ac.care

5. Behaviour that challenges us

Behaviour of children in care

Children in care behave differently depending on their experience of trauma, attachment style and brain development. This can include behaviours such as:

• Hitting, kicking, spiting or punching others
• Breaking or misusing toys or equipment
• Refusal to co-operate or to listen to instruction
• Swearing or shouting at parents / teachers / carers
• Teasing or bullying
• Lying and stealing
• Truancy
• Running away from home
• Underage drinking / smoking / sexual activity
• Self-harming

Children who have experienced developmental trauma often behave at a younger emotional age. For example, a 6-year-old may “flip their lid” and resort to the physical behaviour of a 3-year-old. When a child regresses to a younger developmental age, this is often difficult for us to understand as they are not acting at their chronological age. As a carer you may need to adjust your thinking to respond to them at their development age they are functioning at. Some of these behaviours may look like:

• Having intense meltdowns like a 2 or 3 year old.
• Having angry responses to reasonable requesting. For example, angrily putting a tea towel away.
• Being extremely impulsive. For example, running away and shoplifting.
• Being extremely clingy or fearful.
• Having self-soothing and comforting behaviour such as rocking, head banging, food hoarding and over eating.

This can trigger strong reactions in us as adults who may be accustomed to managing children at their chronological age.

These Iceberg Model fact sheets are intended to assist carers to have a trauma-informed approach to managing challenging behaviour. Explore these and refer back to them when you feel like you’re needing to understand behaviours and where they may be coming from.

You flipped your lid?! Now what?

We know we’ve flipped our lid when we feel angry, frustrated or become overwhelmed with emotion. Some things that may assist carers to “put their lid back on” are things such as taking deep breaths, walking away, having a bath, listening to music, focusing on what needs to be done, talking through the situation, calling a family member or friend, going for a drive or counting to five.

What strategies do you already use to help calm yourself?

If you don’t have any, think of some you will be able to use moving forward.