BEYOND BEHAVIOR: What If We Reimagined Student Struggles as Signals of Need?

“What’s wrong with them?”

It’s a question we’ve heard too often in schools. When a student zones out, melts down, talks back, or refuses to engage, our default scripts tend to kick in—redirection, demerits, behavior plans. But what if we paused before reacting? What if, instead, we asked:

“What’s happening beneath the surface?” “What is this student’s nervous system trying to communicate?”

In neuroinclusive classrooms, behavior is not a problem to control—but a signal to interpret. Especially for neurodivergent students, whose systems may be more sensitive to sensory input, transitions, social stress, or emotional overload, energy and emotional regulation are essential for learning to even be possible.

Beyond Behavior is a new lens—one that sees regulation, not compliance, as the foundation of engagement. When we understand how energy is spent, restored, or depleted throughout the school day, we begin to build the kind of environments where all learners can truly thrive.

Here’s how the eight principles of Beyond Behavior help bring that vision into practice:

Principle 1: Behavior Is Energy in Disguise

“Let’s ask what’s needed, not what’s wrong.”

What looks like defiance may be depletion. What looks like avoidance may be a nervous system protecting itself from overload.

Too often, we interpret behavior as a moral issue, when it’s actually a capacity issue. Energy levels are impacted by sleep, hunger, transitions, noise, and more. When a student can’t access a task or melts down, the question isn’t, “Why aren’t they trying harder?”—it’s “Where is their energy going?”

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Normalize energy check-ins in morning meetings. Use visuals like thermometers, color zones, or emojis to help students name their capacity—before they hit a wall.

Principle 2: Regulation Needs Flexibility, Not Fixing

“Calm isn't the goal—readiness is.”

“Calm down” isn’t a regulation strategy—it’s often a demand for emotional compliance. But regulation isn’t about being quiet or still. It’s about supporting students to shift into states of readiness, in their own way.

For some students, readiness might mean rocking, chewing, humming, or pacing. For others, it might mean pausing, lying down, or covering their ears. The goal is to create flexible environments where all students can recalibrate—not just those who can sit still and “keep it together.”

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Offer regulation tools like noise-reducing headphones, fidget options, or movement breaks as proactive supports, not as rewards or consequences.

Principle 3:Executive Skills Need Fuel to Function

“Struggling to start isn’t laziness—it’s low energy.”

Initiating a task, managing time, shifting between subjects—these aren’t just skills. They’re energetic investments. And when a student’s system is drained, executive functioning breaks down. This isn’t a discipline failure; it’s a nervous system needing support.

Many neurodivergent students have a fluctuating capacity for executive tasks depending on sensory input, emotional safety, and stress levels. Recognizing that can shift us from frustration to compassion.

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Use visual routines, clear “first steps,” and scaffolded tasks. Reduce decision fatigue by offering consistent cues for starting and transitioning.

Principle 4: Stress Has Layers (and They’re Not Always Visible)

“Every student carries invisible weights.”

Students don’t enter our classrooms with blank slates. They carry full nervous systems influenced by home life, sensory inputs, unspoken expectations, past trauma, and emotional overwhelm.

According to Dr. Stuart Shanker, stress lives in five domains: biological, emotional, cognitive, social, and prosocial. Energy regulation is drained across all of these—not just through obvious behavior.

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Invite students to reflect on what fills and drains their energy during the day. Use this information to plan schedules, seating, and groupings that support—not sap—their nervous systems.

Principle 5: Masking Drains Energy and Belonging

“Kids can’t learn when they’re hiding.”

Many neurodivergent students spend their school days performing normalcy—masking stims, pretending to follow, copying peer behavior, or withholding questions. This constant effort to blend in is not sustainable. It comes at a deep cost to energy and identity.

The more a child masks, the less energy they have to learn.

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Celebrate authentic self-expression. Create unmasking rituals—like “show up as you are” days—and normalize sensory-friendly tools and alternate forms of participation.

Principle 6: Co-Regulation Builds Safety

“Settled bodies, settle bodies.”

Regulation isn’t an individual pursuit—it’s relational. Students learn to regulate in the presence of attuned adults who offer safety, rhythm, and groundedness.

Your calm doesn’t just soothe a student—it teaches their nervous system how to return to baseline.

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Use co-regulation tools like breathing together, pausing before transitions, and check-in rituals that center connection before correction. Build relational rituals into your daily flow.

Principle 7: Plan Around Energy, Not Just the Bell Schedule

“Let’s match learning to capacity, not just time.”

The clock tells us when class starts. But it doesn’t tell us if a student is regulated enough to learn. Planning around energy means designing school days that respect capacity: alternating tasks, building in recovery time, and rethinking the pace of instruction.

This isn’t about “soft” teaching—it’s about strategic nervous system alignment.

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Use energy mapping with your class. Help students identify high- and low-energy windows, and schedule cognitively demanding work accordingly. Plan for restoration before collapse.

Principle 8: Support Builds Capacity—Not Control

“Let’s create systems that care, not correct.”

Behavior charts and consequences might manage surface-level compliance, but they rarely build internal capacity. When we shift our focus to supporting regulation, we unlock long-term learning, deeper resilience, and genuine inclusion.

Supporting regulation means co-creating environments where students feel safe to try, safe to pause, and safe to ask for what they need.

🛠 Neuroinclusive practice: Design support plans that focus on co-created strategies for regulation and recovery—not punishment for dysregulation. Replace “What’s wrong with you?” with “What do you need right now?”

Final Thought: Regulation is the Gateway to Belonging

When we design schools that center both emotional and energy regulation, we shift the culture from performance to presence. From “hold it together” to “we’ll hold it with you.”

Neuroinclusive classrooms aren’t built on compliance—they’re built on connection, compassion, and co-regulation.

Because before a student can learn, they must feel safe. Before they can focus, they must feel resourced. Before they can thrive, their energy must be honored—not ignored.

Let’s go beyond behavior. Let’s build schools where the nervous system is not a barrier—but a bridge to deeper, more human learning.

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