There are few pieces of behavior advice I hear more often than “build a relationship with them.” And none of them are an intervention.
- A student is refusing every assignment? Build a relationship.
- A student is leaving the classroom? Build a relationship.
- A student is becoming aggressive when they are frustrated? Build a relationship.
- A teacher asks for more support because a student’s behavior is significantly interfering with learning? Have you tried connecting with them?
I understand why we say it. Relationships matter enormously in schools. Kids are more likely to trust adults who know them, feel safe with people who treat them with dignity, and engage in classrooms where they experience genuine connection. I have spent my entire career working with students with significant behavioral and social emotional needs, and I would never suggest that relationships are some fluffy extra we can skip.
I also think we put teachers in an impossible position when we start treating a strong relationship as though it should function as an intervention plan. It can’t.
Connection creates a foundation
We still have to understand the behavior. Building a stronger relationship with a student will not automatically stop aggression. Offering more choices will not automatically stop refusal. Adding movement breaks will not automatically stop elopement. Creating a beautiful calm corner will not automatically prevent escalation.
Any one of those strategies might be incredibly useful for a particular student. The important part is understanding why that particular support makes sense for that individual child.
When a student repeatedly engages in a behavior that is interfering with their learning, safety, relationships, or ability to participate in school, we need to get curious about what is happening around that behavior.
What tends to happen before it? What does the student gain or avoid afterward? Are there predictable settings where it happens more frequently? Is the task too difficult? Is there a communication skill the student needs? Are they trying to access connection, movement, sensory input, assistance, predictability, or a break from something that feels overwhelming?
There is so much more useful information available to us once we move beyond “this kid is having behavior problems.”
Sometimes the behavior is telling us exactly where the skill gap is
One of the biggest shifts I want teachers to make around behavior is moving away from simply asking, “How do I get this behavior to stop?”
I want us to spend more time understanding what the student needs to successfully navigate the situation in the first place.
Think about a student who regularly refuses independent work. Maybe you have a fantastic relationship with this child. They stop by your desk every morning to tell you about their soccer game. You know their siblings. They think you are hilarious. They feel safe with you.
Then independent writing starts and they put their head down, rip up the paper, argue with you, or announce that they are absolutely not doing this.
Your relationship has not failed. It also hasn’t given us enough information to determine what happens next.
Maybe the student cannot independently initiate a multistep task. Maybe writing is significantly more difficult for them than their verbal responses suggest. Maybe they have learned that refusal reliably delays a difficult assignment. Maybe they become overwhelmed when they see an entire page of work at once. Maybe there is another barrier we haven’t identified yet.
The support and intervention that we choose should come from what we learn about the student and the behavior.
That might mean breaking an assignment into smaller pieces, explicitly teaching the student how to ask for help, adjusting the task, teaching a replacement behavior, changing what happens immediately before the task, or collecting more data so the team can figure out what they are missing.
This is where behavior support becomes much more individualized and much more useful.
Teachers deserve more than a list of generic behavior strategies
I wrote Their Best Behavior largely out of my frustration with the way teachers are often given behavior advice. Teachers are handed strategies like “build relationships,” “give choices,” “use positive reinforcement,” and “provide breaks,” then sent back into classrooms to figure out the rest. Meanwhile, the teacher is trying to determine why one student keeps leaving the room, another shuts down during math, and another goes from seemingly fine to flipping a desk when corrected. You need more than a bag of tricks for that.
In Their Best Behavior, I walk through ten classroom behaviors teachers regularly encounter, including refusal, aggression, elopement, disruption, inattention, anxiety, helplessness, dishonesty, backtalk, and bullying. The goal throughout the book is to help you slow down enough to understand what may be driving a behavior and then make thoughtful decisions about how to respond. And find an intervention that is backed by science and evidence, rather than relying on relationships as the only anchor over and over.
I also wanted it to be something you could actually use while teaching.
You do not need to become a behavior analyst to start noticing patterns. You can learn to look at what happens before and after a behavior, consider its possible function, identify skills that may need explicit instruction, and make more intentional decisions about environmental supports and adult responses.
That skill set becomes especially important when your first strategy doesn’t work. A strong relationship actually makes this work better!!
There is another reason I get a little twitchy when “build relationships” becomes the final answer to a behavior problem. It dramatically undersells what relationships can actually do.
When I know a student well, I am more likely to notice that their body language has changed before they escalate. I know that they hate being corrected in front of peers. I know which assignments tend to overwhelm them. I recognize when their joking has shifted from playful to avoidant. I know what motivates them, what embarrasses them, what helps them regulate, and what makes things worse.
That information is incredibly valuable. I can use what I know about the child as part of assessment, instruction, prevention, and intervention. That is a much more meaningful role for relationships than expecting connection to somehow make challenging behavior disappear.
Kids deserve adults who can do both
Keep building relationships with your students. Learn what they love. Laugh with them. Notice them. Be someone who makes school feel safer and more manageable. Then keep going.
Learn how behavior works. Pay attention to patterns. Get curious about function. Explicitly teach the skills students need to handle situations that are currently difficult for them. Advocate for additional assessment and support when the behavior requires more than classroom-level intervention.
Relationships matter enormously. They are also not interventions. They are one piece of effective behavior support. Kids deserve connection alongside adults who understand what their behavior may be communicating and know how to respond thoughtfully.
If you have ever found yourself staring at a behavior and thinking, I have a great relationship with this kid, and I still have absolutely no idea what to do next, I wrote Their Best Behavior for exactly that part of teaching.
It will help you move from trying another random strategy to understanding the behavior in front of you and choosing support with an actual reason behind it.
