Looking Beyond Behaviour

One of the harder truths of supporting young people — whether as parents/carers, Waymakers staff or volunteers — is that being a young person’s safe person doesn’t always feel good.

Sometimes it looks like trust, connection and shared joy. Sometimes it looks like being the person who gets the eye-rolls, the complaints, the automatic “no”, the criticism and the frustrated outbursts.

Recently I’ve found myself reflecting on the difference between knowing something intellectually and living it emotionally.

I know that young people often save their biggest feelings for the people they trust most. I know that behaviour is communication. I know that overwhelm can make it hard to access empathy, flexibility and perspective-taking.

And yet, when you’re the one being told that nothing is right, nothing is fair, and nothing you’ve done is good enough, those truths can be surprisingly hard to hold onto.

In many settings, these moments are often understood primarily as behaviour problems to be managed. But when we look more closely, what we often see is a young person whose needs are not being met — for safety, autonomy, connection, understanding or rest.

What can look like defiance may be a need for control.

What can look like rudeness may be a sign of overwhelm.

What can look like disengagement may be a nervous system trying to protect itself.

A consent-based approach invites us to pause and ask a different question:

What do I and others need?

This is one of the Waymakers habits we try to model and practise together. It shifts the focus away from controlling behaviour and towards understanding what might be driving it.

At Waymakers, we try to balance autonomy and community. We respect young people’s agency while recognising the needs of others, and we move away from coercion without abandoning boundaries, safety or responsibility.

These ideas are sometimes misunderstood as meaning that adults simply step back and allow young people to do whatever they like. In reality, they ask more of us, not less. They ask us to stay curious, to reflect on our own responses, and to find ways of meeting needs while remaining in relationship with one another.

A young person might need space, clarity or a sense of choice, while an adult might need quiet, calm or a moment to regulate. Neither cancels the other out. The work is in noticing both, and responding in a way that honours everyone’s humanity.

This doesn’t mean there are no boundaries. It means boundaries are rooted in care rather than control. It means we model what it looks like to recognise our own limits while staying connected.

As adults supporting young people, we can find ourselves caught in a difficult balancing act: being understanding while maintaining connection, honesty and healthy boundaries.

But we are people too.

Sometimes we feel hurt.

Sometimes we feel unappreciated.

Sometimes we wonder whether we’re getting it all wrong.

One of the more challenging realisations is that explaining how hurt we feel doesn’t necessarily have the effect we hope it will. A young person who is already overwhelmed may hear that as another problem to solve, another expectation to meet, or another reason to feel ashamed.

That doesn’t mean our feelings don’t matter. It just means there may be a difference between sharing them and expecting a young person to hold them.

Boundaries don’t have to be dramatic. Sometimes they are as simple as:

“I’m not willing to be spoken to like that.”

“I’m going to take a short break and come back.”

“I care about you, and I’m stepping away for now.”

Not as punishments. Not as consequences. Just as ways of looking after our own nervous systems while staying connected.

What I’ve also noticed is that the moments which most challenge my confidence are rarely the moments that tell the whole story.

The young person who complains all morning may still seek you out when they’re upset.

The young person who says “I hate you” in anger may still want you beside them when things feel difficult.

The young person who rejects every suggestion may still be telling you, in their own complicated way, that you are their safest place.

None of this makes the hard moments easy.

We don’t have to pretend it never hurts.

We don’t have to have all the answers.

And we don’t have to carry it alone.

At Waymakers, we don’t see behaviour as something to manage so much as something to understand. The question we keep returning to is simple:

What do I and others need?