It is tempting, in the heat of it, to treat behaviour as the thing to fix. Stop the hitting, stop the screaming, stop the running off. But behaviour is almost never the actual problem. It is the smoke. The fire is somewhere you cannot immediately see.
The short answer
‘Behaviour is communication’ means that what a child does — especially in distress — is an attempt to express or cope with an internal state: overwhelm, anxiety, an unmanageable demand, a sensory experience, an unmet need. The behaviour is the visible tip of an iceberg. Respond only to the tip and it returns; respond to what is underneath and it changes.
The iceberg, in practice
A child sweeps a plate off the table. The behaviour is the plate. Beneath it might be a noisy room, a sudden change of plan, hunger, the third instruction in a row, or a day of masking that has just run out. The skill is learning to ask, in the moment, ‘what is this asking of my child that is hard right now?’
How to read it
- After a hard moment, write down the 20–30 minutes before it.
- Tag the likely pressures: sensory, transition, demand, hunger, fatigue, social.
- Name the need out loud, gently: ‘That was too much, wasn’t it.’
- Meet the need first. Address the behaviour later, calmly, once the storm passes.
What sits under the waterline
Almost every behaviour you are trying to stop is being driven by one of a small number of underlying pressures. Knowing the list shortens the guessing considerably.
- Sensory load — noise, light, clothing, smell, crowding, or too much of any of them for too long.
- Transitions — stopping one thing and starting another, especially without warning.
- Demand — an instruction that costs more than the child currently has available.
- Body state — hunger, thirst, tiredness, illness, needing the toilet, needing to move.
- Social effort — a day of masking, reading people, or holding a self together in public.
- Fear — of failing, of being told off, of being separated, of something not yet nameable.
Common behaviours, decoded
- Refusing something they can usually do — capacity has dropped, not willingness.
- Melting down at home after a calm school day — delayed release from a day of holding it together.
- Silliness escalating at bedtime — often an overtired nervous system, not defiance.
- Hitting a sibling over something tiny — the tiny thing was the last item on an already full stack.
- Going quiet and disappearing — shutdown, which is distress too, just the version nobody complains about.
Boundaries still belong
Reading the need does not mean abandoning limits. You can stop the harm and stay connected at the same time: ‘I won’t let you hit. You can squeeze this, or tell me you’re angry.’ A boundary does not require humiliation to be real.
What the research says
This lens is grounded in clinical approaches like Dr Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, built on the principle that ‘kids do well if they can.’ When a child consistently can’t, the useful question is what skill or support is missing — not how to apply more pressure to a child who is already at capacity.
The behaviour is the question. The need is the answer.
Frequently asked
- What does ‘behaviour is communication’ mean?
- It means a child’s behaviour is an expression of an underlying state or need — overwhelm, fear, hunger, an unmanageable demand — rather than a problem to be eliminated. The behaviour is the message; the need is the meaning.
- Doesn’t this excuse bad behaviour?
- No. Understanding a behaviour is not the same as permitting harm. You can hold a clear boundary and still respond to the need underneath, rather than only punishing the surface.
- How do I find the unmet need?
- Look at the 20–30 minutes before the behaviour. Note sensory input, transitions, demands, hunger, and tiredness. Patterns emerge quickly once you start tracking.
- What is the behaviour iceberg?
- The behaviour iceberg is a simple picture: the behaviour you can see — hitting, shouting, refusing, running — is the small part above the waterline. Below it sit the things driving it: sensory load, anxiety, hunger, tiredness, an unmanageable demand, a skill that has not developed yet, or a day of holding it together at school. You cannot change the tip without changing what is under it.
- What sits under the waterline?
- Most often one of six things: sensory input that has become too much, a transition the child was not prepared for, a demand that exceeds current capacity, a physical state such as hunger or exhaustion, a social situation that required masking, or a fear the child cannot yet name. Tracking which of the six shows up most is usually more useful than any single technique.
- Does behaviour is communication apply to teenagers too?
- Yes, though the surface looks different — withdrawal, sarcasm, door-slamming, phone use, missed deadlines. The principle is unchanged: the behaviour is a state being expressed by someone without a better way to say it. Teenagers usually need the conversation later and sideways, not in the moment and face-on.
- What if the behaviour happens for no reason at all?
- There is almost always a reason; it is just not visible from the outside or not in the same hour. Delayed release is common — a child holds everything together through the school day and falls apart in the car. When nothing in the moment explains it, look at the whole day rather than the last five minutes.
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