Understanding challenging behaviour Chapter 3

The Rage Cycle: Phase 5 and 6

Welcome to the third blog in our series about challenging behaviour. In previous blogs we have looked at the rage cycle and talked about some useful approaches for supporting children and young people during stages 1-4 of a meltdown. Today we will look in more detail at the last two stages of the rage cycle: Depression and Repair

What does depression look like? Stage 5

To an extent this stage is quite self explanatory. In our first blog Deb wrote about it as a stage where the child or young person might feel disappointment, shame or other negative feelings. It’s also really important to know that you might be going through this stage as well. So while it’s important to monitor and to work out good ways of supporting them at this stage, it’s also incredibly important that you think about this for yourself as well. Self care when supporting someone who has challenging behaviours is vital and cannot be underplayed.

What can I do?

There will be a lot of overlap in behaviours from the recovery stage and this stage, with the need for many of the same strategies. All might seem calm at this point and it’s tempting to begin talking about everything that happened, but everyone’s emotions are still likely to be delicate and there is a risk of re-igniting distress here. They might need close support from you, perhaps your reassuring company or a long cuddle, or they might need time on their own in a relaxing environment. Many of the children I have known have instinctively taken themselves into the smallest space that they can find, in a corner, under a table for instance, some take themselves to a quiet room, while others might feel the need to go for a run or have some energetic exercise. We all have a thing that helps. I have noticed over the years that when I’m working through anger after an argument or have some frustrations I always find myself cleaning something that needs a really good scrub…and I’ll be doing it much more quickly and vigorously than usual! Often there is a lot of pent up energy to be released and ‘heavy work’ can give an outlet to that. Again knowing the young person’s needs as well as your own is incredibly important, but you need to give everyone the time to do this.

That doesn’t mean that a little talking can’t happen at this point. It can be really powerful for the child or young person to hear you quietly voice how you think they are feeling, especially if they have trouble processing this for themselves; “I can see that you look sad. I feel a bit sad about this too.” But try to give each other space and time without lots of talking. Encourage them to go to their chill out space and to do the thing that helps them to unwind. Make sure that you do this too. Reassure them that once everyone is feeling calmer you can all be in the right headspace to begin repair work and find a way forward.

In summary, during the depression stage

• Continue to provide opportunities for the calming activities used in the recovery stage
• Keep the atmosphere as calm as possible
• Continue to give space and time to relax
• Be aware that the people involved might be experiencing feelings of sadness, depression or self loathing
• Openly acknowledge that people might be feeling low
• Reassure everyone that these feeling are natural
• Trust that there will be a time to talk about everything at a different point

What does repair look like? Stage 6

I want to say that this is probably the most important stage of all, but in reality the way every stage is managed is equally important. Mishandling any stage can cause significant problems. But this stage is where relationships can be mended, trust is reaffirmed and a commitment to change is established. Unfortunately this is the stage that can most often be overlooked. Especially because everyone is so busy moving on to the next thing in life; cooking the dinner, putting the washing on, or in the case of school getting resources together for the next lesson, or making sure that everyone has covered those science lesson objectives.

The idea of bringing everything up again to talk about can also be a bit frightening. Do I really want to start talking about it and risk it all kicking off all over again? But if you don’t consciously work through this stage then you are likely to have to live with the long term consequences for far longer.

What can I do? Deb recommends having a strategy for setting the scene for a chat; sit down with a cuppa and biscuits. Try to make things feel as relaxed as possible. Some people prefer to have this kind of chat whilst they are doing something else. One of my friends always had her ‘difficult’ conversations with her son while she was driving. She said that he was more likely to open up to her this way. She thought he found it less stressful as they didn’t need to make eye-contact. Some people love to cook or be creative and it can really help to be doing something like this while you are chatting. There are many ways to approach this and it’s good to work out a way that suits your family. It’s likely that there will be lots of things to unpick. It might be that it’ll work better to have a few different conversations rather than trying to do everything all in one go.

One thing that will be important to do is to work out what each stage of the rage cycle looks like for those involved and what strategies are helpful to use at each point. Find a way of recording this that works for yourself and the child or young person. Share the information with people that need to have it. It’s helpful to have this recorded in a way that means that the strategies can be shown during the rage cycle, so they can make use of the strategies as independently as possible. For some people that might be a written list, for others it might be a symbols that can be shown individually or as a group, or for other people it might need to be a box of items that they use to at a particular stage.

It may be that the child or young person finds it difficult to communicate or struggles to understand emotions. In fact a lot of challenging behaviour occurs because of problems to do with communication or because someone has trouble processing their emotions and those of other people. In this case it is important to put some long term work in place around improving communication and understanding emotions. There are lots of resources on line that can help with developing emotional awareness, particularly using pictures and videos. It is still possible to go through an effective repair stage even when someone doesn’t appear to have the skills to take part, but it does take some creativity to find a way that works.

If they are able, it’s important to chat about what happened and how the events made people feel. In order to do this the child or young person will need to understand some emotions so that they can apply to the situation. It will be important to talk about everyone’s feelings and perspectives in the situation. There are lots of good ways of doing this, for instance it can work really well to reenact the situation using figures or puppets.Then reenact the situation again, replacing the inappropriate behaviour with suitable alternatives, such as showing a coloured card to communicate that they are starting to feel anxious and need access to their calming activities. A fantastic strategy for teaching about how people were feeling during an event and what their intentions might be is called Comic Strip Conversations, developed by Carol Gray. It’s a strategy that was developed for working with people who have an Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC) and it’s a fantastic way to work through events like this with anyone, whether they have ASC or not. This can then be followed up with a Social Story ( a strategy also devised by Carol Gray), including suggestions about how to respond in specific challenging situations. When you are recapping the situation, be overt about all the ways that you tried to help. Don’t rest on your laurels here, presuming that it’s obvious to the child or young person; it’s very unlikely that they’ll spot this when they are in distress. But demonstrating how you did, can and will help builds trust for the future. Make sure your actions are clear.

In summary, during the repair stage;

• Find a situation or setting that helps everyone feel comfortable to talk things through
• Record, in writing or with symbols for instance, what behaviours can be seen at each stage of the rage cycle
• Record strategies that can be used during specific stages
• Share the information about this with those that need it
• Find a way to show the child or young person what was said,
• Find a method of showing how people were feeling and what everyone’s perspectives were
• Give alternative reactions/responses that would be more constructive that they could use next time
• Give and teach ways to communicate for those that find communication tricky
• If necessary, put in some long term work around communication
• Put in some long term work to develop emotional awareness
• Be clear about how you helped and can help in the future

As with all the stages of the rage cycle that we have covered, we have scratched the surface here. There are lots of strategies that can be used and everyone will have their own individual needs around this. If you feel that you would like some help with anything we have written in this series of blogs, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are here to help. All our contact details are at the side of this page.

We hope that this has been useful to you and we appreciate any feedback you want to give about it. Take care and check in next week for the next in our series on challenging behaviour.