Behaviour Plans Are For The Adults, Not The Kids
Behaviour plans are useless, unless the adults have developed — and continue to develop — secure relationships with the children
What is a behaviour plan?
Around here we have something called a Behaviour Intervention Plan (BIP). If a child is consistently or repeatedly demonstrating concerning behaviours at school, the family and select school staff will work together to develop a B.I.P.
The primary goal of any type of plan should be to meet the child’s needs, first and foremost. However due to bureaucracy, politics, and lack of training, these plans often end up outlining ways the child must behave differently in order to make everyone else’s jobs easier.
I don’t blame the school staff, they aren’t given the proper training and resources to compassionately, skillfully, and effectively support students with complex needs. Full stop, there’s no other way to state this.
In fact, let’s forget creating behaviour plans altogether as they’re generally useless anyway. What we should be doing is getting to know the children, developing positive relationships with them, supporting them, and working to understand and meet their needs.
