Using and Understanding Key Therapeutic Language

"You can't teach children to behave better by making them feel worse. When children feel better, they behave better." - Pam Leo.

This page intends to provide a set of terminology relating to providing trauma-informed practice and supporting positive interactions. It includes words that can be used (with definitions) as well as those to avoid (with potential substitutions).

“Beneath every behaviour, there is a feeling. And beneath every feeling, there is a need. And when we meet that need rather than focus on the behaviour, we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom”. - Ashleigh Warner

Key definitions

Being therapeutic: An approach to behaviour that prioritises the pro-social feelings of everyone within the dynamic. A provisions policy establishes the methodology by which prosocial behaviour replaces anti-social behaviour, through planned and sustained pro-social experiences.

Behaviour: Everything a person says or does. The spectrum of behaviour goes from extreme pro-social to extreme anti-social behaviour. A behaviour policy should increase pro-social behaviour and reduce anti-social behaviours through planned responses.

Valued behaviour: Relating to behaviour which is positive, helpful, and values social acceptance.

Unsafe behaviour: Behaviour that causes harm to an individual, a group, the community or the environment. Behaviour that is not positive and will predictably result in injury or harm.

Punishment: The imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant experience upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority. Punishment is designed to suppress and control behaviour within a specific context.

Consequence: A logical, explainable response to a pro-social or anti-social behaviour; a logical outcome of something occurring earlier; a conclusion reached via reasoning. Consequences are designed to help children learn and develop pro-social behaviour transferable to all contexts.

Self-regulation: involves children’s developing ability to regulate their emotions, thoughts and behaviour to enable them to act in positive ways.

Co-regulation: where adults and children work together toward a common purpose, including finding ways to resolve upsets from stress in any domain and return to balance.

Dysregulation: is an inability to control or regulate one's emotional responses

Dynamic: Any group of people brought together through choice, circumstance, or obligation.

Equality: Affording people the same equal status, rights, and opportunities.

Equity: The differentiated measures to provide equal opportunities.

Externalising: When a person’s natural response to anti-social feelings is to act on the world around them, which can lead to physical and verbal responses that affect the wellbeing of others. Examples include fighting, bullying, and property damage.

Internalising: When a person’s natural response to anti-social feelings is to withdraw from the world around them. This can impact the wellbeing and opportunity of the individual concerned and result in refusal to communicate, self-isolation, school refusal, and self-harm.