Mona Delahooke visited Bridges Graduate School for Cognitive Diversity in Education during the school’s recent two-week summer residency program. With over 30 years of experience working in pediatric psychology, Delahooke helped shift the paradigm from focusing on children’s behaviors to focusing on what is underneath the “tip of the iceberg” for each child. Delahooke researches the brain-body connection; how the body impacts sensation, feeling, emotion, and behavior; and the importance of regulating the autonomic nervous system in order to affect behavior.
“To this day, my biggest criticism of mental health and education training programs is that they do not teach about the body/brain feedback loop and how this affects children’s behaviors from the body up,” writes Delahooke in her landmark book,
Beyond Behaviors: Using brain science and compassion to understand and solve children’s behavioral challenges (2019).
Her book fills a gap in the literature for supporting vulnerable children, including those who are neurodiverse or exposed to toxic stress or trauma, by forging a path to link the fields of clinical psychology, neuroscience, child development, and education.
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In approaching 2e children, Delahooke creates a new paradigm using curiosity, empathy, and understanding to address the root causes and neurological underpinnings of their behaviors.[/perfectpullquote]
In approaching 2e children, Delahooke creates a new paradigm using curiosity, empathy, and understanding to address the root causes and neurological underpinnings of their behaviors. In her talk at Bridges, she stressed the importance of attuning to children’s nervous systems; focusing on their social and emotional development; paying close attention to their individual differences; and valuing authentic relationships with calm, present adults as the keys to effective interventions.
Delahooke’s work follows closely that of Stephen Porges, who invented the Polyvagal Theory to explain human behavior as “adaptive responses to an individual’s ever-changing nervous system.” This concept of behavior, along with a child development “roadmap” designed by Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder, in which children use relationships to progress through tiered stages of development, and a focus on individualized sensory processing of each child are the cornerstones of Delahooke’s description of the brain/body connections underlying challenging behaviors.
Delahooke does a beautiful job translating the Polyvagal Theory for non-scientists by associating nervous system states with colors. Teachers and parents do not have to remember the terms for the three autonomic nervous system states—
ventral vagal,
parasympathetic, or
dorsal vagal. They can merely ask themselves, “is this child in the green, yellow, or blue pathway right now?” Delahooke emphasized the need for caregivers, teachers, and practitioners to recognize children’s individualized signals of stress so that they might work to help the children regulate to the “green pathway,” which indicates readiness for learning and social engagement.
Likewise, adults need to strive to be in their own green pathways so that they can approach children with feelings of warmth and safety and to co-regulate. It is important to recognize when to use “bottom-up,” or body-based strategies, for regulation if children are not ready to work on “top-down,” or cognitive-based strategies, due to nervous system dysregulation.
This concept of “bottom-up” strategies is missing from most therapy programs that target vulnerable children, including the school-based trauma-informed therapy programs. Cognitive-Based Therapy (CBT) is considered the “gold standard” of care for children suffering from trauma, anxiety, and depression and is the focus of most treatment programs. However, the assumption that most children are developmentally ready and neurologically stable enough to access cognitive reasoning in order to process their trauma is not realistic or scientifically accurate, according to Delahooke. Nor is it realistic to assume that kids purposely and consciously act in ways to achieve certain goals, even those inspired by malintent.
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Twice-exceptional students carry the burden of overexcitable and vulnerable nervous systems, which can be easily triggered in traditional school environments and even in their own homes.[/perfectpullquote]
Delahooke’s neurobiological work offers a more effective treatment approach. She cites Ross Greene, author of
The Explosive Child, who said, “Kids do well when they can.” Challenging behavior, Delahooke emphasizes, indicates that kids are having a hard time meeting the expectations of their environment. Too often, adults view children’s behaviors as maladaptive or disordered, when really these behaviors may indicate that a child is under a great deal of stress or is using a certain behavior to soothe their overtaxed sensory system. Delahooke’s case studies of patients she has treated, along with her personal stories about her own children, illustrate her arguments for understanding the layered complexities of children’s behaviors.
Delahooke stresses the need to look at the child’s history and triggers. A child’s violent behavior could be explained by hard wiring of the nervous system for self-defense due to past trauma. Another child could be distracting their class with a noisy behavior that serves to calm the child’s overloaded sensory system. Delahooke advises caregivers, educators, and therapists to use nonjudgmental curiosity when exploring why a child is using a behavior before trying to modify it. Julie Skolnik describes this as acting like a “benevolent detective.”
The book includes hands-on worksheet templates that parents and practitioners could use to create sensory maps, nervous system analyses, and individualized strategic plans for each child. She calls for adults to mold the environment to suit the child rather than expecting the child to change to conform to the environment, particularly in the case of children who are neurodiverse or have experienced trauma. If adults do decide to try to modify a child’s behavior, Delahooke recommends spending time cultivating a close, trusting relationship with the child.
Delahooke’s strategies are in line with key articles from the twice-exceptional literature, such as that of Susan Baum, Robin Schader, and Thomas Hébert, who identified five factors as critical to students’ overall development:
- a psychologically safe environment,
- time for changes to take place without rushing or demanding,
- tolerance for asynchronous behaviors,
- positive relationships with faculty, staff, peers, family, and professionals, and
- a strengths-based, talent-focused environment
These factors line-up nicely with Delahooke’s primary points of the need for the child to feel safe; for others to realize that behaviors that might appear as maladaptive may serve a purpose for the student; to respect the need for positive relationships with trusted adults; and to focus on each child’s individuality.
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Delahooke’s work supports caregivers, teachers, and practitioners serving 2e students. [/perfectpullquote]
Twice-exceptional students carry the burden of overexcitable and vulnerable nervous systems, which can be easily triggered in traditional school environments and even in their own homes. Their behavior is often misinterpreted as intentionally bad when it is most likely an indication of their sensory overload, struggles with executive functioning, or asynchronous development. Delahooke’s work supports caregivers, teachers, and practitioners serving 2e students. I have personally used Delahooke’s work in my own home with my children and seen great success.
Beyond Behaviors paves the way for more research and program creation based on ways in which the brain/body connection can be used to help children feel safe and supported as they learn, grow, and develop and to develop ways adults in these children’s lives can work on their own feelings of safety and support in order to maintain the calm presence and understanding needed to help vulnerable children.
After the 90-minute Q&A session at the Bridges Graduate School, doctoral student Marnina Kammersell, summarized the impact Delahook’s work has had on all of us who work with 2e students. “I admire how Dr. Delahooke simplifies the complexities of relational neuroscience, making it accessible and understandable,” said Kammersell. “This perspective of seeing ‘beyond behaviors’ is crucial in empowering parents and educators to bring about positive changes in the lives of neurodivergent and twice-exceptional children.”
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Marna Walthall Wohlfeld is a doctoral student at Bridges Graduate School for Cognitive Diversity. She is an editor for The Journey, an electronic publication of the Gifted Homeschoolers’ Forum. A trained SENG facilitator and a mom of four, she is passionate about advocating for effective education and support for 2e children.
