Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Motivation is a nebulous and magical force that drives people to initiate behaviors geared toward the accomplishment of goals. It is a “call to action” that is supposed to be naturally activated at every age and every developmental stage. Students like Andy are naturally motivated by an instinctual sense of curiosity. They are curious about the world and have an unbridled love for learning.
Trauma robs a child of his sense of curiosity. When the world and the people around Billy are no longer safe, his sense of curiosity becomes locked down, severely hindering his internal sense of motivation. It is a fear response. The mindset shifts 180 degrees and the traumatized child now thinks, “If I don’t explore, initiate, or put forth effort, then I am safe.”
One theory used to explain the nature of human motivation is the arousal theory. This theory suggests there is an internal thermometer that is perpetually activated to balance out levels of arousal. If the arousal level decreases, then a person will look for excitement such as physical exercise or a nightclub. When the opposite occurs and the arousal level is too high, this same person will seek down time, as in reading a book or watching a movie.
For Billy, his internal arousal level is stuck on high, whether he is hyperactive in his behavior or on the quiet, shut-down side. He was not properly regulated in his past to be able to have a more “normal” set point like Andy. Since his high arousal level is due to fear, he will be ever seeking to bring his arousal down by creating safety.
Unfortunately, we have traditionally viewed this child as resistant and lazy, void of motivation.
Traditionally, it has been believed that a student’s level of motivation is influenced by several factors: (1) the need to have approval from others, (2) the desire to overcome challenges, (3) an interest in the subject matter, (4) a general desire to achieve, (5) self-confidence, and (6) persistence. For Andy, a student who enters the classroom relatively regulated and having an internal sense of “I’m okay,” these factors hold true. Billy has not yet come to the level of feeling physically or emotionally safe in the classroom. Therefore, he is still at the lower levels of the hierarchy of learning. Whether or not the subject being taught is of interest is irrelevant.
External rewards have been regarded as solutions to help students who do not naturally have a strong sense of internal motivation. Positive rewards, such as those listed in Table 7.1, are typical external motivators. Andy can successfully respond to these rewards. With Billy, a much different result unfolds.
Table 7.1. Typical external positive and negative motivators
In Billy’s quest for the reward, even one that would be considered a positive motivator, like stickers or a prize from the treasure box, stress is created. He wants the reward but collapses under the stress created to earn it. The stakes are high and unmanageable within his window of stress tolerance. His exaggerated black-and-white perspective tells him that if he does not get the reward, then he is stupid, bad, unlovable, different, unworthy, and unsuccessful. He does not have the regulatory ability to handle the overwhelming feelings this creates; hence, he acts out and demonstrates negative defeating behaviors. Such positive motivators often backfire for students like Billy.
SURVEY SAYS:
“I got sent out of the classroom all the time. One time I didn’t want to leave the classroom and be in the hallway alone so I knocked a chair over and wouldn’t go.”
Negative motivators, such as the threat of alienation, have traditionally been used as a means to get students to be participatory and to complete assignments. Placing students in the corner, having them sit beside the teacher (as a punishment), or exiting students out of the classroom to sit in the hallway by themselves are prime examples. Unfortunately, these only create division and labeling between students, as well as stress for Billy.
SURVEY SAYS:
“A nice teacher would make school better. I had one in 3rd grade and I never got in trouble. In 4th grade I had a teacher who kept putting me out of the classroom and I couldn’t stand that.”
Andy is motivated to behave because Andy does not want to be “bad” like Billy. Billy, who has a history of abandonment and rejection, gets isolated, which confirms his internal belief that he really is a bad child. As a result, his negative behavior increases in severity. Ironically he creates exactly what he feared from the start.
The traditional school environment has been structured in a rigid hierarchical system to keep students in line and motivated: “I am the teacher. You are the student. I will teach you. You will listen and you will learn.” While it is appropriate and absolutely necessary to have this hierarchy in the classroom, the reality is that it has been taken to the extreme and often leaves no room for relationship.
Billy, who has a history of being hurt and traumatized by those in charge of him, will resist this type of structure in order to ensure his safety. He does not trust adults, and rightfully so; his history tells him not to. To adapt to this type of hierarchy in the classroom, Billy must feel emotionally safe first. Developing a strong and loving relationship with the teacher and other adult leaders will be critical to his ability to take his place as a student with the teacher in charge.
Children have a natural love for learning. As young toddlers, they learn to crawl and walk without external motivators. Certainly they like encouragement, but the natural desire to progress is already a part of their innate programming. Children do not need to be bribed or threatened into learning. What they need, especially Billy, is to be supported, guided, and scaffolded up within an environment that is conducive to feeling emotionally safe, developing relationship, and feeling respected.
The traditional techniques invented and implemented in the past, as discussed in the prior paragraphs, are barriers and hindrances to Billy’s progression because they create fear. Any technique based in fear is only going to elevate more fear in Billy who already lives in fear. These techniques are like wolves in sheep’s clothing; they are illusions. The reality is that when fear is a part of the learning environment for a child like Billy, learning stops. What subsequently follows is exactly what these external motivators were intended to eliminate: negative behaviors.
Motivation is more about regulation than about simply making a choice to succeed and follow the rules. Traditional techniques like stickers and rewards address the area of the brain that is shut down for Billy. To think clearly and to sequentially rationalize that “if I behave, then I will have a prize from the treasure box” takes the work of the neocortex. For Billy, when he is struggling and dysregulated, this part of the brain ceases to fire (see chapter 3). The problem exists in the lower area of the brain for Billy. That is why his thinking is going to be different than Andy’s, especially because his negative belief system says that he is stupid, the world is unsafe, and he has to do whatever it takes to make things work for himself (see Figure 7.1).
Figure 7.1. Top-down thinking vs. bottom-up thinking.
In the lower part of the brain, life happens in the next fifteen seconds. Consequences are not relevant. Morals, ethics, and the differences between “right and wrong” have no bearing. All of these guiding forces reside in the neocortex, an area of the brain no longer “in charge” when Billy is dysregulated.
The solution requires interactive regulation (through relationship) to calm Billy down, to create safety for Billy, and to decrease his anxiety. When you switch from the strategy of getting students motivated—with the promise of a reward or the threat of the loss of a privilege—to a strategy that taps into the student’s neurobiological predisposition for relationship. Tap into the need for co-regulation and you will see amazing results, as seen in the following example:
An elementary school teacher switched from using the well-known “Red Light Classroom Management” plan to one that addresses a child’s need for safety and regulation. In this Red Light plan, each child begins the day with a green light. As negative behaviors and choices are made, the child then digresses to a yellow light and ultimately to a red light, with each level having a consequence attached to it. Instead, this teacher created a program based on the kangaroo’s safe pocket, which replaced the green light. Each student started the day with a kangaroo in a pocket that had his name on it. When a student acted out, the student’s kangaroo would be transferred over to the teacher’s safe pouch, demonstrating that the student needed to feel safe and needed the teacher’s help in getting regulated. She explained to the students that her number one job was to keep everyone safe and feeling secure in her classroom. This way, anyone needing extra support was given exactly that, free of punishment or fear. The system was much more effective in teaching students appropriate behaviors because she was able to help regulate students and shift them back to a place of safety and security.1
This approach is brilliant for a student like Billy because it helps him shift out of fear-and-survival mode. When Billy is left to his own devices to regulate, all his internal resources and energy are already used for protection and safety, leaving no room for learning. The more Billy falls behind academically, the more he feels threatened and the less he learns. Hence, the negative and endless spiral begins with no way out when traditional approaches are put into place. Unfortunately, the only way out of this downward spiral for many students is to ultimately quit and drop out of school.
It takes a shift from a behavioral perspective to a relationship-based regulatory perspective to interrupt a child’s negative spiral downward. Many of the traditional techniques need only be modified slightly and delivered in the spirit of love and connection (as in the example above) rather than in the framework of fear and control. It is a small shift yet one that can have a powerful impact on students.
Create a Sense of Belonging. Under natural conditions, humans have historically lived in multigenerational and multicultural settings. The human species has long been defined by groups and by the nuclear family. In fact, we are biologically designed to be in community. It goes against our nervous system to be isolated, and studies show that our physical health is dependent on the quality of our relationships. We all need to belong and feel like we are important to others.
When a student senses that others think, “You are one of us,” safety is inherently created. Unfortunately, traditional classroom responses to Billy’s negative behaviors do exactly the opposite. Traditional consequences of isolating and alienating are relational expressions that say, “You are not one of us.” With these traditional techniques, Billy is marginalized in his own classroom community. This type of disciplinary action will ignite Billy’s stress response system further because he has a history of being rejected, abandoned, or targeted as the bad child. His past memories dictate how the present moment will be interpreted. He is triggered by this sense of not belonging and it sends him into a panic. A student’s past family history is critical to understanding his present state and reaction in the classroom.
SURVEY SAYS:
“You should have the freedom to be yourself without the fear of being judged.”
Create a sense of belonging not just for the Billys in the classroom but for all students by focusing on the class as a community. The class is the “family” that supports, understands, tolerates, validates, and loves each student in his individual differences (instead of expecting each student to be the same and fit into a predefined mold). The entire class should exist for the needs of each student, not the other way around (where traditionally the students exist for the needs of the class). When one student is dysregulated, the class stops to support this one student and everyone works to help this student feel safe. It is the coming together of everyone to support the needs of the one.
It may seem like this would take too much time and would interrupt academic progression. In the beginning, it will take more time and the academics probably will be second in line. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important but so is relationship. Once safety, security, and acceptance are solidified at the beginning of the school year, such an environment will progress academic learning to its highest potential over the span of the entire school year. It is the investment of time and emotional energy where the payoff materializes into academic achievement long term.
A community atmosphere helps to empower every student and gives each student a voice, as shown in the following example:
In one classroom, a teacher was able to establish this type of family-oriented learning environment. When a student got dysregulated, everyone was able to join in to help this student feel safe again. The teacher had a singing bowl and when Billy became dysregulated one day, another student rang the singing bowl (which he was given permission to do) and called out, “Everyone just breathe!” The teacher at this point was able to say, “We all need to stop. Pause. Breathe. We’re all okay and everyone is safe.” The teacher then encouraged the students to continue what they were doing and went over to Billy and helped to individually regulate him in order to get back on task. The class continued on in their work and Billy was able to quickly shift back on track.
SURVEY SAYS:
“Yes, I liked school because I had the best teacher ever and she helped my class become a family.”
At Watershed School, an innovative school in Boulder, Colorado, students meet at a set time once a week for what they have termed “advisory.” One teacher is designated as the “advisor” and is assigned to each advisory group of students in various grades. The group stays intact for all four years, from ninth grade through graduation. Each advisory group grows to become more like a tight-knit family, where students have an emotionally safe place to discuss any issue that comes up in their lives. It is a place for students to work out social, emotional, and academic issues. Each member of the advisory has a voice and is given an equal chance to be heard and understood every week.
The result is a school with students who have a greater level of trust and security, with a decrease in negative social issues. Students learn to communicate better at all levels, and the ability to say “I need help” improves. The teachers understand each student better, which directly transposes to an increase in academic achievement. The one-hour-a-week time investment, along with the emotional and relational investment given by each advisor, has proven to benefit the school tremendously.
When programs like this one at Watershed School can be delivered in a relational and community-oriented way, students feel safe. When they feel like they belong, academic achievement happens. Here are some more simple yet effective ways for students to feel like they truly belong to the classroom community:
SURVEY SAYS:
“My suggestion is that the environment is comforting, and friendly. No student wants to sit in a classroom that just has desks, and chairs.”
Create a Classroom Designed for Regulation. For students to be motivated, they have to be regulated. You cannot have one without the other. Therefore, the classroom should be set up to assist in keeping students regulated throughout the school day or class period.
Movement. Repetitive motor movement can be key in helping some students regulate. Patterned, rhythmic, and repetitive movements settle the brain and activate the vestibular system (the sensory system that responds to movement and our sense of balance). When a baby is upset, the caretaker either rocks, bounces, or sways with the baby to calm the baby down. The same is true for older children. These types of movements should be encouraged in the classroom to settle children, help them regain their focus, and open up the pathways for more learning. Here are some ideas to offer movement for children:
Children often do things that demonstrate the exact solutions needed to help them. It is up to the adults to see the solutions being presented instead of seeing only the breaking of the rules. The following example shows how a child knew that movement was what he needed to get regulated but was breaking the rules in the process:
Billy would become upset in the classroom and run out without asking permission from his teacher. Each time, he would run to the school elevator and “play” inside the elevator by sending it up and down to the two floors repeatedly. He would refuse to come out and only wanted to make the elevator go up and down, up and down. The teachers talked to Billy on several occasions to help him understand that the elevator was not a toy but a necessary piece of equipment for many of the handicapped students. They explained that he was not allowed to run out of the classroom, as leaving the class without adult supervision was against the classroom rules. Billy was told he would receive demerits each time he ran to the elevator. This scenario happened multiple times throughout the school year, yet no amount of explaining seemed to influence Billy’s behavior. No amount of demerits had any effect on him. It appeared as if Billy would make up his mind and do what he wanted whether it was against the rules or not.
What Billy was doing clearly revealed a regulatory issue, not a behavioral issue, yet the teachers were asking, “How do I get Billy to change his behavior?” which is the wrong question. The movement of the elevator, going up and down, was providing a sensory experience at the physiological level to help regulate Billy. He was not intentionally being defiant. Conversely, he was intentionally seeking to find a way to behave by regulating himself.
The solution comes in realizing that a student’s activity is a regulatory issue when he is seeking movement for regulation. With this understanding, the teacher could lovingly approach Billy and they could work out a way for Billy to have “elevator time” when he needed it. A schedule could be set up that worked with the teacher’s schedule or Billy could be given the chance to express his need to regulate when he became dysregulated in the classroom.
Sound. Music can be exceptionally calming and it has been shown to actually change a person’s brain wave patterns. In the womb, the fetus is constantly surrounded by the organizing rhythm and vibration of the heart. The brainstem is getting patterned at a very early age. Thus, it is not surprising that studies on classical music and Native American drumming have shown them to be effective forms of stress reduction. White noise machines and water fountains can also be used to provide comforting background noises.
Animals. Animals have a calming effect on human beings. Have you ever been to a psychotherapist’s office and not seen a fish tank? Research has shown that watching fish randomly swim around in a tank can significantly decrease stress levels and lower blood pressure. Other animals that are soft and cuddly, such as hamsters and guinea pigs, can help create a calming atmosphere for children.
SURVEY SAYS:
“We had a class pet named Bunny Foo Foo I liked.”
Breaks. Some children need to take frequent breaks and leave the classroom. Having library passes available to students can offer them these much-needed breaks. Granted, Billy is streetwise and will attempt to overuse this luxury of leaving the classroom, even when he is regulated. Boundaries and limitations will need to be held for such a tool to be used effectively instead of abused.
Simplicity. Decrease wall and ceiling decorations. Many classrooms have so many papers and posters stapled, hung, and pasted to walls and ceilings that even regulated students like Andy get overwhelmed. If you were to walk into a day spa, what do you notice about the environment? There is soft music, the walls are painted in a soft warm color, and there is a fountain of water creating a calming background sound. Consider how the décor of the classroom environment is influencing the regulation of the students.
SURVEY SAYS:
“I was very distracted. I used the bathroom as an excuse.”
Lighting. Consider changing and warming the lighting in the classroom. Stress and anxiety can increase when working with intense lighting, especially in rooms where fluorescent lighting is used. Using lamps with incandescent bulbs can aid in this as well as letting in as much possible natural light.
SURVEY SAYS:
“Kids should be able to eat their snacks whenever they want, as long as they don’t bother anybody.”
Food and Water. Keeping students regulated at the physical level is important to their ability to stay calm and focused, especially the Billys in the classroom, with experiences of neglect and not having enough food in the past. Their bodies can easily go into survival when they become hungry, which elicits the fear that they will never be fed again (there is that black-and-white thinking showing up again for Billy). Even for Andy, having the flexibility to have a snack and enough water can be beneficial to his overall demeanor. Keeping snacks and water available is ideal for helping to keep students regulated.
Safety. Sometimes, even when every measure has been taken to create a classroom of regulation, Billy may still not be able to maintain safety, thus becoming aggressive and violent. When Billy gets to this point, safety should always become the number one concern. Traditionally, when Billy exhibited these types of unsafe behaviors, he would be placed in a seclusion room and told he had to calm down before he could return to class. This type of response to Billy’s aggression only escalates his survival mode, especially if he has had a trauma history of being left by himself. For a child like this, a seclusion room is the absolute worst solution for him.
SURVEY SAYS:
“No. I didn’t like school because of the padded quiet room that made me so scared that I wet my pants and they made me clean it up with bleach and towels from the bathroom. They didn’t let me change my clothes or wash my hands. I go to a different school now.”
Secluding a child who does not have a sufficient regulatory system to calm down by himself is counterproductive and should never be an option. He will not be able to calm down on his own and it will be a traumatizing experience as he sinks deeper into a fight-or-flight response. It is like leaving a crying baby in a crib and expecting the baby to calm down on his own. The baby will only cry louder until he gets to a point where he has to shut down in order to stop the dangerous level of stress hormones being excreted. He stops crying out of survival, not out of regulation.
Instead, safety can be created by moving Billy into a safe room—a different room from the isolation room if he had negative experiences there—but a regulated and trusting adult needs to be with him. If the adult is in a loving place, free of control and fear, Billy will not have a need to attack. When the adult is not feeding more fear into Billy and adding a calm and loving presence, Billy’s need to attack will decrease. This is where safety mantras that have been practiced and rehearsed can be exceptionally effective in getting Billy back to a place of rational thinking. Situations like this are even more quickly de-escalated when the adult with Billy in the containment area is someone he knows, trusts, and with whom he has past positive experiences.
Develop Relationship. If you reflect back onto your academic career from kindergarten to high school, who was your favorite teacher? Most of us can easily come up with an answer to this question. Yet the important point follows right behind: Why? Why was this your favorite teacher? Most likely, it was not because this teacher was well organized and gave good lectures. It was most likely due to this teacher’s approachability and interest in you as not just a student, but as a person.
SURVEY SAYS:
“Yes—I liked school because my teacher was nice she was always there to help me. And when I was struggling and would get mad she never gave up on me.”
Out of everything listed in this chapter for motivating students, the most effective “tool” is relationship. Never underestimate the power of the relationship in the academic environment. It is the great motivator of all time. Unfortunately, many of our educational approaches to teaching students in the classroom are relationally disconnected experiences.
The teacher-student relationship addresses two of the most primary fears that every human on this planet has:
Children, however, are developmentally programmed to need relationship in order to curb these two great fears, more than adults. When a child goes through family experiences that fail to do this and conversely exasperate these fears, the result is a student who lives and breathes every moment out of these fears. With this intensity of fear occupying the mind, there is little room for clear, focused, and complex thinking.
When you have a strong relationship with someone, there is an inherent desire to please the other person. If your spouse or partner is upset with you, do you think he/she will stop off on the way home to buy you flowers or that special treat? No. Yet if this same person is floating on air in love with you, would the answer be different? Of course it would. As such, the teacher-student relationship is the key to awakening a student’s internal drive.
If you want to increase academic achievement, increase relationship. The two are directly correlated. Children like Billy need to be provided patterned, repetitious, relational experiences.
SURVEY SAYS:
“Yes—I liked school this past year. I liked my teachers alot better this year because they understood me.”
Enhancing the teacher-student relationship can be done in several small ways, many of which take very little extra time:
Be willing to be vulnerable. Share some information about yourself (appropriate information) to show that you too are human and are willing to be exposed. It does not take a clinical degree in psychology to be able to relate to a student. It simply takes attention, awareness, and the willingness to take an interest in the student’s perspective.
It is also important for children to have relational continuity, especially children with erratic histories of broken relationships. Switching teachers during the year can be disastrous for Billy. While “life happens” and this cannot always be prevented, helping a student rebuild a new relationship with a new teacher will be critical to the success of such a monumental change, as can be seen in the following example:
Billy was doing fairly well in third grade until about February. While there were several other factors that could have triggered him, such as the beginning of state testing or the anniversary of his adoptive placement, the one variable that stood out the most was the change in his primary classroom teacher. His teacher, one he adored and favored, was suddenly replaced due to an emergency within her family. By the beginning of March, Billy’s behaviors had intensified and it seemed as if he had completely regressed back to the beginning of the school year. The switch over in teachers was addressed only minimally at a class level, and the students were expected to move forward as if everything was the same. Billy’s parents went to the new teacher and explained how Billy was missing the previous teacher and had not yet had a chance to develop a strong relationship with the new teacher. Arrangements were made for the new teacher to meet Billy at the park that following Saturday so they could have one-on-one time. Billy also began coming to class ten minutes early each day prior to the first bell. During the morning time with the teacher, Billy was given jobs to help the teacher, such as washing the whiteboard, along with the chance to build a deeper, more meaningful relationship with her. After only two weeks, Billy’s behavior returned back to where it had been prior to the change in teachers.
Never minimize the impact on students when teachers are changed during the school year or when students are moved to different classrooms midyear.
Involve Parental Support, Not Parental Fear. Teachers traditionally have used the parent-child relationship in a fear-based way to get children motivated. The teacher says to Billy:
“If you don’t get your work done ...
“If you don’t behave ...
“If you don’t get focused and pay attention ...
... then I’m going to call your parents.”
This threat of calling the parents is missing a grand opportunity to motivate children through the influence of a relationship rather than trying to motivate them through the threat of a relationship. The two are radically different.
For Andy, threatening to call his parents will typically work because he has a relationship with his parents. He cares about them and what they think about him. Deep down, Andy wants to please his parents, so he responds to this threat.
Billy, however, is still working to keep his parents at a distance in order to protect himself from the vulnerability of an intimate parent-child relationship. Threatening to call his parents actually helps him fuel his campaign against his parents. Disapproval from his parents will not elicit a positive response in Billy and, in fact, will sometimes work to drive Billy further away from his parents. This is why Billy may actually increase the intensity of his negative behaviors with such a threat.
In some cases, Billy is actually trying to get his parents’ approval. In this case, a threat to call his parents would ignite his stress-response system. He is scared that if he does not win his parent’s approval, he will lose his parents. Adopted and foster children live in a perpetual state of fear that their parents will simply give up on them and send them back at any moment of any day. Billy’s underdeveloped ability to modulate stress will then manifest itself into more negative behaviors and he may spiral out of control. His ability to maintain any sense of regulation would be severely challenged.
Schools need to team up together with parents to help regulate Billy. When Billy gets upset and the teacher is unable to help regulate Billy’s stress response system, the teacher can suggest that Billy call his mom or dad. Taking two or three minutes for Billy to connect by phone can be just enough to help him get back on track.
For many students, a daily phone call to a parent as a proactive measure can be a powerful way to help them interrupt their stress patterns. Billy’s system is not equipped to handle six hours in a school environment; his window of stress tolerance simply is not that large. Allowing him a break or two during these six hours gives him a chance to reregulate throughout the day before behavioral issues surface.
When possible, most adults check in with their significant other during the workday. In fact, if we do not check in, we might hear about it when we arrive home: “Why didn’t you call me today?” It is a healthy coping mechanism to chunk our day into smaller pieces with relational breaks throughout.
Allowing phone calls to the parent is a developmentally sensitive approach to working with a child like Billy. When infants become toddlers, their mobility increases but their regulatory system is not yet fully developed. During this stage of development, they will wander away from their parents to explore their surroundings. These early exploratory experiences are limited, as the toddlers then run back to the parent to reconnect. They run to explore and then run back to reconnect and reregulate. This type of behavior is repetitive and gives the child a chance to be on his own to practice self-regulation, but then it immediately affords him the chance to reregulate back with the parent.
We need to re-create this type of coming and going for Billy. Giving him a chance to be on his own at school for a couple of hours, then allowing him to call or text a parent to get reregulated, is giving him practice to later becoming fully able to self-regulate. Eventually, Billy will not need this type of intermediate reconnection and will be able to make it through the whole school day.
Here is an account of a dad’s interaction by phone with his ninth-grade “Billy” at school:
When Billy becomes upset, his sensory system gets revved up, and going to class becomes too difficult. The counselor called me the other day and said that Billy was refusing to go to class. While on the phone with me (and Billy knew I was on the phone), the counselor asked Billy again if he would like to return to class. I heard Billy reply, “No, I most certainly do not.” I asked to speak to Billy to help him regulate back down and to connect with him and his struggle. The conversation went something like this:
Dad: “What’s going on, buddy?”
Billy: “I have a headache and it is piercing my brain so I’m not going to go to class and deliberately put myself in more pain.”
Dad: “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Billy: “Nobody can stop me from sitting here all day.”
Dad: “You’re right.”
At this point, we sat in silence. It was not a “You’re in trouble” silence but an “I’m here just to love you” silence. After a bit, I continued:
Dad: “Is there anything I can do for you now?”
Billy: “I could ask you to come pick me up but I know you won’t.”
Billy knows my “General Patton” stance that he will need to learn how to manage in school and I will not be coming to get him unless it is an absolute emergency. We ended the conversation without me trying to take control over him but encouraging him to regulate and return to class. He, however, did not go back to class and sat in the counselor’s office the rest of the day. When he got home, he got on his bike and took a good thirty-minute ride. Most parents would not have allowed this, as a consequence, but I know Billy. He needed time to get this out of his system and process. The next morning I went to wake him up and he said to me:
Billy: “I told you. I’m never going back to school.”
Dad: “I understand it is hard. But remember the deal is that you need to go. Staying home is not an option.”
Billy got ready for school without another word of resistance and had no trouble making it through the entire day. I know that by giving him the support, holding the needed boundaries, and not trying to force or control him is what he needed to uncover the natural internal motivation that is inside of him. He has been having a wonderful school year thus far and has not refused to go to any classes since this incident.
