“If you have to give any correction, do it privately,
in secret, and with the greatest sweetness.”- St. John Bosco
St. John Bosco’s preventive system of discipline in schools is based on his three rules of reason, religion and loving kindness (Morrison, 1979). He believed in the power of having a loving and patient relationship with the students in his care and that this approach would most lead young people to the development of virtue and character. Today, the field of applied educational neuroscience is drawing a strong parallel between developmental neuroscience which emphasizes relationship and the regulation of nervous system states in children/adolescents and how honoring these realities of childhood development can prevent acting out, behavioral dysregulation and disciplinary infractions. The main idea is that when educators tend to the nervous system needs of the children in their care while also being in safe and connected relationships to their students, there are significantly fewer disciplinary problems and a greater focus on learning.
“Brain-aligned relational discipline embraces the knowledge and understanding that discipline is an expression of a compassionate presence, warm demanding, and guidance without coercion. Discipline is not something we do to students: it is something we want to develop within them. The foundation for this new perception of school discipline is grounded in the social neurosciences speaking to attachment, co-regulation, educator brain state, and the strengthening of touch points, which are relationship and connection moments in our children’s and adolescents’ lives.” (Connections over Compliance, 2021, Dr. Lori Desautel, p. 35).
This paradigm shift in discipline is working to move educators away from traditional models of discipline which emphasize punishment, consequences, and reactive and reflexive responding. St. John Bosco called this approach a repressive system and we know today that harsh and reactionary discipline only serves to cause children and adolescents to repress strong emotions that then show up as bodily and psychiatric symptoms, behavioral acting out, academic struggles or troubles in their relationships with peers and adults. St. John Bosco’s preventive system and today’s brain-aligned preventive discipline emphasize attachment/relationship, fairness, responsibility, and developing life skills through learning virtue and problem-solving.
While virtue is acquired through education (CCC 1810), it is the means to live fully as a disciple of Christ. Catholic schools place Jesus as the center and seek to frame their mission on Him being the master Teacher. Jesus is the perfectly virtuous person and every baptized Christian is called to live in imitation of Him. Virtue is what it “looks like” and “sounds like” to live as a disciple who follows the master. The language of virtue can be used as well as modeled to students through actions and relationships. Therefore, as Catholic educators our call is to recognize the innate goodness and dignity of each person entrusted to our care and make every effort to understand the wisdom of the saints revealed through the recent findings in neuroscience.
In our book, Raised in Grace: Made for Wholeness (2024), we emphasize two important constructs of childhood brain development which lay the foundation for this paradigm shift in discipline moving from a reactionary approach to a preemptive one. The Neurosequential Model, outlined by Dr. Bruce Perry (Perry & Winfrey, 2021), illustrates the order in which the childhood brain develops from brainstem structures associated with survival and safety, to relational and emotional structures housed in the limbic system, and finally to the reasoning structures in the cortex. In the classroom, this means that any particular student has to feel a sense of emotional and physical safety in the context of connected relationships before we as educators can have access to the portal of the cortex where learning, memory and attention are at work. St. John Bosco, for instance, would say that one should never correct a student when he/she is upset, but instead give them time to reflect and enter “his/her own mind.” Brainaligned preventive discipline recognizes that when a teacher is attuned to the nervous system states of his/her students and is working to foster good working relationships with and between her students, significantly fewer disciplinary infractions will occur. When they do occur, they are much more likely to be viewed as the activation of a child or an adolescent’s underdeveloped nervous system needing adult help and as opportunities to build discipleship and skills (e.g., through virtue, teaching meekness in response to anger or self-control as an antidote to impulsivity).
[Our] call is to recognize the innate goodness and dignity of each person entrusted to our care and make every effort to understand the wisdom of the saints revealed through the recent findings in neuroscience.
Secondly, the childhood nervous system is underdeveloped and, like the brain, is being wired gradually in the context of daily experiences. From a brain-aligned standpoint, we want children in the classroom to be in a state of relaxed alertness to most benefit from instruction. What current developmental neuroscience is suggesting, however, is that most negative behaviors occur from a bottom-up, overly activated nervous system rather than from a cortical top-down decision on the part of a student to misbehave (Delahooke, 2019). Polyvagal theory (i.e., the vagus nerve) outlines three predictable pathways within the nervous system including: 1) social engaged nervous system state (e.g., also called rest and digest); 2) the fight/flight system (e.g., a system of mobilization leading to disruptive, dysregulated behaviors); and 3) a freeze system (e.g., an energy conservation system that takes a child out of social connectedness). In general, a child/adolescent with an activated fight-or-flight nervous system response (e.g., inattention, hyperactivity/restlessness) needs calming strategies to return to a state of social engagement and relaxed alertness. Traditional disciplinary strategies that are about calling a student out while admonishing and consequencing them, while they may look effective in the temporary, actually create more stress and thereby, more cortical shutdown. Certainly, some misbehavior is intentional and designed to control and manipulate the environment and here discipline should continue to keep stress levels low and consequence the behavior in a way that teaches virtue while not giving into the goal of the behavior. Children and adolescents who are in a freeze nervous system state are shut down and not engaged in their learning and have a more significant level of nervous system disruption. These students need movement to overcome their shutdown state. These are students who cannot seem to turn in their homework or refuse to go to school or rigidly adhere to comfortable routines as opposed to adjusting flexibly to new classroom demands. Brainaligned strategies that focus on stretching and patterned, repetitive movement are most successful with these students.
An educator standing in a “still point of grace” (Rasmussen and Villa, 2024) and being attuned to the nervous system states of their classroom and their students is at the heart of brain-aligned preventive discipline. Here, co-regulation is used as a main strategy for intervention (e.g., when the adult nervous system in a safe and connected state helps a child come into a calm, safe and connected state
MTSS in education takes a whole-child approach to developmental needs providing a framework that identifies and is responsive to the needs of all students. Positive behavioral support systems are an example of an MTSS framework that promotes positive behavior, preventive discipline and responsive interventions to disciplinary infractions. While positive behavioral support approaches come close to brainaligned preventive discipline, we suggest that behavior modification alone is not the goal of using discipline to build daily living skills. Instead, the elements of Christian anthropology, the neurosequential model and polyvagal theory previously outlined as well as placing a child in a culture where the graces of baptism and the sacraments are nurtured, particularly the theological and cardinal virtues to build in brain fundamentals over time (i.e., neuroplasticity) are best suited to our current understanding of developmental neuroscience and St. John Bosco’s preventive system.
Tier One systems of support address the needs of most of the student body in that they are school interventions that help to calm and settle children before learning begins. Nervous system activation and fears of belonging often occur during times of transition from recess back to classroom, in hallways during movement from one class to another and anywhere that adult supervision is lessened. School-wide strategies that focus on morning prayer, regular Mass, teaching virtue and building in time for reflection help all students achieve that state of relaxed alertness necessary for access to higher cortical learning. Built-in procedures and routines that help with transitions provide consistency and continuity that through repetitive practice create the gradual wiring of calm and socially engaged minds through neuroplasticity.
Tier Two systems make up about 15 percent of necessary interventions and are designed to address subgroups of students who need specific skill-building in regulation and virtue. As educators, we all know groups of students who need extra help because an activated nervous system state has gripped the whole group through resonance/contagion. We have seen this in episodes of bullying or mean girl exclusion going on in classrooms or groups of students who are navigating an important transition such as puberty in middle school or that between eighth grade and high school. These groups require more intentional interventions in regulation and virtue training.
Tier Three systems of support are reserved for students (estimated to be about 10 percent) who have easily or chronically activated nervous systems and/or unique nervous systems and relational needs. Neuroatypical students, children with early attachment wounds (e.g., adoptees) and those students who have a high degree of adverse childhood experiences often comprise those who need individualized intervention to help them achieve states of calm and regulation. At this tier, educators are much more intentional about co-regulation with students and use sensory strategies, validation through virtue-spotting, movement and breathing as well as providing a space (e.g., a chapel visit, a calming or sensory corner) where they can go if they are becoming dysregulated. These students have much more success in their learning and development with a teacher who is attuned to dysregulation and can provide accommodation and interventions aimed at nervous system regulation and secure relating.
St. John Bosco emphasized that patience, gentleness and prudence win the hearts and minds of young people. Teachers who practice their own “still point of grace” only use punishment as a last resort and understand that children and adolescents only obey from a point of persuasion (e.g., securely attached relationships) are practicing brain-aligned discipline. Teachers have a great deal of power in influencing childhood development during these daily micro-moments where they can communicate (literally in milliseconds) to a child that they are seen, safe and soothed in the inevitable childhood struggles to grow and learn (Siegel, 2018). Indeed, God is showing us how to care for His children and we are being asked to listen and respond.
“Not all of us can do great things but
we can do small things with great love.”- St. Teresa of Calcutta
Sister John Dominic Rasmussen, OPis the executive director at Openlight Media.
sjdr@sistersofmary.org
Karen Villa, Ph.D.is a neuropsychologist.
kkvphd@gmail.com