87: School: Angry kids, bad behaviour, and school avoidance. What can parents and teachers do?

Nearly one in five teachers in England has been hit by a pupil this year, according to a BBC survey.

But it's not just in England. Stricter school discipline is making a comeback to Australian classrooms in a bid to help teachers stamp out disruptive behaviour. France is bringing back school uniforms to tackle the issue, and in America, more than 70% of 1,000 educators said in a recent national survey that students are misbehaving more now than they did before the pandemic in 2019.

Meanwhile, teachers are leaving the profession faster than they're joining in the UK, and school avoidance rates are at an all-time high. It's a complex issue that Simon Currigan talks about a lot on his podcast, School Behaviour Secrets.

In this conversation he gives us his version of what's happening, gives us a top tip on how to deal with a teen when they've lost control, the importance of asking why... at least five times, and gives us a framework for understanding school avoidance.

NOTES TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST:
SEND - Special Educational Needs and Disability
SEMH - Social Emotional Mental Health needs; part of SEND

EMOTION COACHING:

• Empathise with their position - connection before correction.
• Boundaries based on values.
• Problem-solving - get them to engage in coming up with solutions.

The Toyota Five

RAIDED framework for understanding school avoidance:

• Relationship problem
• Anxiety 
• Identity - what do people like me do in a situation like this?
• Direction - where they are focusing so it can be a desire to be out of school because of what's happening at home.
•  Environment - is the school too overstimulating or do they have sensory needs?
• Dislocation - do they feel unwelcome in the school community, as if they don't belong.

Transcript

Rachel Richards: 0:02

Hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards parenting coach journalists mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now poor behavior in schools has made regular news headlines in the UK, where a BBC survey found nearly one in five teachers in England has been hit by pupil this year. But it's not just here. In Australia, stricter school discipline is making a comeback to classrooms in a bid to help teachers stamp out disruptive behavior. France is bringing back school uniforms to tackle the issue. And in America, more than 70% of 1000 educators said in a recent national survey, students are misbehaving more now than they did before the pandemic. It's a complex issue that needs much more than this one episode. But I thought it would be great to talk with Simon Kerrigan, who has a podcast called school behavior secrets. He's a dad to teenagers, and he has a website called beacon school support with courses for teachers on how to manage difficult behavior. This episode is unusually long, but I genuinely found this conversation with Simon deeply enlightening, he gives us some useful tips on how to deal with a teen when they've lost control the importance of asking why at least five times and a framework for understanding school avoidance. I started by asking what he thinks is going on with bad behavior in schools, what we're seeing, particularly since COVID, and I still work day in day out with schools across the Midlands,

Simon Currigan: 1:32

what we're seeing is increasing numbers of children presenting higher and higher needs. And the funding isn't there from the local authority to give the school the support they need to to meet those needs. Essentially, money translates into manpower. And manpower translates into relationships with kids and adaptations and support in school. And essentially, the wheels are coming off the system. So you've got teachers who have more and more children who are presenting difficult and get higher levels of need, which results when those needs aren't met, it results in more difficult behavior in the classroom, because the kids are overwhelmed and they can't cope. The teachers getting stressed, they don't have the training and support they need to support the kids, the parents are getting stressed and frustrated because they can see their their children's time is being wasted. You know, whether it's whether it's your child who has those needs, or whether you're a parent of a child in class, where the learning has been disrupted? You know, it's just it's a really difficult situation. And that doesn't mean that teachers don't care and that schools don't care. And but actually, it's there are systemic problems with the education system right now, which is why more and more teachers are leaving, and I know

Rachel Richards: 2:49

that you used to be a teacher, and then you ended up dealing with special needs. Students, and now you've you've moved into this area, can you give us a little bit of an understanding what are the differences between sdmh and Sen. D, because people who are parents, either they're in the thick of this, and they've had to learn all these acronyms and learn what all this stuff means because they've got a child who has needs, or you're a parent whose kid is in a class with one of these kids, and you have absolutely no idea what the challenges are or what's been done. Yeah, absolutely. And

Simon Currigan: 3:22

the problem with teaching like, like a lot of other organizations, it's really jargon heavy. But actually, the distinction is really super simple. So sdmh is a kind of Sen. D, and I'll just unpack what that means a little bit. Sen. D stands for special educational needs and disabilities, which means any child who has a specific additional need in any area, so that that could encompass reading, it could encompass social skills, it could encompass someone who's got a physical different disability that makes it difficult for them to say, go upstairs, we need some accommodation in terms of seating, it could include dyslexia, or dyscalculia. This whole range of needs now SMH stands for social, emotional and mental health needs. And it's it's one subset of Sen. D. So Sen. D is like the library and SMH is one row of shells on the library relating particularly to social, emotional, mental health needs. And really, you're lumping in with that behavior. Because when kids social, emotional and mental health needs aren't addressed effectively, they're nine times out of 10. The result is difficult behavior, challenging behavior in the classroom. Okay,

Rachel Richards: 4:33

so I think I understand what you're talking about. And so

Simon Currigan: 4:37

the reason I ask him he has a type of Sen. gotchu. So the reason I brought it

Rachel Richards: 4:41

up was because there's been a big, seemingly a big rise in children who have extra needs, and also a big rise in behavior challenges in the classroom. And I've seen some great quotes from you about disrespectful behavior in the classroom and one of them was don't take it personally.

Simon Currigan: 4:59

Especially When they mean it personally, why

Rachel Richards: 5:02

how? How are we? Because we say this to parents all the time, we just say you know that the teenagers don't take it personally, but you've just said, especially when they mean it personally, how does that translate into managing a classroom full of kids when you've got someone who's being swearing at you or being disrespectful?

Simon Currigan: 5:18

Well, the first thing is you're a human being. So everyone has a low day, everyone, you know, in all honesty, like, I had a hard day on Friday, I ended up raising, raising my voice to my daughter, did she deserve it? Probably not. You know, we're all human beings. Yes. And we shouldn't judge ourselves on this idea of like perfection. It's fine to have a standard that you're aiming for. But as a human being, you lead by your emotions. We know from science that you're led by emotions, firstly, and foremost. So first of all, you got to have realistic expectations for yourself in the classroom. But then what you got to think about and this is true for parents as well, you've got to think about there are in a classroom, there's 29 other kids in your house, there might be two or three other kids. And they're actually looking at you and your role modeling what to do. In that situation, they're going to look at what you're doing. And they're going to lock it away as a template, we used to have this poster on the wall at one of the I used to work at our pupil referral unit teaching kids who apparently excluded and there was a poster up on the wall that really stuck with me. And it was, I can't remember who it was from. But it was Don't worry that your kids are listening to everything that you say, worry that they're watching every little thing that

Rachel Richards: 6:33

you do like that.

Simon Currigan: 6:37

It's scary. But you should also, you know, if one of your own kids or you know, whether it's a student or your own child, if they're getting upset, then actually, what you've got to, I think what I learned was, in those moments, it's not about trying to control what they do, you've got someone who's out of control of their emotions. And actually, my job is to try and manage the situation out there out of control of their emotions, where there's something going on, and they're overwhelmed. And my job now is just like a plane. And my job is to plan that plane, that emotional plane, successfully. I'm like at the radio tower, I'm not in control of the plane. But I'm at the radio tower, I'm trying to talk that plane down with a with a very frustrated, frustrated, irrational pilot that moment. And when you see your role as that, actually, it takes away the conflict, I've met a lot of teachers. And what's interesting about being a teacher is most of the kids most of the time, just do what you ask them to. Right. It's like they're just programmed to do that, in evolutionary terms. They're just programmed to follow instructions. And even kids who have difficulty with their emotions, and teachers say, Oh, they never do what they're told to do, you do a ton of motion, and 98% of the time, they just do what they're told to do you notice the 2%, when they don't, actually 90% of the time they do. So you can walk into a room. And you can walk into a room and I've got the video here, but I'll kind of explain what I'm doing. For people listening on audio, you can walk into a room of 300 kids in an assembly hall, and you can stand in front of them, and you can just with your hands, put them in front of you and just raise them up to your face like that, and 300 kids will stand up. It's like Yoda lifting the X Wing out of the, you know, in The Empire Strikes Back out of the out of the lake. And that gives you this false sense of you control kids. And, and you don't you just set up a set of circumstances and a set of environments, and you give them a set of values where they're more likely to do the right thing than the wrong thing. And then those teachers really struggle because they feel like they control the kids. That's how it feels. But actually, when they meet a child who doesn't do that, who doesn't conform 100% of time, actually that makes them question their professional capacity as a teacher, and they find that really threatening, and actually talking to them and making that mindset shift from Okay, your job is not to control this child, your child is just to help them manage those out of control emotions for the next five or six minutes, minutes. That kind of takes the onus off unit takes you into a slightly different role.

Rachel Richards: 9:10

I saw that. And I think that's something that we parents can completely get on board with as well. I mean, it's the same at home, right? We don't. And actually, one of the things that some of our parents, all of us actually we all struggle with is, you know, how do I get my kid to do X? Well, in many ways, if you set up an environment where it was just a kind of expected situation, then nine times out of 10 They probably will do it unless they feel that it's a power battle. Yeah.

Simon Currigan: 9:37

And then the worst thing you can do is engage in a power battle. That's one of the things we say to teachers actually, I call it a dead end confrontation where you're saying yes, when a child is saying no, and usually if there's an audience that makes it harder for people to be kind of what's the word more flexible, more pliable, because no one wants to lose face. People will tell you face to face conversation one to one, the minute there's another person in the room, you've got an audience and then people taking positions. So yes, it's about the you're absolutely right spotting being drawn into our power back, and you can feel the sand, sort of shifting underneath your feet, because you can tell them to do it. But actually, they've got a choice, they might do it, because they might not. So

Rachel Richards: 10:21

how so? So once that child has lost control of their feelings, their emotions, how would you get them? Sort of? How would you guide that plane back down onto the ground.

Simon Currigan: 10:32

So there's lots of research on this. And if you look at it, different researchers or kind of come out at the same conclusion. I'm a parent as well. So my kids are teenagers. So welcome. I love the research by John Gottman, I think his research is the most accessible at this moment. And being an emotion coaching parent, which is a simple sort of three or four step process for shifting into that role of manager rather than confrontation. And the steps are essentially recognize actually, that this is an uphill battle, this is your child has lost control of their emotions, for whatever reason. And it's your opportunity, it's a teaching moment, right? It's an opportunity to role model and teach how to succeed in this situation. And we live in a world we see this with adults as well, any tiny bump in the road, any tiny problem, and it's exploded into this massive thing, like on social media, everyone's shouting at each other, you're going to show you know, go into shops, you see adults, just, you know, this culture of no one's listening, everyone's shouting over tiny, tiny things. So the first thing we do, we kind of recognize as the adult, right, let's not slip into that confrontation, let's move into an emotion coaching moment. And then extend empathy. So there's also a guy called dancer gal, he's done work on this in terms of neurobiology of kids. And the first place we're going to start is with connection. There's another saying in teaching, I can't, I can't attribute its connection before correction. Alright, so you spend a few moments and I think you're really frustrated about having to do the dishwasher, because you've got loads of homework and it feels unfair and, and he's just hanging around in that moment of empathy and connection from it. You're showing that you understand the way they feel, you might not agree with what they've done. But you're showing you understand their emotions, and you're hanging around in those emotions for longer than you normally wouldn't. You might say, I remember a time and my mom asked me to do XYZ, you just sort of sit there in that connection for a while. And you sort of instead of coming head on, what you're doing is sort of drawing yourself alongside them. If you imagine two horses and one horse is out of control, for the one rider to take control of both horses actually is going to come alongside so we can kind of straddle both horses probably don't do that in real life, it's really dreadful advice, and they've been on a horse in my life. But you can kind of imagine you've got to come alongside someone. And then the next step is setting the boundaries, like, you know, I understand that your sister, you know, it's just deleted all your work, but it's not okay to hit her. You know, and you're setting a boundary there. And I often like to use the phrase like what we've done is, in our family, we don't talk to each other like that. Because they will see, especially as they're teenagers, and they're seeing having experience of other people's families and other people's environments. Kids, when they're young, let's just assume that everyone is like you, every family is the same. And they're getting an idea of well, he's allowed to go and do X, Y, and Zed till 2am in the morning. So actually seemed like in our family, these are our values. And that's not okay. And other families will have other values. And that's their choice. But I've got these values, because I love and care about you, and I want you to be the best person you can be. And then the beautiful thing is you switch into problem solving, which is a much less confrontational conversation to have is look what's gone wrong here. And how can we fix it give me two or three ideas about how we move this forward. And I just found having that kind of script, empathy, boundary, problem solved, takes all of the pressure and all of the D personalizes

Rachel Richards: 14:20

it. Yes. And also, eventually what you're doing it sounds like eventually what you're doing is once you've calmed them in the you've made them realize that it's not you against them, you're actually next to them, then they can start switching their thinking brain back on again. Because when you engage them and say, so like how can we resolve this, you know, what's the best way forward, they then have to try and think and that's the hardest thing often to get people to do when they're upset.

Simon Currigan: 14:45

And they're in that they're in that situation because they didn't have the problem solving skills to manage it successfully, successfully the first time and it's called coaching motion coaching because if you think about the other any other form of coaching imagine you're learning to run a sprint or something You wouldn't turn up a coaching for running and have one half an hour session with with a coach. And then he's like, Oh, well, you're done, you can run now, coaching involves bursts of input repetitively over time developing and improving skills. And so if you tried emotion coaching once you once and it didn't work, well actually what you've got to commit to is time after time, after time. And eventually what happens is you're giving them a skill. So then down the line, when they're in that situation, they can cope with it. And when you look at kids, when you look at the work that Gottman did on emotion coaching kids, when you look at their long term progression, those kids it's not that they never get frustrated, or angry or sad, but they spend less time in those emotions are the kids, and they tend to have they tend to be able to think in the long term, potentially able to think ahead and find ways forward and tend to in terms of sort of academically and socially, tend to do better in life, they tend to be sort of steadier, interested in terms of working relationships and all sorts. Yes, because

Rachel Richards: 16:01

this is this, this sort of resonates in so many ways with what we've talked about many times on this podcast and this whole thing with, with my kids where I say, Have you got stuck, you know, they whatever they're doing, I'll just see, are you stuck at the moment, because quite often they get they get trapped in an in an in a place and they can't move forward. And I think that given so often with our teenagers, and we as adults will look at our kids and go, Well, I told you know how to do this, or, you know, why? Why haven't you got this yet? Or they'll come to me? And they'll say, Oh, I'm really I really struggle with making small talk conversation. You know, am I broken? I got some special needs laser skin. No, everyone struggles with that. This is normal. And it's it's a skill. And we have to practice it over and over again, in order to get to the point where we feel comfortable. And it's kind of automatic.

Simon Currigan: 16:51

Yeah, absolutely. It's a life skill that you develop over time. And if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But look at look around on TV, look around social media, look, just look around in the world, how many people aren't hair triggers are a tiny, tiny things, you know,

Rachel Richards: 17:04

we all struggle, okay, so I don't have to judge each other. We just go Yeah, that's a skill that they haven't conquered yet.

Simon Currigan: 17:10

And there's a lot of power when they talk about their friends, and maybe their friends have done something. And then you say, Well, you know, how do you think that worked out for them? You know, what would you have done in that situation? What would you have done differently? What do you think they, you know, it's interesting, because then you're picking out but then you have to bring it back to a values based conversation, and a thing, as a parent of a teenager, when the kids are younger, basically direct them to do things. If you've got an 18 year old drinking bleach, basically, you pull them away from the bleach, don't have the bleach, and if they can't understand you're locked the bleach away or you physically move them later. But you move away from direction to this is my view.

Rachel Richards: 17:48

This is agree no, absolutely. I'm

Simon Currigan: 17:51

helping them develop a set of morals and values by which to judge situations are in and I think if we get it right, you can have conversation like you're in a situation someone said, x y Zed, or you said X, Y and Zed. How did that feel? Did that feel right? Did that feel wrong?

Rachel Richards: 18:08

This depends on your value tank and see what because you can't

Simon Currigan: 18:11

give them a set of procedures for navigating the world because it would be 1600 pages long and it will be incomplete. They'll need to be able to. And we talked about this with teachers as well. You need like a framework to help you assess what's happening around you or make good decisions about what to do next in school. We say to teachers, like if your school has got a value of respect, and most schools do. And actually, when you were yelling at that child, were you embodying that value of respect

Rachel Richards: 18:39

for you? Yeah, like? Yeah.

Simon Currigan: 18:42

So yes, absolutely. Important. Yes.

Rachel Richards: 18:45

And coming coming on to the classroom situation. I saw that you were talking about using why in the classroom and addressing challenging behavior by repeating the question, why until you've got to an answer. Can you talk a bit more about? I mean, this is the what we've been talking about a lot on our podcast, which is being curious rather than judgmental, because it's so easy for us to jump to. Oh, I see what's going on there when we don't really have any information. Yeah, absolutely.

Simon Currigan: 19:13

So I just want to put some nuance in that I am a big fan of doing simple things well, first, so I'm assuming if you've got a child with behavior issues in the classroom, I'm going to go in and assume or I'm going to go and make sure that the adults in the room have done the basics. They're consistent. They say what they mean, all of that kind of thing. They're not they're not saying we're going to we're going to manage your behavior one way and then on Tuesdays different on Wednesdays. You've got to get the basics in place first, because without the basics, you're it's not going anywhere so So assuming those basics are in place. The idea of the wise is it's the Toyota five why's and it came from Toyota, I think it was in the 1920s as authorities and they developed this way of thinking about problems that we're having in their manufacturing plants, which was essentially if I give a Toyota example, I forgive a car example. And then they give a child example to try and show how they have one translates to the next. So imagine they're having problems with windscreens being cracked and they, they look at their look at their floor and they say, well, that person fitting the windscreen is rubbish, they're not doing the job properly, let's sack them. And then next week, they're still having windscreens cracked, they haven't really solved the problem. So what they started doing was they said, We're going to ask why five times until we reach the solution. So the windscreens are being cracked on the assembly line. Why is that happening? Well, it's happening because this guy keeps dropping the window. Screw the windscreen. Okay. So why is he dropping the windscreens? Why he's got the wrong gloves or something? Okay. Okay, so why is he got the wrong gloves? Will because procurement are having their meeting with the foreman, every other week to discuss what's working and not working on the site. And if you ask five why's you kind of get somewhere and if you think about that procurement meeting, there might be lots of downstream problems that are happening, because that meeting isn't being effective. And solving the problem of that meeting not happening might then actually solve lots of other things as well. And when you look at kids in school, or kids at home, if you ask yourself, you know, I'll give a classroom example, a child keeps shouting out our whole class time and monopolizing the teacher's attention. So other kids don't get lucky. And which is something the other kids find frustrating. You might say, Okay, I could just try punishments and things like that. And if that doesn't work, you know, I'd take punishments, positive and negative, doing all those kinds of things. And if, you know, like things like reward charts, and looking at all those basic kinds of things, but if the basics don't work, then we've got to ask why. Why is the child shouting out? Well, maybe they don't understand that they need to share their time with a teacher, why don't they understand they need to share with their type time with the teacher? And then there are a million different ways you can go from them. Maybe they have difficulties in generally socially, why have they got that? Well, maybe they have autistic traits, or, or maybe there were issues around the way that child interacts at home, maybe there's neglect. And there are all sorts of reasons why children cannot, might not develop social competencies. But it's only by going why why why, why why that you end up at something that's meaningful. It's like a set of dominoes. And if you can get to the first domino in the sequence, you're much more likely to be effective. If you're looking at the last domino in the sequence, what you're trying to do is manage the problem as an adult, if my child keeps breaking curfew of curfews 10 o'clock, and they keep coming back at 11 o'clock. But one way of making sure they don't break curfew is to put dead locks in every door at the house and seal them at three, four, that will solve the problem. Created a prison, but it will solve the problem. But actually the minute the door opens the child's out. So by asking why are they coming back late? Well, what is it that's happening when they're out? Why do they what is it about their friends to their friends have a slightly later curfew? Can we have flexibility? Every situation? Actually, it's about finding solutions that enable the child to succeed and flourish for themselves rather than us as the adults on a helicopter and manage it like that. And

Rachel Richards: 23:23

then you don't have to keep going over the same thing at times, and then the next class and they do the same thing. And the next thing, you know, you've actually managed to address a real issue, which is, which is the skill they need? And then everybody's much happier. Great. I love that. What about, I saw that you said there's a myth that high behavior standards and trauma informed practice are incompatible? Can you talk a bit more about why that's a myth?

Simon Currigan: 23:47

Yeah. So for people that are new to the term trauma informed practice is essentially what I've just been talking about really thinking really deeply about why kids are behaving or acting in a certain way, in nearly any element of their life, rather than just going with kind of like, if they break the rule, this is what happens if they follow the rules, you know, come on, like a mechanistic. What's the word a behaviorist approach? So it's really digging deep into the underlying causes. And often what you find is, let's take the example of kids who have, say, let's say kids have sensory needs, when you dig into it. They're finding it hard to cope in a busy classroom, because there's lots of noise, lots of displays, lots of things going on. No, they just find that sensory environment really difficult. Is it well, that that's a physical thing about them, that's not going to change. There's not a tablet you can give them there's not something you can do to kind of train them out of that. But one, one approach that might be successful, they've got social anxiety, that's another, that's another thing. So if we expose them to the busy, sensory socially complex classroom, what's going to happen is they're going to increase their stress and anxiety levels, and at some point, they're not going to be able to restrain that they're going to be able to cope and you're going to get an explosion or a meltdown or they're going to run away, or there's going to be some sort of emotional issue that needs to be dealt with, which is not good for them. Not good for the teacher not good for the other students, because that's a high in highly intense situation. So one adaptation might be the they can just go there's a table just outside the room. And after the bid inside the busy social environment, busy sensory environment, after about 15 minutes, they can pop out. And they can have just five minutes reading a book or something just to reduce stress levels. So when they return to the room, they can succeed. And I think when you look at those kinds of adaptations, sometimes there's a temptation from some teachers to say, well, that kids getting rewarded, they're doing their work, they should be in the classroom. And then then they start talking about it being low standards, if you've got a child who needs a movement break, you know, what does that look like in the classroom? Well, actually, if you if you if you implement movement breaks, effectively in the classroom, they shouldn't be disturbing to the other children. If you do them badly, it can look like chaos, it can look like a child running around the classroom and throwing everyone off task. If you've got a child who has sensory needs, they're putting in place measures to meet and support to meet those needs can either be discrete, or it can be very disruptive. Or if it's done badly, it can have no impact. And then you see back. So it's, that's that's the tension there. And then can look like low standards, if it's done in a low quality, badly planned. Also cheap way, inclusion is expensive. Let's just put that, let's just put that to bed inclusion done well is generally expensive. So when things are done in a bad way, actually, it looks like we're just tolerating any behavior. There's chaos in the classroom. That in my opinion, isn't about inclusion. And it's not about trauma informed practice. That's just about lots of things done badly. Yes, right. Yeah. One classroom should look like a focused, productive, classroom focused and quiet, not necessary. It's not about whether the room is quiet, that's going to depend on the task, if you've got lots of kids doing a spelling test that needs to be quiet, if it's, if it's a piece of teamwork, where you've got a group of three or four children working on a piece of art together a piece of design, talk is appropriate. But how much Doctor? It's complicated. Does that make sense? Does that

Rachel Richards: 27:28

make sense? And it just, to me, when I'm listening to all of the things that teachers have to do, it sounds like we're expecting a huge amount from teachers, because these are human beings who may have teenagers at home, and having to come into work and deal with quite stressful situations or having to anticipate how to manage an entire classroom with structures. So presumably, it's the setting up of the structures and, and being very clear about what the procedures are so that, then you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel every day.

Simon Currigan: 27:54

Yeah, expectations and consistency are massive. And when you're a teacher, you also have to take like a bird's eye 30,000 foot view, which is in general, how do I run this class? What are the routines? What are the expectations? And then there's kind of like this zoomed down view for individual students, which is okay, those are my general principles. But now how am I going to make reasonable not any adaptation, but a reasonable adaptation to make the success I

Rachel Richards: 28:22

want to talk about? Because obviously, the people who are listening to this podcast are predominantly parents of teenagers or tweens or grandparents, and I'm fascinated by what you would say to them, about how they can be supportive of teachers and an education system. We have had an episode talking about how to have conversations with teachers and, and why it continues to be important even into the teen years, and that you are a team. But are they you know, what would if you had parents err, what would you be saying to them about what's going on in schools and how we can actually set our kids up to succeed and support the teachers?

Simon Currigan: 29:02

I think the tone you've got to strike is, is positive. It is about how can we work together to help my my son or daughter. What you have to appreciate is schools are generally full of people that came they didn't come into teaching for the money generally came into teaching, because they wanted to make a difference. And they liked young people, and they want to support them. And some of them got jaded along the way but deep down, that that is why they turn up to work every day. But they've been badly served. You're talking about people who who don't necessarily have the training, or the knowledge to understand about the different forms of autism and ADHD or just there are so many different conditions, and you've got your child with their one condition and that's all you have to know about. But a teacher is kind of like more like her Like, in a sense, like a GP, they have to know about lots of things, but they aren't given the training, the consistent support to know about those things. So it's almost like a GP, that's been given a year of training. That's all you know about cold and you know about ankle, you know, about tonsillitis, you get to be a GP, you know, we'd never do that. Children are presenting evermore complex needs. And it might be that the adult that you're talking to, they don't know what they don't know. And rightly or wrongly, there might be a job of education on your part. And I like the phrase, right? That situation might not be your fault. But actually, it might be your responsibility to, to change, because without that nothing's going to improve. And it's about the, it's about the tone of the dialogue. When it showed when it's your child, I noticed that all, you know, as an adult, as a parent, when it's when it's your child, it's intensely personal, and it's much more emotional. Whereas when you're a teacher, it's professional, you're just trying to meet the needs of different children who aren't using you care, but you carry different ways you don't have that you don't have that love, you don't have that depth of love for each other that you know, as a parent that you have a child, it's yours. So it's actually sometimes parents go in, and teachers can feel ambushed. And that's down to a lack of communication between home and school, and often schools to blame here, often schools don't bring things up until it's too late. They let things run and then the parent feels overwhelmed or the parent is storing up issues. And as you know, in any aspect of your life, when you store things, or when you actually have a conversation, it could be like, you know, with your partner, your partner is doing something that's been annoying you if you store it, I've actually when you have that, have that conversation, it has to be quite an emotional conversation. So you've got to kind of rein those emotions back however you feel on the inside. Because without that, as a teacher who has been on the opposite side, I've had, I've thought everything was fine. Perhaps with a student, perhaps, I can think one student, perhaps that student maybe had autism, and they were masking really, really well in school. So it doesn't look like there's any issues. But when they go home, they're having these meltdowns at the end of the day, because they've not been able to you know, they've been struggling to cope, and those emotions gotta go somewhere to go home and having a terrible time. I can think of a mom who was perhaps turning to the classroom door, I have no clue that this is happening at home, but that mom has been frustrated for 234 months. And then she comes in and then she kind of like offloads and then as an adult, I feel ambushed, because I wasn't expecting to have that conversation out of out of nowhere. And then that puts you on the backfoot or makes you defensive and it makes you locked down as the adult because you think, Oh, what the hell? Right?

Rachel Richards: 32:52

Yes, yes.

Simon Currigan: 32:55

So actually, what we need is, think back to your motion coaching, problem solving conversations. And it's like, how do we fix this problem in kind of like an adult way, where I am listening to you? And you are listening to me? So yes, how do we connect? I think in a world where everyone's shouting at each other listening as a superpower. I agree. Yes. And it is about being persistent. Because there are so many needs out there right now. Unless you're persistent. You may get overlooked. But you can do that in a firm but polite way. Yeah.

Rachel Richards: 33:27

And write everything down. Yeah, the one tip I had, and you know, the conflict resolution episode that we did, where we're talking about, like, how do you identify what the problem really is, which comes down to asking questions, listening. And I do think that writing things down and having a structure for how things will proceed can make a massive difference, because everybody, everybody's under a lot of pressure, and you'd be walk away having had a conversation and you don't have a plan going forward and you don't have agreed measures, then it's going to be difficult to then reinforce

Simon Currigan: 33:58

anything. Yeah. And I think I massively echo that I have a posting a post it note with some bullet points on it. And we say that when I recommend that when parents go to the doctors, if they're worried about their children think that they might need a diagnosis, you have those conversations and they can spiral off. But when you do those, what I would do is I would focus the conversation on the needs that you believe your child to have has other than a list of accusations. Yes. Because if you see the person in front of you getting defensive or nervous or even angry, and you provoked an emotional reaction in them and now they're not able to engage in that conversation fascinating because because actually what's happened is their right their prefrontal lobe are shut down. They're not being they're not being able to access their thinking logical brain in a way that can plan ahead for success. Actually, you put them in a position where they can't actually listen to you or do the things that you want them. Right. So, yeah, so it's, it's hard, but I think it's going in and reining that emotion right back and talking about the need as you perceive it, and then listening. And hopefully, the teacher will do the same for you, they'll hopefully you'll both be listening. Sometimes if you find it difficult to do that I've been in situations where a parent has found someone who, like a brother or a sister or you know, a friend who may be it's not 100% personal to them, so they can take the sting out. So if they sense that the that you're becoming emotional or upset, they can kind of take over the conversation for a little bit and support

Rachel Richards: 35:42

that. But I do think that if you're going to go in with another person, perhaps you need to tell the teacher beforehand, otherwise, they may think, Wait, hang on there to

Simon Currigan: 35:51

arrange a meeting, I think the pre arranged with a posse of six people, and a lynching pole. The thing to bear in mind about teaching is no one ever, it's incredibly rare. Anyone comes in at the end of the day and shakes your hand and tells you you're doing a good job. As a teacher, what you deal with is complaints. Even management will rarely say to you, you're doing a good job with that class, or we're doing a good job with those kids. The the thing with social media as well is now teachers are reading what people are saying about them in social media. And people generally don't post on social media, Mr. Jones, or Mrs. Jones, who did a fantastic job with my kid, what you tend to read on social media is this school is rubbish. This teacher is says XYZ. And, you know, and I think that lack of productive dialogue, when you when you talk to teachers, that's often it's not just behavior, it's kind of like, that's driving a lot of what people have why people are leaving, I heard an interview with some doctors who had gone to Australia have left the NHS and they were kind of interviewing them about what their new life was like. And they said, Well, you get paid a lot more money. And they were like, well, we get paid a bit more money, it's not a lot more money, but a bit more money. But here the profession still kind of like has some respect. And people don't just shout at us like they do in the NHS, and we don't get attacked. And I think that kind of professional dialogue, as well as it's gone from education. And I'm not saying teachers should be put on a pedestal and never question that's not ease, are actually there's a way we can talk to each other that helps bring about success for the for the job, which is ultimately what you want as a parent, and ultimately what they do want as, as a teacher, and

Rachel Richards: 37:37

I love what you're saying, because actually, you know, we always ask for people to review our program, and we get some amazing reviews and and they just make my day, you know, they make me feel so much better. And like, oh, it's worthwhile what I'm doing. And we can be doing that for teachers. You know, if you notice that each has done something good. Why not a little note? And actually, I saw one teacher say, You know what the best person you can give me for Christmas is a handwritten note. Preferably something that you send, also to the headmaster, telling you how great I am. Because that would just make me feel better. And I thought that's a really, you know, we kind of missing the point sometimes and and forgetting just how good it feels when we're doing a job and we're recognized for doing a good job.

Simon Currigan: 38:21

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, even an email, you know, an email. Yeah, yeah, even an email because an email as a teacher tends to be an inbox of deadlines and complaints. And only how it stands out as you're saying just all it's got to be is I just really appreciate the way that yes, made accommodations for my soul. Oh, appreciate the way you listen. It's It's nothing, it takes 10 seconds of time. If you think about what it does for your relationship with that teacher in a purely transactional sense. And I'm saying do it because it's transactional? Yeah, actually, it makes them way more likely to listen to you in the future. So

Rachel Richards: 38:54

right this is we really need to do this. I'm going to go and write some emails.

Simon Currigan: 39:00

There's a line that's about 100 I think about 100 years old. I think it's from How to Make Friends and Influence People that probably applies here and it's going to mangle it but it's something along the lines of a person convinced against their will. Is a person of the same opinion still. Yeah, selling them x y&z Yes. What should happen, actually,

Rachel Richards: 39:21

so in other words, what I keep saying, which is that if if people don't argue back with you, and you shout them down, they're still gonna think the same thing. Yeah. One last thing before we finish, I wanted to address school avoidance. Now we even

Simon Currigan: 39:37

moved on from school refusal score. Yeah. And that's because I mentioned school

Rachel Richards: 39:41

refusal and people said, no, no, you can't say that. That's very offensive. And so we do have to tread lightly on this. But you know, that is really record highs as well. What are your thoughts about, you know, what's causing it and whether there are things we can be doing as parents because You know, I saw a headmaster saying, I thought people were being unreasonable until my daughter started avoiding school. And and it's completely put me back in my box. And I don't know how to cope with it. So, you know, it's a very, very difficult issue. It's very, it's really, really upsetting for everybody involved. What are your thoughts about it and what we can be doing a to stop it from happening and be to help?

Simon Currigan: 40:24

Okay, so Truancy is different from its, it tends to be called absolute emotionally based school avoidance, okay, I'll just call it school avoidance for for sure. Truancy is where kids are just making an active decision, they don't want to go into school, or they're bunking off, or they're hiding in a toilet, sometimes, and you can, right, we've got to be careful not to over medicalized things. Sometimes, teenagers just do dumb stuff, right? To just make dumb decisions in life sometimes. And it's wrong, just over medicalized. And so there must be all sorts of reasons behind it. So sometimes, some kids will just do some dumb stuff, that's part of being a teenager and growing up, let's not. But for children who have that persistent fear or anxiety about school, there are lots of other things going on. If it helps, I've got like a simple framework that actually nails most of the reasons why kids actually have difficulty getting into Scotland. And when you tackle those, and I send it, it doesn't cover 100% of the reason why kids don't get into school, because there are obviously hundreds of reasons but the key things to look at the aspects to look at. And I call it the rated framework. So r means R stands for relationships. And it could be there's a relationship that's broken down, say, with certain adults in school, perhaps there are certain teachers and if you find that there's a pattern to their resistance to go in into school, maybe it's a Monday or Tuesday and a Thursday might be that the meeting certain teachers or you know, there's a relationship that doesn't feel right there, and they don't have the I don't know how to put it, that know how to fix it, or it could be relationship with another peer. So maybe they're falling out with certain friendship groups, or there's some bullying or there's some issues around relationships there. So that often fuels school avoidance. And conversely, the way of fixing that actually, is to create more relationship, create positive relationships, or fix the relationships that are broken, that's fairly easy. So A is anxiety. And you most commonly find, especially this Borge of need that seems to have come post COVID. Most of those kids have issues around anxiety. Not exclusively, but particularly kids who are on the spectrum. They've school is a busy, noisy, sensory, socially complex place that lots of children who are autistic find really demanding and difficult and anxiety provoking. And I think what happened during COVID was a period where they said, Well, look, you don't need to manage those anxieties. You don't need to come into school, you can learn perfectly fine at home. And a lot those kids did all of them, but a lot of them were doing perfectly well. They were getting perfectly good grades, they were missing a social education. But in terms of the academic side, they were told, Well, that's fine. And then they were in school and then are out school, and it's fine not to come in again. And they were getting lots of mixed messages. And I think a lot of them were thinking while I was learning perfectly successfully before. Why do I need to put myself in this overwhelming environment that I find personally threatening. And there are other reasons people can have anxiety. That's just one example of anxiety. And until you deal with the anxiety, you're going to get that resistance, you're going to get the refusal, you're going to get the avoidance identity. And identity is essentially what does what does someone like me do in a situation like this? So when kids are younger, they have a strong family identity. But as they get older, they have an identity in terms of their friendship group, what am I what does the group of people I'm hanging around with? do in a situation like this? D can be DS direction, the first is direction. So it's easy to think. And this one probably applies more to teachers. But we can assume they don't want to go to school. So the direction is I want to be out of school because I find school threatening or upsetting or difficult in some way. But sometimes children. School is fine. They don't have a problem with school, but they're worried about something happening in the home. So perhaps someone's ill, or there's been a bereavement and they've got this irrational fear that someone else will die. Maybe mom and dad are arguing all the time and they're worried that they're going to separate or there's going to be a divorce. As a teacher, we have to deal with things like neglect and dv and intimate partner partner violence. So actually, school might be fine. So you have to think about the direction of travel either being pulled towards home or pushed away from school. E is environment. So again looking at things like the sensory environment, do they find it overwhelming? Is it overstimulating? Is it too much? Is it too difficult. And unless we put in place accommodations for those sensory needs, then nothing is going to change, those sensory needs aren't going to change overnight. So we need to do shift over time. But, you know, accommodations need to be met. Because if you're walking into an environment, or let's say you're oversensitive to sound, which is the classic one, if you find it physically painful to be in a classroom, because it's so noisy, or the corridors are so noisy, and it's hurting your ears, and it's causing you physical discomfort, and obviously, you're not going to want to be there. And you've got relationships, we've got anxiety, we've got identity, we've got direction, we've got environment, and we've got the final D, and the final D is dislocation. So do they feel for some reason dislocated from the school community? Do they feel excluded, for some reason, do they feel unwelcome Has something gone wrong about the way the school has? What does mean? Not necessarily the way the school has welcomed the child into the school, but often, they can just feel like, I don't belong here. I don't feel welcome here. Because

Rachel Richards: 46:17

certainly some of that can be cultural, or can be to do with your family setup that, you know, if you've come from a family that don't really have never really studied and never, never valued school, then it can be very difficult to see a great value in the school system. Yeah,

Simon Currigan: 46:32

and if you look at interestingly, specifically, the kids that are doing worst in the system, interesting statistics, prospective working class, white boys and working class black boys. And I started certainly, I mean, we worked with a lot of families, and we see a lot of things in school. So what I'm not saying is not statistically accurate, but we work with a lot of schools, and a lot of you know, a lot of families. And there is an increasing number of people who we used to value education. And we used to see it as a way of escaping from poverty. And so we place great stock and great value in sending our kids to school. But for those groups, maybe education doesn't hold that anymore. And why do you think value has been lost. And I'm not saying all white working class families like this, I'm gonna say all white, working class white families lives. But there's certainly significant groups of people that just don't see the point in sending their kids to school. And of course, that becomes a culture and it's like, well, that's not for you, you know, you're not going to go to uni, you're not going to go, you're not going to do an apprenticeship, you're going to whatever. And that's a bigger societal problem.

Rachel Richards: 47:42

If people want to find you, I'll put a link in their podcast notes, and there's be a link on my website to all the information, where would they find you?

Simon Currigan: 47:50

Okay, so two key places, we've got a podcast called school behavior secrets, it's available wherever you listen to podcasts. It's predominantly aimed at teachers and school leaders. But there's loads of information there as a parent. Although what we talked about is classroom based, it doesn't take a massive amount of common sense to translate it into a home based environment, to school behavior secrets, and we've just got a website called beacon school support.co.uk, we've got tons of free downloads, again, they're all got a slight bit of weather or slanted towards teachers. But actually, if you've got half an ounce of common sense, you'd be able to translate anything on the website to to your own children, loads of free downloads about understanding why children do the things they do, which is a big thing. We want to understand why children are having difficulties, how they need support, and what we're big on as well as giving you practical strategies, practical things you can take away to go and do with your kids to help them succeed and flourish.

Rachel Richards: 48:46

That was Simon Kerrigan, who has a podcast called school behavior secrets. If you enjoyed this podcast, why not let other people know, you can put us on social media, share with friends and people from your school environment. Why not give us a review? That would be amazing. And if you want to actually contribute to any discussion that we've been having, or give me some extra tips that I can use on the podcast, then you can reach me at teenagers untangled@gmail.com or just come to the website, which is www dot teenager's untangled.com. That's it for now. Bye bye.