Extreme Behaviors in Children and Adolescents
When your child starts to exhibit challenging behaviors, it can be both confusing and frustrating. On the one hand, you want to understand what's going on with your child emotionally, while on the other hand, you want to help to correct the behavior.
Challenging behaviors can show up in a variety of ways; for some, it's anxiety and panic, others will yell and scream, and still, others will throw tantrums, refuse to help or work, run away, nag, or bully.
All of these behaviors can lead to a diagnosis like Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Autism Spectrum disorders, and Attention Deficit (various types), but what can you do to help your child without a diagnosis?
All too often, children are misdiagnosed and put on medications before trying natural therapies to manage their behavior issues. For the vast majority of children, using behavioral modification techniques along with strategies to get to the root cause of the behavioral issues is all it takes to get them back on track.
Therefore, before you seek out a diagnosis for your child's behavior issues, your first step should be to try to squelch the root cause of the behaviors by engaging in therapeutic behavior change strategies.
How Behavioral Strategies Work
Behavioral strategies work by looking at the patterns of behavior to identify the source of the behavior. In other words, there are several reasons why your child might be misbehaving. Depending on the why, there are different strategies to help get your child back into balance.
If you skip the step of looking at where this behavior is coming from, you miss out on an opportunity to truly help your child learn how to get back into balance and meet their needs.
A few different reasons your child might be acting out include:
Physiological reasons like low blood sugar, hunger, or sleepiness
A need for attention
Sensory response
Pain seeking or avoiding behavior
Looking to gain control
Digital withdrawal (due to excessive use or removal of SmartPhone, iPad, video games, etc.)
The first step in assessing where the behavior is coming from is observing the behavior over several days and taking notes. You can use the below behavioral log to quickly figure out the source of the behavior.
Behavior Log
Using the behavior log allows you to use your observation to avoid escalation.
At the top of the log, you write the behavior you would like to squelch, like "Easily overwhelmed, confused, or frustrated." Then each time you observe the behavior, measure it and quickly write it down in the log. In a week, you can quickly see the patterns and trends, which should give you the information you need to avoid the escalation.
For example, if you notice a trend of behavior concerns early in the morning, you should first rule out blood sugar issues before engaging in a behavior modification. Look for signs like hunger, tiredness, and temperature to decrease an autonomic nervous system response which increases the severity of the behavior.
Once you have ensured that you have met your child's basic needs and removed any easy to resolve antecedents, you can begin to use strategies that will help you to manage behaviors.
Strategies To Manage Behaviors Without Diagnosis Some things to keep in mind when working on behavior change:
It often takes about 30 days to reset a behavior, so plan for at least a month when engaging in behavior change strategies. The first seven to ten days can be the honeymoon phase where you feel the most motivated, but it's important to stay consistent and follow through for the full 30 days if you want to see real results.
Using a reward approach serves independence better than punishment. When you use a reward approach, there is no shame, and you're giving your child the answers to their problems instead of just reinforcing the problem.
Although it can be tempting to use food as a reward, this can ultimately lead to eating disorder behaviors and create an unhealthy relationship with food for your child. Therefore, focus on intrinsic rewards that can help grow your child's sense of confidence and pride. To determine the best intrinsic reward for your child, ask them what they find is the best incentive for them.
When correcting the behavior, use the sandwich technique: Praise, Correct, Praise.
If the behavior is task-oriented, always have your child complete the physical task themselves instead of jumping in and doing it for them. This will foster a good work ethic.
Include sensory breaks in your day. These can include activities like deep pressure with weighted blankets, wraps, and lap pads or lifting weighted objects to soothe the autonomic nervous system. When looking for weighted items, we highly recommend SensaCalm products, as they meet our standards for quality, non-toxicity, local sourcing, and fair living wages.
Schedule in self-regulation strategies like breath regulation five times a day. Put it on your schedule if it helps; just make sure it's consistent.
When And How To Engage Further Therapeutic Input
For some children, the above strategies will be enough to get them back on track. However, if your child's behaviors are severe enough to the point that it interrupts their ability to care for themselves, to maintain a safe home, to have healthy social experiences, or if academic learning is consistently disrupted to the point of learning delays, then more therapeutic input should be provided.
This is usually the point at which many families will look to diagnosis to explain the behavioral issue. Unfortunately, once diagnosed, the most common method of treatment is pharmaceutical.
While pharmaceutical medications can provide short-term help, they also come with some severe side effects, including changes in mood, behavior, anxiety, and self-harming behaviors.
Instead of jumping to a diagnosis, the more holistic approach that will yield the best results for your child is to work on the root issue by engaging in a bottoms-up protocol that supports your child's nervous system, along with neurological organization.
All too often, people will skip the crucial step of working on their child's foundational needs and jump into behavior change strategies or go straight to diagnosis, which truly is an injustice to both you and your child. Treating the root cause of the behavior is frequently the missing piece to helping your child with their behavioral issue.
The Brain Harmony Bottom-Up Approach To Root Cause Healing
At Brain Harmony, we get to the root cause of major behavior concerns by using a bottom-up approach. In the below Pyramid of Learning, you can see that approaching behaviors needs to begin with the foundations of the pyramid. If behavior is at the top of the pyramid, then behavior change can only come once the central nervous system is balanced.
This includes sensory processing, reflex maturity, ocular motor control, perceptual-motor control, and so on. The success of behavior change is dependent on the organization of the foundation, and behavior is, therefore, a reflection of the state of the brain and nervous system.
Trying to address significant behavior problems by only using behavior strategies without securing the foundation of the nervous system is the reason you're reading this article. If behavior change was all you needed, then this problem would have resolved by now. It's not until you feed the nervous system what it needs that your child will be able to follow through with behavior change because, at that point, they will have the neurological skills to do so.
The key to fostering a neurological environment for change is through our CALM Method.
As pictured above, when you begin working with brain harmony, our first step is to COMFORT the nervous system by creating a sense of safety using a Safe and Sound Protocol, which works on the vagus nerve.
Next, we ACTIVATE the weaker parts of the brain and nervous system, which begins to reorganize your child's brain so that it can function more fluidly.
Then we approach the LEARNING phase, where we teach new behavioral strategies. This is where we use the behavioral strategies described in this article. At this point, your child's brain and nervous system is ready to try something new.
And finally, your child MASTERS their new behavior with repetition. At this stage, your child is able to follow through with the desired response consistently. That's real brain harmony.
Tommy's Behavior Success Story
Tommy had severe behavioral issues when he first came to Brain Harmony. He would torture himself, his teachers, and his classmates at school. He whined and cried often, sitting still for reading was impossible, and he would experience tantrums when it was time to change subjects or go to another classroom. He was suspended from school so often that it even put his parent's employment at risk.
After starting with Brain Harmony, Tommy's mom began to notice significant shifts in his behavior. The teachers at school were so astounded by his changing behavior; they even asked if he was put on medication. Of course, Tommy had not received any medication at all; he had just experienced what a calm nervous system, neurological organization, and some behavior change strategies could do.
Reese's Behavior Success Story
When Reese was diagnosed with ADHD, his mother, Jennifer, wanted to try anything she could before putting him on medication as she felt that pharmaceuticals weren't the answer. She tried many different approaches, some providing small changes, until she found Brain Harmony on a podcast.
When she first came to Brain Harmony, Reese was very hyperactive, always getting into trouble, and although he was very smart, his behavioral challenges were a big issue at school. He had difficulty processing his emotions and experienced lots of outbursts.
Jennifer noticed huge changes in Reese's behavior after beginning with Brain Harmony and starting the Safe and Sound Protocol. For the first time, she realized how big the sensory issue has been for Reese. She always knew he had sensory issues, but she had thought that his primary complication was ADHD.
Today, instead of getting angry and not knowing what to do with it, Reese will cry and release his emotions, processing what he's feeling and calming himself down. In school, he is much more emotionally regulated, and his OT no longer sees the hyperactivity that led to his diagnosis of ADHD.
Emery's Success Story
Academic Struggles, Anxiety, Sleep, Sensory Integration
Cassie and her husband were at their wits end after trying everything to help manage their son Emery’s stress, insomnia, and trouble learning at school. When Cassie heard about Brain Harmony on a Wellness Mama podcast, she knew she had to give it a shot. After an incredible free consultation, she decided to have the whole family begin the therapy. Within a short amount of time Emery began sleeping, his stress levels went down tremendously, he started excelling in school, and for the first time in his life he was playing sports with his siblings. His two brothers also saw incredible improvements in stress levels, creativity, and learning. His youngest brother in kindergarten is even reading at a 1st grade level!
“We were kind of at our wit’s end and just didn’t really have a lot of options, so I thought - what do I have to lose? We had been two years on multiple different doctors appointments and not getting anywhere. So I reached out to you for the free consult, and after speaking with you it was like you knew things that no other doctor had ever put the pieces together, and I just thought okay this is a definite for Emery. Really this is the only things that’s worked for us… you pick him up from school and he had a smile on his face… his quality of life has just really increased tremendously.”
Grant struggled with ADD, focus, nervousness, and anxiety for most of his life - preventing him from enjoying life to the fullest and performing at his peak potential at school. After working with Brain Harmony, Grant has achieved AB Honor Roll, has become more affectionate, and has tapped into his new found love for creative writing.
“Anxiety wise - before, I’d just get panic attacks just.. thinking about the future and how it’s going to effect me. But now I’ve just been thinking about now.” - Grant
“You have absolutely nothing to lose. No matter where you’re at mentally, you have room to improve always. And it can be life-changing if you’ll just give it a shot.” - Grant’s Mom
Takeaway
If your child is having behavioral problems and you feel like you've tried every approach, it may be time to identify if the issue is a downstream imbalance. Many behavioral problems manifest from imbalances in the autonomic nervous system and can be successfully addressed without a diagnosis or medication. When you engage in a bottom-up approach by working on your child's foundational needs, the upstream behaviors tend to become more calm and regulated.
If you're interested in learning more about Brain Harmony's approach to behavior change, schedule a free consultation to see if Brain Harmony is for you.
Keep on the lookout for next week's article on Digital Health with practical strategies to regain control over your mind, intentions, and life to avoid the "Failure to Launch" Epidemic.