A basic dialogue to

GET TO THE BOTTOM OF DIFFICULT BEHAVIOUR

ALANA PACE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The day everything had to change 4

Quieting the noise of life 9

General rules for having difficult conversations with the school 11

Reducing screen time 16

The toy store idea for Minimizing toys 17

The dialogue to get to the root of challenging behaviour 19

What it an Imago Dialogue and why does it work so well? 21

The magic wand technique 24

The dialogue format 26

Conclusion 27

Additional printable cheatsheets 29

The day everything had to change

1

It was the Fall before COVID hit and we were supposed to

be celebrating my parents’ wedding anniversary.

Through the glass walls of the vineyard restaurant, I could

see my parents drinking merlot and everyone except my son

and I were enjoying fresh pasta and fire-roasted pizza.

The wind whipped around us and the sky was overcast.

I barely felt chilled as my heart was racing. I focused in on

my son. All that mattered at that moment was my child’s

behaviour. As I sat in the hard plastic chair, I racked my brain

to think of what was going on. If I was honest with myself,

this angry behaviour had been getting worse for months.

My once earnest, affectionate son was now easily provoked,

meltdown often and back-talked readily. He was becoming

angry, despondent and difficult.

In fact, what lead up to our current standoff was behaviour I

had never seen before. He was rude to my parents and,

when I said that he and I go outside to talk, he ran through

the high-end Italian restaurant away from me.

But it only got worse.

Though my child running through a restaurant is something I

thought I would never see. And, even though this was most

certainly disruptive to the other patrons – something I would

never want. What concerned me at that very moment was

my son. What was going on inside of him that he

was this angry and this disconnected?

When I brought him outside, it was clear just how bad he

felt.

“Love, what is going on with you?”

He screeched and pulled away from me. I let him sit as far

away from me as he wanted. But I persisted.

“I’m worried. What’s making you upset?”

A defiant look consumed his face.

“I’m a bad boy and I want you to go away.”

Each word cut through my heart. He had never said

anything like this before - nor has he since.

It was our lowest mother-son moment to date.

And while the recent memory of this event still stings, the

next morning and every day since has been vastly different.

In fact, as I write this, I realize we haven’t had one word of

backtalk and no major behaviour problems since that night.

Right now, my son is arguably the best version of himself

he’s ever been.

So this begs the question, what changed?

When my son said those ten fateful words to me, it

catapulted me into action. At the time, I was reading a

book, Simplicity Parenting, that created a brilliant analogy

for any period like this in a child’s life.

Author and family therapist, Kim John Payne suggests that

when a child’s behaviour becomes unrecognizable and/or

unmanageable, the parent should see this as a soul fever.

He explains that, when a child has a physical fever, our knee

jerk reaction is to cancel extra activities, call in sick to

school, and nurse our child back to health. Everyone’s

schedules get simpler. The home gets quieter and our

interactions soften until such time as the child is back to

normal. In the case of a soul fever, the protocol should be

similar. We should simplify ours and our child’s schedules

and nurse our child’s mental wellbeing back to health. What

that looks like is dependent on the noise in the child’s life.

And I will get into what I did next.

But my first move was to frame my son’s behaviour as a soul

fever – or a byproduct of his mental health at the time – and

not take it personally. Instead, I needed to develop a soul

protocol to get him back to himself again.

Equipped with this analogy, I decided to both simplify mine

and my son’s life while using strategies from the research

articles I’ve read and family therapy practices I’ve learned.

Though these strategies are applied to mine and my son’s

relationship, they are based on the most current studies in

relationship and developmental psychology and therefore

have broad applications for different children with different

behavioural problems.

Quieting the noise of life

2

When we got back from my parents’ wedding anniversary, I

fired off an email to my son’s teacher to arrange a meeting.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, it was time. (I had asked a

fellow mom to watch my three kids on the playground.) As I

made my into his dimly lit classroom and sat down on a

child-sized plastic school chair, I felt surprisingly small.

My eyes darted around the room looking at cartoon-like

self-portraits and educational charts. I was nervous. First of

all, I was planning on sharing some of the struggles I had

observed in my young son for the first time. Secondly, I was

about to tell a school professional we would be reducing my

son’s workload to get him back on track.

Though I loved my son’s teacher, I wasn’t sure how she

would respond to me altering her educational plan.

I swallowed hard and prepared myself.

Having studied health psychology, I knew that each younger

generation is more stressed than the last (1). Not only that

but, each subsequent year, millennials and Gen Xers report

even greater stress than the year before (2). Stress of this

nature undermines psychological and physiological health in

anyone (3), not just adults. Payne, who worked as a

counsellor for children in refugee camps, consistently found

western children to be more disorderly than those in high-

conflict areas (4).

The reason? Compounding stress.

Specifically, the more children are over-scheduled and

overstimulated, the more their stress mounts. As their stress

accumulates, children seem to be more likely to show

symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,

generalized anxiety disorder, oppositional defiance disorder

and depressive disorders.

Payne’s answer? We must quiet the noise in children’s lives.

Truth be told, my son’s homework was an immense source

of stress for him. As hard as it was for me, to get him back

on track, one of the first courses of actions I needed to take

was to minimize his workload.

Sitting down with his teacher, though my heart rate was

high, I was equipped for conversations like this. Having

worked with and grown up with educators, I had general

educator-approved guidelines to approach situations like

these. (My mother teaches in the education department at

Simon Fraser University after teaching and being an

administrator for 37 years, my aunt and uncle have also

taught at University of British Columbia and worked as

educators for decades.)

GENERAL RULES FOR HAVING DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS WITH THE SCHOOL

- Arrange to meet the teacher face-to-face. Email is best

for little details.

- Meet with the teacher before meeting with the principal even if the issue is with the teacher. This shows

good faith and reinforces or, at least, allows the

opportunity to build a relationship of trust and respect. It

also gives the teacher a chance to explain herself and offer

context for what is happening in her classroom. (If I didn't

get desired results or had remaining concerns, then

contact the school administration.)

- Lead with gratitude. No matter what the situation is, this

is good practice. It softens everyone and sets up the

dialogue in a constructive way.

- Ask questions. In my case, I described what I was

witnessing at home with my son and asked his teacher

what she noticed in him. Specifically, was he struggling

with his academics or self-regulation in class? What did

she think his strengths were? It’s always important to take

away some strengths to share with your child after a

discussion like this. Additionally, working with a child’s

strengths can often help bridge the gap with her

difficulties. For instance, in the case of my son, had his

teacher said he is strong in math but struggling with

reading which is prompting meltdowns, I may use

mathematical word problems to help scaffold his reading.

- Have a sense of your goals for your child and communicate them in a constructive way. When I press

pause on getting all the assigned homework done and

really think about it, I know my number one academic goal

for my children is a life long love of learning. So, cutting

down on the busywork in order to promote my son’s

emotional regulation and competence was key. When I

met with my son’s teacher, I thanked her for her diligence

and all the work she put into his homework and home

reading. I shared that because I wanted to get his

emotions regulated and to improve his reading, we would

be minimizing his workload to increase focus and feelings

of competence. We would continue to read and work on

reading but would be temporarily letting go of the extras.

Fortunately, she agreed that loving to read and exposure

to written word was more important than doing all the

sight words, home reading, and spelling tests.

- If the desired outcome of the teacher meeting isn’t achieved, set up an appointment with the administration.

Once I had tackled school work, I took my wall calendar

down and looked at removing non-essential activities and

plans from our schedule. At that point in our year, we didn’t

have too much on the go. However, for some families this

may mean cancelling most extracurricular activities,

postponing lessons, asking for refunds or simply attending

activities in a touch-and-go way.

I will admit, doing this goes against what’s ingrained in me. I

am of the belief that if a child starts something, she should

finish it. Like when my daughter wanted to drop soccer, I

told her she had to finish the season but could opt out the

following year.

What I soon realized, however, was that the analogy of a

soul or mental fever held up here. Meaning, if my son was

physically feverish, his wellbeing would trump his

commitment to a team. And so, even though it was hard for

me, I put my faith in the benefits of a minimized schedule.

It turns out research shows that a more liberal schedule is

better for children. In two metanalyses, researchers looked

at the incidence of mental illness by generation looking at

over 63,000 high school and college students (5). They

found that even though they looked at data from World War

II and the Cold War, the more recent generations had the

highest incidence of mental illness. This study also reported

that the more a generation was focused on individual

success, the less happy that generation was. Contrastingly,

people who focused more on internal measures of

satisfaction and worth were the happiest.

Researcher Dr. Peter Gray references a study that compared

children’s lives in 1981 and 1997. This study found that

children spent more time in school, doing homework, in

adult-directed activities, shopping with parents, and

watching screens and less time in free-play (6). Gray says

that “[b]y depriving children of opportunities to play on their

own, away from direct adult supervision and control, we are

depriving them of opportunities to learn how to take control

of their own lives. We may think we are protecting them, but

in fact, we are diminishing their joy, diminishing their sense

of self-control, preventing them from discovering and

exploring the endeavours they would most love, and

increasing the odds that they will suffer from anxiety,

depression, and other disorders.”

Instead, Gray suggests children have ample amount of time

for free-play - that is time where adults do not intervene or

intervene minimally. In play, children can still work on soccer

or baseball skills but also develop greater executive

functioning, negotiation, and self-regulation skills because

they are orchestrating games for a different children of

varying ages and abilities at the playground or in the

neighbourhood.

Suffice it to say, a minimal schedule was necessary.

Finally, with respect to quieting the noise of my son’s life, I

looked at our lives from his perspective. As I took a step

back to look for sources of overstimulation, I noticed the toy

clutter more than ever. On top of it, he spent a considerable

amount of time in front of the TV each morning before

school and after.

We agreed he would spend less time playing video games

so he had more room to play.

We also agreed the TV would no longer be left on for

indefinite periods of time - meaning one show and it was

off.

REDUCING SCREEN TIME

The two most effective ways I’ve found to reduce screen

time are:

1. Increasing green time. I do this by packing snacks for

after school and heading to a park almost every day. I

head outside when I notice they’re asking for screen time

and either bring my work with me and sit in the backyard

or pull weeds in the front. On the weekend, we head to

local trails.

2. Modelling the behaviour I want to see. Modelling is a

more powerful teacher than moralizing (7). Though my

work and schooling require that I am online more than I

would like, when I’m not working, I do my best to ditch

my phone and close my computer. I’ve even gone as far

as to delete apps that I tend to get lost in and remove

push notifications on my phone.

As we transitioned away from too much screen-time, I

wanted to be more available for my son to play. In the

mornings instead of YouTube, we read together. This helped

minimize overstimulation before transitioning to school.

After school when we couldn’t spend time outside, I had

board games and puzzles available.

The truth is though, I wanted him to be able to play and be

inventive without my help. And, with our basement and his

bedroom overrun by stuff, that was less likely to happen. I

needed to get rid of clutter!

THE TOY STORE IDEA FOR MINIMIZING TOYS

Through his family practice, Payne found that too many toys

are a source of childhood stress. He suggests that children

have no more than 20 toys available to play with at any

given time. Lego would count as one, LOL dolls another,

and so forth up to 20. He suggests that when we minimize

toys, children are less stressed, less overwhelmed, bored

less often and are more creative.

But it’s not just Payne. In 1981, Bavarian researchers

conducted a ground-breaking study wherein they removed

all the toys from kindergarten class (8). Teachers noticed

children observed more, explored more, and showed more

uninterrupted focus. Moreover, their creativity flourished.

While I wasn’t about to get rid of every play thing we

owned, my kids and I took almost all our toys and sorted

them into four categories:

1. Toys to throw out - anything broken and not fixed in

ages, anything missing pieces, anything without any

value.

2. Toys to donate - anything my kids didn’t care about

anymore.

3. Absolute favourites - we put these back into their rooms

or away in an easy-to-access manner.

4. Undecideds - we took these and organized them on our

garage shelf and called it a toy store. We agreed that the

only way to “buy” a toy from the toy store was to trade

in one of their favourites. That way the clutter doesn’t

come back!

Once the toys were organized, I made sure as we bridged

the gap between overstimulation and calmness, I was

available to play board games, make play dough and run

around outside. All of this space in his schedule, in our

home, and after school allowed for more joy in my boy but

there was one piece that was missing still.

The dialogue to get to the root of challenging behaviour

3

When we left the vineyard that fateful night, my son and I

did so with our food in doggy bags.

When we got back to the hotel room, I was surprised my

boy asked if he could crawl into bed with me. I agreed and

in mere seconds, he was warming his ice-cold feet on my

legs and nestled his head into my chest.

“I love you,” I said to him.

“I love you too.” He responded.

I knew this was my moment. He was calm and seeking me

out again.

“Tonight was hard wasn’t it?”

I could feel his head nod in my arms.

“I want to talk to you about it. You’re not in trouble. But I

want to understand what happened so we can make it

better for next time okay?”

I proceeded cautiously. Though I remained tense from

earlier that evening, my focuses were on making my child

feel safe and understood.

But I wouldn’t turn this into a lecture because, even though I

can default to this, I know it only makes matters worse.

You see, lecturing works the exact opposite way I intend it

to. When I scold my children, their brains are likely already

in a reactive state. At my parents’ anniversary dinner,

something triggered my son activating his stress response

(fight, flight or freeze) - hence him fleeing the restaurant. My

son already likely feels awful because he sees himself as a

“bad boy” and feels threatened because he could sense my

frustration. If I then were to lecture him I would reinforce his

reactivity making him feel defensive or avoidant.

Neurologically, he isn’t in a state where he can listen to what

I am saying. Epinephrine (adrenalin),

norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and cortisol (the stress

hormone) are present in his brain impacting his ability

to listen (. Even though his brain was likely not in a state of

hyperarousal when I brought up what happened earlier, if I

defaulted to lecturing, he would likely quickly revert to that

state (9).

Instead, I chose to use a type of dialogue used in family

therapy called an Imago Dialogue. However, I have adapted

it for children.

WHAT IT AN IMAGO DIALOGUE AND WHY DOES IT WORK SO WELL?

Originally developed for couples’ counselling, an imago

dialogue is predicated on the idea that one person talks and

the other listens until the dialogue is done and then it’s the

other person’s turn to speak and listen. The reason this

dialogue is so powerful is that it feels the speaker feel heard

and understood.

The dialogue is predicated by a request if it’s a good time

to talk. If the listener agrees, then it proceeds.

The speaker then shares his feelings. The listener has three

important steps to follow:

1. Mirroring. When the speaker stops sharing his feelings,

the listener repeats back what she has heard. It usually

starts with, “What I heard you say is…” Once the listener

has repeated back what she has heard, she asks if she

missed anything or if the speaker has anything else to

say. If the speaker has more to say, the listener will

continue mirroring back what she heard again and asking

again if she has missed anything. This step is repeated

until the speaker feels as if he’s said everything he needs

to say. Note: the listener does not refute what is said or

make any inferences. The entire goal is for the speaker to

feel release from pent up frustrations and to feel heard.

2. Validation. Once the speaker has expressed his feeling,

the listener moves to validation. She can do this by

saying something like, “It makes sense to me that…

because…” The listener can also ask for clarity by saying

something along the lines of, “Can you help me

understand…?” This helps the listener feel

acknowledged and understood.

3. Empathy. Here, the listener says, “It must feel…

when…” Or, “I imagine you must feel..” This piece

allows the listener to really feel not only heard and

validated but understood and at peace at the end of this

process.

Download a traditional Imago dialogue template here.

With the template of the Imago Dialogue in my head, I

approached my son asking yes or no questions.

“Today was hard, wasn’t it?”

He nodded his head.

To help get things right, I described what I saw as I saw it.

“When we walked into the restaurant, you were pretty

happy weren’t you?”

Nodded again.

“When we got to the table and we got to the table, did you

feel a bit disappointed with the menu?”

He nodded again.

“Did it make you upset that they didn’t have food you were

expecting?”

His body tightened and he grunted. I had it wrong.

Bit by bit, I pieced together what happened and when. We

were getting somewhere. But the truth is, this was only

shedding light on what happened in that moment. And it

lacked depth. That’s when I decided to use another

favourite counselling technique of mine.

You can download your Imago cheatsheet here.

THE MAGIC WAND TECHNIQUE

One of the most powerful ways to understand anyone’s

deepest struggles and how to problem-solve with a child is

the magic wand technique. For more verbal children, a

parent asks, “If you had a magic wand, what problems

would you solve?”

For my son, I built up the concept of the magic wand -

talking about how it could do absolutely anything he

wanted it to it could tie his shoes or make sure he never had

homework again. I would ask him things he would want the

magic wand to do and he could say yes or no.

I started with some silly ones like asking if he’d want endless

pepperoni pizza. But I also peppered in some more serious

ones like if he’d like it if his sister was nicer when they

fought.

Soon, the words came pouring in. When we sat down at

dinner that night, my daughter, who is fifteen-months older,

read her menu with ease and was quickly able to order. His

difficulty reading was weighing on him. Then, pretty well

everyone who was at the table was rushing him to make a

decision rather than let him work through the menu at his

own speed and then take the time to decide. More of his

feelings came forth during this time - feelings about fears,

where he’s self-conscious and how he feels rushed often. He

also expressed wanting to spend more time with me.

Equipped with this knowledge, we came up with a game

plan for the future. We would work through the menu

together and may even look it up ahead of time online so

he could have the space and time not only to read it but

make a decision. We also made plans for more one-on-one

time.

To replicate this same process, you can follow this general

formula.

THE DIALOGUE FORMAT

Children, of course, aren’t as straight forward. For one, they

may worry the discussion will lead to them getting in

trouble. Secondly, they may lack the emotional vocabulary

or simply language skills in general to express how they’re

feeling and what’s happening inside of them. For everyone,

it will take practice using this dialogue for it to feel organic.

For children that have speech and language difficulties or

are younger, it may be better to ask yes and no questions.

For instance, “Were you mad at your sister today?” “Is your

homework bothering you a lot?”

See the dialogue template on the following page.

Download the dialogue cheatsheet here.

Conclusion

4 Since the day at the vineyard, my son’s behaviour has vastly improved. We do find we get out of sync and our relationship can regress, but we get back to the principles of minimalism, connection and understanding.

I hope you enjoyed this short book. It is, of course, not to act as a substitute for professional help. Please consult your family physician or paediatrician if you are concerned about your child’s mental health.

If you would like to read more of my work, please head to ParentingfromtheHeartBlog.com and join Parenting from the Heart: Positive Parents Connect on Facebook.

Additional printable cheatsheets

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Positive Discipline cheatsheet package