Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children's Behavioral Challenges

by Mona Delahooke

A NEW approach to solving behavioral challenges.

In Beyond Behaviors , internationally known pediatric psychologist, Dr. Mona Delahooke describes behaviors as the tip of the iceberg, important signals that we should address by seeking to understand a child’s individual differences in the context of relational safety.

Featuring impactful worksheets and charts, this accessible book offers professionals, educators and parents tools and techniques to reduce behavioral challenges and promote psychological resilience and satisfying, secure relationships.

Neuroscience-based effective tools and strategies for children labeled
- Conduct Disorder
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)
- Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)
- Anxiety & Depression
- Autism & Developmental or Learning Differences

And children who experience or have
- Aggressive, confusing and unpredictable behaviors
- Tantrums and meltdowns
- Disconnection or shutdown
- Adverse childhood experiences
- Trauma and toxic stress

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Psychology, Education, Teaching, Professional Development, Autistic Spectrum Disorder

315 pages, Paperback

Published March 19, 2019

Reviews

[✨Julie✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

✩ 4 stars ✩

As educational books go, this was a decent read. I agree with most of her philosophy and would recommend this to parents or anyone who works closely with children.

I frankly think most of this should be common sense, but when children become dysregulated, more often than not, the adults around them do to. When your emotions are heightened, logical thinking tends to go right out the window. I particularly liked the focus the author put on making sure to check in with your own emotions before attempting to assist a child in regulating their emotions. Sadly I think this is a step that many adults overlook. For those who are willing to learn and grow, I think this book could be very helpful and informative.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

Pre-read: Throwing an educational book into the mix! This is required reading this semester at my school where I work as an Elementary School Counselor. 💖🤗

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I've encountered on child development and dealing with children with "problem" behaviors. Period.

Here comes another book review rant.

Every parent and especially EVERY PROFESSIONAL WHO WORKS WITH CHILDREN NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK.

Seriously. If this book existed ten years ago, it would have saved me ten years of outrageous amounts of stress and obsessively reading on child development and psychology to figure out how to help my child.

AND it would have saved me a ridiculous amount of time and money WASTED on countless professionals (mental health, educators, and physicians) who are incompetent when dealing with children who have faulty neuroception. If you work with children, there is no excuse for not understanding these concepts. They've been around since the 90's. Read this book.

[Trevor Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a Behavior Analyst. This is likely a very biased review, but I wanted to share my thoughts without a filter.

Hoping to broaden my professional scope when it came to dealing with challenging/problem behaviors, I was excited to read this book with the sheer number of positive reviews that I read.

However, I finished the book being severely disappointed.

If you are a parent or professional who has no background in dealing with problem behaviors, this book will likely be insightful in understanding the need to create a calm environment for learning/understanding with the child. Also, reviewing top-down and bottom-up processing is an important distinction, especially when working with young children and better understanding our expectations as adults with robust learning history.

However, with my background in behaviorism, the sheer quantity of mentalism in this book was something that I could not shake off. Of course, this is written by a psychologist, so I understood this when jumping in. But unless it flew over my head, there was no practical application explained in this book.

Each example was essentialy:

1. This child has problem behaviors because XYZ
2. Using a compassionate approach, we reduced their stress and brought them to the "green zone"
3. We collaborated with lots of different professionals (which many families do not have access to unless they are incredibly well off).
4. Problem behavior went away.

I think this is a good start to understanding problem behaviors, especially with neurotypical kids, but human behavior is far too complex to approach problem behaviors only in this way.

[Greg Stoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main idea of this book is that when kids are having behavioral issues, adults tend to see them as "top-down" where the child is choosing to misbehave for some reason. But often, what's happening is "bottom-up": the child has something deeper going on and it comes out via misbehavior, and to really fix the bad behavior you need to address the underlying problem. Just trying to give stickers for good behavior and punishing bad behavior isn't going to help anything! (this is also not a huge surprise given the rewards book)

He uses a color shorthand to categorize a child's state of arousal: green means the child feels safe and connected and able to learn; red means the child is like the "fight" in "fight or flight", often with a rapid heartbeat, sweating, etc.; blue means the child feels in extreme danger and may have a slow heart rate and breathing rate.

There's a lot of useful stuff if you have a child with a problem - since I was reading it just for information it was a bit tedious to get through. I think the main takeaway is that kids (especially young ones) just don't have much control over their emotions and actions, and you have to help them by making them feel safe instead of expecting them to be able to do something they just can't. Which is valuable!

[Heather MacDuffie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic resource and a brilliant contribution to the paradigm shift that is the Polyvagal Theory. As a trauma therapist of 20 years I am gathering resources to help me rapidly integrate this new scientific understanding into my practice. The handouts are user friendly: clear, simple and coherent. The way that the body and mind work together to create behavior, and how to work with this effectively is clean and succinct. People learn without realizing it! As a provider of the Safe and Sound Protocol I have been using some of her parent handouts to aid my assessment, not just of children but also adults. I can't recommend it enough! Useful for parents, therapists, teachers, OTs, or anyone who works with children or has behavior themselves (get it? I mean everyone)

[Mariah Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so incredibly helpful. When my son was put in therapy everything I was told to do and the books I was told to buy went against every single “mom tingle” I had. We tried several of the suggestions and found they only made things worse (she talks about this in the book). I started making connections between co-regulation and Charlotte Mason’s “Education is an atmosphere” and doing my own research. After following several accounts on Instagram to help me further my understanding, I stumbled upon Mona Delahooke and her book.

This book put words to all of my mom tingles. She explains the House of Social-Emotional Development, walks you through the autonomic pathways of the nervous system, describes top-down and bottom-up behavior, helps you to understand what toxic stress and trauma can do to the nervous system and how that can effect behaviors, urges you to step away from traditional consequences and thoughts on behavior and discipline, and so much more. I especially appreciated how she talks about us as parents needing to be regulated in order to help our children and gives encouragement for the parent to do that.

There are lots of worksheets/assessments in the book that would be helpful if you are just beginning to dip your toes into better understanding your child (neurodivergent or neurotypical alike) or need additional help.

I took everything from this book to the therapists and, even though these are new ideas compared to their training, they were open to hearing me out and picking up Mona’s book themselves.

Win-win-win.
Definitely worth a read.
Grateful for stumbling upon this.

[Kian.ting · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sentence from the book will stick with my mind forever. "If you have a flower that is having a problem blooming, you don't fix the flower but the environment the flower is in". This one sentence summarizes the whole book. The book talks about children's behaviour whether perceived to be good or bad is actually the child's means to communicate to us on what is going through in their body and mind. I attended conventional/traditional parenting course, they though us when children have bad behaviour their are usually testing boundaries or doing some powerplay, that frame of mind is so toxic to the parent, cause if I start to perceive every bad behaviour as a powerplay, to get my attention or to test boundary how the heck can I keep calm, that thinking is outdated and toxic. This book corrected me in looking a children's behaviour as communicating thier needs without words, and it is the role of the parrent to work out what it means and how we can help them. This should be the first parenting book that I should read. I cant recomend it enough, will definitely reread it.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has deeply altered my understanding of children's behaviors as well as how I approach them. It covers the concept that children's negative behaviors are often a result of feelings unsafe. It provides ways to recognize the different pathways that kids could be on and how to help bring them back to a place of safety and communication. It also reminds parents/teachers/caregivers to take care of themselves and maintain their own feelings of safety so that they can adequately help the children in their care. I feel much more equipped to address my kids' struggles, and I plan to utilize many of these skills when I end up back in the classroom.

[Liza]

I am not a behaviorist by any stretch of the imagination. You will often find me butting heads with BCABs about the communication goals they write for my students (stay in your goddamn lane and stop treating my students like pigeons!). That said, this book made me realize how much behaviorism had creeped into my parenting. Planned ignoring? Yup! I’ve done that! And guess what? It doesn’t work in my family. Connecting and diverting does. This book also has a huge emphasis on trauma and triggers, which is essential to exploring because parenting is triggering as hell. Nobody warned me about that, so I’m warning you. This is essential reading for anyone who spends time with kids with behaviors (basically all kids unless you’re raising the most boring kid of all time).

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a healthcare worker who works with children with disabilities or adults with disabilities this book is a must-read. It discusses a lot about bottom-up thinking vs top-down, and how those can help us help our patients. She also discusses how oftentimes negative behaviors are a result of something such as sensory processing rather than an attention-seeking behavior. Overall I highly recommend this as it's very informative and easy to read.

[Michal · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's all about connection and dealing with Why kids feel the way they do instead of trying to mold their actions into a mainstream pattern.

[Robin Coral · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend!

[Wanda Boyer M.C., Ph.D., RCC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Delahooke thank you for writing the excellent resource entitled “Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges.” You offer great insights into clarifying Top-Down Behaviors that are conscious and over time include intentionality and planning and “connections in the prefrontal cortex” (Delahooke, 2019, p. 29); and Bottom -Up behaviors that are related to stress responses and the activation of the limbic system which triggers the amygdala and inhibits the hippocampus (memory) and conscious thought (Delahooke, 2019). Recognizing developmentally from what direction a child is functioning, top-down or bottom -up can lead to more compassion and co -regulatory work with the child to create meaningful child centered experiences. I would like to commend you, Dr. Delahooke, for concretely identifying the six developmental processes which can help us help children gain emotion regulation involving process (1) regulation and attention, (2) engagement and relating, (3) purposeful and emotional interactions, (4) social problem solving, (5) creating symbols, words, and ideas, (6) building bridges between ideas ( Delahooke, 2019, pp.34-45). As well you provide observational questions that explore where the child stands and is the child achieving the six C’s -calm, connection, communicating back and forth, communicating through symbols, connecting words/symbols, crossing ideas and thoughts. As well, the pathways: green social engagement, red flight, fight, or fright, and blue shutting down are tools that can attune counselors to client- centric needs.To better understand the children and youth in our care we must consider how they individually respond to processes in the physical body, their feelings , and thoughts. This keen focus on the child or youth’s individual differences can help us understand the behavioral challenges that they may experience.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. Very practical. Full of case studies, helpful worksheets, graphics, etc. It helped reinforce what I’ve already felt, that my son is in fight-or-flight mode nearly constantly at school, largely a result of past school trauma, as well as autism and sensory processing issues. All the rewards charts and point systems in the world will be ineffective if he’s in survival mode. That many of his unwanted behaviors are “bottom up” reflexive responses, rather than “top down” purposeful decisions.

I hope to work with my son’s special ed team to see if we can adjust his supports in ways that help him feel more relaxed and capable at school. The premise of the book is that if he feels calm and safe, he can move from the more primitive survival-driven parts of his brain, and actually be ready and receptive to learning.

The point is to look beyond the behaviors, which are symptomatic of underlying issues, whether they be sensory issues, pain, past trauma, or neurological differences. The book uses icebergs as metaphors, with the visible behaviors being the tip of the iceberg, and the underlying conditions (personality, trauma history, medical issues, neurodivergence, etc) as being the unseen bulk of the iceberg, and what needs to be addressed in order to influence behaviors.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who works with children.

[Elena Popadic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book as a student occupational therapist on placement with school based services looking to learn more about the sensory needs of the kids on our caseload and honestly this book offered me way more than I imagined it would. My view on so much has changed and I even found myself a little emotional at certain points after realizing how much I wasn't seen or heard as a kid and that I'm essentially re-parenting myself in my late 20s. I believe that this book can help shift an entire generation if this is the direction pediatric professions are headed. I would strongly recommend it even for those who have kids but dont necessarily work with them, the writing is written in a lay-friendly way and will not bore you the way just sifting through research would.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for every parent and caregiver to better understand that when we see behaviors, we're often seeing only the tip of the iceberg. I appreciated the personal stories of children the author has worked with and the interdisciplinary teams she has established to find holistic care.

Much of the content was review for me, but the workbook pages were helpful to articulate specific needs and tools for our kids. I was so grateful for the way Delahooke includes polyvagal theory and the caregiver's own mental/neurological state in the moment of working with a child. Co-regulation is so important and having compassion for ourselves as parents is paramount.

Highly recommend!

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book urging parents and people who work with children to consider that behavioral approaches (reward and punishment) have limited effectiveness to "top down" behaviors that the child has conscious control over. Many negative behaviors are "bottom up" and NOT under conscious control, but are instead adaptive responses to stress and disregulation. Punishing these behaviors only increases the stress and compounds the problem. Instead focus on relational safety, therapeutic use of self, and increasing positive experiences.

[Cindy Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read for anyone working with or raising children. Gives a new perspective in dealing with challenging behaviors. This author also references other strong brain based models and theories to behavioral challenges such as Tina Bryson, Bruce Perry, and Bessel Van Der Kolk. If you are familiar with their writings, "Beyond Behaviors" is an excellent addition to your readings. If you are not, it's also a great book to begin with!

[David Asche · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for a book to help me better understand reactive attachment disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, as well as how to support someone dealing with them. This book did a decent job explaining what those disorders and others are, along with their probable causes.
The author’s description of “bottom-up” versus “top-down” processing, and especially the different stages a child with these disorders goes through what she labeled as “green,” “red,” and “blue”—helped me gain insight into the mindset of a child experiencing these challenges.
The book is written from a psychiatrist’s perspective and carries certain biases and assumptions I disagree with. For example, the author often traces a child’s behavior back to prior trauma, creating a pathway that removes accountability from the child and frames them solely as victims of someone else’s actions. There is also inconsistency in how this approach is applied: bullying from another child at school is treated differently from trauma caused by parental divorce or abandonment. The author seems largely impartial toward parental actions that contribute to behavioral issues, where a bully is painted as the original problem, yet her main premise for correcting bad behavior is to address the underlying cause. In my view, this may stem from society’s strong disapproval of bullying contrasted with its greater acceptance of parental divorce.
Additionally, the proposed solutions rely heavily on those around the child, parents, teachers, and peers altering their own behaviors to accommodate the child’s needs. While this might be feasible in a small, controlled setting, it becomes impractical when extended to the rest of society for the sake of one child’s requirements. This approach also stands in direct contrast to the book I recently finished, Born Lucky, in which an autistic child’s father focused on helping his son conform to societal norms rather than expecting everyone else to adapt to him. Though it was a struggle, the child, now an adult, attributes his success in life to that method.

[Tia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had some interesting ideas that I was excited to explore, but they were presented in a way that was just so monotonous and repetitive. Even the case studies followed the exact same structure, and felt very artificial, so it was difficult to figure out ways to apply these ideas to my own clients.

If you are a parent of a kiddo with behaviors or someone looking for an introduction to the topic, I think this is a great starting point to better understand behavior. However, if you are already a professional working with people who have severe behaviors, I wouldn’t recommend it past the first couple chapters, as I feel that all of the main ideas were presented upfront, and reading on wasn’t very useful, just repeated the same ideas in the same few ways.

[Kamilah · Rating 5 out of 5]

listened to this on audio but will now be buying the hard copy since it includes a lot of useful worksheets. a great book for anyone with children in their life and not just those who have difficult behaviours. there is so much to be learned when we see behaviour as communication and seek to understand what function it is serving for the child. It was also a great reminder of how important supporting the nervous system and sensory needs is when trying to help struggling children.

[Sammi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some interesting parts that could help you calmly help your child. It reminds you to evaluate yourself and your emotions before you engage with your child during a hard moment. It was long and rambles sometimes.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more for a clinician or educator that knows the jargon she uses. I found it helpful and will implement some of the strategies she discusses.

[Kelly Nesbitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book to a lot of the families I work with as well as reference it in my sessions!! So important to reframe behaviors ❤️

[Diana]

note to self: made it to page 218, may come back eventually

[Steph · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly, there wasn't that wasn't much of anything good in this book. I disagreed with a lot of it and what was good information was framed as groundbreaking when it felt like common sense to me

[Ariel Whalen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be on everyone's reading list! Especially people who work with children

[Amber Coones · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.3

[Rosie Gearhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all behaviors are purposeful, intentional, or defiant. Sometimes the "bottom" of the brain is in charge; the child is having a fear response to feeling unsafe, even if the environment is in fact completely safe. Before deciding how to deal with a behavior, first gather enough information to know whether it is "top-down" (from the thinking brain - cortex) or "bottom-up" (from the emotional brain - limbic system).

Sensory issues or past trauma can often play a role in behavioral problems. It is even more important for children with these profiles to have caregivers who are attuned to the state of their nervous system at any given moment. Look beneath the behavior. Meet the need.

Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors by Gobbel is a more interesting and well-written treatment of this subject. I would recommend that one if you only want to read one book on the subject. This one is more clinical, less conversational, and has less practical application.

Audiobook narrator was a bit bland.

Bottom Up:
- Is the child calm and able to pay attention?
- Is the child open to engaging with others?
- Is the child able to use any type of back and forth communication?
- Is the child's back and forth communication telling or asking something?

Top Down:
- Is the child using words, symbols, technology, or play to communicate ideas?
- Does the child use logical thoughts and understand that others can have different opinions or ideas?

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m surprised by the number of positive reviews for this book. As the parent of a child with challenging behaviors, I was hoping this book would provide some insights that we haven’t explored yet. However, much of the information was very basic for anybody who has spent any time at all with children with challenging behaviors. For example, she talks about how the root cause of the behaviors could be due to not getting enough sleep. Or they could be due to sensory issues. Or due to deviations from routine. This is all pretty basic. She gives an example where a child had been struggling and then they determined that the child wasn’t sleeping well. They fixed the sleep issue and the behavior improved. What parent doesn’t know that children who aren’t sleeping well can behave poorly?