When ‘Challenging Behavior’ Is Communication: A Different Lens for Youth Service Staff
April 22, 2026— Lee-am was almost 13 years old when he started having significant behavior problems. He had always struggled in school and at home. By the time he was fifteen, he had multiple diagnoses, including ADHD, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiance disorder. The 40+ page report from the assessing psychiatrist noted many of Lee-am’s behaviors, presentation, and symptoms leading to the diagnoses. When Lee-am was 16, he was admitted to a long-term therapeutic detention center.
Bennie was 13 years old when the school counselor was called to his homeroom because Bennie was not responding to the teacher’s directions nor to his classmates. His hood covered the entirety of his head as he buried his face in his folded arms. Eventually the counselor was able to get him to her office, where he promptly sat on the loveseat, grabbed a pillow and buried his head away again. He refused to respond to the counselor’s assurances, questions, and suggestions. He dug his heels into any attempt to bring him out of whatever place of despair or refusal he was in. So the counselor called his guardian to come pick him up from school.
These moments happen where teenagers bump up against authority figures. The young person will refuse, shout, talk back, swear, walk out, shut down. We see the behaviors and actions, but there is more there. So much more.
Adults in these situations often have judgements, criticisms, and blame formed quickly, almost instantly. The teen is labeled: disruptive; defiant; unmotivated; attention-seeking; etc. These words and diagnoses come quickly. Sometimes too quickly. They shut down curiosity at the exact moment it is most needed.
Behavior is communication
As the adults responsible for the youth we serve, we must learn the language of behavior so we can respond accordingly. Our attuned responses create safety. Safety allows for regulated nervous systems and emotions. If we can create safe conditions, our own nervous systems relax. Confusion can trigger fight/flight reactions in the kids and in staff members, especially those who have experienced trauma in the past or are currently in unsafe situations. Understanding and being understood clear confusion. If we take seriously the idea that behaviour is communication, then every action—especially the ones that challenge us—tells us something.
Anger might mask fear. Avoidance can point directly to shame. Indifference might be shielding a deep sense of failure. Shut down in the face of overwhelm. The louder the behaviour, the more likely it is that something important sits underneath it.
Adults in positions of authority are also in positions of responsibility. ‘Bad’ behavior cannot be excused or allowed to continue. Responding in an attuned manner doesn’t mean changing the boundaries or lowering expectations. It means that we become less reactive ourselves, that we pause and manage our own behavior.
Adolescents have highly tuned hypocrisy and bullshit radars. Part of their development entails passionate and rigidly held ideas of right and wrong, fair and unfair, justice and injustice. If we are to teach them how to speak for their internal experiences, to take responsibility for their actions, to come to understand themselves, and how to regulate their emotions, then we must do the same.
Our knee jerk reactions will not earn us respect or compliance. In fact it often makes the problems worse. When we respond with escalation, control, or disconnection, we unintentionally reinforce the very patterns we are trying to change. Even if we don’t say a word, our body language says it all.
We learn to speak for our frustrations, bewilderment, and anger. We take time to observe our quick judgements and then create space for curiosity.
To respond differently means we acknowledge that our own responses are integral dynamics where authority and adolescence meet.
Our tone matters.
Our body language matters.
Our consistency matters.
And when we get it wrong—and we will—what matters most is not perfection, but repair. Repair after rupture strengthens trust and respect. We model accountability. How many adolescents get to see this in action? How often did you as a young person have someone come to you and say,
“I handled that badly. I should have listened more. Let’s try that again.”
These are incredibly healing moments.
Addressing the words under the words
If Lee-am’s teachers, therapists, and psychiatrist had changed their question from—
How do we stop this behaviour right now? How do we ‘fix’ Lee-am?
to questions such as—
What are we missing when we interact with Lee-am? What is he trying to let us know?
What response could help us learn something different about Lee-am and what he’s trying to tell us?
—they would have discovered that Lee-am had an extensive history of early childhood trauma that had never been addressed, much less treated.
In consultation after the fact, Bennie’s counselor found she had been responding to pressures from larger systems to get Bennie back into the classroom as soon as possible. She realized that her own sense of helplessness and overwhelm was triggered by Bennie’s shut down. There was little curiosity and instead a desire to fix the problem. While valid, it is ineffective in the face of such behavior.
In later sessions with Bennie, he told her that his dog had died the night before and he was so sad he couldn’t speak. Further investigation found that Bennie lived in an environment where there was no room for his grief. His guardian, unable to emotionally attune and in survival mode herself, had chastised Bennie’s “ridiculous behavior” the day he had been sent home, alternately berating him and throwing her hands up in the air in defeat.
There are myriad ways in the moment to navigate these challenging behaviors without perpetuating them, eroding trust, and indulging our own reactivity.
Stay calm when the situation invites escalation.
Hold the boundary with a calm firm voice, stating it clearly, without adding shame or blame.
Return to a conversation later, when regulation has been restored.
Name what we see, without judgement. Just the facts, m’am.
Being in service to our young people
It is easy to forget because of the pressures of the work coming from all angles—families, administration, communities, and the larger systems—that adolescent service providers are just that—in service to the adolescent. Not the systems. We are successful in our work when we have provided successful services for the adolescent. Hold on to this perspective. It will help you advocate for yourself, your decisions, your work, and for the kids you serve.
We want to model adult behavior for the adolescents we serve. We want to act with integrity and care and have the ability to meet them where they are. Our behaviors and actions communicate:
That conflict does not have to end in disconnection;
relationships can withstand difficulty;Ruptures can be repaired;
And those in authority know how to take accountability.
With consistency, this brings steady incremental changes. The patterns of behavior will shift as feelings of safety within the relationship and the larger environment increase, along with trust in those who have authority.
Once we begin to hear behaviour as communication, we can no longer un-hear it. We just have to be willing to listen.
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