Parents, teachers and providers can avoid making matters worse by differentiating between the two types of behaviors. The process continues through early adulthood. And this is why so many of our treatments fall short, or even deepen a child or teen’s emotional and behavioral challenges. As a point of reference, almost all toddler tantrums are bottom-up because children don’t begin to develop the ability to reliably control emotions and behaviors until late toddlerhood. When we punish a bottom-up behavior, we can easily make matters worse. Not all behaviors are top-down many disruptive behaviors are actually bottom-up.īottom-up behaviors do not respond to rewards, consequences or punishments. Bottom-up behaviors are brain-based stress responses that require understanding, compassion and actively helping an individual feel safe, based on that individual’s unique neurology. What do all of these approaches have in common? They all involve discipline, and are based on the view that behaviors are top-down and deliberate, and should be dealt with through punishments, consequences or rewards. Level- drop programs–Facilities frequently use this reward and consequence protocol for teens in residential psychiatric care. Isolation–When children and teens are hospitalized, too often isolation from family and friends is used as an intervention. Seclusion and restraint -Across the US and internationally, schools send students into seclusion and isolation rooms under the guise of “protecting self or others.” Preschool suspensions-America’s preschools suspend an average of 250 preschoolers daily. And the main way we solve them? Punishment. Too many approaches to helping behaviorally challenged children and teens are based on the assumption that all challenging behaviors are alike. These two types of behaviors have completely different causes and should lead to very different solutions depending on the type of behavior. But this isn’t happening. They are called top-down because they are literally driven by the top part of our bodies, the “executive function” center of our brain. Top-down thinking and behaviors develop over many years through connections to the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Top-down behaviors are deliberate and intentional. They are called bottom-up because they come from cues in the body and areas of the brain that are driven by instincts. They are survival-based stress responses, and operate through the activation of the brain’s threat-detection system. Over decades of clinical practice, I have found it’s critical to know the difference between top-down and bottom-up behaviors.īottom-up behaviors are instinctual and unintentional. My recent Facebook post on the topic reached well over a million people. Most graduate programs in mental health, education, social work, and medicine don’t yet consider this dichotomy important enough to teach or train about. I didn’t, even after years of college, training, and earning a Ph.D. Did you know that there are (at least) 2 different kinds of behaviors? Most people don’t.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |