The 'Why' Behind the Behavior Doesn't Matter — And Worrying About It Is Counterproductive
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that spending time trying to understand the root cause of every misbehavior delays necessary action and gives students an excuse.
Key Takeaways
- The 'why' is often unknowable - We can't read students' minds, and speculating about motivations is unreliable
- Action matters more than analysis - Addressing the behavior immediately is more effective than conducting a psychological investigation first
- The why doesn't change the response - Whether a student hit someone out of anger, attention-seeking, or impulsivity, the consequence should be the same
Transcript
Trying to find the why behind student behavior, like this comment suggests, sounds so sensible, but I think it could not be more wrong.
If you are trying to get a house plant to grow, right, and it's not getting enough sunlight or it's getting too much water or it's the wrong temperature or whatever, then it makes sense that we would want to ensure the optimal conditions for that house plant to grow, right?
But kids are not plants.
And I would say, among the many differences, one major one is the importance of self-control and decision-making.
And if you're trying to get a plant to grow, none of that matters, so you just create the optimal conditions.
When we go overboard with creating the optimal conditions for children to avoid...
anything that we would consider bad behavior, I think we're actually harming them.
I think we're actually setting them up for a life of trouble because we are helicopter parenting too much in the school environment.
We're saying, okay, your bad behavior was not a result of your lack of self-control or a result of a bad decision you made.
It was because I didn't make the lesson interesting enough or I didn't support you enough and you got frustrated and therefore you threw a desk.
I think that's really maladaptive.
I think that's a really unhealthy lesson to teach our students that the the bad things that they do are someone else's fault and I think it's a really unhealthy message to send teachers that the bad things that your students do are your fault as a teacher for not preventing them for not figuring out the why behind the behavior and I think you know if you're an individual therapist or you're developing an IEP or behavior plan and you are doing a functional behavior assessment I think there's a time and a place for that but that type of assessment and trying to figure out the why behind the behavior should never excuse or justify the behavior and should never pin the blame for the behavior on someone else.
Because behavior is always an individual choice, right?
It is always the individual who is making the decision to act in the way in which they do.
And the reason I feel so strongly about this is that that is what they get to take with them.
Their self-control, their ability to make good decisions is what they take with them when they walk out the schoolhouse door at 4 p.m., That's what they have.
They don't have a teacher.
They're hovering over them trying to help with their math problems.
They don't have a parent hovering over them at all times trying to keep them from getting frustrated in a social situation.
Like these are not exactly skills, but these are experiences that we need students to have in school, you know, failing and getting in trouble a little bit, you know, losing your cool, getting a consequence for that is not the end of the world.
And it actually can can make a very big difference.
in developing that self-control that it takes to do the right thing, even when it's challenging.
So I think this idea that we should just remove challenges, remove stressors from the school day for a child so that they can not blow up and be violent, I think this is just deeply counterproductive.
We do not need to worry about the why.
We need to worry about the appropriate reaction to that feeling, to that frustration.
Let me know what you think.