“Behaviour is communication” is something we say a lot.
But I think we sometimes stop at the slogan.
Understanding behaviour requires more than deciding that someone is angry, attention seeking, defiant, or refusing. We need to look at what happens before it, what changes afterwards, the environment, relationships, communication abilities, sensory needs, trauma, health, learning history, and what the person may have learned works when other ways of communicating have not.
Sometimes behaviour says, this is too hard.
Sometimes it says, I don’t feel safe.
Sometimes it says, I need control.
Sometimes it says, I don’t know how to tell you what I need.
And sometimes our first hypothesis is simply wrong.
That is why good behaviour support needs both humanity and rigour. We listen to the person and the people who know them. We observe. We collect data. We test our assumptions. And we keep changing our understanding when the evidence tells us to.
Because the purpose is not simply to make behaviour disappear.
It is to understand the person well enough that they no longer need that behaviour to be heard.
