Positive Behaviour Support

Practical Behaviour Tips for Parents (That Actually Work)

Wellness Experts · June 2026

Here's the reframe that changes everything: behaviour is communication. When a child hits, bolts, refuses or melts down, they're not giving you a character reference — they're telling you something they don't yet have the skills or regulation to say another way. Once you're asking "what is this behaviour doing for my child?" instead of "how do I stop it?", the practical strategies below start working.

1. Find the function

Almost all challenging behaviour serves one of four purposes: escaping something hard, getting attention or connection, getting a thing or activity, or meeting a sensory need. Track a week of incidents — what happened just before, and what happened straight after? The pattern usually shows itself quickly.

2. Change the setup, not the child

The cheapest wins are environmental. Visual schedules reduce the ambush-feeling of transitions. Warnings before endings ("two more minutes, then bath") beat surprise endings. Offering two acceptable choices restores a sense of control that heads off many battles entirely.

3. In the moment: co-regulate first

A dysregulated child cannot access logic — that part of the brain is offline. Lower your voice, reduce your words, stay physically calm even if you're acting. Reasoning, consequences and lessons all belong after everyone's calm, not during the storm.

4. Catch them getting it right

Behaviour that gets attention grows. Flip the ratio: aim for five specific, genuine acknowledgements of things going well for every correction. "You waited while I finished the phone call — that was really patient" outperforms any sticker chart.

5. Teach the replacement skill

If a behaviour works for your child (and it does, or they'd stop), they need a better tool that works just as well — asking for a break, using a feelings card, a movement outlet. The behaviour won't fade until the replacement is genuinely easier and just as effective.

When to bring in support

If behaviour is intense, frequent, unsafe, or holding your child back at school or in the community — or the whole household is walking on eggshells — that's the point where a Positive Behaviour Support practitioner earns their keep. A functional behaviour assessment finds precisely why the behaviour happens, and a plan built around your family's real life (not a textbook's) turns things around in a way willpower alone can't.