Our kids are over stressed.
Leaving kids to ‘figure it out’ on their own is not the way to build resilience.
We have to support their self regulation skills through co-regulation.

Self Regulation is different to self control. It is self regulation that makes self control possible. It supports their ability to learn.

Self-regulation is foundational for:
*emotional wellbeing
*educational achievement
*physical health.

Often misbehaviour is actually a clue that the child needs support to deal with their stress, rather than a consequence of punishment hence reframe the behaviours from misbehaviour to stress behaviour.

The 2:10 or 2×10 behaviour intervention is perhaps one of the simplest yet best strategies out there.
Here’s what it is: a teacher spends 2 minutes a day for 10 consecutive school days talking to the identified/challenging student about whatever the student is interested in or wants to talk about. That’s it!

Though many teachers may indicate this is just best practice and something they’ve already been doing on a regular basis, the vast majority may struggle to build a rapport with their most challenging kids. I can relate to that struggle—it’s not always easy to get students to open up and trust you.It also takes a lot of time to build a strong rapport, and time is probably a teacher’s most precious and limited commodity.

You may not be able to create a structured, dedicated time for talking individually to students…and that can actually be a good thing. The 2×10 strategy doesn’t mean pulling the child away from a task to corner him at your desk, then setting a timer and forcing the kid to bond with you for exactly 120 seconds. Relationship building works best when it happens naturally and authentically! You don’t have to stop everything you and the child are doing to talk: just look for and seize opportunities during the school day.
Stand in the doorway when students enter the room and ask them how they’re doing—not as as a rhetorical greeting, but as a sincere question which you genuinely want to talk about. Chat as and when the opportunity arises.
Talk briefly while kids are cleaning up and transitioning into the next activity. When you’re starting or ending small group instruction, take a moment to talk casually. When you’re assisting a child one-on-one (even just to look over their work and see if they’re understanding the concept), say, “By the way, _” and extend the conversation into a topic of interest to the child.
Another—and much bolder–approach is to use your instructional time for relationship building and do so unapologetically. When students are disruptive, we have no qualms about stopping the lesson to address what happened, help students problem solve, issue consequences, and so on. We dislike doing it, but we know it’s necessary in order for the lesson to proceed smoothly afterward. Think about it—how many minutes a day are you spending on those off-task behavior discussions? Why not spend 2 pro-active minutes preventing the problems from occurring by building a rapport with challenging kids? Get the rest of the class involved in a warm-up activity or other independent assignment and start a quiet individual conversation. If you don’t have to stop your lesson 10 times afterwards to deal with misbehavior, you’ll actually accomplish a lot more.

This behaviour intervention is based on the premise that connection and relationship fuel motivation and overall wellbeing.
Sometimes this intervention in itself is all that is needed (particularly when the root cause of the issue may be poor teacher-student relationship). Sometimes, this intervention opens the door for a student and teacher to be more readily able to start a more skill-specific intervention.

Dr. Raymond Wlodkoswski (former teacher turned professor turned author) writes that he found 85% improvement in the student’s behaviour who received the intervention and that overall class behaviour improved too.