Behaviour is Information
I have long said 'all behaviour is communication' ... and I'm not recanting that. I'm augmenting it.
For most parenting advice –and most parents– behaviour is the problem, both the root and the branch. Parents (and experts) even talk about 'nipping it in the bud' to prevent recurring problems (behaviours.) The focus is on 'the behaviour' (good and bad) entirely, which aligns with the stock behaviourism advice: punish, bribe, threaten, coerce... while also explaining why that advice just doesn't work well enough to earn its keep (you'll see why in a moment.)
Behaviour certainly communicates, but it doesn't communicate where a situation began. Behaviour is the source of nothing. Behaviour is hypothesis... it is the evidence-in-action of what is really happening.
In an adaptive system, behaviour is the first visible node in a much larger loop. By the time we can see a behaviour, perception, interpretation, prediction, conditioning, learning, emotions, motivation, and decision have already been at work.
When we behave as if behaviour is the source of the problem, we have no curiosity into the inner map of the world that created it. Then, we have no respect at all for how sensible or inevitable that behaviour is.
Our compassion falls apart. Frustration grows. Inappropriate adult-minded motives are attributed, even to very small children. A parent snapping follows... naturally.
That entire reaction – the parent's adaptive process– becomes unnecessary, when we learn to see the whole process more accurately, and lead with curiosity instead of certainty:
What is this behaviour communicating?
...and then...
What kind of inner map of the world must a person have to make this behaviour sensible, even inevitable?
How could we find that out?
Well, not with threats or punishment... or bribes. Or criticism.
Do you see how that is immediately obvious?
Without any question of 'letting someone off the hook' or 'getting away with' anything, it's immediately obvious that until we understand how someone's understanding of the world makes that behaviour a logical and sensible solution to a problem, we can't sensibly intervene.
