Simon Currigan: 0:44

Whilst every pupil's needs are unique, there's one key mindset shift that can enhance your de-escalation skills as an adult. In this episode, we uncover what that mindset shift is, and show you how to apply it when handling student meltdowns or anger outbursts. You'll learn how to reduce your students' distress and minimize disruption to classroom learning. This is a must listen for educators seeking deeper understanding of why kids get dysregulated and how to support them. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there. Simon Currigan here, and welcome to the snackable essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets. Just like a box of chocolates, these mini episodes are bite sized, packed with goodness, and will give you an instant energy boost without the guilt. In each one, we unwrap a golden strategy or insight from a previous episode that you can use right away in your classroom because sometimes, like sneaking that extra chocolate, we all need a reminder of those essential tips that make life a little sweeter. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you, if you're enjoying these episodes, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a chance to join us for more Essentials episodes. In today's episode, we're heading back to episode 57, which was originally released back in 2022, but it's still so relevant today. My colleague, Emma Shackleton, and I are handing you a behavioural Ferrero Rocher, a game changing mindset shift that will help you de-escalate tricky student situations so that managing outbursts becomes a whole lot smoother. Let's dive in.

Emma Shackleton: 3:01

Here's a little mindset shift that might help with this, and it's thinking about the difference between a child's calendar age and their emotional age. So the calendar age, well, that's easy. That is how many days old that child is. So in this scenario, we're talking about a 13 year old child. So lots of 13 year olds are as tall and as big and as strong as adults, so you're looking at a virtual adult in front of you. But actually, when we think about their emotional age, that's harder to gauge, but that is where they are at emotionally. So, yes, they might be 13 years old in their body, but actually develop mentally, where are they at emotionally?

Simon Currigan: 3:48

So when you're looking at this child in front of you, the mindset shift to make here is, I like to imagine a Russian doll. They're like a wooden doll. It's usually a woman on the outside, and you lift up the top half of that wooden doll and inside there's another wooden doll. You open that doll and they get smaller and smaller and smaller. Well, I want to imagine a Russian doll with 2 layers. When you're working with your out of control student, what you have to recognize is you're actually managing 2 pupils, not one pupil, but 2 separate pupils. On the outside, the big Russian doll on the outside, what we're looking at is that 13 year old, that teenager who looks big and looks strong and looks mature. But when you open up that Russian doll, on the inside, there's another one. There's a child. There's a 2 year old or a 3 year old who has a much younger emotional age. And what's interesting is in terms of how our brain makes decisions, it's that inner emotional child who's calling the shots, who's making the decisions about what's happening. Because when we become angry or when we move towards high levels of anxiety, we start to engage in more emotional thinking. And in those cases, it's not the sensible, old, logical teenager that we're looking at. It's that younger doll inside, that 2 year old, that 3 year old who can't control their emotions, who are making irrational decisions. And it's important not to confuse the 2 because if you're confronted what appears to be, a 6 foot 13 year old who's close to adulthood, then you might be tempted to manage that situation like you're talking to someone who's 18, 19, or 20. But just because they look like an adult, it doesn't mean they're thinking like an adult. We have to think about the inner child.

Emma Shackleton: 5:27

Okay. So in terms of de-escalation then, how do we do that? If we imagine the inner child, the 2 year old child, for example, let's think about how we would manage a 2 year old having a tantrum or who is out of control or being overtaken by their emotions. What would we do then? Well, we'd accept that the child had lost control of their emotions. So we'd recognize that it's pointless talking and reasoning with them, and we'd realize that they need the adult's help to get on top of these emotions and to get back in control. What we wouldn't do is turn around and say, we'll sit down and talk about the action man incident when you're more composed and being more respectful. At 13 years old, we sometimes expect that children should be able to do this. I often see this in primary schools as kind of an expectation. Once children get to year 4 or certainly year 5 year 6, we just suddenly expect that they will switch now into a state where they are able to manage themselves. And actually, just because they are older, just because they are bigger, it doesn't necessarily follow that they've mastered this skill yet. Let's face it, there are adults who haven't mastered this skill yet. So we can't assume that just because they're older or just because they're bigger, they're able to emotionally regulate.

Simon Currigan: 6:50

So we have to deal with the pupil as they are in front of us, not how we think they should be behaving, but how they are behaving and how they have developed in terms of their emotions. We're dealing with, although it looks like a 13 year old, we're dealing with a 2 year old who never developed the skills to deal with this situation. They have a skills deficit. They lack the ability to regulate their emotions. They lack the ability to control their emotions once they start to run away with them. It's almost like they're having a tantrum even though they're 13 or 14 years old. And there are all sorts of reasons why they might not have developed these skills at an earlier age. It might be that their parents have presented them as poor role models. Often parents that shout a lot and scream a lot have kids who shout and scream a lot, and they've just learned that template for managing difficult situations from poor role models. It might be in their early years they experienced trauma or domestic violence, and that has impacted on their ability to regulate their nervous system. So they're unable to when their emotions start to run away with them. They might be hypervigilant, constantly looking for threats around them, constantly in this defense mode waiting for someone to attack them. They might have experienced any of the other ACEs adverse childhood experiences. They might have an underlying special need that's fueling high stress levels like autism or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or attachment disorder or any of those other conditions. So what we have to remember is what we're seeing in class, the behaviour in front of us is just the tip of the iceberg. We don't know what happened before this event, either earlier today or 10 years ago, that has impacted on this child's skills, their emotional skills, their ability to manage and regulate themselves in difficult situations.

Emma Shackleton: 8:37

Well, this is a tricky balancing act because although we're saying that we have to de-escalate the 2 year old, of course, the person in front of us is 13. So a bit like a parent, first of all, we have to manage the inner 2 year old who's responsible for driving that behaviour because they're experiencing those overwhelming emotions, but we've also got to be mindful that we have got a 13 year old in front of us. So we have to be mindful of talking and acting in a way that doesn't offend them. So we've got to think about our tone of voice and be really careful that we're not being patronizing. Don't talk down to them like a 2 year old. Use the language that you'd expect a 13 year old to be able to process. And if the 13 year old detects any whiff of an insult, you're gonna have the 2 year old and the teenager getting angry with you.

Simon Currigan: 9:33

So what we have to do is guide that inner 2 year old until they're back in control of their emotions, and then we can start addressing the 13 year old again. So this might involve some time away from whatever they perceive as the threat. What is the thing that's frustrated them? Is it a specific piece of work? Is it another child? Is it an adult in the room? If we can give them space away from those things, their brain is no longer going to be looking for that threat or reacting to that threat. They're going to calm down, and they're gonna be more reasonable. We need to talk and use language that is acceptable to that outer 13 year old. And once we've got that inner child who's been jumping up and down and up and down with anger, once we've calmed them down, right, we shift our focus back to the outer child, back to logic and talking about what went wrong. We might have a restorative conversation about who was impacted by that behaviour and what needs to happen to put that situation right. We might have to talk about consequences for inappropriate actions in the classroom or have a coaching conversation about how to do better in this situation in the future, whatever approach your school adapts. But there is no point engaging in that conversation that requires logic and distance and calm until we've managed that in a 2 year old. We're gonna have to pause right there as we run out of time for today's snackable episode, but if you want to unwrap more insights about developing your de escalation skills, check out the full episode. That's episode number 57. It's packed with practical strategies and definitely worth indulging in. I'll pop a link at the bottom of the episode description for easy access. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to rate and review us. It's quicker than unwrapping your favorite chocolate bar, and it helps more teachers, school leaders, and parents find our School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Thanks for tuning in, and I look forward to seeing you next time for another sweet, sweet bite of behaviour wisdom.