09/04/2026
Almost every behavior in the world could be described in at least two different ways.
I mean, even all moral judgments aside here. And all interpretational differences aside. I’m not talking about the fact that one adult might interpret behavior one way, and a different adult might interpret it differently, or that something could seem “bad” in one scenario but “good” in another — those are both valid points but not the thing I’m trying to describe.
What I’m trying to describe is like this:
I might take a nap because I want to be less sleepy, I want to reduce a sleepy feeling. Or I might take a nap because I want more of the coziness of my bed, I want to increase the comfiness feeling (by staying there…and therefore falling asleep).
I might eat food because I want to reduce the amount of hunger I feel. Or I might eat food because I want more of the taste of the food in my mouth.
I also might eat food because I want to reduce the amount of boredom I feel. Or because somebody else is eating food and I want to increase how much I’m socializing with them, and eating food is an easy way to do that. I’m not saying these are the *only* 2 things.
But an easy way to do a mental exercise on imagining what other way a behavior might be interpreted is to ask, “what does this cause more of? What does it cause less of?” The answers might be slightly clunky in order to fit them into this framework (as demonstrated above) but it’s just a jumping-off place and it’s easy to remember in your mind. What becomes more? What becomes less?
When children are doing something that looks unusual, many people who work with children — people who haven’t been trained on “behavior” or “sensory processing” or anything like that, but just who care about children and work with them — might suspect that something is up and might try to interpret what the child is doing. This is a totally reasonable thing for them to do.
They will sometimes then report these things to me and it’s obvious from the way that they report it that their brain interpreted the behavior in one direction, when in fact it might have been interpretable in the opposite direction as well.
I don’t attribute any malice or meanness here at all whatsoever! It makes sense that they would instinctually think of what, to them, feels like the most logical reason for a child to be doing whatever it is they were doing. I’m not writing this post to scold or to attack, at all — just to try to give examples of how you can interpret behavior in the opposite direction too.
“She likes singing in class even though it’s disruptive to everyone else,” somebody tells me.
The behavior is “singing in class”. The assumption/interpretation is “because she likes singing.” What about “because she doesn’t want to hear something else that she is hearing”?
To put it another way…the teacher assumes she wants more of singing, and I’m asking, what if she wants to reduce the amount of other noises she’s capable of hearing?
What does the behavior cause more of? What does it cause less of?
Again — it could actually be for another reason entirely.
-She could want more of vibration in her throat because her throat itches from allergies but she doesn’t know how to communicate that or doesn’t even know that it’s not supposed to itch, she just knows the vibration from singing feels good.
-She could want more of hearing her favorite song, and since she’s a small child who doesn’t have access to Spotify or a phone or the radio, the only way she can hear it is by singing it.
-She could want less of peers getting in her space, and she’s found that singing makes them stay away from her.
-She could want more of peers being friends with her, and singing songs from a movie she knows and loves feels, to her, like an obvious way to connect with other peers (because doesn’t everybody love this movie?)
Etc etc — the list could go on and on. This is why interpreting behavior from only the outside (without any of the child’s input) can be extremely difficult, because there are lots and lots of reasons!
Why is it important to know that there could be lots and lots of reasons? Because it helps us interrupt our adult tendency to assume that we interpret correctly. It helps us stay curious instead of jumping to conclusions.
If the teacher assumes that the child wants to sing in class because she just likes singing and wants to…the teacher may try to problem solve that, even kindly, with the child, by making sure that they super-duper definitely know that the rule is “you can’t belt out songs in the middle of quiet work time because that’s just disruptive to others”. The teacher may begin assuming that the child doesn’t care if she’s disruptive to others. Maybe the teacher thinks the child is just too “in their own world” or too inattentive; maybe the teacher thinks the child is being rude, defiant, and overtly disobeying them. Maybe they escalate that. Maybe they just keep patiently reminding the child to stop singing every 5 minutes for a whole school year.
Maybe the child was trying to drown out the “scritch scritch” sound her pencil makes on paper because it just feels intolerable to her. Maybe the whole thing could’ve been solved in five seconds by playing quiet music in the room during quiet work time. Or by giving her a pen. Or by letting her wear ear defenders — or by a hundred other little solutions!
Here are a few other examples of behavior and their interpretations that I see in my job in the school setting, and in parenting my own kids.
💧 I was in my child’s bedroom hanging out with him the other day. He banged his water bottle into the wall. It caused a loud noise, startling me, and I said, “Hey!” (not angrily, just instinctively) and he apologized. Then about 10 seconds later he did it again. This time I didn’t say anything, just looked up from what I was doing and began watching him. He did it *again*. I could easily have jumped to the conclusion that he was seeking my attention, or that he was being careless with his things, or that he was being rude, or that he was trying to play loudly, or or or…
But instead I watched him and realized that he was trying to pace back and forth across the room and trying to alternate his arm and leg movements, like swing left arm with right leg and vice versa, and holding his water bottle in his hand, and he has some coordination difficulties and was overshooting and hitting the wall at the end of his pacing, then readjusting and trying again.
I don’t know *why* he needed to practice coordination and cross-body movement all right at that second, but any knee-jerk reaction interpretation of the situation on my part would have been totally wrong.
I would have guessed that he wanted to cause more noise or to receive more attention. Instead he was actually trying to work on having more coordination (and he also didn’t want the noise, the noise was a natural sign to him he had done the coordination wrong!)
🤝 In a past job, I worked with adults with developmental disabilities. One of them had a habit of scratching her cheek until it bled. She would get “stuck”, frozen, staring off into space, and scratching at her face with a rhythmic movement with one hand. I was told by staff there “She’s seeking attention. She wants you to go up to her and go ‘oh no, don’t scratch yourself!’ And make a fuss over her about it. We’re trying to just ignore it until it goes away.”
One time during our OT session she got “stuck” and began scratching while staring out a window. I disagreed with the staff’s policy but I also felt like I didn’t want to come in and fully break their rule for how to interact with her. Instead, I stood side by side with her, shoulder to shoulder, and gently offered her my hand without saying anything. (i.e. not making a fuss and not verbally responding, but still trying something new). Silently, also without saying anything, she took my hand in her hand and continued squeezing it — her hand squeezing my hand with the same rhythm that it usually scratched herself.
In a later session I tried to show her how to hold her own hand and squeeze it if I wasn’t there, working under the assumption that maybe her hand “needed” to move in that rhythm at those times when she became “stuck” and that scratching had been her go-to before but that squeezing might help meet some of the same needs.
(I also tried to explain to her staff members how they could try the same thing because I saw her so infrequently compared to them.)
Some people had guessed that she wanted more attention and that she had chosen to do it through more self-harm. I thought that maybe she just wanted more rhythmic hand movement and more human connection, or maybe less of whatever we were doing at the time that was making her anxious.
🧢 I had a student in school who kept getting in trouble for putting his hood up and his head down on his desk, withdrawing into himself when he was overwhelmed or stressed. They weren’t allowed to wear hoods or hats in school. His teachers assumed that he just wanted the hood, that what he was doing was because he wanted “more hood”, so to speak. I suggested that what he might want was less visual overwhelm, less visual stimulation.
They ended up being able to make a divider out of folders that he could use when he was trying to work on an assignment, like a pop-up that he could put on his desk and it would block out visual stimuli from the left, front, and right. (Imagine making a little cubicle out of folders.)
(If it had just been me working with him, I would’ve just let him wear a hoodie when he wanted to…but I don’t always get final say in things like that.)
[Image description: A picture of a green post-it note with words hand written on it that say, “to interpret behavior a different way, ask yourself…” Two arrows point to two boxes, which read, “What does this cause more of?” “What does this cause less of?” My handle, , is also on the image. End description.]
