I fully agree with this—but only after I learned it the hard way.
The first time my six-year-old knocked his little brother’s block tower down, I reacted immediately. The screaming started, the baby cried, and I swooped in with a firm voice and a time-out. I felt like a parent doing the right thing. I was stopping the bad behavior, showing it had consequences, protecting the little one. That’s the job, right?
But then I noticed something. The time-out ended and, within ten minutes, he did it again. Then he started hiding his actions—he’d “accidentally” bump the coffee table, or he’d wait until I left the room. The behavior didn’t go away; it just went underground.
It was during a similar afternoon, with the same block tower and the same tears, that I stopped myself. I set the crying baby down in the playpen, went over to my oldest, crouched down to his level, and instead of lecturing, I asked a different question. Not “Why did you do that?”—because I knew that would get a shrug and a “I don’t know.” I asked, “Are you trying to get my attention?”
He looked at me, eyes darting. He didn’t nod. But he didn’t have to.
We sat there for a bit, and I remembered something a first-grade teacher told me years ago. She said, “When a kid is misbehaving, I don’t ask ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I ask ‘What is he trying to tell me?’” At the time, I thought it sounded a little too soft. I was a big believer in firm boundaries. I figured that kind of attitude was how you end up with kids ruling the house.
But watching my son sit there, clearly stuck between guilt and frustration, I understood what she meant. His behavior wasn’t random. It was a message. Every single thing he did, as annoying or destructive as it was, communicated something real. And if I just kept shutting down the message—by punishing the delivery—I’d never get to the content.
This doesn’t mean I stopped setting limits. The tower still had to be rebuilt, and an apology was still required. But I started changing the sequence. Before the “consequence,” I made space for the “why.” I’d take his hand, move him away from his brother, and say, “Let’s sit for a minute. I need to understand what’s happening for you.” Most of the time, he couldn’t articulate it. That’s the thing about young kids—they don’t have the words. My son knew he was angry. He didn’t know that he felt displaced by his baby brother, that his toys were being touched, that his space was invaded.
That’s the real insight. I used to think discipline meant outsmarting my child, or laying down the law early and often. Now I think it’s more like translation.
A concrete example: Last month, he started refusing to put on his shoes in the morning. Every day, a battle. We tried everything—a sticker chart, threats about being late, offering to race him to the car. Nothing worked. The shoe standoff took forty-five minutes some days.
I was about to double down on stricter rules when I remembered the tower incident. So, instead of grabbing his shoe and wrestling it onto his foot, I sat on the floor with him and just kind of mirrored what he was doing. He was staring at the laces with a completely blank face, not moving. I finally said, “I noticed you take a long time with your shoes. Part of me wonders if you’re trying to tell me something about school.”
His lip wobbled. “I don’t want to go.”
“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice plain. “What’s hard about going?”
“Lee is mean to me.”
We got it out. It wasn’t about the shoes. It was about a kid who pinched him on the playground. We talked through what to say when Lee got close, and I walked him through exactly what would happen when he got to class—“You’ll hang up your bag, we’ll wave through the window, and you can sit next to Maya.” The shoes went on in two minutes.
Now, I know what some parents are thinking. If I stop and analyze everything, I’ll be negotiating with a terrorist. There’s a fear that asking “what’s this about?” spoils kids, or makes us weak parents. But I’ve found there’s a difference between being understanding and being a pushover.
I still set the rule: shoes go on, because we leave at 8:30. The change wasn’t in the expectation—it was in my approach. I’m not giving him a hall pass to skip school. I’m helping him solve the real problem so the simple expectation is actually possible for him.
What helped me most was shifting how I heard my own voice. I used to think my instinctive, firm “STOP IT!” was effective. Now I realize it was just a shortcut. It ended the surface behavior for a moment, but did nothing for whatever was driving it. The next interruption—whatever it was—just picked a different act to perform.
So, I’ve started doing a few things differently in our house, mostly based on that teacher’s question.
First, I’m trying to label the behavior in a way that separates the child from the action. Instead of “Stop being mean,” I try to say, “Hitting your brother isn’t okay.” It’s a small phrase difference but it signals to him—and to me—that being upset is okay, but the hitting is just a bad way to show it.
Second, I’ve learned to look for the “inconvenient” needs. Truly, so many bad behaviors trace back to a basic biological or environmental need. My daughter, who is three, turns into a monster before dinner. For a long time, I thought she was just “testing boundaries” because she’d chuck her plate across the room. Then I realized her blood sugar was low. A cheese stick and a cup of milk changed everything. It sounds obvious, but in the heat of the moment, “testing boundaries” is the label you reach for first. I try to ask if they’re tired, hungry, or overstimulated before I ask if they’re being defiant.
Third, I now use a phrase that feels a little silly, but it works: “Show me what happened.” When one kid comes running with a complaint, instead of listening to the verbal report (which is usually skewed), I walk both kids back to the scene and say, “Show me.” It slows everyone down, gives me physical evidence, and puts the focus back on facts instead of accusations. It also gives me a minute to breathe before my own nervous system goes into alarm mode.
And finally, I’m getting better at sitting with uncomfortable feelings. When my son cried in the kitchen because Lee was mean to him, my first impulse was to fix it immediately—call the school, get Lee in trouble, or tell my son to ignore it. But the longer I stayed quiet and just let him feel sad, the more he opened up. I always think I have to do something when my kids are upset. But sometimes the best thing is literally just standing there, offering a lap, and letting the problem be big for a minute.
This whole shift has changed the temperature of our house. It’s not that behavior is perfect—far from it. Just yesterday, my middle kid had a meltdown because I gave him a blue cup instead of a green one. I could have launched into a lesson about gratitude and entitlement. Instead, I looked at him—flushed, tired from a birthday party—and said, “You seem really disappointed about that cup. I know you wanted the green one, but it’s in the dishwasher.” He cried for two minutes, drank the water, and moved on. If I’d lectured him, we’d still be stuck at the table arguing.
I’m not trying to be a perfect, understanding parent. I still lose my temper. I still shout, “Enough!” in the parking lot. But I get back to this idea more quickly now. Every time my kid does something bizarre or frustrating, I’m trying to make that pause. The one where I ask, “What is he trying to tell me?” Because honestly, they can’t tell us in any other way. Their behavior is their language. It’s messy, and sometimes it’s manipulative, and often it’s exhausting to decode. But it’s all they have. They’re just sending the message, hoping someone will finally listen.
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