A choice Issue

Barry Golten, 9 June 2024

I talk about the way to help those stuck in survival modes as being through the development of self-regulation and that this does not happen through the teaching of regulation techniques – useful as they are – but through repeated experiences of “co-regulation”. What I am describing here is the way in which having a connected person meet our stress with their calm can pattern our brains to regulate better ourselves.

Linked to this is the notion that if we see all behaviour as an expression of need, we are more likely to find a compassionate response to the person exhibiting this behaviour. This means assuming the person was doing their best in that moment, given who they are and what they have had in life. The ability to feel for others is always related to our own capacity to regulate our survival response and no one can manage it all the time.

When I put it like that and illustrate it with lots of examples, participants like the idea – it is a simple enough one – we all know that the last thing we need when we are overwhelmed is a stress response in the person trying to help us.

Yet after a while of letting this sink in, some participants often have worries about what I am saying. These worries are understandable and natural given both the historical culture around the way we respond to children’s behaviour and the intense, overwhelming high-pressure environment some schools have become.

This blog is an attempt to put some of these worries in context, offer some alternative views and hopefully settle some of the concerns.

A common concern is expressed something like this:

• What about the children who are not struggling to self-regulate and are just being naughty or making bad choices?

Before looking at these concerns it's important to say that worries are there for a good reason. Humans are designed to scan for threat and when we experience some sort of anxiety, fear or concern our nervous systems tell us that we need to be on alert in some way. If we are calm and internally connected, we then evaluate the threat using our memories, thoughts, and values.

Inherent in this concern is the notion of choice. It is a word we hear a lot in the media – politicians talk a lot about people making bad choices and having to take the consequences. Whilst no one can deny that as conscious beings humans do have the capacity to make choices about their behaviour, it can be problematic when we start to think of choice as being a simplistic concept.

The ACE’s study in the late 1990’s strongly demonstrated the biopsychosocial impact and correlation between adversity in childhood and life outcomes including a propensity for risk taking behaviour to self-soothe in distress. Are we saying that it is a coincidence that most of the people who end up in prisons, drug rehabilitation and psychiatric hospitals also tend to have multiple ACE’s? This puts the black and white rhetoric of “making bad choices” in context. We know from research that our behavioural choices are affected by environmental and psycho-social factors. This is not saying that an angry child who throws a punch at a teacher is not making a choice, but it is saying that it is not a free choice.

American neuroendocrinology researcher Robert Sapolsky takes this notion even further claiming that there is no neurological evidence for the existence of free will. Sapolsky concludes that our choices are largely determined by our genetics, experience, and environment and that the common use of the term free will is erroneous.

I don’t think we need to go as far as to unpick the complexity of choices made by children in a school environment. Choice is complex. When we feel stressed or threatened, our stress response system is automatically activated and so for some children, there is no choice involved in their behaviour. A child may have responded automatically, and logic, language and reasoning were not involved in the process – in other words, they did not make a conscious behavioural choice. Therefore, when children are repeatedly asked – was that a ‘good or a bad’ choice – they are often unable to answer and can then be deemed unresponsive or even truculent. Further, overtime, such a child may draw the conclusion that they must be bad as they are being told they are always making bad choices. This becomes the child's narrative and identity of themselves.

Even when a child is regulated, the choices they make about how they express the feelings evoked by being in a social environment will be influenced by multiple factors:

• The behaviours they have witnessed both at home and within the classroom

• Their level of energy at that time – often related to rest, sleep, diet and if they are hungry

• Their perception of how the behaviour may impact on relationships both with peers and adults.

No doubt you can think of many more.

A further fear is commonly mixed up with the notion that we might not offer the right consequences for “wilful” behaviour if we respond with compassion. This is the notion that compassionate responses will lead to chaotic children with no boundaries and no ideas about pro-social behaviour. This concern is fuelled currently by the lobby against trauma informed practice as a way forward in schools.

At our best moments, most parents and teachers know that there are other responses than the polar ones set up here of either:

• Responding with empathy but offering no guidance (what Emotion coaching calls a laissez-faire approach), or

• Responding with guidance (which might include shaming and shouting) but not empathy – (“disapproving”)

When we as adults are well enough regulated, we have the capacity to respond in a way which combines compassion and empathy with reason and guidance. We can understand the reasons behind the behaviour and see what it is expressing – but instead of reacting to it punitively, we validate feeling and provide co-regulation. Only once the child is regulated and their brain is functioning optimally i.e. both thinking and feeling, do we set limits to behaviour and problem solve with them to find future alternatives. This is what we mean when we describe the “Authoritative parenting “style.

There is no imaginable scenario where this compassionate response to disruptive behaviour can be describe as easy. We are all triggered by it and on many occasions the reaction of seeing the behaviour as a “simple choice”, fits with our need for an immediate containment. We can only contemplate the complexity of these behavioural “decisions” when we have enough time and support to reflect on them – both individually and collectively. These are currently scarce resources.

My hope is that those who have the power to influence such things, can create the space for this much needed pause in the interest of wellbeing for all.