Jo Stockdale’s Post

Apparently 'if you're not failing, you're not learning'? It may not be an exact science but there's definitely some truth in it. So I often wonder why are we so afraid of letting children make decisions; why so many adults are much more comfortable controlling and micro-managing kids than letting them use their own brains or to learn from experience? Does anyone else feel like, at every level, adult egos have just taken over? That systems, and too many people who operate in them, have become to too attached to the power and control they can exert over young people as a measure of their own success? And that a child failing to conform or comply is them, as the adult, failing? The willingness to go risk failure, the capacity to learn from experience, to implement their own boundaries, to challenge the norm or protect their rights are all hugely protective factors to live a healthy, productive and enriched life; to 'fulfil one's own potential', as we like to call it. And yet so many kids have been effectively trained to fear failure. They are terrified of being wrong, going wrong and doing wrong. When these children aren't children anymore, not long from now, and they're supposed to be equipped for the big, wide world, what good will all this power and control have done them - or us - in the end?

Despite an increasing understanding of what adults can learn from the way young people behave, and how we can respond to it productively, we've got a LONG way to go. In the name of 'behaviour management' (or, more accurately, a fixation with power and control) too many settings are turning to rigid, inflexible approaches which don't recognise that children are not only humans, but growing, yet-to-mature humans with individual needs and ways and moving through the world (just like us) These approaches can be far more successful in prolifering the behaviour problems they are supposedly trying to manage, which is what I'll be exploring as part of my keynote at St Andrew's Healthcare Lightbulb conference (because having a humane response doesn't have to mean permissive or passive)!

"Truth. So many children - and the adults they become - are denied the support they need because they're expected to choose a 'normal' response to abnormal circumstances - often those which are acutely distressing, terrifying and traumatising. It doesn't always excuse every behaviour or reaction it is way more complex than that - but what we know about how the brain reacts to a perceived threat to survival is that it doesn't think, well, sometimes at all. 'An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour'...  Instead of leading with judgement, what might happen differently if we led with that truth?" #traumaresponse #fightflightfreeze #survivalresponse #amygdalahijack

Now there's a thought... While I breathe a sigh of relief at the schools which make themselves an exception to these practices, plenty of schools are increasingly proliferating the very behaviours towards children that Safeguarding legislation would make them duty-bound to act on if they were happening to children outside of school. Would we as adults tolerate being banned from using the toilet? Or locked in isolation booths for hours and sometimes days at a time, for infractions like bringing the 'wrong' pen to work?  Or excluded for talking in the corridor? For any setting justifying these practices as 'Behaviour Management': Clothing is not 'behaviour'. Footwear is not 'behaviour'. Hairstyles are not 'behaviour'. Writing equipment is not 'behaviour'. Emptying your bladder is not 'behaviour'. But abusing power is abusing power. It doesn't matter where it happens. The soaring numbers of children now unable (not 'refusing') to go to school because of fear and anxiety is telling us everything we need to know about the impacts of this style of 'behaviour management'. And then we expect children to learn, flourish and thrive?! #behaviourmanagement #EBSA #schoolanxiety #schoolavoidance

It doesn't matter how old we are, we all like being heard. We all want to be seen, understood, validated etc. Culturally, we are pretty terrible at listening to our children. We might have moved on a bit from 'children should be seen and not heard' but we've got a long way to go yet. They have a lot to say that isn't being heard. It's called Emotional Based School Avoidance. It's called off-rolling. It's called poor mental health and CAMHS waiting lists. It's called self-harm and youth suicide. It's frustrating and infuriating when policy-makers and decision makers ignore what's happening right in front of them. Because we all know this 👆 is the result years and years of ignored children. And the ignored professionals who care for and about them, as the reality of 'So much to do and not enough resources to do it with' continues to drive huge numbers out of the work they love, roles they can only hold on to if they're willing to sacrifice their own mental health in return. We might not be able to change the world for this ever-growing number of children (and their adults) who fall into these 'categories', but if we listen - really listen - to just one of them, it might change the world for them. Who's listening?

If you know me professionally, you probably know that I think that more people should learn more, know more and think more about the way young brains develop and grow 🧠 After all, every thought, action, decision, behaviour and belief come from the brain, so if we want to change any of those, we have to change the child's brain activity in that moment. Hence why I'm part of Neurochild. Probably the most challenging of those subjects that that both professionals and parents have difficulties with is behaviour. However, focusing on the 'bad' behaviour itself - using control measures like bribes, threats and sanctions in an effort to 'manage' children - is just a sticking plaster approach. They don't work in the long run because controlling them doesn't help the intrinsically choose their own behaviours or master SELF-control. Behaviours - however they may present - are simply the end product of a child's experience. Everything changes when we prioritise the cause of the behaviour, when we recognise it's a symptom on a deeper problem, rather than THE problem... When we "deal with the root, not the fruit". Better understand and respond to 'problem behaviours' from the source is at the heart of my course "The Brain Behind the Behaviour". Whether you work or live with children and young people (or both), it helps trainees decode some of the more typical behavioural challenges, as well as unearth what's going on with those which aren't so straightforward 🧠 #braindevelopment #behaviourmanagement #behaviormanagement #youngbrains

They didn't have a name for Masking when I was a child but I remember it well. And childhood has changed A LOT since then. The constraints of the school environment, pressures linked to social media, and childhoods that overall are increasingly being hurried and squeezed out, are rapidly taking their toll on our children's mental health. A few weeks ago I worked with a group of children who were all in a special unit specifically for EBSA children. Their masks had well and truly dropped by then. Most of them could barely manage to speak at all, let alone fluently. And yet there was a protracted window of time when all of them, like so many others, were learning to mask in school, their struggles not being noticed or recognised until they were in such enormous distress and anxiety that it took every ounce of their courage to be there. They'd all gone from healthily functioning children to a point where getting on the bus to come to my session was considered a great achievement. But if these children present as compliant, polite, helpful, how do we know they're masking? We don't, of course. That's the point. But we can no longer take it for granted that children who don't cause their grown-ups any problems don't have any problems. We can't keep putting the onus on children to always 'know they need help', let alone ask for it. Sometimes, listening to children means hearing what is NOT being said. We've got to a point where children's mental health is an accepted sacrifice if we get compliance and obedience in return. When that becomes more highly valued than the children themselves, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. #maskingatschool #EBSA #childmentalhealth image credit The Contented Child

I've recently become involved with a project that's responding to the increasing numbers of children becoming victims of violence at the hands of other children. It's an issue many of us are concerned, possibly terrified, by. I'm NOT saying that any form of violence is ever acceptable; one act of violence is one too many. But it does concern me that the reporting of these kinds of tragedies is often so inflammatory and divisive. It's not always as simple as 'the victim' and 'the perpetrator'; for example, the statistics in UK prisoners indicate that experiencing trauma or violence in childhood is a significant risk factor in becoming an aggressor of violence yourself. Society likes the slogan 'Lock them up and throw away the key', so working to understand what's going on for children who commit violence is easily peddled as soft or permissive. ❓But if we don't understand the risk factors in children becoming violent, how do we reduce the numbers of children being harmed by violence? ❓ What will change if the way young offenders, and potential offenders, think and behave doesn't change, BEFORE they wield a weapon? ❓Yes, bravado and reputation play a part, but when is somebody going to ask WHY so many children feel safer with a knife in their pocket than without? ❓Is the solution to just lock them up AFTER yet another child has been hurt or killed? We can't protect our children from becoming victims of violence if we don't prevent children from becoming violent offenders; it's the same thing. If want a world with fewer victims in it, we have to work towards a world with fewer offenders in it. #knifecrime #childhoodviolence #traumainformed Image credit unknown.

How many of us have accused a child or adolescent of being 'disrespectful'? 🙋♀️ Of course, it's right to teach them not to be, but how quickly do we often make the accusation? What a very easy judgement it is to make, to assume a child is being rude or hostile. Firstly, understanding and adapting your own behaviours takes no small amount of self-awareness. Secondly, understanding how those behaviours might be perceived by others takes empathy, before you even employ the skill of adjusting them accordingly. These ☝ are actually pretty sophisticated competencies; they take time and practice to master and refine. They also require that the young person's pre-frontal cortex (the part of their brain responsible for executive functioning) is not only fairly well developed, but operating effectively in that moment. Let's be honest; as adults, are WE always self-aware, well regulated, empathic and measured in our responses? Before we go into combat with children about being any of the variations we may interpret as 'disrespectful', isn't it worth a reality check? Firstly on their intentions? And then on ourselves... Are our perceptions coloured by our own stories or triggers? Are our expectations - that these yet-to-mature brains should be able to navigate the demands of an adult-led world - actually realistic? Or fair? And are we leading; modelling the behaviours and communication we want these kids to cultivate? Or are we just demanding compliance? Because, reassuring as obedience may be, I think it sometimes give grown-ups a false sense of security; this idea that we've commanded 'respect'. If we've got genuinely respectful children in front of us, we shouldn't need to demand conformity, should we?

This isn't another post just celebrating all the lovely things about children that SATs don't measure. But when it popped up somewhere in my life this week, it reminded me of a discussion I was part of an event last week which really resonated with me. Somebody said 'I think most children are waiting to be told they have a right to be there'. And I agree; not in every circumstance, but a lot of them. And to that end, I would change the last line of this poem, even if you'd lose the rhyme. I'd tell every child to Remember They're 'Good Enough'. I don't believe in teaching children that their value is in 'doing better, being the best, being better than all the rest'. That's a lie. It's not how real life works. Too many children - and the adults they become - admit defeat too easily or shoot way below their potential because they have learned - inaccurately - that they're 'not good enough'. They are, all of them, already. And they're all deserving of their place on their planet, just as they are. #sats #anxiouschildren #exampressure #satspressure