Join Guy Stephens for a presentation on a new way to understand children's behavior. For years, families and schools have leaned on rewards, punishments, and compliance-based approaches to manage children’s behavior. But research shows these methods often oversimplify behavior, which can lead to worse outcomes, especially for neurodivergent children, children with disabilities, and children who have lived through trauma.
Behavior can communicate unmet needs, emotions, distress, pain, sensory overload, or a need for connection or safety. At its foundation, behavior is biology. Our brain, body, and nervous system drive all human behavior. Once we understand that behavior starts in the body and brain, we can move away from compliance and control and toward connection.
Drawing on his own lived experience as a father and current research, Guy shows how trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming, relationship-centered approaches help adults understand what is beneath behavior and respond in ways that promote safety, regulation, connection, and skill development—leading to better outcomes for every child.
You will learn:
Why children's behavior is so often misunderstood
Why many common methods of addressing behavior are not working
How trauma-informed, neuroscience-aligned, and neurodiversity-affirming approaches can change how we see and respond to behavior
At home, at school, and across our communities, we can create lasting, positive change — together.
Guy Stephens is a passionate advocate and a nationally recognized expert on restraint and seclusion. In 2019, Guy founded the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint (AASR), a highly respected national nonprofit organization. AASR's mission is to inform changes in policy and practice to reduce and eliminate the use of punitive and exclusionary discipline and outdated behavioral management approaches and end the school-to-prison pipeline. Guy promotes trauma-informed, neuroscience-aligned, neurodiversity-a rming, relationship-driven, and collaborative approaches to working with children. He has presented at conferences and events across North America and regularly speaks as a guest lecturer for undergraduate and graduate courses. Guy currently serves on the board of directors for The Arc of Maryland and PDANorth America. Guy believes that we can do better for all children and adults; if wecan, we must. Guy understands that we must embrace neurodiversity and neuroscience to create safe and inclusive environments and ensure equal rights and opportunities for all.