Every Child Comes With a User Manual. We Just Have to Learn How to Read It

A child may spend an hour building an intricate Lego structure from memory, then stare at three maths questions as though they have been written in code. They can recall every detail of a conversation you had six months ago but remain genuinely surprised that PE happens every Wednesday. They may cope beautifully throughout the school day, only to come home and unravel because someone gave them the wrong cup.

Adults often read these contradictions as choice.

They can do it when they want to. They managed yesterday. They are perfectly fine at school.

Each statement may be accurate, but ability is only one part of what a child can manage at a particular moment. The environment matters, as does the way an instruction is given, how much effort the day has already required, whether the task feels manageable and whether the child knows where to begin.

After many years in classrooms and around school meeting tables, I have learnt to be wary of simple explanations for complicated children.

A learner who does not begin may be avoiding the work, but they may also be struggling to identify the first step. A child who argues about an instruction may be testing a boundary, or they may not yet have processed what has been asked. The quiet child who never causes concern may genuinely be coping well. They may also have become extremely skilled at hiding when they are not.

We do not need to replace one assumption with another. We need to stay curious for long enough to notice when, where and why the difficulty appears.

Occupational therapist Tash Munisamy from The Bridge School Morningside describes behaviour as the visible part of a much larger picture. Rather than asking only how to stop a behaviour, she encourages adults to consider what it may be communicating and asks:

“What does this child’s nervous system need in order to feel safe enough to participate?”

That does not mean abandoning boundaries or explaining away every difficult moment. Children still need to learn responsibility, recover from mistakes and do things they would prefer to avoid. They are also perfectly capable of delaying bedtime, negotiating over vegetables and developing a sudden need for the bathroom when homework appears.

Understanding what may be getting in the way gives us a better chance of responding to the actual difficulty.

A child who cannot find the first step may need help breaking the task down. One who feels overwhelmed by uncertainty may manage better when they know what is coming. A child who thinks through movement may need to pace, fiddle or stand before their thoughts organise themselves, while another may find that same movement so distracting that the rest of the room quietly disappears.

The expectation does not always need to change, but we may need to reconsider how we are helping the child reach it.

This is also why children can appear so different at home, at school and in therapy. Each setting places different demands on them.

A teacher may see a capable learner who rarely asks for help. At home, the parent sees the exhaustion that follows a full day of maintaining that competence. A therapist may recognise sensory strain, anxiety or planning difficulties that are far less obvious in a busy classroom.

None of these adults necessarily has the whole picture, but each may be holding an important part of it. Trouble begins when those observations remain in separate rooms and the child is somehow expected to connect them alone.

Children are remarkably quick to absorb the language used about them. They know when they are considered lazy, difficult, dramatic, distracted or capable of more. What they are less often taught is how to describe their own experience without turning it into a personal failing.

There is a considerable difference between believing, “I am useless at homework,” and being able to say, “I understand the work, but I cannot work out how to begin.” Once the difficulty has a name, the child and the adults around them have something more useful to work with.

This thinking also sits behind BABS, a whole-child practice that brings regulation, thinking and learning together rather than treating them as separate problems.

“We are often very quick to describe what a child is doing without asking what purpose that behaviour may be serving,” says Kate La Trobe, a qualified Behaviour Analyst and Executive Functioning Coach at BABS. “A child who refuses to begin may be avoiding the task, but they may also be overwhelmed, unsure how to start or trying to regain some control. The behaviour may look the same, while the support each child needs can be very different.”

The child may still need to complete the task, repair the mistake or accept the boundary. Looking at the whole child gives the adults around them a better chance of understanding what is getting in the way and responding in a way that helps.

A useful understanding of a child is built gradually from school history, reports, teacher observations, parent knowledge and the child’s own account of what helps or hinders them. No single assessment, diagnosis or classroom moment can carry the whole story.

Children, rather inconveniently, also continue to grow and change.

Perhaps that is what a child’s user manual really looks like.

It does not arrive neatly bound at birth. It is written over time, through the situations in which they flourish, the demands that drain them, the things that help them recover and the moments when they are able to show us what they know.



We will not read every page correctly the first time. Parenting and teaching would be considerably easier if we did. But the more carefully we pay attention, the less likely we are to mistake a child’s difficulty for a character flaw and the better chance we have of giving them support that actually helps.