it quite naturally all flows  together and makes some good sense to say people are gonna thrive and we're  not gonna have a lot of big behaviors if we have a good balance of demand and expectation met with the right level of support for their needs for support. 

So if you would agree with me in that, then I think we can move on into  thinking about what does it look like to put some behavior strategies in  place that are living in this withness, that are holding people accountable, that  we are collaborating, that we're holding each other responsible for a community  that is with each other and that we're all saying, yes, you need to participate and this is what the expectation is for your participation, but we're ready to support  you and to lift you up and to help you meet that expectation so that you're not  overwhelmed and frustrated and unable to cope with the demands on you. So we'll jump into more of these strategies and thoughts in the next  section. Enjoy looking at some of the resources and I'll see you in the next  segment.



Last modified: Monday, May 11, 2026, 8:52 AM