I have been thinking and learning a lot about Self-Reg for many years now. This does not make me an expert, but I somehow manage to convince myself that I’ll at least be able to distinguish between stress behaviour versus misbehaviour. Then today happens, and I’m reminded that we can all make mistakes.
What happened today?
I was on primary duty during second nutrition break. It was a really windy day outside, and coupled with it being a Friday, there was a lot of energy in the air. I went out on duty when the bell rang, and right away, I was pulled away with various problems from mean words to fighting. It was then that I looked up and realized that there was not a second teacher outside. I used my walkie talkie to call for support. It turns out that the other teacher on duty was away with no supply, so they needed to coordinate somebody else to come outside. It was only a few minutes into duty, and already I could feel the stress.
Then a soccer ball went over the fence. I turn around from dealing with one problem and I see two students climbing the incredibly high fence. One child is already almost at the top. Oh my gosh! All I could focus on was the height and the big drop on the other side. I was terrified that two kids were going to get severely hurt.
My Response
I couldn’t help it: I yelled for the students to get down. The problem is that they wanted their soccer ball. I might have seen the injury possibilities, but they were focused on the ball that could be taken away. Right away, they were yelling back at me that they were not coming down. The more I requested, the more they fought. I should have tried to reason calmly, but I was terrified about the possible outcome here.
Making Things Worse
At the time, I would have stood by my decision to respond as I did. Safety has to come first. I called for admin support. As soon as I did, the kids came down quickly. They were not calm though. They still wanted that ball, and my only solution was to wait for somebody to come by and throw it over. The problem was that I did not recognize their stress here.
- One child was concerned that his ball from home would not make it back again.
- Both children recognized that soccer is a good social game for them, and by not having the equipment needed to play it, recess would be less successful.
Instead of empathizing with them and trying to come up with a different solution, I triggered them further by refusing to acknowledge their points of view.
How Did This End?
The stress from this encounter led to one child who ran away to the back field at the entry time and refused to come inside. Then I really did need admin support. The other child was so easily triggered from the earlier interactions, that he ended up pushing down and hurting a child during the entry time. I then later went back to class, and realized how upset I was about this stressful recess. Why? Because how I chose to respond ended up dysregulating kids more. Instead of seeing their stress, I interpreted that fence climbing as misbehaviour.
How Might I Have Responded Differently?
I’m not suggesting that we ignore the safety piece here, but why did I have to yell at them to get down? I keep thinking about my principal and vice principal, and how good they are at validating emotions, and whether that would have helped here.
- I needed a quieter voice.
- I needed to validate their feelings.
- I needed to be willing to problem solve.
I can’t change what happened today, but I can change what I can do going forward. When did you misread misbehaviour versus stress behaviour? What was the impact of your choices? I think it’s human to make mistakes, but maybe by sharing our stories, we can also learn from each other and begin to air on the side of stress behaviour.
