You know when you buy a new car, and suddenly you see the same car everywhere?
The cars haven’t magically multiplied.
Your brain has just started noticing what you’ve told it to look for.
This came up in this week’s episode of The Kindness Code Podcast with Andy Baker, author of Targeting the Positive with Behaviours that Challenge - and honestly, it really stopped me.
Because if a whole staff team keeps saying, “This young person is aggressive”…
What are we training everyone to see?
Aggression.
Every time.
And then even the smaller things, the things we might not have noticed before, start getting pulled into that same story.
That is powerful. And it’s dangerous.
The answer isn’t just “catch them being good.” That sounds lovely, but it’s far too vague.
The real work is identifying the positive incompatible behaviour - the thing the young person can’t do at the same time as the behaviour we’re worried about.
So if we’re worried about abusive language, the opposite might be respect.
But “respect” on it’s own doesn’t mean much unless we define it properly.
What does respect actually look like in this home, on this shift, with this child?
It might be speaking kindly.
Holding a door.
Walking away rather than escalating.
Helping someone who is struggling.
That’s what we need to train our brains to notice.
And as always in care, the work starts with the adults first.