So you know that moment. You're calm. You're using every de-escalation trick you know. And the student keeps spiralling. Stressful, right? Well, here's the truth. If a student you're working with keeps becoming dysregulated time after time, well, de-escalation probably isn't the answer that you're looking for. And that's why in today's episode of School Behaviour Secrets, I'll explain why de-escalation might not be enough and what you should be focusing on instead.♪♪♪♪ ♪ ♪♪♪ Hi there, my name's Simon Currigan and welcome to School Behaviour Secrets and truth told when no one's looking, I'm the kind of man who's still got an old school iPod, you know, the kind with a jog wheel an Atari 800XL and a collection of comics because one day I think they might be worth something. If you're feeling me, let's get together and form a support group. Today we're going to be talking about something every teacher and school leader has faced. What do you do when de-escalation just doesn't work? You've got a student caught in Groundhog Day. They're heightened again and again. It's distressing for them and it's exhausting for you and that's no good emotionally or academically for the pupil. It's distressing, it's horrible and also it's putting you through the ringer week after week so you feel like you're treading on eggshells and then at the end of the day you go home feeling burned out. And the thing is, you've tried the calm voice, the supportive stance, the soothing words and no matter what you do, the student just keeps spiralling. You feel stuck and you don't know what to do. But here's the truth, right? By the time you're reaching for a de-escalation strategy in the middle of an explosion… or a meltdown, you are already on the back foot. You've already lost. Why? Because de-escalation is designed to put out fires. It's not designed to prevent them. If a child's nervous system keeps getting overloaded, you're going to keep going around and around in circles. No de-escalation strategy in the heat of the moment is actually going to put things on the right track in the long term. And what a lot of people who contact me about de-escalation, what they really want, yeah, is a set of magic words they can say to you in an explosion that will just calm everything down. But reaching for a set of magic words or a magic solution when a child becomes de-escalated, that's the wrong way to think about it. What if we approached the problem so your student didn't become escalated in the first place? And to do that, what we really need to do is get upstream to understand what's fuelling their behaviour in the first place. And that's where the set of PAINS come in. Now, for me, PAIN stands for the Primary Areas of Internal Need. And when a child is sensitive to one or more of these PAINS, Primary Areas of Internal Need, it makes it harder for them to regulate throughout the day. So it also makes it harder for us to de-escalate them. Think of it like hidden stress loads that push kids closer to the edge throughout the day. And unless those forces aren't managed, you see kids walking on a tightrope all day long, desperately just holding it together. And for credit, what I'm going to describe that you can use in your classroom today is adapted and based on the work of Stuart Shanker, whose work, in all honesty, really changed the way I looked at dysregulation. So if you've never checked out his work or any of his books, I thoroughly recommend you do so. So let's break down the different areas where a child may experience PAIN, those Primary Areas of Internal Need. There are five of these. And as I work through them, what I'd like you to do is I want you to picture a child that has difficulties with heightened emotions that you're working with right now. One who frequently becomes dysregulated. Picture them in class or out on the playground at break time. And start thinking about which of these pains, primary areas of internal need, apply to them. Because all kids are different. Think about what you could start doing now you've identified those areas to support them. So let's kick off. The first area I want to look at is physical pain or stress. Now these are the basic biological needs that we all have. But kids feel the effects more strongly. Think sensory overload in a noisy classroom. Think poor sleep the night before. Hunger because they skipped breakfast or even something like an undiagnosed allergy. A student with a stomach pain or a pounding headache simply can't focus on your lesson no matter how engaging it is. And what looks like difficult behaviour might actually be a body that's struggling to regulate physical stress and pain. The fix here isn't another detention. It's often something as simple as food or water or giving them space to regulate their senses. It's support for parents to help them put in place a successful sleep routine. Interestingly, just recently I had an operation that left me in a lot of pain for about 5 weeks. And it had a massive impact on the way I was able to work. And I really never expected that. I thought I'd just power through it. Just get my head down. But it turned out actually to be really hard. With my brain burning calories just trying to regulate that background sensation of pain. That left me very few resources left over for managing my focus, communicating effectively or seeing a work task through to the end. So if you're working with a child who experiences physical stress, my advice is really look at what compensating and supporting strategies you can put in place for that child. Next, there's emotional pain. Anxiety, anger, shame, parental conflict, guilt. These are strong feelings that don't just stay at home. They walk into school with the child like a monkey on their back. A student who's experienced conflict over the weekend or saw his parents fighting or literally separating, again, they might lash out on Monday morning. Another might feel unsafe in your classroom because of a peer relationship that's gone wrong. And just to unpack that feeling of unsafety for a moment, when you think of something like Maslow's hierarchy, safety is one of those critical factors at the bottom of the pyramid that needs to be in play before we care about bigger picture aspects like achieving self-actualisation, which basically means reaching your potential, forming social connections or learning new skills. And also when emotions are high, logic is low. So if your student is struggling with emotional stress or pain, the strategy here is this, build connection, use empathy. Anyone who's worked with a people affected by trauma or has a background of adverse childhood experiences, they will know this. In the words of Kim Golding, connection before correction. Make the people feel safe. And the things could be physically, emotionally or whatever. Show you care about their wellbeing and connect with them. Do this first before trying to work through whatever issues are driving their dysregulation. By the way, this is something I'm exploring in much more detail in a book I'm working on right now about student dysregulation in schools. It's early days, it won't be out for a while yet, but the core idea is this. Kids don't escalate out of nowhere. And as adults, we can help by spotting the stressors early and putting in place compensating strategies. And I'll let you know more as that develops. Then we've got cognitive pain. Now, this is about how your students process complex information. Struggling to follow instructions, having a poor working memory, confusion about how to get organised for a task, language barriers. All of these pains can fuel the child's stress or distress. Imagine being asked to do a task that you don't understand over and over again. Or being berated every time you get it wrong over and over and over. Eventually, frustration is going to take over. So the behaviour, the dysregulation we actually see is cognitive overload in disguise. The solution? Adaptations into how we present work. Things like chunking instructions, simplifying language, scaffolding tasks, pre-tutoring language. Even things like more white space on worksheets. Chunking the activities. Just before we get to the next category of pain or primary area of internal need, I've just got one quick request to make. If you're finding this episode useful, hit the subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. And if you could take just 30 seconds to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it really helps us reach more teachers and leaders who need this support. Plus, it makes my mum proud. So if you can do that, I'd really appreciate it. And while I'm on this side quest, if you'd like more practical tools for understanding behaviour and SEMH needs in your classroom, we've got a free resource to help called the SEND Behaviour Handbook. It gives you clear, easy-to-use fact sheets on common conditions like ADHD, autism and trauma, plus a behaviour analysis grid that helps you link classroom behaviours to possible underlying needs. The aim is simple. Help you spot issues earlier, look for underlying causes to think deeply about your children's SEMH needs, and then respond with the right support strategies fast because early intervention matters. You can download your copy today completely free. I'll drop a link in the show notes, which you can open by tapping on the podcast and looking at the episode description, or you can go to beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook. That's beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook to grab it. Either way, the link will be in the notes. All right, so let's get back to the main event, the primary areas of internal need and explore what we mean by social pain, the next category. Now, that's all about fitting in drama and friendships, not knowing the unwritten social rules. For some kids, social life is a minefield and when they feel excluded or humiliated, behaviour becomes their shield. A student who constantly interrupts may not be attention-seeking, but connection-seeking, and they find that when what they're doing gains the disapproval of the very adults or peers they're trying to connect with, that fuels their stress and dysregulation. Another who's rude might be putting up a wall to protect themselves from the very rejection they fear. This type of pain is all about getting our own social needs met, and one of those needs is safety. So thinking about when our ancestors roamed the plains, we would have lived in social groups of about 20, 30, 40 people. The tribe was essential for our survival, for everything from physical protection from predators, to finding food and water, to finding a mate. Now, if we had high social status in that group, that would have given us much better opportunities, things like the first and best access to the food and water that had been collected by the tribe. But if we didn't fit in, we would have had the scraps left at the end of the day. Fitting in socially actually would have directly affected our chances of surviving in the wild. And if we didn't fit in at all, well, there was a chance we would have been thrown out of the group. And back when humans lived in the wild, trying to survive on their own, well, being segregated from the group, that was a death sentence. And our minds haven't evolved past this, despite our modern societies. So if we feel that we don't fit into the social group that we're part of, we still experience emotional discomfort or pain in the background. So if you see a student struggling with this, the way forward is to explicitly teach social skills, coach friendships, and build that sense of belonging in your classroom. And then finally, we've got pro-social pain. Now, this is less obvious, but just as important. Whereas social skills are about how am I going to fit into the group and get my needs met, pro-social skills are more about contribution to the group. Thinking beyond yourself and about the needs of others. Because humans need to contribute. Kids want to feel useful and valued and part of a team. And when they don't get that outlet, or other to the group, pain increases, stress increases, and dysregulation and unsafe behaviour often fills the void. I've seen children who disrupt constantly suddenly thrive when given responsibility. Things like handing out books, mentoring a peer, supporting younger pupils. By giving those students a role where they can contribute, you ease that stress, give them a purpose, and help role model what it means to contribute to a group. Now the thing is many kids, especially boys, think the way to be a leader or to lead a task and gain everyone else's approval is to be the fastest, the loudest, the biggest, the cleverest. And sometimes they can put other kids down to help elevate their status. In a way, they're seeking approval and leadership, but they lack leadership skills to do that effectively. In fact, most kids have never been explicitly taught what good leadership looks like. It's a set of qualities that elevate the whole group, not just the individual. And these are the sorts of skills we need to teach clearly, especially as kids grow older and group work becomes more common to help them thrive. So if we step back, here's the bigger picture. De-escalation isn't a magic wand. It's a safety net. It's an emergency brake for when things tip over. The real work in avoiding kids becoming dysregulated actually becomes before that, before they become heightened in the first place. By lightening the children's load across these areas, these primary areas of internal need or pains, instead of asking how do I de-escalate, start asking what's fueling this child's escalation in the first place. I call this pro-regulation. Actively putting in strategies that keep kids regulated throughout the day so they don't become dysregulated in the first place. Prevention always beats cure. So if you're working with a pupil who does keep becoming dysregulated, what can you do tomorrow to apply this approach? Well, here are a few things. First, observe them. Start looking for patterns. When does dysregulation and heightened emotions and challenging behaviour happen the most? Is it always straight after lunch? Is it when they're working with certain peers? Is it when they're working in school? certain subjects? Then categorise. Use the pain framework. Are the stressors physical? Are they emotional? Are they cognitive? Are they social? Are they prosocial? Are they spread across two or three categories? Looking through these categories, what it does is it actually helps you catch all the stressors rather than missing out a key one because it didn't initially jump out at you. You weren't kind of scanning for it as you observed the student. And then compensate. Make a small adjustment to compensate for the stress that's driving that pain. Maybe it's a snack before a lesson, a simplified instruction, a safe seat or a peer buddy. Whatever you use is always going to be individual to the student. Different pains require different strategies. But at the same time, no students are the same either. And as ever, if you can work in collaboration with the pupil to get their opinion and their input on how to move this area of their life forward, and you can get them to suggest strategies, well, now they're invested in it and now they're much more likely to follow through with them. And fourthly, try out these strategies for a period and then reflect. Notice what worked, what didn't, and then adapt. Behaviour change isn't a one-off. It's a process of tweaking and observing and responding and reflecting. If it didn't work, well, congratulations, you've eliminated a strategy that isn't appropriate for your child in this situation. Then the job becomes to find another that addresses the same primary area of internal need. And here's the takeaway. If your student is trapped in an endless cycle of becoming dysregulated, it's time to stop thinking dysregulation and start thinking pro-regulation. The power is in noticing what keeps them stuck and making adjustments before the crisis hits, not looking for a set of magic words that will magically dispel them after they've become hype. So let me leave you with this. What pains might be fuelling the behaviour you're seeing in your classroom and with your students? And what's the one change that you could make tomorrow to lighten that stress load, that pain? And by the way, if you're dealing with a child who... has issues with attendance or is affected by emotionally based school avoidance, who resists coming onto the school site because they just find school, you know, overwhelming in some sense. And you want to know why that is. Really drill down into the cause that you can then respond to and do something about. Well, the pain framework is where you start identifying those drivers as well. If today's episode gave you something to think about, I only ask one thing from you. Share it with a colleague who's battling similar challenges because when we shift the focus from putting out fires to preventing them in the first place, everyone wins. Students, staff, school leaders and the school itself and the other pupils in the classroom, because then we're freeing up work time for the pupil to achieve academic success. My name's Simon Couric and I hope you have a brilliant week and I can't wait to see you next week.

//otter.ai