Ari, now 19, shared his story with me. “When I was growing up, no one understood me. During school, I tried to do what was expected of me, but I couldn’t concentrate on the teacher’s lessons. My brain was overwhelmed by the noisy classroom and everything happening around me all at once.”
“One time, I ran into a closet in the back of the classroom just to escape the overload. The teacher came and reprimanded me for leaving my seat without permission. He didn’t ask if something was bothering me, he assumed I was trying to misbehave.”
“I grew up thinking something was wrong with me. I felt like a failure for not being able to do what was expected of me.”
Ari was one of the many children I’ve encountered in my work who on the outside may seem difficult or defiant, but inside just want to be like everyone else, and feel like failures when the expectations placed on them don’t account for their inner experiences. My concern grew, since many of these children were already receiving hours a week of ABA therapy, and were still being treated at a surface level, their behaviors corrected without ever considering the underlying reasons for them. Often the result was they would shut down or escalate their problematic behaviors to protect themselves from further hurt.
That closet in the back of the classroom wasn’t defiance, it was Ari trying to cope with sensory overload. But a child who’s constantly being told what he did wrong, without anyone ever wondering why he did it, starts to believe there’s something fundamentally broken in him.
The first step with Ari, as with every child, is creating a safe relationship. This means approaching the child without judgment or criticism, and viewing challenging behaviors as something to be curious about rather than something that needs to be immediately corrected or fixed. We can learn so much about a child by just being curious and asking the question, why is he acting this way, and what purpose is it serving him. Many problem behaviors are self-protection strategies a child uses to cope with their challenges, so creating a safe environment is critical for him to open up and be able to learn. The question we’re always asking is, does the child feel safe enough to engage?
This is often the crucial step for helping a child actually benefit from teaching and start building real self confidence. Instead of continuing to think of himself as a failure, he gets the chance to see that nothing about him is broken, and that’s what opens the door to real growth.
After working together, Ari’s perspective on himself shifted profoundly. He came to see that despite the challenges he faced in school, he possesses so many unique talents and abilities that just needed the right intervention to flourish.
In Ari’s own words, “Having someone understand what I went through helped me realize I’m not broken, and there are many things that I can be successful in.”