Beyond Behavior Charts: Rethinking Discipline with Dr. Mona Delahooke ~ 1003

Tim Villegas
Dr. Mona Delahooke wants parents and educators to think about challenging behavior differently. Usually, when we target behaviors that we want to change…

Mona Delahooke
We tend to think, well, this is good or bad behavior or something that we need to be concerned about. We focus on the behavior, which I view as the tip of the iceberg, just a signal of what’s going on inside of a child rather than the target.

Tim Villegas
But what if there was a way to look beyond the typical behavior management systems to support learners?

Mona Delahooke
The most important environmental aspect is a caring, warm, loving adult who witnesses your distress. And who doesn’t reinforce you when you’re doing something they think is good and takes away their attention when you do something they believe is attention-seeking or negative.

Tim Villegas
And what about those disability-specific classrooms that districts say are so necessary?

Mona Delahooke
Why would we segregate those in our society who are differently wired? What message does that give those children? And how about depriving those children who are deemed as neurotypical of classmates who have different brain wiring?

Tim Villegas
My name is Tim Villegas and you are listening to Think Inclusive presented by MCIE. This podcast exists to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. For this episode, I talk with Dr. Mona Delahooke, author of the books Brain-Body Parenting and Beyond Behaviors. We discuss the neuroscience of behavior, how parents and educators can move beyond behavior charts and positive reinforcement, and a new way to look at using the check-in procedure with learners. Thank you so much for listening. And now, my interview with Dr. Mona Delahooke.

Tim Villegas
Today on the podcast, we have Dr. Mona Delahooke, who is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than 30 years of experience caring for children and their families. She is a senior faculty member of the Profectum Foundation, and a member of the American Psychological Association. She is the author of Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges, and is a frequent speaker, trainer, and consultant to parents, organizations, schools, and public agencies. She lives and works in the Los Angeles area. She is also the author, which is why she’s here, of Brain-Body Parenting. So welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Mona Delahooke
Oh, thanks so much, Tim. Thanks so much for having me on.

Tim Villegas
I’m really excited to have you on. We talked a little bit before we started recording about how Beyond Behaviors was really your book about your experience in education and how misunderstood students who are neurodiverse are. And the new book Brain-Body Parenting is really a parenting book, but I’m really interested in our audience understanding the connection between how parents focus on solving problems with children and how teachers do. Can you share a little bit about why parents want to focus on solving problems instead of relationships?

Mona Delahooke
Well, it’s a really good question. And I think it’s something that is a thread in our culture, not only in our schools, but in our parenting and how we view children. We are accustomed to viewing behaviors as the target. We tend to think, well, this is good or bad behavior, or this is a misbehavior or something that we need to be concerned about. We focus on the behavior, which I view as the tip of the iceberg, just a signal of what’s going on inside of a child rather than the target. Our culture, and especially our education system, tends to view those behaviors that we would consider challenging as the problem. The paradigm shift I am suggesting for education and even for parents is that we look beyond the behaviors to see the useful information they provide about the child and be less judgmental about what a behavior means, focusing less on the behavior and more on the child.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, so let me bring in a personal story. I was making breakfast this morning for my nine-year-old. She’s the only one who gets up early with me because everyone else is older—middle school and high schoolers. I made breakfast. She did not want to eat it. We have this monthly menu, and it’s set. I made the breakfast. She didn’t want to eat it. And there was a part of me that was like, that stinker. She doesn’t want to eat my breakfast. I made this breakfast. She doesn’t want to eat it!

Mona Delahooke
All the work! And thinking. This is a real breakfast. This doesn’t sound like just a piece of dry bread.

Tim Villegas
It was—you know what it was? It was an apple cheddar frittata, okay?

Mona Delahooke
Oh my goodness.

Tim Villegas
Mona, you would have loved it.

Mona Delahooke
Okay, I’ll order two of those.

Tim Villegas
But seriously, I was thinking about this. She’s not trying to get under my skin. I know my kid. And it was so funny because I was thinking about your book and my experience as an educator. That kind of stuff happens all the time. It doesn’t matter if it’s breakfast or an assignment you want to give. This kid doesn’t want to do what I want them to do. So I want to bring in this question and connect it to something you wrote on social media. You wrote something that you said in your book was one of the most popular things you’ve put out on social media:
If the ability to control emotions and behaviors isn’t fully developed until early adulthood, why are we requiring preschoolers to do this? And then punishing them when they can’t?
Why do you think that resonated with so many people? I’m just thinking about my nine-year-old, who was getting upset with me because I wanted her to eat my breakfast that I so dutifully made. She’s not fully in control of her emotions at six o’clock in the morning.

Mona Delahooke
I love that. Yes. Let’s think about this from a few different angles. I love your example because it would be so easy to personalize refusing to eat a delicious breakfast that was made with love and care. I know as a parent, I’ve felt this a lot: like, oh my gosh, that’s so mean or disrespectful. Really? Why are you doing that? The whole idea is that we can deconstruct that. Certain behaviors can make us feel like the person is being disrespectful or not considering our feelings. But what we don’t realize is that underneath the tip of the iceberg of the behavior are so many other factors influencing those decisions. For example, inside her body, she might not have been physically hungry yet, or her body was still waking up. Even the smells could have triggered something we call a safety threat inside the body. It was a physiological reaction. She wasn’t aware of that, and it came out as, “No, I don’t want that.”
So we can start to understand that our behaviors and emotions are deeply physiological. They involve our body. Regarding that quote, the ability to contextualize and control your emotions and behaviors is a project that starts from toddlerhood and moves on to young adulthood. That ability to put all the ducks in a row, to say something polite rather than what you really feel—that’s a developmental process. As we get socialized, we learn more sophisticated problem-solving, but it’s a project. I think that’s why the quote resonated. It was one of the most popularly shared quotes, and I just threw it up there. Literally within 10 seconds, I was taking a walk and saw parents trying to have a toddler do something way beyond their skill level. I posted it, and sure enough, like 2 million people saw it. A lot of us don’t properly understand social and emotional development. We have what’s called the expectation gap. We think kids can do things when they really can’t developmentally. Sure, they can walk, they can talk, toddlers look like little mini adults, but they are so unbaked. When we understand their brain and body development, we can expect these behaviors rather than dread them.

Tim Villegas
And that applies to children who are not on a typical path of development too, correct?

Mona Delahooke
A million percent, and emphatically so. Our education system doesn’t understand the profound impact of individual differences—brain wiring differences, perceptual differences, movement differences—all those things that make neurodivergent children unique. These differences are often judged as inappropriate behaviors or misunderstood, and at the worst end, punished. That’s what I would like to see shifted in our education system.

Tim Villegas
Let’s get back to Brain-Body Parenting, because one of the phrases you talked about is “the platform.” I thought that was really interesting. What do you mean by the platform?

Mona Delahooke
We’re more accustomed to thinking about our children’s thinking brain. There have been a lot of great parenting books about the brain and how we think about parenting, which is great. I’m adding that the brain gets its operating instructions from the body. I coined the term after Dr. Stephen Porges, a neuroscientist whose theory I use in my work. The actual platform that launches our behaviors, emotions, and sensations is the brain and body. So the platform is shorthand for our brain-body connection. That is always in charge because we’re not just a brain and not just a body—we’re always both.
If we don’t understand our children’s nervous systems and our own, we’re missing the full picture. If we’re just focusing on behaviors, we’re looking at the behavior as the target and not the signal. That can mess up our relationships and make us feel certain ways about our children. I know that happened to me when I had one of my children whose behaviors I didn’t understand. Until I knew better, the relationship was on shaky ground. We can learn so much from this platform.

Tim Villegas
I loved how you said that. A lot of times we see behavior as the target. As educators, we have behavior targets all the time, like IEP goals—something observable. That’s what we’re taught to look for, not signals.

Mona Delahooke
You hit the nail on the head. Our whole culture is around behavioral management and control, especially in education. Teachers are taught behavioral technologies—behavior charts, classroom rules, posters. There’s nothing wrong with teaching expectations or having rules posted. But I have a problem with behavior charts where teachers track behaviors by colors or levels.
When we punish a signal that is a stress behavior, we’re misunderstanding what’s happening. Stress behaviors that get on IEP goals—like bothering other students, trying to escape, making loud noises—aren’t done to make life miserable. They’re adaptations and protections of the nervous system for that student’s body and brain—their platform. That’s the paradigm shift in how we view behaviors that hasn’t taken root yet in education.

Tim Villegas
A trend in modern applied behavior analysis is to look for underlying sources of challenging behavior. Is what you’re proposing in this parenting book and in Beyond Behaviors really different from the modern ABA framework?

Mona Delahooke
I’ve heard the phrase “modern ABA framework,” and I wonder what that actually means. I assume it’s a way ABA may be trying to update their practices, possibly with neuroscience showing us that behaviors are signals. But boots on the ground, in schools, preschools, special ed, ABA-run programs—I don’t see a difference between ABA now and a decade ago. When you’re focusing on behaviors, you’re focusing on behaviors.
If a child isn’t paid attention to when they do a certain behavior, or they don’t get a sticker unless they do X—that’s still behavior management. Behavior management doesn’t consider the internal life of the child—their feelings, self-concept, emotions, physiological process. How distressed are they inside? What are your techniques doing to that child’s distress level?
For example, calm-down rooms are supposed to be nurturing places where children feel safe. But the ones I’ve seen are where an adult goes with them and doesn’t talk because they don’t want to reinforce a “bad” behavior. With all due respect to everyone working with children, people are telling us what it felt like to be the recipient of a behavior management program. Those are the students who are now teenagers and young adults. They’re the experts, not the teachers. They tell me what it was like for them.

Tim Villegas
The effort educators put into crafting a physical environment to reduce stress and make students feel safe—their energy would be better put into building and cultivating a relationship as opposed to a physical environment. Is that right?

Mona Delahooke
I love the way you said that. 100%. Relationships are the most important part of the environment. Sure, noise-canceling walls and sound-absorbing panels are great. But the most important environmental aspect is a caring, warm, loving adult who witnesses your distress and doesn’t withdraw attention when you’re struggling. We could spend our resources on human accommodations first. That doesn’t require extra money or architects. It requires human beings with a lens shift away from behavior management and toward compassion and co-regulation.

Tim Villegas
Do you think co-regulation and cultivating relationships are more likely to happen in inclusive settings versus segregated ones? Our organization promotes inclusive schools and students learning alongside their typical peers, not in self-contained environments. In your professional opinion, where is this more likely to happen?

Mona Delahooke
In my professional opinion, it needs to happen everywhere. Why would we segregate those in our society who are differently wired? What message does that give those children? And how about depriving neurotypical children of classmates with different brain wiring? Segregation—does that benefit our culture? I think not.
Right now, our education system hyper-focuses on behavior management and under-focuses on building relational safety. Neuroscience is unequivocal: relational safety is the foundation of resilience, physical health, and mental health. Why aren’t our special ed students given relational safety? Why are they given behavior management as the top approach, which is very expensive? Students with the most challenging behaviors often get the most detailed behavior plans. But those behaviors—hitting, kicking, self-harm—are signs of distress, not attempts to make life difficult. Our mentality is a couple hundred years old. That’s why I wrote Beyond Behaviors: it’s time to shift away from that.

Tim Villegas
Fantastic. Let’s jump back in after the Zoom break. You live in Southern California, correct?

Mona Delahooke
Yeah.

Tim Villegas
I grew up in Arcadia.

Mona Delahooke
Oh my gosh, you’re kidding.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, off Longdon. Do you know where that is?

Mona Delahooke
Yes! My office is on South First Avenue.

Tim Villegas
I lived on South Fourth.

Mona Delahooke
That’s near Carl’s Jr. I walk there for lunch.

Tim Villegas
Exactly. I live in Georgia now, near Atlanta.

Mona Delahooke
Wow. Did you grow up there?

Tim Villegas
No, Arcadia. I went to Maranatha High School.

Mona Delahooke
I went to Maranatha High School.

Tim Villegas
No way! We’re alumni? That’s amazing.

Tim Villegas
Back to work. Something I thought was interesting about Brain-Body Parenting was the pathways. They reminded me of Zones of Regulation, but they’re not the same. Could you explain the pathways?

Mona Delahooke
Thank you for bringing that up. The colors I use were developed years before Zones of Regulation by Connie Lillas. They represent the three main pathways of the autonomic nervous system, based on polyvagal theory.

• Green Pathway: Social engagement, calm, able to learn and play.
• Red Pathway: Fight or flight response when the nervous system detects threat. Behaviors like running, hitting, screaming are signs of distress, not intentional misbehavior.
• Blue Pathway: Freeze or shutdown when stress is overwhelming or prolonged. Kids may withdraw, seem hopeless, low energy.
  These states are automatic. We can’t always live in green because life isn’t predictable. Understanding these pathways helps us respond with compassion.

Tim Villegas
You also talk about check-ins. What does that look like?

Mona Delahooke
Check-ins are about understanding nervous systems, not behaviors.

1. Check yourself: Are you red, blue, or green? If you’re dysregulated, you can’t help the child.
2. Check the child: What state are they in? If green, you can use logic and problem-solving. If red or blue, stabilize first.
3. Work together: Use your private toolbox for that child—strategies that help them feel safe. Co-regulation is key. You don’t teach self-regulation; you model and embody it. It’s an experience, not a lesson.

Tim Villegas
Does this apply to older kids and adults?

Mona Delahooke
Absolutely. Social and emotional development is developmental, not chronological. It looks different, but the principles apply across the lifespan.

Tim Villegas
Where can people find your work?

Mona Delahooke
My website is monadelahooke.com. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as Dr. Mona Delahooke. Both books are on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and even Target and Walmart.

Tim Villegas
Please go out and get Beyond Behaviors and Brain-Body Parenting. Thank you so much, Dr. Mona Delahooke, for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Mona Delahooke
Thanks so much for having me.