Summary
“Connection before correction" has become a bit of a buzz phrase in education - but what does it actually mean in a real classroom? How do you do it in the middle of a behaviour incident, when stress levels are high and pupils seem least open to connection?
In this episode of School Behaviour Secrets, Simon Currigan unpacks the science and the practice behind this powerful idea. Drawing on the work of psychologists Dan Hughes and Kim Golding, as well as what we know about the autonomic nervous system and the impact of stress on the brain, he explains why connection isn’t a soft option - it’s a strategy grounded in biology.
You’ll discover:
- Why correction fails when pupils are dysregulated and the amygdala takes over.
- How connection to a calm adult acts as a buffer, helping pupils regain access to the thinking part of the brain.
- The role of the PAIN framework (Primary Areas of Internal Need) in fuelling stress and behaviour challenges.
- Why some pupils - especially those affected by trauma or ACEs - resist connection, even though they need it most.
- Practical ways to use the PACE approach (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy) to connect with students in the moment, before moving to correction or problem-solving.
By the end of the episode, you’ll have a clear picture of how “connection before correction" works in practice - and why it’s often the missing link between repeated conflict and lasting behaviour change.
If you’ve ever thought, “I’ve tried consequences, I’ve tried reasoning, but nothing sticks," this episode will give you a new lens for seeing behaviour — and a toolkit for building calmer, safer classrooms.
Important links:
Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook
Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources
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Show notes / transcription
Simon Currigan
If you want better behaviour, start with connection, with relationships, because here's the truth- you can't correct a child who doesn't feel safe with you. When safety goes out of the window, logic goes with it. So today I'm going to unpack what connection before correction really looks like in practise. Not as a warm and fuzzy slogan, but as a science backed strategy for calmer classrooms. We'll look at how connection acts as a biological buffer to stress, what's actually happening in a child's nervous system and why some students resist connection even though they are the ones that need it the most. So if you've ever found yourself thinking, I've tried being calm, I've tried being firm, and nothing's working with this student, then this episode's for you. Hi there, my name's Simon Currigan and welcome to this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets.
And I've spent the last week wondering what's happening to famed 90s rapper Ghostface Killer right now. He was one of the founding members of the Wu Tang Clan, featured on a crossover hit On My Knees with the short lived girl band The 911. And since the Noughties, he's just not popped up on my radar. Maybe he's living quietly in Surrey now, teaching mindfulness and baking banana bread. I would love that. Which brings me to today's episode, maybe awkwardly, because whether we're talking about rappers or we're talking about students, when people lose connection they drift into survival mode. And that's when things go wrong, especially in school, especially with kids.
So let's start by getting clear on what this phrase actually means. Connection to before correction. Well, it doesn't mean letting the pupils get away with anything. It means this. Before you can fix behaviour, you have to have a sense of safety. That's what you've got to fix first. Kids don't listen when they're scared, angry or ashamed.
They listen when they feel safe. Connection before correction. It's a concept made popular by psychologists Dan Hughes and Kim Golding. And it's a way of reminding us not to put the logical cart before the emotional horse, if you like. You have to tackle things in the right order, first things first. And that starts when kids are dysregulated, especially when they're dysregulated with connection, with relationships, because when they are dysregulated, it's very hard for their brain to deal with processing language or thinking ahead or being logical or thinking flexibly, all key skills for resolving issues. So if the child had a dispute with another child, actually what we want to do, our tendency is to rush in and kind of try and unpick what, what happened in that disagreement.
But at that time, at that moment, the child's part of the brain that deals with that is kind of offline. So it means we're trying to get the child to engage in a conversation that they literally can't connect with. But when a child feels emotionally connected and safe with an adult, their nervous system settles. That's when the thinking part of the brain comes back online finally and meaningful conversations about change become possible. Because now they can access that conversation about why, what went right or wrong. The mechanics of the brain are ready to kick into gear. So while the traditional approach might say control first, relationship later, neuroscience, that tells us a different story.
It tells us we have to start with relationships first, when things go wrong, and then managing the situation and self control follows down the line. So I want to dig into this a little bit deeper. Every one of us has a built in alarm system. It's called the autonomic nervous system. And it's always scanning the environment subconsciously. It's not something we think about and it's always asking one key question, am I safe right now? And when the answer is yes, we stay or we move to a calm, flexible state where we can think, we can listen and we can learn.
But when the answer to that question is no, when we sense there's a threat and even a subtle threat, like a sharp tone or a tense expression, that alarm system hits the red panic button and, and the amygdala takes over. The brain kind of moves up towards fight, flight or freeze. And when the amygdala is running the show, the prefrontal cortex, that's the rational problem solving part of your brain that goes offline. It powers down the voice, the logical voice in your brain. The volume on it gets turned right down, it gets muted. And that's what's known as amygdala hijack. Which means reasoning with a dysregulated child is a bit like trying to fix your WI FI by shouting at the router.
It's not going to work until the system resets. Yes, the classic turn it off and on again. So here's the good news. Connection to a calm, trusted adult acts as a biological buffer to stress. It puts the brakes on stress. When pupils feel connected to that adult, someone whose tone, their posture and their facial expressions say you're okay, their heart rate drops, their cortisol drops, and that thinking part of their brain becomes active again. Connection literally changes the way their biology is working.
And you can see this in the real world, see how quickly a distressed toddler calms when they see their parent and the parent comforts them and meets them in that moment of connection, everything changes. You can see it on their face, you can see it from the way they hold their body, you can see it from the way their muscles relax. And that's crucial because many pupils are already walking into school carrying stress before the day even begins. They're living with what we call an overload of pain. The primary areas of internal need. They're unbalanced, they're unstressed. Those are the domains that push them towards anxiety or anger or frustration. And in terms of our nervous system, when we're exposed to those primary areas of internal need and we don't have the emotional tools to cope with them, well, that's like putting your foot down on the emotional accelerator, pushing you towards faster, higher stress.
For a full rundown of the pain framework, rewind to episode 246. It's got loads more detail in it, but let's run through the areas quickly right here, right now. These are the key areas identified by researchers like Stuart Shanker that fuel dysregulation. So we've got physical pain, aspects like tiredness, hunger, sensory overload, emotional pain. Are they carrying anger, guilt, shame, Are they experiencing cognitive pain, confusion, working memory issues, difficulty processing language and instructions? Social pain. Do they feel rejected or excluded by peers or adults?
Pro social pain. Do they lack a sense of purpose or contribution, or don't know how to contribute or work within the social group? Each one of those adds weight to a pupil's stress load and connection actually helps lighten that load. It's like a seesaw. On the one hand, we've got the stresses weighing the seesaw down, and on the other, we've got relationships and connection balancing, balancing out those pressures. And when we connect, before we correct, we reduce stress across every one of those primary areas of internal need. We are saying through our behaviour, you're safe here.
And once safety returns, flexibility returns. The child can think logically again. They can listen to what you're saying, they can repair, they can have that reasonable conversation about what happened. But here's the catch. The pupils who need connection the most, they're often the ones who resist it the hardest. For children affected by trauma or adverse childhood experiences say they've got a background of domestic abuse, well, for them, adults might not be a source of comfort. Maybe they've learned the hard lesson that adults are a source of danger.
So their nervous system has learned a simple rule. Adults aren't safe. Avoid them. Distrust them. They're not reliable. Keep adults at arm's length because they can turn on you at any time, that sort of thing. So when a teacher or a teacher assistant leans in to help a child who's absorbed those messages, their body actually screams danger.
And they push away, or they lash out, or they shut down, even though deep down they're desperate for that connection at a biological level. And that creates a vicious cycle. They need adult support, but they don't trust the adults. And that lack of trust actually fuels their dysregulation, meaning that they now need even more adult support. But they can't accept that which dysregulates them further and they get stuck in a doom loop. So for them, trust with adults is like standing on thin ice. They don't trust that it will bear their weight, so they're waiting for the surface to crack and swallow them up at any moment.
The only way to prove that the ice isn't going to crack is through time, it's through consistency, and it's through calm. So for these kind of students, connection isn't a one off technique.
It's not a silver bullet. It's not something you're going to achieve this morning or in a lesson or in one or two interactions. It's a long game. It's the quiet repetition of safety cues, a calm voice, a predictable response. No surprises. And the thing is, you build up trust with these kids. Gram by gram.
That's how trust starts to rebuild. And it's something I'm going to explore in more detail in a book that I'm writing right now, which goes into depth about all these techniques. But that's going to be in the future. I'm just going to leave that there as a teaser. And before we go on to okay, you've described the problem. Now how do we actually connect? Before we correct the nuts and bolts, I'd like to say if you're finding this episode useful, hit subscribe so you never miss a future episode.
And if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it really helps more teachers and school leaders find this kind of support. And it gives me an excuse to pretend I'm checking podcast analytics instead of just scrolling through Facebook. I'll minimise the app the moment anyone comes into the office. And don't forget, you can also grab our free Send Behaviour Handbook. It is packed with guides about ADHD and autism and trauma, plus a behaviour analysis grid to help you link the classroom behaviours you're seeing to possible underlying needs in your students. It's not there for us as teachers or educationalists to try and make a lay diagnosis. It's not about that at all.
But it's helping us link what we're seeing in the classroom to possible underlying causes so we can get the right professionals involved and we can start putting in place early intervention. You will find the link in the show notes. You can open up your podcast app and click on this episode and you'll see the link there. Or you can go direct to beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook. That's beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook. So let's get practical. How do you connect before you correct?
One of the simplest and most powerful tools for doing this is the PACE approach. Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy, developed by Dan Hughes. And it's designed specifically to help children feel safe emotionally in moments of stress. So let's break it down. Playfulness first. Playfulness is about warmth and lightness, and it doesn't mean cracking a joke during a child's meltdown or explosion. But it does mean potentially playing the long game by backing off from talking about expectations and boundaries, which increase the pressure in an interaction when the child obviously cannot cope with it, and using tone and micro humour as a release valve to signal safety.
To say, this situation you're in right now that you're finding difficult, that's giving you heightened emotions. This situation is resolvable and it is not the end of the world. So it's a half smile, a calm voice, maybe even a light comment, like after a student rips up their worksheet, say, yeah, I know. Trigonometry makes me furious too. What you're saying in moments like that is, I'm not a threat. It's not the end of the world. Let's lower the temperature here.
Acceptance is acceptance, as in, we're going to accept where the child is right now, whether we're comfortable with that or not. And we're going to accept the emotion they're experiencing whether we agree with it or not. It's acceptance, as in, this is where we are. We are where we are right now and we need to deal with it effectively. It is not acceptance, as in any behaviour goes, any behaviour is okay, so it's saying things like, I can see you're angry right now. That works far better than calm down or stop breaking the rules. It gives the feeling permission to exist while keeping clear boundaries on the behaviour you're seeing in the room.
And what you're doing here is you're separating the child from their actions. So that's playfulness and acceptance. Curiosity is replacing accusational speech and thoughts like, you know the school rules about speaking respectfully to me, with wondering and being curious about what's driving that. So saying things like, I wonder if it felt unfair when I told you you couldn't use the computers. Curiosity invites conversation. It turns a confrontation, it pivots it into a collaborative discussion. And when you get curious, you engage the thinking brain.
Rather than firing up the defensive one. It leads you to the underlying problem that's causing the behaviour. Rather than just focusing on the surface level behaviour itself, it leads you to better answers as an adult. And then finally, we've got E for empathy. Show that you feel with them, not for them. Because empathy is different to sympathy. So saying things like "that sounds tough I used to do trigonometry in school.
I found it really hard and I got frustrated too". Sharing shared experiences. Empathy tells the child that they're not alone. Because when you're on your own, that's a lonely, difficult, scary place to be. That simple act helps quiet the child's amygdala, their alarm, and it starts bringing the prefrontal cortex back online. And remember, empathy means connecting and acknowledging the causes for their actions and their perceptions, rather than agreeing with what the child says or condoning them. It's about listening and connecting.
Because after we've used the PACE approach and we've got things calm, then we'll move into problem solving and putting limits on behaviour and so on. So PACE gets the child into an emotional state where we can then deal with the underlying problem. When you use pace, you're not being soft. What you're actually doing is you're being strategic. You're creating the where correction can actually work and be effective and lead to change in the future, rather than a child just going around and around and around, stuck in a pattern of behaviour because they're not learning or growing, they're not gaining the tools to deal with the situation that they're out of their depth in, which fueled their emotions. So here's your takeaway. Correction only works when the brain feels safe enough to learn.
Connection isn't the reward for good behaviour, it's the route to achieving it. So this week, try picking one student who struggles to trust adults, who becomes dysregulated focus on connecting before correcting. A calm tone, a curious question, a small act of empathy, and watch what happens. And bear in mind, I did say this approach built trust gram by gram. So you're thinking about the long term, not whether it works in a single day. Because for a child carrying stress or carrying trauma, your calm presence isn't just nice to have it's their nervous system safety net. You become external regulator, the safety valve that helps them find their internal regulation.
And that's where real change begins. If today's episode gave you something useful, something practical you can actually use in your classroom, please remember to hit subscribe so you never miss the next one and potentially share it with another colleague or two who'd find it useful. Your podcast app makes sharing an episode really easy to do. All you have to do is hit the share button just like you do on social media, and you can send them a direct link to this episode. And while you've got the app open, I would really appreciate it if you could support me on the podcast and leave a rating and review, because that tells the algorithm the podcast is worth highlighting to other listeners. That helps us grow, but it also helps us spread these techniques to teachers and school leaders who really need to hear them. That's it for today.
That's all I've got for you. My name's Simon Currigan. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next time on School Behaviour Secrets.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)
