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Last week, a student at my daughter Sam’s school put signs above some of the water fountains saying, “Please do not drink from this fountain. It is contaminated,” and, “No utilice éste fuente, por favor. Está contaminada.” As the story was told to me by Sam’s resource teacher, the principal ripped down the signs and was overheard complaining about the troublemaker who both inconvenienced and frightened people.
It turns out the miscreant was my daughter. A teacher discovered her making new signs in English and Spanish that read, “The water is still contaminated. Do not drink it.”
Apparently that day Sam had noticed that the water comes out of the fountain aerated, and she decided the white-ish bubbles were lead. Given the ancient plumbing and rampant corruption in Chicago, her concern is not farfetched—but it is wrong. Lead does not appear in water as white, dissipating bubbles. Furthermore, the school’s water was tested in the fall and found to be safe. Had Sam bothered to ask any employee of the school, she could have learned as much. But Sam is not one to spend time verifying her suspicions. She trusts her instincts, well informed or utterly uninformed as they may be.
What struck me about the incident (besides my frustration with her failure to stop and ask) is how the story’s tone changed when Sam was identified as the culprit. Every adult at this school of 1850 students knows her. They know her outbursts, they know her aide, they know her smiles and tears. They also know her desire to be helpful. When it was Sam who had posted the signs, believing she was performing a service, the incident turned from annoying to amusing. That switch got me thinking about how our children’s intentions and what we presume to be our children’s intentions impact our responses.
We want to know why people act as they do; we care about the backstory. This is not a profound insight. Murders committed in self-defense are treated differently than murders committed as premeditated acts of cruelty. Charitable donations pour in to devastated communities struck by a tornado, an “act of God,” but not so much to blighted neighborhoods for which human agents can be blamed (a subject for public policy debate that I will not explore here). For reasons of survival, I need to know if the person hurrying toward me intends to rob me, to ask for directions, or to return the wallet I inadvertently dropped while crossing the street. I use context clues including body language, facial expression, and the presence of other pedestrians to make a guess about whether to change my pace or direction. My response, my safety, depends on guessing well.
What happens when we do not know why someone acts as they do? For parents and teachers of children with limited communication skills, impulse control, or theory of mind, we spend much time presuming because our kids cannot tell us. Our reactions are guided by these presumptions, and wrong presumptions lead to wrong reactions. For example, if I ask my neurotypical daughter Kelly to put away the pile of clean laundry I’ve left on her bed, and 15 minutes later I find the pile on her closet floor as she sits on the bed, happily absorbed in a YouTube video, I scold her. She obviously heard me and just as obviously disobeyed me.
However, if I make the same request of Sam and 15 minutes later find the laundry right where I left it as she sits on her bed, happily absorbed in a sewing project, my anger is more likely to mystify her than to prompt her to mend her ways. Did she hear me? Who knows. Does she realize 15 minutes have passed? Who knows. Does she even see the laundry? I have watched her “clean” the kitchen, leaving it littered with spills and dirty bowls even after she proudly proclaims the job complete. If I ask her if she sees anything she has left, she will scan the area and maybe settle on one “last” item that she missed. She simply cannot take in a space larger than a desk. So anger about the laundry would probably be misplaced.
I spend much of my day working with teachers and with parents of children who are struggling in school. My teacher training did little to prepare me to understand students whose learning style didn't complement my teaching style, so I recognize the teacher’s instinct to conclude that uncooperative students are disobedient students. Much of my work revolves around reconsidering this assumption. Behavior is a form of communication, and more often than not, especially in young children, it is not communicating a desire to be non-compliant or troublesome. Challenging behavior may indicate that a child is feeling overwhelmed, or reading social cues incorrectly, or needing physical movement, or any of a host of messages. It may even be communicating a misplaced desire to help, as with Sam’s sign posting. Responding appropriately requires that we try to identify the child’s motivation.
Back when Sam was in elementary school I arrived at pick-up time one day to find Anne, the mother of another autistic child, Joey (names changed), waiting for me. The school had called Anne because Joey whacked Sam with a tennis racquet. Sam was not injured, but the teacher felt obliged to report Joey. When the two kids came out of school Anne made her son apologize. He mumbled, “I’m sorry,” and ran off. Then Anne asked Sam to recount the event. Sam explained that she was holding a ball out to give Joey, because it was his turn. “Oh,” said his mother, “he probably didn’t understand the game and was pretending to play baseball with you.” “No,” replied Sam cheerfully, “he just didn’t want the ball.”
I’ve always remembered this conversation because Sam understood her friend’s intentions in a way that none of the adults did. The gym teacher’s version of the aggressive child, the mother’s version of either the confused child or possibly the imaginative child, my version of the dysregulated child, none of them were correct. Certainly he needed to learn to “use his words.” But beyond that, none of our reactions made any more sense to him than his behavior made to us. He just didn’t want the ball.
